Google is now beginning to appreciate the unique challenges that come with size, scale, and sprawling strategies.
Like Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker — with great power comes great responsibility. And as Peter’s alter-ego Spider-Man knows only too well, with great power comes a vast array of threats and enemies, too.
Google isn’t a super hero. It’s a company comprised of a bunch of clever people trying to make sense of a meandering line of products & services and attach long-term agendas to them.
Jane Copland recently ran an article asking what might the search engines one day understand about social media. First, I must freely admit, I have been somewhat remiss in my ‘blogging obligations. I’ve had this article suspended in my mind for some time. Only after reading Jane’s discussion was I roused from my technological torpor to write.
I’d like to expand upon what Jane started and go a little further beyond social media, and at the same time highlight some of the issues I see staring the search engines right in the face.
Social Media as a Trojan Horse for Content
Currently, the search engines are largely blind (dare I say, blind-sided?) by social media. And in this regard, I’ll be singling Google out specifically.
However, sooner or later, this misunderstanding and/or misinterpretation of social media must change. Why? Because if Google doesn’t get a grip and start “getting” social media — which it currently doesn’t — then it’s going to see less people finding stuff via their algorithms and more people sharing stuff via social media and social networks and email and IM and phone text messages…
Meanwhile, people aren’t clicking on their Sponsored Links.This isn’t an immediate threat, but the prospect of their principle revenue stream being challenged by a social phenomena is on the up-swing and it’s a good idea for Google to give the “problem” some serious thought now rather than later, when the threat has matured.
Even more so, rowdy start-ups have a habit of plundering nascent markets with viral-like applications and services — Facebook being a good if somewhat mature example of that thinking.
Google’s Search Information Paradox
The very fact that Google is even discussing hanging onto our personal search data longer than eighteen months offers an insight into their current thinking. If you want personal search to work, then the likes of thee & me need to share more personal information about ourselves with the search engines.
There’s no way around this particular search information paradox, one not solved by any purely observation routines and algorithms. After all, to offer more is to know more. If this wasn’t the case, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software just wouldn’t exist.
Let’s assume Google knows more about us as people, rather than just our search activities — what next?
The next step in search technology will be marked by the death of the search engine as we know it.
Innovation in Search Technology — the Found Engine
As our lives edge inexorably towards being more and more interconnected to the internet, our likes & dislikes shared amongst family, friends, and colleagues, as well as our work-day tasks & activities, this pool of data becomes information.
You see, data and information aren’t the same thing — data is the raw source, while information is data rendered into something meaningful.
We can share this data as APML (Attention Profile Markup Language), empowering the services we use to make more informed, specific decisions based on our very specific needs. In this scenario, imagine Google allowing you to attach your APML profile to your Google Account. At once, their various applications become smarter and more aware.
The potential benefits might not seem immediately obvious, but the monumentality of change will be truly staggering.
Fast forward a few years — the annotated event you just added tentatively to Google Calendar is suddenly surrounded with Google Docs pages and spreadsheets brimming with the information you’re going to need for that meeting.
Along with a list of links and search results, white pages, PDFs, and other assorted documents harvested from the websites you frequent most often.
Sure, some won’t be quite right while some might just be plain wrong, but the hard work will have been done for you. Also, as you discard those sources that are less relevant to your activities, you’ll be revealing something about your needs.
Additionally, as you make use of those sources you did keep, you’ll be rating them, revealing even more.
This is the emergence of what I call the Found Engine — we no longer search for stuff; our tasks and activities define our needs, so stuff is just found.
Take this a step further and think along the lines of a more Semantic Web with a healthy helping of Google Social Graph API and the level of specificity and accuracy begins to rise dramatically.
Google Universal — no Panacea for the Ills of All Search
My understanding is that Google Universal uses the raw number of comments as a metric, not factoring in whether those comments are meandering flames or Fanboy missives.
This kind of thinking is precisely fundamentally flawed logic that probably reveals a little about their lack of comprehension when it comes to blogging as a medium and social media and delivery vehicle.
Quite recently I enjoyed a measure of success with my Socialize Me! Plugin for WordPress. However, when doing a search for: “Socialize Me!” I’m currently out-ranked by Digg.
If we accept that Google is smart enough to create a quality report of those articles highlighting my Plugin, then it’s no stretch to assume that Google also knows that those sources all point to my original article.
With those assumptions being quite safe, why then doesn’t Google lift my article above those referring to mine? Think of it this way: what’s the value to the person performing the search if they have to click on the Digg article in the Google SERP, only to have to click again to get to my Plugin? Add bad usability to the list of missteps, too.
The fundamental problem for Google is, they don’t “get” either social networking or social media — which I’ve written about many times before now.
To avoid having to truly understand either, Google is going the architectural route to socializing their applications, which relies less on a detailed understanding of the social minutia, and more on the mechanical prerequisites.
Neat, but ultimately naive. Like I said, Google doesn’t get Social Media.
Google is suffering from growing pains, much to the amusement of Microsoft, I don’t doubt. During this formative, adolescent period, Google will most likely undergo something of a change in shape, style, and demeanor.
Will what we get at the end of this change be the Google we know or the Google we’ve been wishing for? Who knows. But if they don’t learn from their mistakes, someone else will…
