"Today, Google would not make a search engine that looks like Google"
This year's lent sacrifice was Google search. It's not seemingly as addictive as chocolate and alcohol or even the BBC website as I did last year, but it is frightening how reliant I had become on Google search. Above this, I wanted to check whether it was still the superior way to search. Just because it's the biggest, have we become lazy in assuming it is the best?
I must caveat a couple of things:
1) I am a big fan of Google products. They are one of the few suppliers to motors.co.uk who I regularly argue to spend more with. But that's because the product works. However, our relationship of late has become strained as the algorithm's frenetic updates are throwing up bizarre (and sometimes dangerous) alterations which makes me just as keen to ratify whether Google always knows best (it doesn't);
2) I did not give up all Google products. This might be like giving up white chocolate but not dark chocolate, but I think Chrome and Google Maps are as important to me as chocolate! Plus, it didn't serve to encourage me into new worlds of search. (Weirdly I did use Google Plus, unfortunately no one else did ...)
Chrome helped me with my sacrifice, making Bing as my default search engine. "That's nice of Google" I thought, assuming that a Google product would only allow Google search. It took me a couple of weeks to realise the subtlety of evilness as I noted the prevalence of US results, I had been given Bing.com rather than .co.uk results.
Even a Google.co.uk search for "Bing" shows the US site. Google's fault or Bing's?
This highlighted one of the major UX differences for Bing v Google, the lack of regionalised (and personalised) results. Fundamentally, the money that Google reinvests in search allows it to always be ahead of the curve. Bing comes from a point of imitation which means Google started ahead and they continue to spend more. Therefore for touches like this, Google is streets ahead.
Our SEO manager at Motors.co.uk intrigued me a few months ago by stating that he preferred Bing results. Aghast at his crisis of faith, he explained they were more reflective of Google results before the bout of Panda updates which shook our world. Many of these updates were right, rewarding sites rich in unique, high quality websites - but if you weren't in the top 10 of such sites, your rankings were subject to a roller coaster which continues today.
In terms of product, the results from Bing were highly relevant (once I was in the right territory setting) and if branded as Google, I wouldn't have known the difference. The home page is really beautifully presented. But ultimately my biggest disappointment was that the search results presentation is a shameless copy of Google.
And this is another frustration. Today, Google would not make a search engine that looks like Google if it wasn't already in search. I admire that their principle is to not copy - moonshots are not achieved through imitation. Microsoft (or any other entrants) could do well to take note.
Maybe the barriers to search are just too great. I naively entered this hoping to find the farmer's market equivalent of search engines, but i didn't. There are other sites, but more often than not they simply run a Google search for you. I tried Quora, but the locked community and guessed replies on some questions made me quickly exit. Worryingly for Facebook shareholders, at no point in my "search" search did I think to use Facebook.
The one place I did search (and search differently) was YouTube. Another Google product! Video results can be so much richer and valuable - though only for a subset.
Come Easter I didn't feel relief at going back to Google, just disappointment and an underlying hope that someone is brave enough to think differently. Google fears it's greatest threats are Amazon and eBay as they disintermediate search in retail, but this feels too narrow. Try searching for something on Google on your phone when walking down the street and you'll quickly realise the opportunity that exists. Google Glass is a moonshot, but it might be a cannier person who provides the "answer engine" which search needs to become. I fear that the barriers are too great, but beg for an underdog to appear.
I've got my hopes for the future, but today I'm compelled as an an advertiser to use Google because it has the largest audience, and as a user it's the easiest. Perhaps I should have just given up chocolate...
