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Google's Mayer Says Personalization is Key To Future Search
rsmiller510 writes "In a wide-ranging interview with Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington on Wednesday at Le Web in Paris, Google's Marissa Mayer talked about all things Google, but what I found most interesting was when the conversation turned toward the future of search. Mayer said the key to the future of search lies in personalization. ... Mayer said in the future, Google (and presumably other search tools) will understand more about the user and be able to deliver more relevant information based on that knowledge. 'We think that when you look at the winning search engine in 2020 and what traits it's likely to have, we think the one thing that will be true is that it will understand more about you the user.'"
Video of the interview with Mayer is available at Tech Crunch. The personalization of search content focuses mainly on SearchWiki, which we discussed when it went live last month. The Register has a more cynical take on the discussion, seizing on comments by Mayer which indicated Google employees may evaluate SearchWiki's user ratings and use them to make "obvious changes" to search results for everyone.
Thank you for bringing this up. It is important to remember as we move forward in developing information technology for the future that the process of learning , when driven by the search for information, includes seeing *what we do not want to see*.
It reminds me of a conversation that I had with an old family friend, involving research and the Internet:
Myself: (continuing)"...so my research is greatly aided by the massive amounts of indexed information on Internet. I can access the specific data I need without having to wade through large amounts of information."
Friend: "That's great, but often times I worry that the nature of research is changing because of things like the Internet, Google, Questia, etc. When I was in college, writing research papers, I would have to go to the library, find the relevant books in a card catalog, and then rent out all of those books and pour through them. Now I'm not saying that I didn't skip chapters or pages, but I found that the process of looking through the card catalog, finding all books related to the subject, and reading information that was irrelevant or detrimental to my thesis was more informative than finally arriving at the information that merely supported my thesis. Often times this process of discovery would force me to re-analyze my position resulting in a more robust conclusion. I fear that if people are brought too quickly to what they are looking for, that they will ignore everything else, and that could lead to many problems."
I was young (teenager) when we had this conversation, and at first I disagreed with him. Now, however, I completely agree with him. I think that "compartmentalized" search information could inevitably do more harm than good as it could result in many more 'localized theories' and far fewer rigorously tested truths.
Google is ridiculously more profitable than NBC Universal or CBS:
Google: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=GOOG&annual
NBC: http://www.ge.com/ar2007/mda_segop_summary.jsp
CBS: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=CBS&annual
NBC and CBS are far more than TV networks, so it doesn't directly address your point, but presumably, those companies integrated other aspects of the broadcasting business into their operations to save money, not to spend it.
That they provide more eyeballs at a lower price point is a huge aspect of the success that Google has had; I don't know, but I expect that being cheaper is part of those lower prices.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.