Reading this article this morning I got thinking about how long it would be before search engine use starts its significant decline, if it hasn’t already.
It was only a year ago that Yahoo announced a change to their search algorithm in an effort to maintain their 4% market share against Google, and only two years ago that the Google-assassin, Microsoft Bing, was unleashed on the world (currently holding a 3.5% market share) touting gifts for all in the form of a genuinely kick-ass browsing experience.
Yahoo hasn’t grown, nor is Bing kick-ass.
I’m a webaholic – sometimes when my partner is asleep I sneak out into the lounge room and load up Wikipedia’s random page URL just to get a fix of stuff. When I get back into bed she inevitably asks me if I have been browsing, to which I of course play the wounded puppy and then a fight breaks out.
With all things computing/data/equivalent going (i)mobile, search engines and for that matter, browsers, are becoming dustbin’d. The days of firing up a browser (oh God yes) and Googling Something Bank, or Relevant Sports Channel or Social Networking Site have had it, there’s an app for that.
Searching for a decent cafe? Urban Spoon it. Looking for a local retailer? Yellow Pages or Locale it. Looking for general information on something specific (and possibly untrue)? Wikipedia it. For every reason why you need a search engine, there is or will be an app.
I made up a stat yesterday that if you were to line up all the apps in the iTunes store, the Android Market and the Amazon… whatever they call their app shop, you would have enough 1cm x 1cm icons to create a mosaic of Jesus rocking out with Angry Birds, the size of the moon. Made up or not, that’s a lot of apps.
The point is that access used to be chair based, Internet Explorer based, and searched (because nobody really used favourites, right?!) Now we press the square.
I was fascinated why Google was sinking so much money into Google TV, Voice, Buzz, Mobile Payments and Solar Energy (apart from the obvious – to become Googleaires).
They knew.
The Internet used to include a journey but we ran out of time for that. Now it’s about arrival.
