Google Drive Search
October 3, 2016
Google allows customers to save digital content to its Drive service. The hitch in the git along is that finding content can be difficult. Google, the search company which pays the bills selling ads, has introduced an information access utility to address this need.
I read “Google Updates Drive, Smarter Search Bar, Natural Language Processing and More.” The write up reminded me that with Google Drive I could “keep everything, share anything.” The article likes Google—a lot. I noted the words “fantastic.” That’s good. Fantastic.
The idea is that one no longer has to use key words. A person can ask a question; for example, I can “search like you talk.” Google is making search like “talk” because users requested this function.
The write up points out that “[Google] Docs:
will also now automatically save a copy of the non-Google file you open, convert and edit in Docs, Sheets or Slides, in its original format. This feature has been introduced considering the fact that work can happen across a spectrum of formats. Meanwhile, you can view or download the non-Google source file in its original format directly from Revision History in Docs, Sheets and Slides on the web.
The search function sounds perfect for the mobile user who finds keywords troublesome.
Several observations:
- Dumping digital content into a pile makes locating the specific item difficult when date, time, and other constraints are not available. Google does not “do time” very well.
- The notion of heterogeneous document types is an interesting one. What content types are supported and searchable? Framemaker or Analyst’s Notebook files perhaps?
- A search vendor introducing improved search is interesting to me. With precision and recall for Google Web search apparently eroded by other considerations, Google appears to be supporting multiple methods of locating information. Is this “let many flowers bloom” or a signal that search is Balkanizing?
As each user’s “pile” of digital artifacts grows, how will a person locate related content; for example, text, image, third party content in a way that makes sense? I do not see great progress in findability, but I like the marketing that inspires words like “fantastic.”
The convenience of Google Drive offers some useful information to those able to analyze a user’s content. Add in archived messages and search histories, and the “new” search creates an interesting concoction.
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2016
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
