Yahoo!: The Web's Future Is Not In Search
At the Next Web conference in Amsterdam over the weekend, Tapan Bhat, the Yahoo! vice president of Front Doors, told attendees that search would not dominate the web in the future. "The future of the web is about personalization. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user," he said.
Some see the remarks as evidence of Yahoo! throwing in the towel and admitting that Google has won the search wars. Asked to clarify his statement to the Times Online, Bhat said, "We're not admitting defeat. Search still matters, but we need to be providing a wrapper around search to turn the info search offers up into something more useful." So, what does that mean?
Interestingly, Google appears to have similar ideas. A couple of weeks ago, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt told the Financial Times that personalization was a key area of research for Google. "We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalization," he said. "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’"
Both Google and Yahoo! are hoping to take data about user behavior aggregated from across their properties (think: search history, del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, Upcoming events, Answers questions, etc.) in order to learn more about what each user wants. The ultimate goal is to deliver a more personalized experience to the user.
Privacy fears aside, if Google and Yahoo! are right, and personalization is where the web is headed, then Google might be more vulnerable than anyone thinks. According to Compete, the stickiest site on the web -- the one that demands most of our attention -- is MySpace, followed by Yahoo! and eBay. Google is actually 5th (based on February 2007 numbers). Facebook, which was 8th in February according to Compete, is likely to make a big push as their new platform adds more useful applications for users, giving them less of a reason to ever leave the site.
Why is attention important? Because the more time you have to interact with users, the more chance you have to gather information about them. The more information you have about them, the more useful and personalized you can make your service and the better you can target advertising and capture a users' ecommerce spending. If the web paradigm is indeed shifting from search to personalization, then it would appear that Yahoo! and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook might be in a better position to take advantage of that than Google.
What do you think? Is search dead? Is personalization the next big thing? Is this a tacit admission of defeat by Yahoo! or is it visionary foresight? Who is in the best position to dominate the personalized web?
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Search will never be dead as long as personalization is not 100% accurate. When people don't know exactly where to go for some kind of information, they turn to search. Unless personalization software/websites can predict what will come into a users mind (including changing interests) search may always be the tool of choice.
Also, search is frequently used to find new websites/information similar to StumbleUpon; and we have seen the popularity of StumbleUpon rise pretty quickly.
-Vince
Personalization is in many ways just a GUI for the underlying search technology. Until Yahoo and MSN can deliver search results that compete with Google, focusing on personalization might be a bit premature.
Pure search will always have its place, but I think Yahoo is right to focus on personalization as their way of getting 'sticky' users - which after all is what MySpace, Facebook and other social network sites have been so good at doing these past couple of years. And it may be that personalization will be 'the new search' in terms of being the primary way people get info - e.g. already I get most of my daily info from RSS feeds and networking.
This makes me want to sell all of my Yahoo stock (and pick up a short position). Search will always have a dominant position on the web. What happens when people search for new keywords or topics that are outside their personal profile (even if their personal profile is 100% accurate)?
Or do they think we will visit Yahoo.com and Google.com and be shown search result ads before we ever even type in a search query?
Jesus...
Future isn't search?
Possibly - I think it comes down to what people use the Web for. Most people currently don't 'live online', they hop on to do stuff - search will find them places do 'do stuff' (wanna book a train in Mongolia, Google it and away you go).
If, however, people* may start to use the Web as the place to 'be' - this is where I share my photos, write my draft novel, talk with my mates, watch "TV" ... then search may well become secondary.
Ultimately, I believe that they will co-exist.
For instance:
I wake up, check my emails, have a natter over the webcam with my Father in Wales, see that the team is online and finish off writing the business case together.
At the same time I need to book a train in Mongolia, find out if Fat Freddy's Drop is playing tonight and where the venue actually is.
All the time I'm keeping an eye on the 'filtered' RSS feeds for what's happening in the world that interests me.
I then watch a wee bit of Joost, check out last.fm for some relaxation and fall asleep.
(I'm sure I'd talk with real people in the real world ... if I could fit it in)
The system/site that can do all that will probably never exist, but it might be presented in one place ... a "homepage". The concept of sharing the functionality (widgets/gadgets) and info (common/micro formats) is probably the glue to having it all happen.
And so - Yahoo! are tackling one area of the Web world, Google the other, Netvibes yet another - there's room for them all.
* Normal people, not us Web 2.0 early adopters :-)
Search isn't dead anymore than operating systems are dead. Just because a new problem comes along doesn't mean that people stop needing the solutions to the old problems.
That said, Google isn't destined to win "personalization" anymore than Microsoft was destined to win search.
Web is headed from being an information provider to being a knowledge provider. Search in both cases only a mechanism, so it never mattered all that much, IMHO. It's just currently, in teh stone age, search is pretty much the only method of getting information on the web.
Again, it's very simple, two keywords:
information --> knowledge
Talking about the direction of the web is like talking about the direction a fly is traveling. Yahoo sounds stupid when it makes grandiose statements about "the future of the web." However, if yahoo is right then http://christonium.com is something they'll all have to worry about. Tapan Bhat described http://christonium.com perfectly when he said "It's [the next web] about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user." He's being vague and I doubt Yahoo will ever live up to his statements. No matter, christonium.com has already done it.
Jason,
We took a different approach to solving the personalization issue. We solved the problem of tying web services into mobile by leveraging the browser to respond dynamically the customers context (Who, What and Where).
The context comes from the device. It resides in a secure database that has it's own set of developer API's. Every piece of context is under the control of the customer to ensure they can protect their privacy.
Once the information arrives at the web server it can be passed via CGI to any back end web service. The web page is then constructed dynamically and includes contextual menus that automatically alter the current browsers menus to include the new context.
On our web site we have information about how it works and also use case studies which show the menus changing to reflect the context.
The future of the web is contextual web services that enable customers to easily navigate new services while retaining control over their privacy.
Let me know if you'd like to see a live demo.
Cheers,
Peter
http://www.5o9inc.com
I would add to what Tapan said is that the future web is about personalized and more intuitive search.
Did you forget about a little thing called AdWords? Google has information about users all over the web, not just those on google.com pages.
Quoted from the article:
"the Yahoo! vice president of Front Doors, told attendees that search would not dominate the web in the future. "The future of the web is about personalization. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user,""
I think what he means is that in the future the focus won't be on search, but on personalization. He's not saying that search is dead, but rather, in the future the web will become more personalized. That includes the personalization of search.
Hi Josh,
I'm pretty sure Yahoo and Google aren't planning to give up on search. I take the move towards personalization as the logical next step in a continued effort to provide the most relevant content to the user.
Right now, search engines invest a great deal of effort into external algorithms designed to serve up the most 'correct' result. Most of you will have read Saul Hansell's piece in the New York Times this weekend on the algorithms behind Google's search enging and the 200 'signals' that go into determining relevance.
Isn't personalization just a new category of signal with the exact same intent as every other category?
The graph on the post is wrong.. was it edited? It says Craigslist.com, but the real URL is craigslist.org - hmm...
The graph is from Compete's blog.
http://blog.compete.com/2007/04/02/attention-daily-new-metrics/
I'm not sure why I'd edit a graph in a post about Yahoo! to show a different URL for Craigslist... (not that I'd tamper with any data, ever).
I don't think search is ever going to disappear, but I can see what Yahoo! and Google are both talking about when they say that personalizing your user experience is the next dominant paradigm on the web.
It's no longer enough to go online and search for specific information, it's about getting specific information from trust sources delivered to you (RSS, etc.), having new information you're interested in delivered to you (StumbleUpon, MyYahoo/Netvibes, etc.), having your email, banking, stock portfolio, address book, and other personal info all at your fingertips.
Look at ReadWriteWeb's log files for the past year, look us in the eyes and tell us search is dead. That's the silliest thing I've read all day.
Old News. Future of Search Pioneer Mylocator.com has been declaring that search is dead for months now. He tries to tell all the SEO people and they refuse to listen. Talk about living in a box. Social Networked Vertical Results are the future(word of mouth combined with premium vertical channels). The founder of MyLocator.com was able to go out capture a cluster of premium strategic vertical properties that are keyphrase, toplevel and vertical. He is the pioneer of Vertical Locator Cluster Technology. Today he controls a porfolio of over 1100+ vertical locator properties. Creating a whole new genre of location he calls "Vertical Locator Cluster Technology." Claims that what we need are LocatorEngines. These early visionaires have to potential to for ever dominate this arena. I will say it for him "Search is Dead; Strategic, Social networked vertical results are Everything. Game Over. Search Solved.
I always enjoy your analysis Josh, this is another thought provoking subject.
Personalization is another way of saying relevance in my view. The site or service that provides the most relevant (or meaningful experience to the visitor/user is the one that will win. I don't see MySpace lasting another 10 years, the personal spaces would be so filled with the mental "Walmart" paraphernalia of the users and with advertisements that it would suffocate a rock.
Hakia and other semantic (or AI) entities should be able to provide enough relevance for people looking for diverse subjects. The static sites will of course be comprised of personalized relevancy tools. I would not be surprised to see Me.dium, Joost, and some aggregator combined onto a platform for these purposes.
Google may be dead as well as Yahoo in their traditional roles. Of course none of us are all right but one thing is certain, the construct of the Web is due for some massive significant changes (overdue actually). Just some thoughts.
Always, Phil
This is just an admission by Yahoo that they do not have the engineering talent to stay competitive in search. Looking at their shriveling market share, one is not surprised.