Great article. What really strikes me about this is that we just saw Google's new glass video - a device in which search is primarily implied. Google knows search is dumb and wants to fix it, primarily through external devices (android) that are context aware and have access to incredible amounts of personally relative data. They can't kill their money cow, not directly, and haven't shown us how they'll monetize products without relying on ads, so they'll have to leave search alone, at least for now.
Why I hate search
11–20 of 78 posts
Re: Why I hate search
#12He only says that search is crap, but not really how to make it better. Except for Siri.
He claims we could do better, but how?
Re: Why I hate search
#13Search is dead. Long live the semantic web.
Re: Why I hate search
#14This seems to be a semantics issue. "To search" has multiple meanings, and only one of them implies loss.
In computer science, you don't (only) use search as an information retrieval mechanism. You use it primarily (whether that's Google, find | xargs egrep , Microsoft/OS X help, etc.) as a mechanism to reduce entropy.
Information stored in files or on the internet is generally too vast to be easily absorbed by a brain that, marvellous as it is, has difficulties processing more than 7 +/- 2 symbols at a time [1]. We need a way to reduce the entropy and extract and filter information. And that's what search tools in computer science primarily tend to do (online or offline).
This is also why by default we use "and" to combine search terms and are generally more interested in narrowing search results rather than expanding them.
Some people admittedly also use search as a tool to look up information; I recall that there's some usability research where some people prefer using search, while others prefer a catalog scheme (such as bookmarks) and that forcing one type of person to use the opposite scheme reduces their productivity.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_...
Re: Why I hate search
#15He will fit right in at Microsoft then. They call bing lots of things like "decision engine" and "doing engine", but never a "search engine".
Despite the tooltip for the magnifying glass on bing reading "Search"
Re: Why I hate search
#16Is anyone else not surprised that the doc is working for microsoft? Perhaps instead of associating himself as a former googler, former professor, and former startup founder, he should assert himself as an individual and an authority on whatever new and exciting product he's working on at mcsft.
I guess that new and exciting product is posting negative blogs about a former employer. Step it up doc and contribute something meaningful.
Re: Why I hate search
#17To me this just feels reaching. Sure, he does a good job of highlighting a problem but doesn't really offer any vision for a solution. But why go to Microsoft? GOOG 635.15, MSFT 31.21
Re: Why I hate search
#18To me this just feels reaching. Sure, he does a good job of highlighting a problem but doesn't really offer any vision for a solution. But why go to Microsoft? GOOG 635.15, MSFT 31.21
> But why go to Microsoft? GOOG 635.15, MSFT 31.21
Share prices are not directly comparable. Market cap is, where MSFT is beating GOOG.
Re: Why I hate search
#19The problem with Internet search is that being stupid about it is profitable. The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution when being part of the problem pays so damn well?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when google started out, wasn't one of its core philosophies to reduce the number of times that users had to redo a search? And that they refused an offer from Excite because the Excite CEO complained that Google results were so good that users were NOT staying long enough to read the ads? Is the OP saying that this part of Google's history is a lie?
Re: Why I hate search
#20Microsoft failed, miserably, at search. So search doesn't matter. Right?
It is impossible to read this piece without getting coated with the dripping venom of regret. It's hearing an adolescent tell you why they really, really didn't want something that they didn't get and now envy.
What really gets me is this claim: "There's no more reason to expect search breakthroughs from Google than there is to expect electric car batteries to be made by Exxon."
Yet Google has overwhelmingly been responsible for the breakthroughs that essentially reduce our usage of their own product. Google themselves are trying to reduce our use of search. Over the past year they've added semantic canonical answers for many questions.
Years ago we really did have to go through pages of search. Now you seldom have to go past the first link, if you even need that.
It's also a bit laughable that he mentions Siri, betraying the gross agenda of the piece. Siri is a basic text parser that, if it fails at that, does a web search. It isn't some semantic knowledge engine, and in many of the scenarios in their own commercial, does a bog standard web search, relying upon all of the old tactics to give an answer. If Siri is the revolution, someone is misunderstanding how it works.
EDIT: 4 downvotes and not a single comment as to why. It is somewhat ridiculous how desperately so many on HN are to promote any vapid anti-Google screed, even when it comes from Microsoft of all places.