The cyclical nature of rapid growth leading to dominance, then plateaux followed by death can be seen throughout nature and commerce. If you don’t believe me then check out this TED talk by Geoffrey West.
Applying this model to Google means that at some stage the rampaging key holders of the internet will eventually see their growth slowdown and maybe they will eventually be replaced. Writing this it even seems impossible that one day we will use an alternative service provider to find a hotel room rate, pictures of the new spielberg movie or get the low-down on the a potential employee. But as incredulous as this may sound the demise of Google could be just be around the corner.
For all of Googles altruistic investments: Google Earth, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Scholar, is it not possible that all of these services could become threatened if Google.com is not the Search engine of choice the world over. No Search, No PPC, No Revenue, No Google?
But what could ever replace this tent-pole of the web? Well, what Google does brilliantly is to give quick results in a clean interface. Allowing the user to scan the top 10 hits for ‘Qantas Air Strike’ information. Then hand control straight back to the user to decide which resuly best fits their search terms. The results returned from Google are at best awesome and at worst frustrating as hell. But yet we still refuse to look past the page 1 results, mostly because we cassume that the ‘search terms’ that we put in, must have been wrong if the result we are looking for does is not returned in the top 10 form 600 billion web pages. We just try rephrasing the search terms. Good but not a perfect solution.
Today I see Google being replaced by a better interface or interaction. Not that you could get a better visual displat of the results. But what if interaction was not visual but by using speech. Surely, if science fiction has taught us anything it is that we will need to talk to computers. See the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Knight Rider and 2001: A space odyssey. Having this relationship with the internet is surely where the magic is? When we are used to ‘asking the computer a question’ why would we want to go back to keying stuff in? And if it isn’t Google that brings us this service then Googles crown will surely be Jilted.
The future interactions with the computer won’t just about the search through. It goes deeper into functionality. ‘Show me the photos of Jack on holiday last year’, ‘What were todays headlines in the New York times’, ‘read out my unread emails’, ‘what time is my first meeting?’, ‘ Super pursuit mode please KITT’. All this drills a bit deeper into the OS rather than sitting on the internet browser which I am guessing where services like Siri come in . Totally integrated into your machine and yet can give you current web delivered content.
Despite the eye catching title, I suspect Google are a kerzillion times brighter than this article and have been working on a voice activated method of delivering content for the last 10 years. I cannot wait 