Google Seeking "Search Without Search"

An anonymous reader writes "Forget Google Instant, the search giant is working on ways to push relevant info to users before they have even asked for it... Foursquare-style location 'check-ins' are also apparently on the way next year."

Comments

I remember

[MyLongNickName]

When Altavista and other search engines (many names I cannot remember) were pushing crap on our search screens. You had a hell of a time finding anything between the paid ads (that were not marked as such) and the sites that gamed the search engine.

Google came along with the smallest footprint and the best algorithm. Fast forward 15 years and Google is more about the cute google art, gawdy gadgets and tracking your every move. And over the past couple years, I find more gamed sites making it into my search results. It has been slow, but Google is turning into the companies they replaced.

Re:I remember

[Amorymeltzer]

It's the natural order of things, whether for a company or for people. They want to waltz in, change everything radically, then settle down and grow old with their affluence. "If you want to know what is going to happen to the youngest generation, they're going to grow up and worry about the youngest generation."

Re:I remember

[Ephemeriis]

When Altavista and other search engines (many names I cannot remember) were pushing crap on our search screens. You had a hell of a time finding anything between the paid ads (that were not marked as such) and the sites that gamed the search engine.

Google came along with the smallest footprint and the best algorithm.

When I switched to Google it wasn't really because it was sparse or clean or white or because there were less adds or anything like that. It was because it worked. I typed in a search, I got results I could use. I was a big fan of real boolean searches, and Google still doesn't handle them quite right, and that was a bit of an adjustment for me. But I was still getting better results out of Google than anywhere else.

Fast forward 15 years and Google is more about the cute google art, gawdy gadgets and tracking your every move.

That's because searching isn't cool anymore.

Google, Yahoo, Bing... Whatever. They all return fairly useful results. If you're looking for information it almost doesn't matter which engine you use these days.

So how do you differentiate yourself from the competition when you can't just say "we actually find you useful information"? You put a cute logo on the page... Or a dramatic background... And you change it periodically, so folks come back just to see what's new. And you toss up information based on their location, or their browsing habits, so you seem more topical and relevant than the competition does. You let people customize their search page, and stick photos of their kids on the page, and whatever else.

And over the past couple years, I find more gamed sites making it into my search results.

Meh. This is true of all the big search engines. Google's just the biggest target out there. Folks have been trying to game the search sites since the very beginning.

It has been slow, but Google is turning into the companies they replaced.

No they aren't.

Webcrawler, AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, Google, Bing... They all make money off of advertising. You go there to find information, and they serve up an ad along the way. That's how they work. That's how they've always worked. It's nothing new.

How else would you propose they make money?

Re:Scary and Fascinating

[Abstrackt]

This is what innovation is about it... but than we're on slashdot.. We all know that this would aslo mean massive personal data-mining, something we're not usually comfortable with (to put it in really diplomatic terms)...

That's because if Google started giving results based on the fact I'm on Slashdot my start page would be NSFW.

Re:42

[IAmGarethAdams]

Oh yeah and as a bonus if you don't run Google's JS you get the actual URLs of the search results and not some redirection server that helps to track you.

Yeah, I really hate it when a company looking to improve search results tries to find out which search results the user ends up choosing!

Re:42

[dwandy]

you forgot the obligatory "now get off my lawn..."

Here's a feature i want: FIND

[Junior J. Junior III]

Seriously, Google, have you looked at your search results lately? It's getting so I can't find anything relevant amongst all the garbage. Maybe this is because the internet is turning into a morass of crap, but I don't think it is. I think it's because SEO have figured out how to game your results, and all I can find with simple keyword or phrases is useless. Do a better job of filtering out crap so I can actually find something useful.