Perfect Search
August 4, 2009
The Mail & Guardian is not aware of an interesting search company called “Perfect Search”. You can read about the company at http://www.perfectsearchcorp.com and get an inside peek at the firm’s high-speed system in my interview with Ken Ebert, on of Perfect Search’s technologists in the ArnoldIT.com Search Wizards Speak series.
The UK newspaper’s use of “perfect search” has a different spin because the newspaper seems to unaware that there is a company with the phrase used in the story’s headline “Rivals Strive to Topple Google in Quest for the ‘Perfect Search’”. In addition, there is not too much information about rivals. Google right now doesn’t have too many in my opinion. There are “to be” rivals or “hoped for” rivals aplenty. I think that articles like this Guardian effort ehlps increases confusion about search.
The Guardian article trots out the painful reminder to publishers that Google has “enormous power”. The article points out that Google will run “more than one trillion searches”. Then comes the passage that I found interesting:
But it is also possible that the concept of search may be moving forward so fast that it will outstrip search engines themselves. The explosive growth of social networking services, such as Twitter and Facebook, is taking the concept of search into unknown areas. Both began as ways for friends and acquaintances to share information and news about themselves but then they developed a critical mass. Suddenly Facebook and Twitter became tools that could be searched by their millions of users. Search on Google for a recipe and you will get a relatively random selection. Ask Facebook or Twitter for a recipe and you will get a choice often aimed specifically at you. Nor is it just for trivia. In the recent political turmoil in Iran, Twitter became a vital tool for organising and releasing information about the violent post-election crackdown. If you wanted the latest news from Iran, it was Twitter that you turned to as well. Twitter had showed itself perfectly able to channel people’s most profound desires: in this case, political freedom of expression. You can plan a revolution with Twitter.
In my opinion, this passage makes clear that Google in particular and online change in general is why newspapers, magazines, and books in hard copy form are clueless. Instead of adapting, as this Guardian article makes clear, the reporter explains a change. Yet muddles what has happened, why the change has taken place, and what the wave of changed has washed up on the digital beach as deadwood.
The article concludes with a question: Perhaps not even Google knows exactly what the world will look like. Yet.”
No kidding. Google is an example of adaptive intelligence, exactly the type of business behavior that traditional media does not understand and, therefore, describes in confusing, often misleading ways. Google surfs digital trends and even makes some waves itself. Traditional newspapers, like this article, describe the snow falling around the grass eating dinosaurs as the Ice Age approaches.
Stephen Arnold, August 4, 2009
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