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Google Unveils Search Options and Google Squared
CWmike writes "Saying that its users are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Google has unveiled a list of new search technologies geared to help users 'slice and dice' their Google search results, along with a new tool to help them cull information instead of Web pages. Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google's Search Products, said of Search Options in a blog post, 'We have spent a lot of time looking at how we can better understand the wide range of information that's on the Web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment.' Google Squared, set to be released to users as part of its Google Labs program later this month, pulls up information from different sites and presents it in an organized manner."
I wish Google had the ability to search for regular expressions and exact word matching. Searching for exact words or things that contain other symbols than letters is unfortunately very hard with Google and so sometimes it's useless in situations where it could have been so powerful.
Why do I care who came up with the idea first? I care about who does it best.
But it is not about who does it best, but about who markets it best. The Google brand is damn-near ubiquitous, and already encompasses the starting point (i.e., home page) of a large number of internet users. I wish Wolfram luck leaping that hurdle.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
I hope Google is not discussing Google Squared as part of a (typically Microsoft) strategy of announcing a competitive to-be-released-soon! service simply to deter users from switching to a rival with an actual shipping product.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
The future of search relies upon better parameters for the search.
Almost all searches are time-sensitive, but some are more time sensitive than others. When I'm looking for information about a piece of software the forum post from five years ago may or may not be relevant.
When I'm looking for information about the thinnest watch to buy, reading about a watch made over 30 years ago isn't appropriate.
Context is the big problem in search. The time sensitivity is one context. Product attributes is another. You can't (with the partial exception of Newegg and similar searches) search item properties in most cases. If you're buying a set of headphones not all headphones list their specs nor in the same way. There are a lot of other products besides headphones.
Sometimes the basic context is spot on, but it's still useless: a forum post of someone with the same question/problem I have, but it was never answered.
Saying that its users are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Google has unveiled a list of new search technologies geared to help users 'slice and dice' their Google search results, along with a new tool to help them cull information instead of Web pages.
(emphasis mine)
And ten minutes after they release this for real, they get sued by thousands of websites claiming that they're circumventing their ad income or whatever by giving viewers an option to get the data without going to the website and thus not see the ads.
I mean, that's what the AP's whining about, right?
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
In the past I thought good searching required training or insight, but this line of thinking - putting the onus on the search provider - is bold and interesting.
It's the right attitude for the service-provider to take, assuming they are trying to make a good product.
But, this doesn't release the user from learning how to search properly, assuming they are trying to get something useful out of the experience.
A user-interface designer (or product designer in general) should always be thinking about how users will naturally interact with the product/service, and should make it as fast, painless, and obvious as possible. From Google's point of view, the objective should indeed be to make a search that, as much as possible, correctly guesses what the user was trying to find, and returns that data. The more they are able to do so, the better the user experience will be.
But, of course, this doesn't mean that users shouldn't learn how to properly use the product as it currently exists, or how to search in general. The better they understand it, the more useful it will be to them.
When logged in at least, it'd be nice if I could accumulate a personal blocklist that's blocked on all my searches. In some areas I keep ended up rediscovering the same SEO'd crap sites, and I'd like to just cut them out of my results for good.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Best, and by a long shot, is how Google came to be damn-near ubiquitous.AltaVista (for search) and Yahoo (For directory) had the lions share of the market. Google was just another one of hundreds attempting to gain a foot hold in the market, until the first time you used it, then you never went back.
I would only need one domain on that list:
experts-exchange.com
The lack of maturity of the internet allowed Google to offer a better product, virtually sans marketing, and take over. I don't think that can or will happen the same way again. Not in the search market, anyway.
The internet still offers the unique ability for something to go viral and spread like herpes in a co-ed frat, but as time goes on the list will dwindle down to rumors (pop rocks and pepsi!) and worms (conficker, et al).
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.