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

[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

[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

[SETIGuy]

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

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?"

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.

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.

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."

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."

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:Google is a mind reader

[spectrokid]

it detected the sticky keys...