48
A Look Back and into the Potential Future of Search Greg Sterling May 16, 2012 Second Annual Conference on Competition, Search and Social
A Look Back and into the Potential Future of Search
Greg SterlingMay 16, 2012
Second Annual Conference on Competition, Search and Social
• Jobs: lawyer, editor, startups, analyst, blogger
• Coverage: “SoLoMo”
• “The impact of the Internet on offline consumer buying”
• Twitter: @gsterling
About Me
• Do you search on a mobile device?
Quick Audience Poll
• What is your primary search engine?
Search as popular as email
Pew Internet & American Life Project, March 2012 (N=2,253 adults)
„Gateway to the internet‟
The consumer audience
“The Google”
Content
A Little History
• 1990 – 1993: Archie, Vlib, Excite, Aliweb (early directories)
• 1994 – 1997: Infoseek, Webcrawler, AltaVista, Yahoo, Hotbot, AskJeeves, Looksmart, Inktomi, Lycos
• 1998 – 2001: Google, Overture, DMOZ, AllTheWeb
• 2002 – present: MSFT Live Search, Powerset, Cuil, Bing (2009), Blekko, DuckDuckGo
A brief history of search
• 2013 – Facebook?
Google circa 1998
• 1996: Brin& Page (@stanford) develop “BackRub” – the original “social search engine” (PageRank)
• 1997: BackRub renamed Google
• 1998: Google launches
• 1999: Google gets funding, AOL selects Google as search partner
• 2000: Google replaces Inktomi to power Yahoo search
• 2002: Google launches AdWords, Yahoo offers to buy Google
• 2003: Google launches AdSense (Applied Semantics)
• 2005 – 2010: Google buys YouTube, DoubleClick, Android, AdMob
A quick chronology of Google
Google #1 or #2 global brand
Brand Finance ranking, 2011
Search the biggest piece of online pie
IAB FY 2011 analysis released 4/12
• Social search: using “social signals” to help determine relevance and order search results (+1, Google+)
• Personalization: using your web history and network to determine results/ranking (component of social)
• Universal search: providing “answers” and rich (vertical) content in search results rather than just “links”
• Mobile search: adapting PC search for different form factors (voice, visual search, scanning)
• Local search/maps (especially for mobile)
• Speed & spam fighting
Key initiatives for Google
Google today (with Knowledge Graph)
Real-time search: the trend that wasn‟t
2009 – 2011:
• Collecta• CrowdEye• Summize• Topsy• OneRiot• Tweetmeme• Scoopler
Google, Bing and Yahoo “co-opted” this trend by incorporating the Twitter feed into their results.
But this created a poor user experience
Official market share numbers
66.5%
15.4%
13.5%
3.0%
1.6%
Bing
Yahoo
Ask
AOL
US April Search Market Share (comScore)
comScore “qSearch” data, April 2012
Search engine people use „most often‟
Pew Internet & American Life Project, surveys: 2004, 2012 n=2,000+ US adults
47%
26%
19%
8%
2004
Google YahooOtherNone/DK
83%
6%6%
5%
2012
Google YahooOtherNone/DK
Users having mostly positive experiences
Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults
Survey: like search, not personalization
People like search …
• 66% think search results “fair and unbiased”
• Over 50% think search results are getting better
But . . .
• 65% see “personalized search” as a bad thing
• 73%: not OK to collect user info to personalize results
• 68% disapprove of (behavioral) ad targeting
Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults
Social Search
The battle over social search
Google efforts to be more social
• Google CEO Larry Page has become preoccupied with Facebook and the apparent threat it poses
• Google Buzz (failed; 20 years of FTC privacy audits)
• +1 button: Google’s answer to Like button
• Google+ 170 million users but limited engagement?
• New privacy policy (collect/analyze more data)
• Google introduced “social search” in 2009, which annotated traditional SERP with relevant content from one’s “social circle” as determined by Google
• Search Plus Your World (1/12) introduced more personalization social content directly into search results
Evolution of Google social search
The „New Bing‟ with Sidebar
Integrates Facebook, Twitter onto the page
The (Human) Q&A Engines
Mobile Search
US PC internet access has plateaued
Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults
Mobile devices outselling PCs
Source: IDC, March 2012
Mobile as primary internet device
• Pew 2012 survey: 25% of smartphone-owning survey respondents said that their mobile devices were their primary Internet access method
• More likely: young adults, minorities, those with no college experience, and those with lower household income levels
• Opus Research: 17.6% preferred mobile devices (smartphone/tablet) as their primary Internet access device (laptop was top choice)
Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults; Opus Research 4/12, n=1,502 US adults
Analysts: Android OS will dominate
Source: IDC, March 2012
39.5%
14.9% 15.7%
20.9%
5.5%3.5%
45.4%
13.7% 15.3%
0.2%
20.9%
4.6%
Android RIM Apple/iOS Symbian Windows Others
Global Smartphone OS Market Share2011 2015
97.23
1.79
0.64
0.16
0.13
0.32
94.79
3.59
1.4
0.18
0.04
Yahoo!
Bing
YANDEX RU
Ask Jeeves
Other
Mobile search market share
Global
US Market
Source: StatCounter, May 2012
Google dominates mobile search
Apps dominate mobile engagement
• comScore (5/12): “4 in every 5 mobile media minutes” is spent with apps (vs. the mobile browser)
• Mobile time spent with FB: 80% in app, 20% in the browser
Flurry Analytics Q4 2011
More time w/mobile apps than PC
Google‟s mobile search sources
We’ve seen data that shows that while Google absolutely dominates searches emanating from the iPhone (95%+), ~50% of iPhone Google searches come from the toolbar, 42% from Google’s homepage and less than 10% from Google‟s app.
-- Macquarie Group, March, 2011
Voice & Virtual Assistants
Google voice actions/search
25% of Android-based Google searches in the US market are initiated by voice . . .
-- Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (2010)
Enter Siri the virtual assistant
• Not a “speech technology”
• A natural- language understanding technology developed by SRI International, which was funded by DARPA
• Breakthrough product
Siri usage
• 87% of iPhone4S owners use Siri at least monthly
• 30%+ use Siri “almost daily”
• 26% use Siri to send email daily
• Initiating calls/texts most common Siri-related activities
• 55% satisfied with Siri
• 9% unsatisfied
Parks Associates, March 2012 (n=482 iPhone 4S owners)
Siri most popular feature of iPhone
49%
39%
33%
24%
23%
19%
13%
11%
11%
Siri
Ease of use
8MP camera
Faster web browsing
Screen resolution
iCloud
3rd party apps
Ability to sync with multiple PCs
Multitasking
What do you like best about iPhone 4s?
ChangeWave, November 2011, n=215 Apple iPhone 4S owners
Siri before Apple was transactional
Taps into APIs/verticals. In “ideal” scenario it renders general “web search” unnecessary
Other „assistants‟
Beyond Siri there are a range of “assistants” that claim varying degrees of “AI”:
• Assistant (Speaktoit)• Evi (TrueKnowledge)• Kngine• IRIS• Several in enterprise: Indisys, Anboto, NextIT, Artificial Solutions
Assessing the Threats to Search (Google)
Assistant sits on top of search
• Combination of NLU and semantic speech processing with “artificial intelligence” – and a pleasing UI is a potential successor to current search engines
• Google inserted itself between publishers/content producers and end users
• Assistant could become primary for users and reduce Google to one of many data providers
• Assistants could tap directly into vertical or branded content via APIs; eliminate need for “search” except where no alternative
Apple to get into map-based search
Apple has acquired three mapping companies:• Placebase (in 2009)• Quebec-based Poly9, a Google Earth-like product (2010)• C3 Technologies (2011)
Apple about to launch own maps and local search capability
Facebook search terrible today
Will be forced to launch better product
Threats to Google• Speech driven “AI” assistants become the primary entry point to
a wide range of functions and content
- Google’s brand and relationship with consumer weakened
- Google will mitigate with own assistant and Android OS
- Google default backfill for assistants
• Mobile shift: substantial “search” and internet usage shifts to mobile and devices Google doesn’t control (i.e., iPad)
- Google less central in mobile context
- Apps a primary consumer access point to content
- Google becomes secondary
• Facebook enters search market in earnest
Over the next 3 years
Next 3 years
• Mobile continues gains (smartphone, tablet)
• More “AI”/assistant development
• Search continues to “diversify” from its original form as a “query in a box”
• Search Uis and entry points grow:- Voice- Camera (AR)- In-car- Map (around me) - Clothes (glasses)?
