Release 0.9 -- Search 2.0

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer did a wonderful duet up on stage, but Bill said a few more things at dinner that struck me. First of all, Bill was extremely happy. By all accounts, he's just been in a great mood for the last few months, as he approaches his departure from Microsoft next month. At dinner, he was most interested in talking about Africa, malaria and how to rescue the US education system, than in search and the like. Bless him!

But he did talk a little about search. The future of search is not actually better "search," he said, but completion of a particular task the user is trying to accomplish -- such as booking a flight, trading a stock, scheduling a movie or a car repair.

Microsoft already does better on long multi-word searches, he added, but no one notices. "The future of search is verbs!" In other words, you don't want a list of search results; you want something specific to happen.

That, of course, is what Powerset is also aiming to do. (I'm an investor.)

Most interesting to Microsoft and its competitors are such monetizable tasks, as opposed to booking a meeting with a friend ... but someday marketers will realize people don't use the Web only to buy things. It's as if newspapers were talking about themselves as classifieds-only, without even mentioning news and other editorial content. And it;s true: Craigslist is a fine business without any encumbering news/editorial, but it's not the whole web.

How can we fund the rest of the Web -- the part where people are not buying things? That's not the marketers' problem, of course, especially if they're in the top-5 categories Bill mentioned (if I remember right): travel, music, finance, consumer electronics, books?

However, it could be the marketers' opportunity ... the opportunity for each marketer is different, but if they can figure out a way to sponsor or enhance relevant content, joining communities and contributing, rather than disrupting them with ads, then they may actually get closer to their customers than their brethren who turn to banners when they get diminishing returns from ads.

Comments

[strifeknot]

01:27 AM on 05/29/2008

Actually, 99% of my time on the web is related to buying things. That's how I intend to keep it.

The rest of the time is spent checking email, and on places like this where I can laugh at asshole Clinton supporters.

[devanate]

01:15 PM on 05/29/2008

I only ocassionally buy stuff on the web. Kinda like to examin my purchases physically before I buy. Guess I'm kinda old fashioned that way. Most of my web time is actually spent finding out what some arcane computer error message means or reading the news.

[KillTheMessenger]

06:50 PM on 05/28/2008

It always amazes me how people keep sticking to the wrong solution long after its shortfalls are obvious. The problem with search is not that it doesn't work well. It works wonderfully for limited knowledge domains if the information is properly pre-ordered. That's how it is done in a science library and finding information there works very well. Search does not work (and can not work as a matter of principle) if all the knowledge of the world is thrown on a single pile and then a robot about as smart as a Roomba is being used to pick items from that pile.

Minor variations to the theme (verb vs. noun) change nothing about the outcome of the pile building strategy.

I does not seem to me that anybody (no matter how rich) knows anything about where the web will go from here. I have hope for one aspect of it which would be truly amazing: geographically linked information would allow virtual travel. If one could start Google Earth (or the MSN equivalent) and then explore billions, maybe soon trillions of photographs and other files linked to their geographical context, there world would become an enormous place to explore audio-visually with endless wonders waiting for the visitor. I know that Google and MS are working hard on it. We shall see how well it comes out.

[jp5472]

08:14 AM on 05/29/2008

Microsoft has been trying for years to be "master" of the internet, controlling browser, search, ads (and therefore revenue) - monopolizing the experience. That has not worked out too well for them as most everything from their browser to MSN to Passport, even their search engine, have been lukewarm at best. When they ever finally realize that instead of continuously peddling "half-baked sh$t" with a couple of new bells and whistles, they should actually invest the time and money into real from the ground up improvement of what they peddle, they may actually finally see the return they always dreamed of...and not 95% of the world begrudgingly using their OS and applications because Microsoft has monopolized the marketplace ( hence, in order to be compatible with others and use of compatible programs, we all just conform to their monopolization).