Search: An Old Taxi with a Faux Cow Hide Interior
July 2, 2008
The last time I was in a big city I hailed a taxi. What a clunker. It smelled of fast food, incense, and hot plastic. One fender was dented and the curb side door would not open. The window would not go down. “She dead,” smiled the driver. The interior of the taxi had a set of blinking lights popular at holiday times. The taxi was a mess, but the faux cow interior was unusual. lights were working.
Thanks to ABC Australia for the photo. The original is here. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1770336.htm
I have been clicking and scanning the opinions about the Microsoft Powerset deal. Scanning the links at Congoo.com, Megite.com, and Techmeme.com will take a long time. I have been a slacker, clicking at random and looking for some substantive news.
Why is search like a lousy taxi with a useless faux cow hide interior?
My thought for this evening is that search is string matching. The other functions are ways to:
- Make it easier for a busy person who does not have time or the desire to read a traditional document; that is, a multi page report.
- Show the user what is available and push the user toward that information. The user, who doesn’t want to make this effort, will let the software do the work.
- Support a user who is not to swift when it comes to thinking about abstract digital data.
- Reduce the time a user spends fumbling for information.
- Put training wheels on a worker who forgets work processes the way I forget where I put my automobile keys five minutes ago.
What’ happening is that key word search, string matching, and its kissing cousin Boolean are the lousy taxi. Good enough but not too pleasant.
The cow interior for search are these types of enhancements:
- Assisted navigation, a fancy term for Use For and See also references
- Clustering, putting like things together in a folder or under a heading
- Discovery, an interface that provides an overview of information
- Semantic search, a system that figures out what you mean when you type a two word query
- Natural language processing, a term that now means answering a question, assuming that someone takes the time to think up a question and type it into a search box
- Dashboards, a report that has panels or containers, each containing different information. Some dashboards look like speedometers with text; others can be quite fanciful.
- Access to metadata about what person in an organization gets the most email about a specific technical issue. This type of monitoring and analysis is now called social search because surveillance is not politically correct in many circles.
You get the idea.
Possible impacts
Let’s consider the consequences.
First, enterprise search is complicated. Today I spoke with an enthusiastic and young professional. The call touched upon creating a plan for enterprise search. Like most organizations, this outfit has three separate enterprise search systems. None work all that well, so the phone rings. This is a common situation, and I am not to optimistic that enterprise search will work very well when there are competing factions each with a favorite search engine to support. Adding whizzy new functionality adds to the cost and complexity, and I am not convinced users want to do much more than find the needed information and move on to another task.
Second, most of these “new” technologies are not new. Cheap, powerful processors make it possible to run procedures that were not affordable just three years ago. With computing power and cheap storage, old functions are trotted out, given a day at the spa, and sold to procurement teams looking for a silver bullet. What is delivered in a headache in my opinion.
Finally, effective search depends on doing some basic very well; for example, knowing the content flow and refresh cycle, security considerations, and content transformation needs to name three key issues. Tossing in a wild card like “social search” when the organization has specific regulatory requirements imposed upon it is for me risky. The risk can be reduced with some thought and research. Call me an anchor or a mom at a middle school dance, but I am going to advocate a more measured approach. I don’t really know what “social search” means, and I don’t want to find out on the fly.
Observations
Search may be headed for the Dollar Store. User dissatisfaction translates to a low value function. As vendors rush to find a silver bullet or magic wand to fix search, the complexity of the system jumps up. I think Microsoft will do some learning with the Fast Search technology and the Powerset technology. Finally, the turmoil is search cannot mask the deep financial hole some of the companies call home. Venture firms have been willing to pump money into start ups in hopes of finding the next Google. Today’s economy may bring more conservatism because search is hard to make pay. Google has a business model, good infrastructure, and a hot brand. Zippy “new” technologies won’t be enough to win quickly market share from Google.
Stephen Arnold, July 2, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
