Is Google's user interface outdated?
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--Google has long been known for its speed, relevance and that simple user interface.
But Silicon Valley executives scouting for the next big thing in search say Google isn't doing enough to innovate on its search results pages, especially in an era of near-ubiquitous broadband.
One venture capitalist of that opinion is Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Google. He has a vested interest in the area: In 2005, Kvamme and his firm put in $500,000 to fund a company called Searchme, a visual search engine that launched in recent weeks by invitation only. Sequoia has since invested millions of dollars in Searchme, whose results pages take a cue from the deck-of-cards visual display of Apple's iTunes.
"I have a hard time going back to Google--the only reason I go back is coverage. (Searchme) only has a billion pages," Kvamme said here Tuesday at the Dow Jones Web Ventures conference.
Jim Lanzone, former head of search engine Ask.com who's now an entrepreneur-in residence at Redpoint Ventures, piled on that sentiment.
"People need access to information. I don't think a list of links is the best solution anymore," Lanzone said during panel session focused on Google. He highlighted Ask advances in visual search tools and a 3D interface.
Of course, these executives have a stake in technology that rivals Google's. But their comments could be seen as a backdrop against a fresh fight over Web search after years of Google dominance. It seems like the obvious contest is between Google and a potentially unified Microsoft-Yahoo. But behind the scenes, there's a new crop of start-ups that are attempting to innovate in search, and investors are eager to fund them.
New or coming rivals include Sequoia-backed Mahalo, a human-powered search engine; The Founders Fund-backed Powerset, a search engine making a big bet on artificial intelligence in search; and Cuill, a stealth search player founded by former Google engineers. These search aspirants see holes in Google's core business of search as the company Google spreads its focus into many various industries, such as mapping, online payments, and user-generated video.
JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan was cautious about new search upstarts because, he said, it's difficult to gain market share. How fast a search engine can deliver results often determines whether people will use it, and speed isn't cheap, he said. Companies must run many data centers to serve fast results, and that can price many start-ups out of the business.
"It's a capital intensive business, that's the dirty little secret of search," Khan said.
Serving up visual search results will certainly be bandwidth intensive. That's why Searchme is slowly ratcheting up usage of its search engine. It's in beta-testing mode now, but the company will likely fully launch next month.
Still, Lanzone specifically called visual search like Searchme's a "feature" of an engine, but not the raison d'etre for a new company. He said companies like Ask.com and Snap have experimented in this area before.
Also, to be fair, Google has come up with new ways to find information. Last year, for example, it introduced universal search, which weaves video, images and other kinds of search results into the main results page.
But by displaying Web pages graphically, Searchme and others could open up a new way for people to find information. (The company also categorizes Web pages in its engine.) Kvamme referred to it as visual relevance, or choosing Web pages by their appearance, rather than their ranking.
Like the other panelists, he applauded Google for its search innovation and advertising network. But he said it's fallen down on Google Video (which was launched before YouTube), social networking, and Gmail, which has yet to overcome Web mail rivals. It's also stagnated in UI.
"Google has done some things very well, but there are still a lot of areas to innovate in," said Kvamme.
In the US, that era isn't here yet.
search engines for being too simplistic (IE, type in product, find
best deal) suggesting that we could make it more interactive like
you have to shoot the best prices like "doom". Another high level
analyst without fundamental grasp of inevitable ease of use.
While searchme may be pretty, but for a good deal of broadband
users, the point of broadband was to speed up the current
internet they're familiar, not find new ways to slow it down.
There's be a general rejection for too much pizazz, as cited by
Wiplahs, minimalism is in because it works. Unless searchme is
fast, provides somehow better results, scriptable and all the
things power users and common users demand.... as well as
performance friendly for those with older PCs, its a niche
market.
I could care less about what Google looks like (in terms of its simplicity), because when I find the site I was looking for, I GO THERE, hence, navigate away from Google because it's done the job I needed it to do. And it takes only a second or two (or should, I should say).
Google is there to 1) Search quickly, and 2) Provide you with the link/address of the page you were looking for (or similar pages), then the rest is up to you and Google says goodbye until next time you need to find something.
Flashy pages are for places where you hang around. I use Google for a few seconds before navigating away to the page I wanted. Why bother having it load forever?
/P
That is what keeps me coming back to those pages. Regardless of internet/computer speed, simplicity and near instantaneous loading are very attractive. Who needs a million colors and things all over the place? Just give me what I want when I need it.
It just works.
Yes, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, Ask.com- all those can yield the same results, but bury it in a barrage of ads, graphics, and other distracting things on the screen. It only takes one badly crafted applet or graphic element to hang a browser and render the site's results useless.
If Google chooses to go this route, then many people including myself will choose then to go elsewhere, losing those valuable page views.
Why does Google dominate the realm of search? 1) Accuracy/relevancy
2) the fact that it doesn't bog down users in buckets of useless animation/Adobe-mess/and other garbage that (believe it or not) annoy the hell out of users.
Let's hope the uppity-ups at Google are smart enough to realize that, and ignore vent-caps that spout this garbage.
The frequency of browser crashes has gone from about once every 2 days to once every month.
Nice product, Adobe... NOT
So help me if I'm forced to "run" add ins just to search text on the web.
I saw the searchme video. Compiz has a similar effect, but the text gets blurred in background windows. For Desktop windows that's ok because I already know what I got open.
However, when searching web results I'm searching for text in its context. I don't care what the website looks like when I'm searching for information. Some of the most interesting websites have the worst looks.
I'm trying to get an overview of ten or twenty sites at a time. If the visual effects blur the text to where I can only see the text on the object that has focus I'll have to tab through each one. That could get annoying The trick in this is really how crisp they can keep the text from what I saw in the video.
SearchMe is a contrived gimmick and nothing more.
these guys?
Ok, so instead of typing in my search and then clicking once this
great company made searching for something even more difficult.
I think this was in response to the fact that more non-IT people were using the web, and engines wanted to make the experience simpler, but to completely take away the ability...
That's why I sometimes turn to Exalead, which does allow boolean searches (on the advanced section).
I'm not sure that some spinning 3D tree of results will help me much when I'm trawling the web.
Type in boolean operators in google. It is searching boolean AND operators by default.
While I agree that the speed and relevance of search results are what's driving it, I would like to see its interface evolve by better integration with Google Aps. Say, you are working on a Google document, maybe you can include a search function within the document. Or a spreadsheet that gets results from the web. Eventually, we would not have to go to google.com to search for something, only when necessary. It'd be embedded directly in documents.
Google then would be the backend of universal applications, from search, to daily mundane office stuff to healthcare. That's the ultimate UI I'd like to eventually see Google evolve to.
I don't know why but it seems the longer a search engine is around the less relevant its search results become. Altavista.digital.com was just as good, if not better than google way back when but it started to slip in relevance.
MSN, Yahoo, Netscape, Live etc are portals that happen to have a search function along wth news, chat and all that other portal stuff. Some may find it useful, I don't. i do most of my searching from Google's tool bar.
I don't exactly know what the answer is but I do agree with the pundits that there is room for imporvement in displaying search resluts. The web is becomming less and less text based and text results will not be king forever.
At the risk of being way to geeky, I wil point out the search engine on the SS Enterprise is all voice based and does not ask you to choose which resluts you would like to see. It just gets them right.
I am always looking forward to the next great thing, and laughing at all the not so great things that come in between. I also try not to bash things I have not sene or used yet.
Google needs to spend more time improving its search, but that is completely different then changing a UI just so it can be "modern".
It will give you a few extras, without massive clutter that Yahoo chokes you with.
I'd much rather have a simple and usable list of results, than a screen-clogging pile of scripts that pop up windows, blink and flash "features", plow in a ton of visual adverts, and in general make the damned thing useless and distracting (see also Yahoo, Ask, and MSN).
Google got on top and remains there because it is simple, unobtrusive, and relevant. Yahoo, MSFT, Ask, and the like will never get there until/unless they can bring themselves to do the same thing.
/P
I let them know that the only thing their obnoxious ads getting in the way of the news was accomplishing was me making a note of the advertiser in question and *never* doing business with them again. There. Lost a customer as a result.
I use another news station website instead that doesn't do that at all and while the news isn't quite as in depth, the overall user experience is much more enjoyable and I'm willing to look at those sidebar ads if they interest me.
It's two approaches. One is offensive and obstructionary, the other is passive and more likely to get my business.
See: (http://adecon101.blogspot.com/2008/03/analysis-google-search-or-internet.html)
-Dash Chang
The New Economics of Advertising
(http://adEcon101.blogspot.com)
Sachin
- On some things, yes (Gmail)
- by mkaz91 March 26, 2008 12:07 PM PDT
- I normally use Windows Live's Hotmail for E-Mail. I signed up for a GMail account and found the UI confusing, cluttered, and unsightly compared to Hotmail's more streamlined interface.
- Reply to this comment
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(46 Comments)Google needs to work on that.
(I use the full version of Hotmail, not the classic)