Just Too Logical

All this talk of Twitter dethroning Google is very funny to me. I’m seriously pleading for Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers to do another Really?!? skit on SNL addressing this insanity!

The Reality of Search

Lets look at reality (the way I see it).

SEARCH Leaders		The WHAT
		Video	Blogs	Micro Blogs	News	Other
The HOW	Post-Time
	Real-Time

Twitter has a leg up on the competition being the first and only right now to offer a micro-blogging service and thus has the best micro-blogging search tool. But soon enough there will be lots of micro-blogging services around, the same way there are now lots of social networking sites. Answer me this: Who will have the best micro-blogging search tool then? Google. Google’s business is search, not blogging (of any kind) and rest assured, they’ll find a way to consolidate all micro-blogging data and allow you to search it. There are many aspects to search. The successful company will be the one that can blur the lines between real-time and what I’ve termed post-time search. In the future there will be no delineation.

Buying Twitter

I still think Google should buy Twitter, mainly to prevent Microsoft, Apple or others from doing so. The more prevalent mobile devices become, the more I think Apple can benefit. It might sound crazy, but what if Apple did buy Twitter and the iPhone was the only mobile device allowed to use Twitter API’s? Ballsy? Yes. Crazy. No. Take a wild guess. How many users, 25 and under (globally) will now have yet another reason to buy an iPhone. Maybe Google could do the same and make it so only Android mobile devices can use Twitter. Now that would be some serious hard-core, bare-fisted competition and I’d pay to see that frigin show.

The Future of Search – The Threat

But all this aside, lets just talk about search a bit. To this day, we are still really not searching. What we are doing is listing. We’re saying, hey Google, tell me every page that has the word “dell” on it (for example). Some blogger goes and mistypes a word and now suddenly you are reading about “bells”. Imagine a real-life conversation if Google was a person today:

Mr. Google: How can I help you?
You: How do you change brake pads?
Mr. Google: Menstrual cramps huh? Let me tell you where to buy pads.
You: Brake pads! Argh! Why is this so painful?
Mr. Google: Cramps and pain? No problem. Would you like some Tylenol?

I know, I know, its exaggerated a bit, but you get the point. The next big thing is going to be intelligent search. We are moving in that direction with Contextual Search and other similar ideas, but we are not there yet. Real-time vs post-time is trendy now but ultimately irrelevant.  I’ll take it a step further and state that intelligent search will have to include voice. When was the last time you saw a futuristic movie where someone typed in a command using a keyboard? Exactly. I work for a startup building advanced voice applications and know that voice and search will be inseperable in the future. So to me the real threat is from those that can provide this intelligent search. If they can do it with voice…they will be the million ton meteor to Google’s planet.

Who Is The Threat?

You may be asking who can possibly do this. Well anyone can, but I seriously doubt it will be from the big companies themselves. They are now too busy either worrying about the economy or keeping the shareholders happy or fighting anti-trust law suites.  They have become risk averse. Small companies will give them a run for their money but will likey sell out when a few $100 million is waved in front of them. And if that happens, I fear the lack of innovation at big companies will cause the product to go nowhere.

The real threat will be from, what I’ve termed, the community of thinking minds. Its going to be the 17-yr old kid down the street who spent all his money to buy that 16GB of RAM and is devoting his entire summer to say “Screw you, I am better.” Or the inspired geek who just saw StarTrek, or the mad scientist who just had a break-through.

You know, as I’m writing this post, I’m looking at my 5 month old son play with his toy. I’m looking around the room and am amazed at what I’m seeing. He is growing up in a world of HD plasma TVs, GPS devices, advanced mobile devices, always connected life-style and extremely powerful computing which will only get exponentially faster and stronger. He will have no concept or expectation of anything less. Think about that for a minute. We are on the cusp of an intelligence explosion and companies need to realize that the same old-same old just wont cut it anymore.

Charles Godfrey Just Too Logical Apple, Google, Search Engine, The Future, Twitter