I don't know. I was just saying that if you want to beat Google, that's their weak spot. Or at least a big one.
Most people who read that one will think "huh?" But if someone reads it and thinks "Damn, how did he hear about what we're working on?" that's someone we'd really love to hear from.
As much as it pains me to say this, I think Google's lack of design sense might be their strong point in search. There's no extra crap to get in the way of search results. (Although I should say that in their other non-search products, it is most certainly a weakness.)
There are of course new ways to view results, but with arguable advantage. A new startup I found recently, Viewzi (http://www.viewzi.com/) does a pretty good job. But it's not better at finding stuff than Google.
searchme.com has an amazing UI. Not only thats cool, but very useful.
i believe the next gen of search engines will be directly answering your search query, rather than simply finding appropriate links.
For many noncontroversial, unambiguous queries(1), Google already directly answers the search query. For ambiguous or controversial queries, you're gonna want the references and context of the original source.
I feel like Google's user experience across many products is consistently good, and never great. The spartan ethic definitely puts a lower bound on it, but I feel like there's still some upside there.
I wonder, what % of their overall hits are the homepage? It must be low, considering almost every hit there lands on a results page, but there are lots of other ways to get to a results page (Firefox, the input box at the top of a results page, etc.)
Or: the "weak spot" might simply be that people inherently differ in their display preferences. _I_ happen to like Google's clean design, but if even 5% of the population actively dislikes it, someone could make some money. Google's "weakness" then becomes the fact that they can only present one face to the world. The beauty of this approach is that it will be tricky for Google to counterattack since they won't want to confuse their brand.
In short, Google may not have weaknesses, but their market does.
I think this merely shows a difference of opinion about what "design" means in this context. I'm absolutely certain that pg does not mean merely "appearance" when he says "design".
The way to approach the Google problem is to ask, when have I been dissatisfied with google search?
And you're right, there are very few weaknesses.
One of the startup approaches to the Google problem is to join forces with them instead of competing with them. Provide a page that wraps google search, but adds additional searchable items into the searchbar (search emails, todo lists, events, facebook, google all through one searchbar).
A slightly better question would be: when have I not found what I was looking for in a Google search? Or even, when was the thing I was looking for not the first search result?
If you use satisfaction as the test, you may be letting the present state of things influence your thinking too much. E.g. I bet a lot of people were satisfied with pre-Google search engines, and just took their limitations for granted.
To make a go of that kind of thing in a startup though, you'd have to make sure that it's something Google won't or can't execute on, something I'm not sure I would bet on.
Part of the idea of 'disruptive technologies' is that they aren't incremental improvements that the current leaders will just copy, but big changes that get ignored by the current leaders.
I certainly agree with that. The way to displace Google is to work on something they despise as inconsequential, the way the "portals" in the late 90s did search.
There are lots of things they despise as inconsequential: stupid consumerish stuff like celebrity gossip, cool design, things that aren't technically demanding, etc...
Sounds like you're suggesting tackling verticals that Google is ignoring.
The celebrity gossip industry is huge as anyone living in LA or who has bought a Star/People/Enquirer can attest. I think that might fall under the category of news, however.
I think that there might be a strength in ranking sites that have great design as opposed to crappy design. All things being equal, I'd rather read an article on a well designed page rather than on a page whose design is non-existent.
I have often searched google looking for recent articles, but the most highly ranked are always first which are often really old and outdated ... maybe there is something in the advanced search to tweak the ordering, I am not sure ...
The fact that a user couldn't figure that out indicates a potential improvement: detecting whether a given search is time-sensitive and automatically choosing the correct search ordering.
The next big search engine will answer queries you wouldn't bother giving google. Things like "what mid-priced chinese restaurant near downtown SF would my mother like?" Its not about design, or about patching holes in google's relevance. It's a paradigm shift. Tough problem, btw ;)
One thing that has irked me about Google AdSense ads is when they present an ad based on faulty disamboguation: e.g., I'm reading an email from cello-dev(Cello is a Lisp package), and I get an ad for a re-hairing service[they put new hair on bows for stringed instruments].
No, I think that Google's lack of crap is their strong spot. When I want to search, a text box to type stuff into is exactly the design that I need. Any more than that, and you're sliding into irrelevant fluff.
A good design means I get to the best possible search results with as little extra cruft as possible. Results are key. Google's design gives me just that -- no clutter, no confusion, no extraneous elements.
Seems like you're looking for something like Kosmix (http://www.kosmix.com/). The way they present results indicates that design is a major part of their users' experience.
I have thought before about judging the actual design of a web site (the way it renders, layout, fonts,...), I don't think it is impossible to do (with a learning system that learns from human users input), and might at least provide another factor for the final search result ranking.
Edit: is there already software for spotting fake art? That might be a starting point, as well as another market for that kind of image processing.
