Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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The Google Blog has this post called The future of search by Marissa Mayer (I would love to meet her someday and bug her with my questions on Google). Very interesting I must say. This is my interpretation of the same and things that are possible and yet Marissa hasnt talked about.

Apart from everything that is mentioned on the blog, I would like to see these things in any discussion on future of search.

1. Device. A search device that I can carry along. A device that does not rely on an Internet connection. Hints: Kindle. Why cant I have a hand-held device that lets me use a search engine and emails and feeds? This could become my net access device and with cloud computing and software as service on browser, I can corner a large chunk of a market. TechCrunch’s web tablet could have been an ideal device but for size. Can iPhone become such a device with an always-on, high-speed net access? Can someone think of new devices?
2. Human Search. As the post on Google blog says, that universal search probably is the future, I would love to see it extended a wee bit. Instead of just uploading pictures or sounds, I should be able to capture inputs the way human do - by seeing (point my device at things and with a combination of great web camera technology, image recognition and bit of luck, the search engine should give me results - with QR codes, we are already seeing glimpses of the future), hearing (voice recognition and searching the sound pattern) etc. If we get close to any of these, that for me would truly be human search and evolution of search as a concept.
3. Recommendations and Personalization. When do we want to use search? When we are looking for more information about certain things. Search should be able to give me recommendations that will truly work for me. If Amazon Suggests can be extended to search, it will make my life so much simpler. As Google Blog mentions, its about personalization and the device/algorithm knowing you well enough to predict that you want to search for. Once that happens, I would be harnessing the power of search engines. Users look for answers when they search. With things being done at Mahalo, Google Knol and Wikipedia we are moving towards giving answers to users rather than a list of webpages that has those keywords or are relevant. Will the search engine that gives answers please stand up?

Search is something that I am really passionate about. Although I cant really speak from a technology perspective, I sure have end-user and product ideas. Here are my previous posts on search.

• Search Cost
• Hal Varian on Search

In this EconTalk podcast, Hal Varian, Chief Economist with Google speaks about Search amongst other things.

He says that search is about two things. Precision and Recall. He then defines precision as “off the number of documents retrieved by a search result, how many are relevant” and recall as “off all the relevant results, how many were retrieved”.

This is my opinion is very important aspect. Before we take on a problem to solve, we need to have the exact definitions in place.

He also spoke about co-evolution of technology and users. He said that any technology and its adopters evolve rapidly with time. He took examples of cars and extended it to search engines.

He said that users are getting more skilled at entering search queries. This helps both user and the search engine in delivering results that are high on precision and recall. And thus making the experience better for the user.

This probably explains why most of the user-dependent (user generated, network effect etc) businesses remain in beta stages for long times (gmail is still in beta). Till the time both (business and users) evolve and are mature enough to help each other, system has to remain in beta.

Lessons? Help your users evolve. Give them tools of the trade. They would need some hand-holding to learn initially. And then they would need the freedom and independence to play around with the system before they start making effective use of the system. And same goes for the system as well.

Please note that the definitions might not be exact (since I took notes while listening to the podcast), but the essence has been preserved. Link to podcast.