Eric Schmidt On Search Ambition and Attitude at the GOOG
May 20, 2015
The article on Business Insider titled Google’s Former CEO Reveals The Complicated Search Question He Wants Google To Be Able To Answer reports on Eric Schmidt’s speech in Berlin where he mentioned the hurdles Google is yet to overcome. Obviously, Google is an incredibly ambitious company, and should never be satisfied. He spelled out one particular question he would like the search engine to be able to answer,
“Try a query like ‘show me flights under €300 for places where it’s hot in December and I can snorkel,'” Schmidt says. “That’s kind of complicated: Google needs to know about flights under €300; hot destinations in winter; and what places are near the water, with cool fish to see. That’s basically three separate searches that have to be cross-referenced to get to the right answer. Sadly, we can’t solve that for you today. But we’re working on it.”
Schmidt also argued on behalf of Google in regards to the EU investigation into Google possibly favoring its own results rather than a fair spread of companies. Schmidt claimed that Google is most interested in simplifying search for users, rather than obliging users to click around. Since Google search is admittedly ad-oriented, Schmidt’s position seems to be at least semi-accurate.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 20 , 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com