Geekonomics
World tells geek how to curve & geek tells world how it can move.
by Nicholas Aaron Khoo, Singapore
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"Scoble can't be more wrong"
Aug 29, 2007 03:17Famous author and tech blogger Robert Scoble "prophesized" the possible demise of Google search yesterday with his extremely controversial post Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google's butt in four years.
It has produced TONs of reaction mainly slamming Scoble. I reproduce some of the comments here from his blog.
SEOmoz "I used to respect Robert Scoble's opinions."
Dave Winer on Twitter: "scobleizer made me jealous. I want some of the drugs he's taking!"
Uncov: "Robert Scoble actually makes you dumber."
Danny Sullivan, search engine guru: "For such hype about his video, I was pretty much left with an 'is that it?' response."
Karl Martino: "Scoble can't be more wrong."
Paul Glaszowski: "How ridiculous it would be for anyone--anyone with a decent supply of sense, anyhow--to think Google will be divested of its crown by entities like Facebook and Mahalo simply due to a lack of the human intervention or 'supplication' in its search process."
Valleywag: "He's just revealing what he has always been: A confused evangelist who doesn't understand the underlying technology, doesn't have his facts straight, and can't keep his story consistent. But, boy, is he enthusiastic about it!"
As a disclaimer first, I'm not an expert on search. Nor have I researched much into it. In fact, I did not even research much into Scoble's ideas or have a very good grasp of what Mahalo is all about. But I was very tempted to reply Scoble on this controversial post of his (which, in trying to "hide" his ideas from Google, inadvertently drew so much more attention--Google folks included). Instead of leaving a comment after the myriad of comments on his blog, I've decided on a quick post here to drop some of my thoughts on his outrageous "prophecy" (but aren't most prophecies outrageous at the time of declaration?).
First of all, I do believe Google hasn't got all the answers in the search space. Although we turn to Google or even Yahoo or MSN first whenever we wanna search up something on the Web, they do not always give us back the best answers, at least not immediately. Why? I think it's a mixed bag of reasons from spam to SEO, to just simply a lack of context. I highlighted that last phrase because I think that's the main problem in search today--too much information, too general, not enough context.
How many times do you have to refine your key words before you even get close to what you want to find? And how many clicks take you to your eventual answer?
Secondly, while what Scoble was proposing sounds pretty much like Google 2.0 to me, complete with online social media, I'm just not quite sure if a social network is the ultimate answer to search. I think Google still has a faster and more automated process than Mahalo, especially for the end-user. Of course, what Scoble is proposing does seems to promise better results. But time, effort and scalability are in question. And most importantly in online social media, you must enroll--which means you must be registered and logged in; giving a certain amount of truth to who you say you are before you can even search for anything sounds rather difficult to achieve, much less 'kick Google's butt'.
Thirdly, Google's search users are in the hundreds of millions, if not reaching the billions mark. The most successful social-networking tool to date, like Friendster, Facebook, etc., do not even come close to 50 million users, I believe. Which means some people will just never use online social media, and thus Google will always be needed.
Lastly, why can't Google change and morph as it grows? We can't rule that out, especially when it's seen Scoble's proposal by now!
Having said all that, there may be some validity to what Scoble is saying. Maybe it just needs more time or refining. After all I'm not the expert in seach and I really did not do a lot of homework on this topic before this post, just some quick comments to Scoble's ideas especially since it has received so much bashing.
So then, what is the answer to a better search that gives me the results I want faster and better? At this point, I'm not really sure but I will study this more, especially "scobleized search 2.0". There's also some contextualized search solutions coming up in text analytics which I saw from the national A*Star research labs which may be worth studying.
Imagine a not-too-distant "scobleized" future where everything you used to get from Google search, you can now get from a social-networking site like Facebook which renders Google search obsolete?!
Possible near future? You decide.
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About Nicholas Aaron Khoo
Nicknamed "Gadget Boy" by friends at age 18 because he used to scribble Grafitti on a PalmPilot faster than most would type, Nicholas Aaron Khoo is web developer turned technopreneur and Singapore tech blogger who also pretends to do strategic advisory for tech startups and 'un'Fortune 500s (when he's not pretending to be the gadget-loaded Batman). A digital nomad, his tech interests range from gadgets, games, tech trends, social media, security, and just about anything that runs on 1s and 0s. See his industry affiliations here.
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