> foretelling a day when a perfect search engine would comprehend all of the world’s information and the meaning behind every user query
There.
That line.
That's why Google will eventually be dethroned.
Google sees the world through the lens of search -- through the lens of querying. With a little adjusting you could massage the above into Microsoft's strategy in a different era.
It's not entirely clear what it will be, but someday we're not going to access all of the world's information starting with short query strings that we type into a search bar. When that happens, Google's worldview won't be able to make the jump, just like Microsoft and IBM did not in the past. They're a search company.
They're an advertising company, which happens to own a search engine.
(30% of their revenues come from advertising on sites not owned by Google. By way of comparison, that is ten times what Google makes from every revenue source other than advertising. See their 2008 Annual Report if you don't trust my math.)
Advertising is their revenue model. Dogmatically, Google is a search company. The comparison would be like calling Microsoft an Office Suite company. Sure, that's where a load of their revenue comes from, but it's not what the company is about. Google's positing as an advertising company is a consequence of them being a search company -- just like NBC's position as an advertising company is a result of them being a media company.
It's like porn! You might not be able to define intelligence but you know it when you see it.
Noam Chomsky points out we know English automatically, not through having been taught rules.
Similarly, I don't know have any references and artificial intelligence nor do I know exactly how does their search system works (well, I know page rank but I know they've done lots of work beyond it). But I can tell they're semi-intelligent by experiencing the semi-intelligence of their searching system. So they are an artificial intelligence company whether they say it or not, whether they know it or not, simply by the fact that what they create operates semi-intelligently to me.
I think this remains to be seen. Since we don't know what the Next Big Thing will be, we can't say that Google will be unable to see it.
Right now Google is a search company. If history is any indicator, they will behave just like their predecessors and remain a search company even when the rest of the world has moved on from search.
However, there is always the chance that Google will defy the odds and transform themselves as their users transform.
As long as they keep a close eye on what people need, instead of on what their search engine needs, they still have a chance.
It's sufficient to say at some point there will be a next big thing that Google doesn't see. To assume otherwise would be to assume that Google has some special position that's unprecedented in the history of corporations.
Google will be dethroned only by superior search or by a combination of search and inference from the search. In fact, Google or its replacement is the most likely contender for the originator of the first true GAI. Jonathan Baron, in "Thinking and Deciding", views nearly all thinking, decision making, creative, and other mental processes as variations on a combination of search and inference. I haven't finished the book, but in what I have read so far he makes a pretty good case.
That's definitely one way to a better search. Or maybe keep a sidebar of links to further information about terms (in the beginning maybe just to links rather than terms) in the current page, that is automatically searching and linking to further info so they are already available if the person wants them.
I don't know whether Google will continue to be successful or not. One good bet, though, is that people not want to get stuff using a more verbose interface. So if you can think of a way to get the information they want to people using fewer keystrokes than or less effort than they use now with a Google search, you'll have the next big thing.
> “Most of the emphasis within the company is on the next couple of years, and we tend not to think about longer than that,” says Peter Norvig, Google’s director of research.
Does anyone else, after having read this article, find that it isn't really about what the title suggests? There's no direct admission or direct quote from anyone at Google about what scares them.
The closest this article comes to telling us what scares Google is extrapolating that Google's slightly different method of developing products (fail fast, fail often) is a sign that they're scared. It's quite a stretch.
The Atlantic may be a venerable publication, but the title on this one sure looks like linkbait to me.
I really like Norvig's attitude. When big companies start worrying about how powerful they're going to be in 10 years it's a bad thing. It leads to fear and paranoia, which makes it harder to not be evil.
"Microsoft never got its collective head into competing against the simple and free stuff available on the Web."
Fake Steve:
"They're starting to look like the new Scott McNealy. Remember him? Ran a company called Sun, which had a great little business going until McNealy became obsessed with Gates and started doing things like paying millions of dollars to buy StarOffice so he could get into that booming free software business."
Microsoft has started brand new billion dollar businesses (TFS, SharePoint) recently --- Google, so far, hasn't shown they can do anything except sell ads.
Yes, you beat me to this. The premise of the article is bogus. Both IBM and Microsoft are doing well. I also checked in WolframAlpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=microsoft,+google,+ibm
I like the way it returns a well-designed summary. I'll try to use it more.
Yes, but IBM had to completely change its stripes in order to survive. They used to make business computers. Yet they sold off every last bit of computer manufacturing, the last part going to China as Lenovo. Their core competency is no longer computer design and manufacture, it's now basically just business consulting.
So, yes, IBM is doing well, but it's no longer playing the same game in the same market that it once was.
I would imagine Twitter scares Google. For the first time ever, there are questions for which Google isn't the best place to type out your query.
"What do people think of X?"
"What's happening in _country_"
etc.
Google determines quality based on variables which take time to shake out, in part because that's harder to fake.
Twitter can be gamed, but on the whole it seems to give a decent picture, perhaps because in effect you see many results on the page in front of you, rather than links to the results.
As with wikipedia, google can just index twitter. If twitter becomes a true threat(which I personally doubt) google can always tweak PageRank to work with fast evolving twitter news. Instead of searching twitter many people will still search google and click on twitter results if they happen to be relevant.
Or they can just look at the topology of the connections and the RSS feeds of the tiny fraction of people representative of the entire thing. Not a big deal, IMO.
There have always been questions for which Google wasn't the best place. Niche forums, obscure government databases, and even things like HN...I routinely use searchyc.com over Google. Twitter is only slightly more relevant to the wider population than any of these...I sincerely doubt that real-time search will ever be more than 1% of the overall search market. There's just not that much that really matters if it's 30 seconds ago vs. 30 minutes ago.
Google Earth was bought, not made (they acquired Keyhole, Inc). And I don't think it makes any money for google, at all.
Many huge companies have diversified revenue streams, within a broad industry - like Nestle, General Electric, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive.
Google has diversified products, but it doesn't have diversified revenues.
That said, information comprehension is like science in that the more you look, the more there is. Google's mission may have a lot of runway left in it.
Totally. IBM got blindsided by software as a product. Microsoft got blindsided by the Internet. Google is not going to be blindsided by some kids who magically perfect search in 10 years. It'll be something completely outside their core competency.
It's hard to imagine where search will be in 10 years without speculating about where the web will be in 10 years. I think when we get better at organizing information when making web pages (or their future equivalent), search will get better and easier, and Google for search will be less relevant.
There.
That line.
That's why Google will eventually be dethroned.
Google sees the world through the lens of search -- through the lens of querying. With a little adjusting you could massage the above into Microsoft's strategy in a different era.
It's not entirely clear what it will be, but someday we're not going to access all of the world's information starting with short query strings that we type into a search bar. When that happens, Google's worldview won't be able to make the jump, just like Microsoft and IBM did not in the past. They're a search company.