Can Googzilla Read a Manifesto and Exhibit Fear?
February 7, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Let’s think about scale. A start up wants to make a dent in Google’s search traffic. The start up has 2,000 words to blast away at the Google business model. Looking at the 2,000 words from a search tower buttressed by Google’s fourth quarter 2023 revenues of $86.31 billion (up 13% year over the same period in 2022). Does this look like a mismatch? I think it is more of a would-be competitor’s philosophical view of what should be versus what could be. Microsoft Bing is getting a clue as well.
Viewed from the perspective of a student of Spanish literature, the search start up may be today’s version of Don Quixote. The somewhat addled Alonso Quijano pronounced himself a caballero andante or what fans of chivalry in the US of A call a knight errant. What’s errant? In the 16th century, “errant” was self appointed, a bit like a journalism super star who road to fame on the outputs of the unfettered Twitter service and morphs into a pundit, a wizard, a seer.
A modern-day Don Quixote finds himself in an interesting spot. The fire-breathing dragon is cooking its lunch. The bold knight explains that the big beastie is toast. Yeah. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Actually good enough today. Wow.
With a new handle, Don Quixote leaves the persona of Sr. Quijano behind and goes off the make Spain into a better place. The cause of Spanish angst is the windmill. The good Don tries to kill the windmills. But the windmills just keep on grinding grain. The good Don fails. He dies. Ouch!
I thought about the novel when I read “The Age of PageRank is Over [Manifesto].” The author champions a Web search start up called Kagi. The business model of Kagi is to get people to pay to gain access to the Kagi search system. The logic of the subscription model is that X number of people use online search. If our system can get a tiny percentage of those people to pay, we will be able to grow, expand, and deliver good search. The idea is that what Google delivers is crappy, distorted by advertisers who cough up big bucks, and designed to convert more and more online users to the One True Source of Information.
The “manifesto” says:
The websites driven by this business model became advertising and tracking-infested giants that will do whatever it takes to “engage” and monetize unsuspecting visitors. This includes algorithmic feeds, low-quality clickbait articles (which also contributed to the deterioration of journalism globally), stuffing the pages with as many ads and affiliate links as possible (to the detriment of the user experience and their own credibility), playing ads in videos every 45 seconds (to the detriment of generations of kids growing up watching these) and mining as much user data as possible.
These indeed are the attributes of Google and similar advertising-supported services. However, these attributes are what make stakeholders happy. These business model components are exactly what many other companies labor to implement and extend. Even law enforcement likes Google. At one conference I learned that 92 percent of cyber investigators rely on Google for information. If basic Google sucks, just use Google dorks or supplementary services captured in OSINT tools, browser add ins, and nifty search widgets.
Furthermore, switching from one search engine is not a matter of a single click. The no-Google approach requires the user pick a path through a knowledge mine field; for example:
- The user must know what he or she does invokes Google. Most users have no clue where Google fits in one’s online life. When told, those users do not understand.
- The user must identify or learn about one or more services that are NOT Google related.
- The user must figure out what makes one “search” service better than another, not an easy task even for alleged search experts
- The user must make a conscious choice to spit out cash
- The user must then learn how to get a “new” search system to deliver the results the user (trained and nudged by Google for 90 percent of online users in the US and Western Europe)
- The user must change his or her Google habit.
Now those six steps may not seem much of a problem to a person with the neurological wiring of Alonso Quijano or Don Quixote in more popular parlance. But from my experience in online and assorted tasks, these are tricky obstacles to scale.
Back to the Manifesto. I quote:
Nowadays when a user uses an ad-supported search engine, they are bound to encounter noise, wrong and misleading websites in the search results, inevitably insulting their intelligence and wasting their brain cycles. The algorithms themselves are constantly leading an internal battle between optimizing for ad revenue and optimizing for what the user wants.
My take on this passage is that users are supposed to know when they “encounter noise, wrong and misleading websites in the search results.” Okay, good luck with that. Convenience, the familiar, and easy everything raises electrified fences. Users just do what they have learned to do; they believe what they believe; and they accept what others are doing. Google has been working for more than two decades to develop what some call a monopoly. I think there are other words which are more representative of what Google has constructed. That’s why I don’t put on my armor, get a horse, and charge at windmills.
The Manifesto points to a new future for search; to wit:
In the future, instead of everyone sharing the same search engine, you’ll have your completely individual, personalized Mike or Julia or Jarvis – the AI. Instead of being scared to share information with it, you will volunteer your data, knowing its incentives align with yours. The more you tell your assistant, the better it can help you, so when you ask it to recommend a good restaurant nearby, it’ll provide options based on what you like to eat and how far you want to drive. Ask it for a good coffee maker, and it’ll recommend choices within your budget from your favorite brands with only your best interests in mind. The search will be personal and contextual and excitingly so!
Right.
However, here’s the reality of doing something new in search. An outfit like Google shows up. The slick representatives offer big piles of money. The start up sells out. What happens? Where’s Dodgeball now? Transformics? Oingo? The Google-type outfits buy threats or “innovators”. Google then uses what it requires. The result?
Google-type companies evolve and remain Googley. Search was a tough market before Google. My team built technology acquired by Lycos. We were fortunate. Would my team do Web search today? Nope. We are working on a different innovative system.
The impact of generative information retrieval applications is difficult to predict. New categories of software are already emerging; for example, the Arc AI search browser innovation. The software is novel, but I have not installed it. The idea is that it is smart and will unleash a finding agent. Maybe this will be a winner? Maybe.
The challenge is that Google and its “finding” functions are woven into many applications that don’t look like search. Examples range from finding an email to the new and allegedly helpful AI additions to Google Maps. If someone can zap Googzilla, my thought is that it will be like the extinction event that took care of its ancestors. One day, nice weather. The next day, snow. Is a traditional search engine enhanced with AI available as a subscription the killer asteroid? One of the techno feudalists will probably have the technology to deflect or vaporize the intruder. One cannot allow Googzilla to go hungry, can one?
Manifestos are good. The authors let off steam. Unfortunately getting sustainable revenues in a world of techno feudalists is, in my opinion, as difficult as killing a windmill. Someone will collect all the search manifestos and publish a book called “The End of Googzilla.” Yep, someday, just not at this time.
PS. There are angles to consider, just not the somewhat tired magazine subscription tactic. Does anyone care? Nah.
Stephen E Arnold, February 7, 2024
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