Interesting article: Why Google is ditching search

BobS said

I don't think the writer was saying that traditional search is going away, just that the surge to primacy of social search is impressive and that it is changing search rather quickly.

The most interesting aspect of Google's move, however, is its tacit acknowledgement that its stalwart search links are largely irrelevant and might as well be replaced with social results.

BobS said

I look at my sister and niece, who are both working professionals, and see a significant change in the way they look things up. Both have iPhone 4s and both use Siri for quick lookups while using traditional search for deeper research. I suspect this will be the trend in search

temp1024 said

When the author states:

The most interesting aspect of Google's move, however, is its tacit acknowledgement that its stalwart search links are largely irrelevant and might as well be replaced with social results.

He's effectively saying it will be as good as gone.

Google's Results Disappoint, Sending Shares Down said

Google's disappointing results were particularly surprising because it rarely misses analysts' expectations and because the fourth quarter is usually its strongest, fueled by retail ads for online holiday shopping. Indeed, e-commerce advertising on Google was strong during the holidays, mobile advertising increased significantly and display advertising with image and video is on track to generate $5 billion in revenue for Google in the coming year, said Nikesh Arora, Google's chief business officer.

Still, said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners, "Q4 is Google's time to shine, and it was just O.K. results, so Google looks a bit mortal."

Analysts focused on the amount that advertisers pay for clicks on Google ads, a metric called cost-per-click, which dropped 8 percent over both last quarter and last year. Susan Wojcicki, Google's senior vice president of advertising, told analysts that a drop in average cost-per-click often accompanied an increase in the number of paid clicks on ads, which rose 34 percent over last year. She also said that foreign exchange rates and 40 changes that Google made to ad formats in the second half of last year affected cost-per-click. It was also affected by an increase in ads on cellphones, which sell for a 20 to 50 percent discount, according to Goldman Sachs.

BobS said

This is just craziness. Google is apparently trying to stroke the egos of its users rather than providing accurate search results. It just makes me question that much more the validity of any of their results.

Bob

Not Sergey Brin said

I think you're missing the point.  Google is trying to provide search results that are relevant to the user.  I expect making search more useful for its billion+ users is a higher priority for Google, compared to flattering a few thousand website admins.

Why is everybody having the same results more 'accurate' or 'valid' than ones personalised to, say, where you live?  

If Walmart was selling your product, you wouldn't find it strange if they placed it in different aisles within individual stores, depending on the demographics of each stores' customers.

BobS said

Your point might be valid if the ranking was based on cookies. But it appears that it is based on being logged into the Google account. Since I am the only one who has access to that account, the results are being skewed just for me. That makes no sense.