I've thought for a long time that Google - as good as its search function is - is just a stepping-stone on how we will search for information in the future. Apple's new smart assisant, Siri, on its iPhone4s seems to me like a paradigm shift towards where we're heading.
Why, after all, would I want to type in "best car insurance" into Google, trawl through all the offers, fill in all my details, get my credit card out to make a purchase when I could just say to my phone "get me the best car insurance; pay for a year" and it's done.
Clearly Siri is not at that level yet but I bet won't be that long before it gets there. Which makes me think what on earth are Google thinking when they say they have no plans to roll out a similar service for Android.
Seems to me monumental dumb thinking on their part.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZSkvwpBBok
Ed
It certainly allows for taking back some search real estate that Google has been expanding into. It allows for specialty search providers like Yelp or Open Table to be integrated into searches and cutting out Google in areas. However, is Apple going to let me chose Bing web search over Google? (Plus we are down to so few original web search DB's you almost have to go, cap in hand, to Goog to provide search.) Will Apple let me default to Bing maps instead of Goog maps? We're down to almost no choices anymore which I find scary, hoever it does reduce Google to plumbing which Google probably finds scary too. :-)
I do agree that Siri may well change the way we think of accessing search. If the rumored HD TV from Apple comes out I can see it being connected to the web and being both computer and TV with Siri as the 'remote'.
>Google thinking when they say they have no plans to roll out a similar service for Android.
No need to, someone whipped up a knock-off called Iris. With Iris search is decent on Louise's Samsung Galaxy ...though wikipedia seems to come up a lot. I'm guessing that 'feeling lucky' gets picked automatically but I haven't really followed up on it.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dexetra.iris
But, to answer the question, these smartphone search apps have the potential of knee-capping search as we know it. Users will turn to them because they are handy and more convenient and purposely remain in denial about the quality and limitations of the search itself.
<added>
Just happened to run across this during this evening's deep-reading session. IMO, the article is Apple-centric and neglects the android side entirely but it brings up a good point.
Why Siri Is a Google Killer
"Siri will vastly improve in the next 2 years based on all the data it's amassing. This game is about where the puck is going, not where it is today. Many people only look at Siri as the application as it works today. Yet, the biggest advantage over any other voice application out there today, and the apps still to be developed, is the massive data Siri is now and will continue to collect in the next 2 years. We know after the first weekend alone, there were 4 million Siri-enabled devices out there probably collecting 1 – 2 utterances a day worth of data — all being stored in Apple's massive North Carolina data center."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/10/28/why-siri-is-a-google-killer/
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I'll also add that it's no coincidence that G is trying to resurrect Google TV after all the what-happens-after-Jobs tech commentary effectively paired Apple TV with Siri as the next big thing.
<more added>
And now, with visions of Apple TV and Google TV (and marketing profiles, supercookies, datacenters, Siri, Iris, and such) dancing in your head, I invite you to read this little scenario John Battelle wrote about back in 2004:
TV AND SEARCH MERGE
http://battellemedia.com/archives/2004/10/friday_sketching_tv_and_search_merge.php
>Why Siri Is a Google Killer
Good article. Worth reading the whole thing.
>TV AND SEARCH MERGE
And Apple has that ad network (mobile only for now) that could be adapted to Apple TV... Seems to me that TV is going more towards on demand rather than rigid linier schedules so that needs to be taken into account. Question are we ready for banner ads on our TV?
I forgot to add Google Wallet to the mix.
http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/
I read an article recently (for the life of my I cant find it anywhere now) which asks when TV manufacturers are going to step into the market as they are missing a beat at the moment.
It talked about most TV's straight out of the box come with a pretty crappy interface and they lack greatly in features. You have to rely on 3rd party hardware/software to get more from your set.
>TV's straight out of the box come with a pretty crappy interface
Blu-ray DVD players are terrible too especially if you buy a cheap electronics store house brand. The Blu-ray hardware guys have managed take something as simple as the old style plain DVD player and turn it into a cluster f---.
You can get some pretty decent looking TV's - but it just seems that once the TV was built and it came to putting together the interface and any additional software features etc.. they lost interest! Such a shame, this left the door open for companies like Apple to come along with Apple TV.
"But rather than just sharing what you're watching, which is what the current iPhone app does, users can now receive content specific to those programs. And it's not just news.
Viewers watching a football game, for example, can tap IntoNow to dig out specific information about the teams playing and up-to-the-minute statistics about the players. Tap IntoNow into a Family Guy episode, for example, and you'll get a screen that brings up the Twitter feeds of the shows creators."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20128983-93/share-your-tv-habits-with-yahoos-intonow-app-now-on-the-ipad/
Another article said that the app could serve up targeted ads along with the peripheral content.
I have my doubts about how useful people will actually find that, but I can't help thinking its a nice way to sell some extra ads either in a link up with the TV companies or just by selling on segmentation....
> have my doubts
As did I ...until the app just sort of cost me $140 in impulse buying during our *first* trial run at home.
This app is truly creepy. Louise used an email address not associated with facebook so it wouldn't broadcast what she's watching through the social networks. Still, this app seems invasive enough that l have minor concerns that the servers will poll cookies and lock in on her facebook profile.
Wish I could get that Forbes article to load on my horrid satellite connection... :-(
Anyway, feeling whimsical. The quote from Forbes got me off on more than a few tangents and I couldn't even access the article. If you haven't read Vernor Vinge's _Deepness in the Sky_ and Peter Hamilton, Pandora's Star and the followup, they're not bad diversion and are sort of guesses on where we could be in the far future with eButlers and other built-in assistants.
So... not that y'all want to read all this, but as I say, was in a whimsical mood.
Quick question and yes, it's relevant... sort of.
Why did East Germany fall, then bringing the whole Soviet empire with it? Because their computers weren't fast enough. Okay, I know that might seem a little limited. It's possible there were some other factors involved too and Welesa and Gorbachev would probably say it was a bit more complex.
But they could have held on to their totalitarian dictatorship quite a bit longer, except that they made one huge strategic error. The focused on data collection, not data processing and retrieval. Essentially, this is the same reason the CIA missed the fact that the regime was crumbling too, so we can't be too hard on the Stasi.
But the important point is that the Stasi was so busy gathering minute details on the lives of huge numbers of citizens that they could not in any way, shape or form process that data. They knew everything about everyone, except they didn't know what was going on in the most fundamental sense. So less than a year before the wall came down, Honnecker said it would stand 50-100 years. Oops.
But how could they ever make use of all that data? The East Germans, it's safe to say, did not have a single computer close to the power of today's iPhone (http://www.quora.com/Supercomputers/What-year-did-supercomputers-have-computational-power-similar-to-todays-top-smart-phones).
So they proved that it's not the data storage, but the data retrieval that matters. Google, one could say, is built on this principle. The data storage is the web -- useless without a good retrieval system.
But I've always said that in 25 years the Google retrieval system will look as ridiculous as the Stasi efforts do now. Handheld devices will have the computing power of today's largest systems. Computers will eventually process natural language to an adequate degree and will go out to the web and the "beyond web" and at that point. Your "eButler" or whatever will do the tasks for you to some degree.
Pages of results based on keyword searches will be utterly ridiculous, as foreign to a kid born in 2030 as finding a book using the card catalog is to most kids today. The research librarian in Yosemite told me that she constantly has people in their 20s come in and ask for help because they don't know how to use a card catalog - don't know how!. In 2040, kids in their 20s won't have a clue how to do a keyword search (and old fogies will complain about how stupid today's kids are). And of course, handheld devices will seem quaint. Odd things for luddites and the poor.
Once you get to the point that the integrated super-duper-ubercomputer understands natural language, knows the habits and preferences of the owner - perhaps even uses shared storage with the owner... or perhaps it no longer makes sense to differentiate between the biological device and the non-biological device - and has access to an immense database... well at that point a company that looks like Google is dead. If Google is still around, it will be because it's a different company that today's company. Like IBM of today compared to IBM of thirty years ago.
To finish up, I have a last question. Where do you guys buy your punchcards?
>punchcards
Having grown up in a good-sized IBM tab shop, I'm sure I have a case or two of 5081's lying about if you really need them. Just pay the freight.
>Just pay the freight.
I'll let you store them for me for now it you don't mind. It's comforting just to know where I can get some when I need them.
But seriously, how long until keyword-based searches are as rare as punchcards? Are as foreign to a 20 year-old as punchcards are now.