ChunkIt’s Evolution of Search
December 21, 2008
Happy quacks to the readers of this Web log for sending me links and snippets from “The Evolution of Search” by Admin here. I tried to answer the questions two people sent me about statements in this article. I wanted to offer some broad comments before these ideas get lost in the lumber room of my small goose brain. Keep in mind that this little goose brain of mine has concluded that Google has “won” the search wars. With an expanding market share in a down economy, its competitors have yet to demonstrate that they can kill the GOOG or leapfrog the beast. This, I hope, will be a controversial assertion and whip some of my readers into a crazed frenzy. I have learned that this type of open discussion does wonders for Web log traffic. Honk, honk.
ChunkIt is savvy enough to play the same game. So, the first point about “The Evolution of Search” is that the information is designed to promote ChunkIt, and there is nothing wrong with that. Second, the notion of evolution allows the author to create a narrative. In some places, the story line is a bit stretched, but in its broad outlines, a reader comes away from the article with an understanding of the unpredictability of search. Finally, the conclusion is also okay with me because the write up is clearly labeled as a ChunkIt effort. I don’t find anything wrong with tooting one’s own horn. Click here to buy a copy of Martin White’s and my new study Successful Enterprise Search Management. Monkey see, monkey do. That’s the story of the webby world, both digital and goose varieties I must say.
I want to comment on three points in the ChunkIt evolution article. I am not out to win friends and influence people, so stop reading if my penchant for looking at issues from a different perspective gives you a migraine. Cyrus, Martin, Bye Barry. Yes. I mean you.
First, the whole search revolution was a fluke. Search is actually old, much older than today’s 20-somethings think. There were corollaries for today’s neatest systems in the 1960s and 1970s. The systems sucked because of the limitations of hardware and programming tools. As the hardware became cheaper and more robust, programming tools hip hopped right along. Now, three decades later, whiz kids are dipping into their copy of Numerical Recipes and reinventing the past. So, the explosion of information, the shift to more users and a broader market, and the emergence of more capable, smarter software blundered forward in a two steps forward and one step back mode. By the mid 1990s, the avalanche had shifted from potential to real energy. I don’t do much history in my analyses of search because the same old stuff keeps getting recycled. History is a mass of cheap spaghetti, not a tidy box of pasta. ChunkIt falls into the trap of making a mess fit into a box. That does not work for me. You may find the approach useful. I don’t.
My view of the evolution of search. This image is from the Joe-KS Web site. What a wonderful illustration of the evolution of search technology. Source: http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_apr2006/EvolutionOfMan.jpg
Second, the discussion of Google as brilliant does not match my research. Now Google’s founders figured out how to make a buck by focusing on search when the other companies were busy chasing portals. I like to remind myself that without Hewlett Packard’s ineptitude with regard to AltaVista.com, there might not be a Google as we know it. But HP made it possible for the GOOG to suck up AltaVista.com engineers and the rest is history. Blend an instinct for moving work to machines, fast computers, better software, experienced engineers annoyed at their former employer, and competitors trying to become portals and you have the ingredients for Google’s success. I just wouldn’t call this brilliance. I would call it good old business savvy with a squirt of math topping and a cherry of luck on top. ChunkIt recycles the conventional wisdom, but that’s okay with me. You can believe what you want about the winner in search; that is, Google.
Finally, I can’t get too excited about this social search stuff. Google counts human actions, so the system is social. Recently the company exposed a voting mechanism. So what? Well, Google is learning so that it can have its software engineers do what human editors once had to do. Humans are important to the GOOG, but all the razzle dazzle about social search has done nothing to close the gap with Google and everyone else in search. Social search is just the topic du jour, and until an engine chews into Google’s lead or leap frogs the beast, I ask, “So what?”
I have no comments about the future of search. My position has been articulated in my summary of my talk in London on December 4, 2008, here.
If you want to excoriate me, please, use the comments section of the Web log. My email boxes are collecting too many messages that begin, Steve, I love your blog but…” Put your remarks in the comments box. I don’t want to be any reader’s pal. Geese make messes and once in a while, according to my mother, lay a golden egg. If I lay a golden egg, I am keeping it. If I make a mess, you won’t help me clean it up. So, use my email to hire me, not to give me parental advice. I rejected that when I was 12 and I reject it now when smarmy dudes use a familiar “you”. Facts, dear reader, facts.
Stephen Arnold, December 21, 2008
Comments
2 Responses to “ChunkIt’s Evolution of Search”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
As distinct from web searching, enterprise search assumes an imperfect search system where some of the search takes place through people. This paper (source below) which claims to be the first to examine primary data on unfolding search chains gets inside the black box of how employees actually search (or don’t search) for in-house experts. The main finding is that members of out-groups – those employees with low network centrality, short tenure and women – experience a form of systemic information discrimination by having longer search chains to reach in-house experts than in-group members. Employees tend to base their search – especially in work environments with high degrees of hierarchy and centralization – on what is safe, appropriate and familiar. This assumes a social fabric surrounding search steps.
My take is that the kind of “social” present in Web 2.0 search does not tackle this problem, assuming a world already flat; Google helps flatten the world of information but not organizations (except perhaps its own) through web search. For enterprise itself, it can, at best offer rules with its GSA to go beyond this conundrum but that would mean talking formal talk to formal organizations to arrive at informal search practice breaking the out-group in-group barrier.
The World is Not Small for Everyone: Pathways of Discrimination in Searching for Information in Organizations by Jasjit Singh et al, INSEAD Faculty & Research Working Paper
http://www.insead.fr/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?did=24502
If inaccessible, free registration http://www.insead.fr/facultyresearch/research/mysubscription.cfm
Marc,
Thanks for the thoughtful post. A happy quack to you. The pig is quite disgusting I assert. Happy holidays too.
Stephen Arnold, December 21, 2008