Trust the Search Black Box and Only the Black Box
September 21, 2017
This article reads like an infomercial for a kitchen appliance. It asks the same, old question, “How much time do you waste searching for relevant content?” Then it leads into a pitch for Microsoft and some other companies. BA Insights wrote, “The Increasingly Intelligence Search Experience” to be an original article, but frankly it sounds like every spiel to sell a new search algorithm.
After the “hook,” the article runs down the history of Microsoft and faceted search along with refiners and how it was so revolutionary at the time. Do not get me wrong, this was a revolution move, but it sounds like Microsoft invented the entire tool rather than just using it as a strategy. There is also a brief mention on faceted navigation, then they throw “intelligence search” at us:
Microsoft’s definition of “intelligence” may still be vague, but it’s clear that the company believes its work in machine-learning, when combined with its cloud platform, can give it a leg up over its competitors. The Microsoft Graph and these new intelligent machine-learning capabilities provide personalized insights based on a user’s personal network, project assignments, meeting schedule, and other search and collaboration activities. These features make it possible not only to search using traditional methods and take action based on those results, but for the tools and systems to proactively provide intelligent, personalized, and timely information before you ask for it – based on your profile, permissions, and activity history.
Oh! Microsoft is so smart that they have come up with something brand new that companies which specialize in search have never thought of before. Come on, how many times have we seen and read claims like this before? Microsoft is doing revolutionary things, but not so much in the field of search technology. They have contributed to its improvement over the years, but if this was such a revolutionary piece of black box software why has not anyone else picked it up?
Little black box software has their uses, but mostly for enterprise and closed systems-not the bigger Web.
Whitney Grace, September 21, 2015
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