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.

Comments

Google aren't evil

[David Gerard]

Google will give you their web and email services, photo processing, mapping, and office applications and software that will make you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.

Google will maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department of whatever they gather concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. "We're Google. We know where you live. In a completely not evil way. Sponsored link: Get Chrome Browsers on google.com. Or we'll make you use Windows Live. MuWAAAAhahaha. Sorry, that's my 'spreading Christmas cheer' laugh. Really."

How convenient

[sakdoctor]

How convenient. The future of search requires giving up libraries of congress worth of personal info, to advertising companies with a sideline in search.

My preference...

[Samschnooks]

links with actual information. NOT links to sell me shit!

Re:My preference...

[tomhudson]

links with actual information. NOT links to sell me shit!

Time to think of distributed search, rather than being dependent on Google or any other one search engine.

Besides, think of the legal implications. You sit down at a coworkers' 'puter and look for some pictures of kittens for the company Christmas newsletter. You search Google for "cute kittens" and the "personalized results" are all porn links or videos of kittens being tortured and killed, based on that users' search preferences.

Serch works now because it DOESN'T tailor itself to any one person's world-view, or give me what it "thinks" I want. If it ever ends up just giving me "what it thinks I want", we'll end up with an echo chamber effect writ large.

Re:Who is really being "searched" here?

[David Gerard]

You, the Google Search/Gmail/Chrome user are the "product". The advertisers are the "customer". The servies on offer are the "bait". It's the television model.

Echo Chamber

[sycodon]

While a Personalized search is likely to give you results that would probably most interest you, it is also likely to exclude results that don't fit your "profile" but are relevant to what you are looking for.

So the search engine is always returning results it thinks you would like to see, but not results that you probably should see.

Re:Echo Chamber

[mckinnsb]

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.

Re:Who is really being "searched" here?

[John Hasler]

You can use Google Search without having a Google account, you know. You don't even have to allow cookies or Javascript and you can block ads. You don't get all the neat personalized features, of course, but it works fine.

It's about the ads

[Animats]

Search personalization is of marginal value. In fact, it's kind of a pain, because searches become nonportable and nonrepeatable. If you tell someone else "search for ...", they won't get the same results you did. But advertising personalization... that's where the money is.

Google offers a great range of services and products, but almost all of them lose money.. No Google product other than search advertising makes money, and even that is declining. The Google Content Network (Google ads on non-Google sites) isn't that beneficial to the actual advertisers, and the more savvy advertisers have opted out of it. People click on those ads, but seldom buy. (By default, AdWords customers are opted in, and the opt-out checkbox is hard to find.) Google stock is down 57% from the peak, and revenue is projected to decline for the next three years. So Google is cutting back on new projects, killing off some of the money-losers, and trying to milk their one profitable product, ads on search results, for all they can.

Using search history, it would be straightforward to recognize specific big-ticket buying situations, like "looking for a car" or "looking for a house". This can be used for lead generation. Search for information about cars for a while, and not only do you start seeing car ads all the time, you get phone calls from sales reps.

People like you helping people like us help ourselves. - Processed World

Re:Who is really being "searched" here?

[maxume]

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.