Number 5 is Alive (Crossposted from class blog)
Oh Google, what will you think of next?
I've used Google for quite a while now, ever since AltaVista was bought out by Yahoo! around '03. I've gone through various favoured search engines: Excite, Yahoo, AltaVista, Dogpile, and possibly one or two others I may be forgetting. Google was a good transition from AltaVista, as the search engine seemed to work as well, but Google had that allure of simplicity. It still does have that, though they've been playing with it ever since it took over as the default search engine for most people. That's good... most of the time. I can't tell you how annoyed I was for the many hours one night that Google was seemingly playing with a new feature allowing users to add pictures to their Google background. The fact that they were going to add that is good but, for several hours, my Google was displaying the Grand Canyon in the background. I just wanted my simple Google back! I came across many similar complaints across the internets and, gladly, it was only a test.
So, where is this going? Well, recently, the Google image search was revamped. Google Images now displays a wall of pictures based on your search without separating the results into pages. I'm not sure I like this over the original setup, but I see some advantages. There's less clicking through pages to do, making it a bit easier to find a suitable picture. And, sure, less clicking may not seem like a big deal, let's not be lazy. But less clicking means less time spent doing needless things. It's a time saver. But, Google's toying doesn't end there.
If you've visited Google in the last day, you probably noticed something weird going on. Boys and girls, meet Google Instant. It's a whole idea based on less clicking. As the article linked above states, Google predicts "the product will save users more than 350 million hours a year, or two to five seconds per search, on average." That's a whole heckuvalot of time saving. We're talking about real time search results - this is no "Lycos, go get it!" - this is "Google, read my mind please." Google has already been a bit too creepy with its clairvoyance, as the suggestions drop down box that Google has used for a long time now sometimes knows exactly what you're going to search for before even you do. But now that's been taken to the next step. Or maybe three steps ahead of that.
This all after a recent discussion of "Web 3.0" in class. Here we have a search engine that is providing search results before you've even finished typing, that will frequently finish your thought for you. It's also generally in context: a quick search has shown me that if I start searching about various media outlets (tv, radio stations, news, etc.) the first results are St. Louis based. Typing the letter 'k' will first (for me) display KSDK's website, then KMOV, which are followed by Kohl's and Kmart. Typing "What do I" does first give me the result of "What do I want to eat?" which is what I had in mind. Google does not know, though; nor does it know my favourite colour. I guess we're not at Skynet or Matrix levels yet (please no one ask Google Instant what mankind's greatest threat is). But the more we use these machines, the more they learn. I'm sure the colour and food questions appear because the question has been asked of Google a countless number of times. Also, while the searches are, rather often, quick to give you results before you've finished typing, they definitely are more and more refined as you finish that thought. As the article brings up, users are taken to page two results quicker as the results change with every keystroke. That could have a tremendous impact, as there are valuable results past the first page that many people never bother to get past.
I'm sure many of the major companies out there are loving the fact that their name pops up in results after a single letter. I'm imagining a strange near-future Gibsonian world overrun by oppressive corporations who've corrupted the old mnemonic tool to learn the alphabet. "A is for Apple, B is for Best Buy, C is for Craigslist, D is for Domino's, E is for Ebay..." etc. etc. ad nauseum.
This is a sign of where we're going, though. Our children will one day look at us aghast as we tell them that we used to have to click a button to get search results; that if you didn't find what you wanted, you had to search several times for good results. I await the day that I load up Google and it gives me results for what I want before I type anything. It sounds off the wall, but so does real time searching.
I've used Google for quite a while now, ever since AltaVista was bought out by Yahoo! around '03. I've gone through various favoured search engines: Excite, Yahoo, AltaVista, Dogpile, and possibly one or two others I may be forgetting. Google was a good transition from AltaVista, as the search engine seemed to work as well, but Google had that allure of simplicity. It still does have that, though they've been playing with it ever since it took over as the default search engine for most people. That's good... most of the time. I can't tell you how annoyed I was for the many hours one night that Google was seemingly playing with a new feature allowing users to add pictures to their Google background. The fact that they were going to add that is good but, for several hours, my Google was displaying the Grand Canyon in the background. I just wanted my simple Google back! I came across many similar complaints across the internets and, gladly, it was only a test.
So, where is this going? Well, recently, the Google image search was revamped. Google Images now displays a wall of pictures based on your search without separating the results into pages. I'm not sure I like this over the original setup, but I see some advantages. There's less clicking through pages to do, making it a bit easier to find a suitable picture. And, sure, less clicking may not seem like a big deal, let's not be lazy. But less clicking means less time spent doing needless things. It's a time saver. But, Google's toying doesn't end there.
If you've visited Google in the last day, you probably noticed something weird going on. Boys and girls, meet Google Instant. It's a whole idea based on less clicking. As the article linked above states, Google predicts "the product will save users more than 350 million hours a year, or two to five seconds per search, on average." That's a whole heckuvalot of time saving. We're talking about real time search results - this is no "Lycos, go get it!" - this is "Google, read my mind please." Google has already been a bit too creepy with its clairvoyance, as the suggestions drop down box that Google has used for a long time now sometimes knows exactly what you're going to search for before even you do. But now that's been taken to the next step. Or maybe three steps ahead of that.
This all after a recent discussion of "Web 3.0" in class. Here we have a search engine that is providing search results before you've even finished typing, that will frequently finish your thought for you. It's also generally in context: a quick search has shown me that if I start searching about various media outlets (tv, radio stations, news, etc.) the first results are St. Louis based. Typing the letter 'k' will first (for me) display KSDK's website, then KMOV, which are followed by Kohl's and Kmart. Typing "What do I" does first give me the result of "What do I want to eat?" which is what I had in mind. Google does not know, though; nor does it know my favourite colour. I guess we're not at Skynet or Matrix levels yet (please no one ask Google Instant what mankind's greatest threat is). But the more we use these machines, the more they learn. I'm sure the colour and food questions appear because the question has been asked of Google a countless number of times. Also, while the searches are, rather often, quick to give you results before you've finished typing, they definitely are more and more refined as you finish that thought. As the article brings up, users are taken to page two results quicker as the results change with every keystroke. That could have a tremendous impact, as there are valuable results past the first page that many people never bother to get past.
I'm sure many of the major companies out there are loving the fact that their name pops up in results after a single letter. I'm imagining a strange near-future Gibsonian world overrun by oppressive corporations who've corrupted the old mnemonic tool to learn the alphabet. "A is for Apple, B is for Best Buy, C is for Craigslist, D is for Domino's, E is for Ebay..." etc. etc. ad nauseum.
This is a sign of where we're going, though. Our children will one day look at us aghast as we tell them that we used to have to click a button to get search results; that if you didn't find what you wanted, you had to search several times for good results. I await the day that I load up Google and it gives me results for what I want before I type anything. It sounds off the wall, but so does real time searching.