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

42

[kthreadd]

Just put it on the front page and be done with it.

Re:42

[Anonymous Coward]

Just put it on the front page and be done with it.

Hitchhiker's Guide was great but no, please don't do that. Please don't modify Google's front page any further. Has anybody else used another person's computer and been shocked at how annoying and needlessly flashy Google Instant is, and been happy to return to your own NoScript-running browser? 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.

The way they're trying to make Google Instant nice and politically correct, free of piracy or hacking terms that might "offend" someone reveals more than anything the kind of marketing mentality behind this stuff. All I want a search engine to do is accept my input of keywords, wait for me to press Enter, and then fetch the search results for what I typed. Just those three things. Any other features are bloat. I sure as hell don't want it guessing about what I want to search for when it's so easy to explicitly tell it that. The effort I make to not be tracked by anyone including Google would make such guesses unlikely to be correct anyway.

I think the problem here is that Google has produced such a fine basic search engine that has already become the dominant choice. Now they don't know when to quit and will keep trying to "improve" it even if these changes aren't improvements at all. Can't be perceived as stagnant and all of that, or so the marketers seem to think.

I mean damn, just think of the message behind Google Instant for a moment. "You typed three letters. 17,549,221 users who typed those three letters got these results. We'll just feel free to assume you couldn't want anything that they didn't want, see we got it all here in our statistics. After all, you are an individual, just like everybody else. You are fungible to us. And of course we'll save you the staggering, horrible, strenuous effort of pressing the Enter key because we are so helpful." Anyone else see it?

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..."

Re:42

[MozeeToby]

You typed three letters. 17,549,221 users who typed those three letters got these results. We'll just feel free to assume you couldn't want anything that they didn't want, see we got it all here in our statistics.

And 90% of the time they're right. The other 10% you might have to press a fourth letter (the horror!).

Re:42

[TheRaven64]

Has anybody else used another person's computer and been shocked at how annoying and needlessly flashy Google Instant is

User interface was what made me ditch AltaVista for Google. User interface was one of the main reasons I stopped using Google. It started with the autocomplete thing - every other text field in any program on my system lets me use the up and down arrow keys to jump to the beginning and end of the input field (there are other ways of doing this, but they require a modifier key, so up and down arrow are the ones I use). Google decided to break this, so I kept finding myself in the completion list, rather than where I expected to be. Then they modified the search results page to the current abomination and I gave up on them completely.

JWZ wrote that the decline of Netscape started when they stopped hiring people who were there because they wanted to change the world, and started hiring people who were there because it was a great place to work. The last couple of times I've visited Google, I've asked people why they were there - almost all of them told me that it was because it was a great place to work.

Re:42

[causality]

This is the only way Google's malware detection can work (which I've triggered dozens of times). Disable JavaScript and Google does no more redirections.

Sorry to say it bluntly but just like Google Instant, the malware detection is one of those features geared towards the ignorant (trying to use a "neutral" word there). I'd rather secure my own machine than rely on the goodwill of corporations to protect me from malicious sites. The latter option would only appeal to me if I didn't know how to secure my own systems and didn't care to learn. I suppose it works out its own balance though. The ignorant who don't understand what JavaScript is and are unlikely to use something like NoScript that's all about taking control of their own experience are the most likely people to benefit from malware warnings.

The reality is if technical proficiency and knowledge of computer security were possessed by every single Internet user, malware would all but disappear tomorrow. Sure there would still be determined, skilled human adversaries who successfully break into other people's computers, but the era of "write a piece of malware once, infect millions of computers automatically" would grind to a halt. The amount of damage a single attacker could do would be vastly limited if the low-hanging fruit of systems vulnerable to automated self-propagating malware were eliminated.

Don't get me wrong now, every single malware infection Google manages to prevent is a plus. That means one less compromised machine, one less member of a botnet, one less spam-factory, one less participant in some lame DDoS attack, etc. This is a good thing. It's just that trying to blacklist every possible malware site is simply not possible. It can never solve the malware problem. It is only damage control. It's the same reason why A/V software hasn't been a final ultimate solution for (Windows) host security.

Re:42

[ColdWetDog]

Google needs a "Google nihilist expert" system: A totally blank screen that only accepts PERL syntax.

Re:42

[SETIGuy]

It is possible to turn off instant search. Why don't you try that?

Re:42

[Compaqt]

Shorter version: The problem is, as Vice President of "Search Experience", Marissa Mayer is constantly having to justify her job, hence Google bloats.

Re:42

[brunes69]

I don't know why people complain about the search page - you spend NO TIME THERE.

It is the result page that matters. And the result page at Yahoo! and live.com is completely full of graphic ads and other garbage.

The only results page as clean as Googles is Ask.com - too bad their results are horrible.

What's your style?

[Pojut]

"I guess you could call it the art of fighting without fighting." -Bruce Lee

Psychic Pizza

[Hatta]

Psychic Pizza will deliver 30 minutes before you order or your money back.

Re:Psychic Pizza

[Pojut]

Psyhic Pizza will also know when to include garlic breadsticks. You know, for those times when you're REALLY high.

"Dude. The garlic is talkin' to me."
"Doesn't it always?"

Re:Psychic Pizza

[houghi]

Psyhic Pizza will know when you are high and hand over that information happily to anybody paying for it, including police, your employer and your insurance company.

Anything Is Possible

[eldavojohn]

Hello, gentlemen, look at your browser, now back to me, now back at your browser, now back to me. Sadly, it doesn't have the information you want, but if you stopped using some other search engine and switched to Google, you could have already had your information. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a flying car with the search engine your browser could use. What’s on your screen, back at me. I have it, it’s the search results to some query you have yet to even conceive. Look again, the search results are now pornography. Anything is possible when you use Google. I’m on a server.

Re:Anything Is Possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, gentlemen, look at your browser, now back to me, now back at your browser, now back to me.

That was weird. When I looked at you, all I saw was my browser. When I looked back to my browser, there you were.

Shark status: jumped

[Garridan]

Yeah, right. Like I want an advertising company to push content to me. Hasn't this been done before?

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?

MS will complain

[gmuslera]

when this feature gets called Google Clippy.

Re:MS will complain

[Combatso]

"it looks like you are looking for visual aids to masturbate too, can I help?"

I feel like Iv already seen this

[Uhhhh oh ya!]

This makes me remember a Futurama quote, "Shut up friends. My internet browser heard us saying the word Fry and it found a movie about Philip J. Fry for us... It also opened my calendar to Friday and ordered me some french fries."

The roots are already there

[Sockatume]

Google Reader's feed discovery and its "magic" sort option, and Priority Inbox, are arguably an early implimentation of this sort of philosophy - when the system knows enough about your usage patterns, it can begin to prioritise particular information. From that it's a simple step to have it start presenting information to you at times when you might need it, but before you have explicitly stated a need. They're already quite a long way along. Latitude's slightly creepy Location History extension could play a big part in this as well. After about 3 months of usage it had a pretty good idea where I worked, where I lived, and when I tended to visit particular restaurants.

geo --crap

[think_nix]

As someone who travels from location to location in between different countries, I am sick of this whole "geo" nonsense, and location based services. For example, remember the good old days when you could go to _somewhere.com_ and get that specific service or site in the language you prefer? Nowadays you get whatever X based on your location or better yet on some computer systems based it is based on the locality of the box. More times than most it is hard to get the information you want and can _understand_ especially when you cannot even understand where _what it is you were looking for_ is.
Also TFA:

"The idea is to push information to people."

Also why do all these business and services feel the need to "push" their information or services upon people ? The more they do this the more people start feeling drowned . From reading the article this geo google VP sounds a little out of touch. Would rather "push" everything on everyone the way google sees best.

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.

Trace Routes in the Sand

[eldavojohn]

That was weird. When I looked at you, all I saw was my browser. When I looked back to my browser, there you were.

One night I dreamed I was surfing the internet with Google. Many scenes from my life flashed across the screen.

In each scene I noticed trace routes in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of trace routes, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from lagging, disconnection or defeat, I could see only one set of trace routes, so I said to Google,

"You promised me Google,
that if I followed you, you would search with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of trace routes in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?"

Google replied, "The years when you have seen only one set of trace routes, my child, is when I searched for you."

Google is a mind reader

[antifoidulus]

Oh wow, more porn! Google, how did you know?

Re:Google is a mind reader

[spectrokid]

it detected the sticky keys...

Marimba Castanet!

[Saint Stephen]

Push technology man.. It's the next big thing!

i'm sure we already have that

[spyked]

"Google is working on a service that finds information before a user has even started looking for it."

Isn't that called advertising?

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.

Re:complain

[maxwell demon]

I wonder how much of their motto "Don't be evil" will be left in the near future.

All of it, of course. Did it never occur to you that the motto isn't "we won't be evil", but is formulated as command? "Don't be evil, or we will get you!"

Too much success

[serano]

Maybe it's a case of Google having too much money and too many people who need to do something, anything, to look busy.

relevant info is the easy part...give me new stuff

[schlachter]

pushing relevant info to me is boring. I can find relevant information on my own. pushing irrelevant information to me is far more interesting and challenging. Show me new things that I wouldn't normally express interest in or come across on my own.

Re:Yes!

[mcgrew]

That annoys me, too. I'm also annoyed that people keep coming up with failed stuff from the past, and a new generation swallows it. Two examples:

Quadraphonic stereo in the '70s. That was an incredibly stupid idea IMO, and it seems like everybody but the engineers and marketers "got it" and it died. You needed twice as many amplifiers and speakers, so a $200 stereo sounded better than a $300 quadraphonic system, and for what? So you could be in the middle of the orchestra while listening to Bethooven?

It came back as "surround sound" after the cost of amplification came down, and they got rid of true woofers and added a single "subwoofer". Four channels makes sense in a video, but not the way it's implimented. Rather than having two speakers behind you, there should be one at each corner of the screen. In yesteryears's movies, all sound came from the center of the screen. In yesterday's movies, sound could follow actors and objects across the screen, but not up and down. In today's movies there is sound coming from behind you, destroying the immersion, but sound still won't follow a rising or falling object.

Another example is DRM. In the late '80s software houses, particularly game companies, did their best to make floppies uncopyable. It resulted in nobody buying a game with DRM, and it died -- until lately.

They tried "push" in the 90s, and it died a deserved death. Now they're trying to bring THAT back again, and I fear today's dumb kids will swallow that idiocy as well.