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Former Google Exec: Traditional Search Market Shrinking

Posted by Unknown on from the queries-go-unanswered dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Former Google executive Stafford Masie believes that traditional search is dying because users are choosing to query their friends and followers on services like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Here's the quote from the video: 'The pie of search query volumes in the world – that business is shrinking. Why? Because people are going and doing search queries – search query volumes are moving towards social containers. They're moving away from static pages being searched and they're moving more towards dynamic real-time stream content. Like Twitter. Like Tumblr. Like Facebook. Those things have a better result because the penetration, the personalization associated with it, and the constant freshness of the content. So I believe that Google's search volume – the business Google is in on the search side – that business is shrinking. And they've got to do something about it.'"

15 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Oh really? by bhagwad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How many here have ever posted a question on social networks asking their friends which laptop/smartphone etc. to buy? I don't. I either start from Google or go directly to Amazon.

    I think "social search" is massively hyped up.

    1. Re:Oh really? by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Social search? No thanks.

      One person I know only buys what Which Magazine recommends. Everything he owns is "top" of Which's ratings. And they all have some pretty killer problems or cost the earth, and he gets nothing more done than someone who buys the cheapest things out of Tesco.

      And just how many of my friends know what an indexable skiplist is, or the correct invocation of a particularl Windows API function, or a system for library cataloguing that integrates with AD, or the name of that guy in the film with that other guy? Precisely zero. If you've stopped tapping things into Google and are instead tapping them into Twitter or Facebook then, let's be honest, they probably weren't really worth asking in the first place. And anyone that answers will use Google to find the thing they read about that topic last week, etc.

      Not only do I not believe it, I think that it could only be a good thing to stop Google having to deal with "Who saw Eastenders the other night? Did Jack find his long-last father?" when it could be dealing with my queries which need a mite more data and research.

    2. Re:Oh really? by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think this is a major factor - people know where to find information now without having to ask Google. They know about Amazon, they know about Wikipedia, they know about their favorite news sites.

      Google has its use, but people aren't having to use Google to find everything the way they used to.

    3. Re:Oh really? by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think this is a major factor - people know where to find information now without having to ask Google. They know about Amazon, they know about Wikipedia, they know about their favorite news sites. Google has its use, but people aren't having to use Google to find everything the way they used to.

      Well, I do. Rather than wrestle with learning where and how each site's search works, I just Google for what I want, plus, say "wiki" if I want the Wikipedia page, "amazon" for the Amazon page, (Rotten) "tomatoes" for move reviews, etc, etc. The hit on the desired site is always at or near the top.

    4. Re:Oh really? by vlm · · Score: 4, Informative

      And just how many of my friends know what an indexable skiplist is, or the correct invocation of a particularl Windows API function, or a system for library cataloguing that integrates with AD, or the name of that guy in the film with that other guy? Precisely zero. If you've stopped tapping things into Google and are instead tapping them into Twitter or Facebook then, let's be honest, they probably weren't really worth asking in the first place. And anyone that answers will use Google to find the thing they read about that topic last week, etc.

      Ahh you've ALMOST isolated the perfect market for "social search". Many replies on /. to questions are of the form of "here are the google search terms you didn't know to search for".

      Example made up "ask /." question scenario: "Dear Penthouse Letters ^H ^H ^H err I mean Dear Slashdot, I maintain a medium size herd of Debian boxes from desktops to a compute cluster and I need to config them all the same and run a bunch of scripts on all of them once in a while. Oh noes what shall I do?". You'll get answers like "google for dish distributed shell, then run dish based scripts from a crontab" and "Google for puppetlabs and puppet" and "google for the following James Turnbull Jeff McCune Pro Puppet" If the dude knew what terms to google for, he wouldn't have to bug us here to begin with.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    5. Re:Oh really? by Svartalf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Facebook? Really? Faceplant's nothing more than a batch of people doing a "dig-me" thing on the Internet- and I'm one of it's users.

      I wouldn't have even thought about looking for plumbers via Faceplant. Most of my associates (and I can heartily assure you that most of them aren't as computer savvy as I am...) on Facebook wouldn't have thought of looking for a plumber by asking a question of their friends like that. They'd have let their fingers do the walking in the yellow pages, meatspace or online. Sorry, not buying it.

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  2. shrinking? by amunds0n · · Score: 5, Funny

    No wonder he is a "former" exec...

  3. step 3) profit by alphatel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or maybe volume is shrinking because Google has gone from an actual search engine to a giant shopping, friendfinder, news aggregator and becoming less useful by the minute.

    --
    When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
    1. Re:step 3) profit by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or maybe search volume is not actually shrinking. Relevant quote, "I believe that Google's search volume...that business is shrinking." Does he anywhere provide any evidence that what he believes is true? He mentions an anecdote about how he queried friends on social media when he was looking for a restaraunt, that is not evidence. That is opinion. If there is any solid evidence it is not mentioned in either of the articles linked in the summary. One can postulate all the reasons one likes as to why Google's search volume is shrinking, but first one needs to establish that it is, in fact, shrinking.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
  4. Key Word: "FORMER" Google Exec by coinreturn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Utter nonsense. When I need an obscure part for a broken appliance, I will not be asking my facebook friends. I will always use Google (or other search engine). It is just too instantaneous to ignore.

  5. Um... by thestudio_bob · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe it's shrinking for Google, but maybe because more and more people are using alternatives. Like me.

    And I want to go on record saying that the entire "Social Search" model is one of the stupidest ideas google has ever come up with. All of my friends and family have different career backgrounds and their own personal likes, when your using a search engine for reference, like for coding, my friend's FaceBook page is not going to help me out.

    --
    The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.
  6. F-A-D by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know who this guy is or what his history with Google was, but he sounds just like every other talking head pundit/consultant that is blathering on about social media changing the world and such crap. It's a very popular fad whose time is just about up.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  7. Topical sites cause traditional search to shrink by Hentes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Traditional search is shrinking (but, mind you, is far from dying) because of huge topical sites that finally managed to develop good search engines. It's far easier to search Wikipedia, IMDB or Youtube for whatever content you are looking for than shuffling through the results of Google that will take you to those sites anyway.

  8. Buy? by Colin+Smith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I search I want information, not opinion.

    I'm fairly sure the guy has a startup he's trying to peddle. Just wait for the IPO.

    Having said that Google's search has noticeably deteriorated over the last couple of years. I often have to hit the Nth page now to find stuff I'm looking for.

    --
    Deleted
  9. "Dying" is the King of bad metaphors. by ugglybabee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every blip or countertrend will always be accompanied by some jackass on the internet explaining how some established paradigm is "dying". Usually, it's some tech blogger desperately trying to goad readers into clicking on his story by being provocative, and it's usually a loaded question, because actually saying what is implied is flat-out ridiculous. When Linux on the desktop finally reaches two per cent. Some jackass will post a blog with the title "IS MICROSOFT DYING?" It's really really really overdone, especially when you consider that it's nonsense. Dying means that Death is imminent, and death is nonexistence. You could argue that nothing that isn't a life form can die in the first place, and you'd usually be right. People are still putting on Greek tragedies. Indeed, somebody somewhere is probably WRITING a Greek tragedy. So Greek Tragedy is not dead. It's not even dying. And "traditional internet search"? Hell, that doesn't make any sense either. Has the web been around long enough that anything about it can be considered "traditional"? Besides bullshit, I mean.