What is the future of search engines?

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “AI frontline” (ID: ai -front), author Vaibhav Saini. Authorized to publish.

What will Google search become in ten years?

AI Frontline Guide: This article will cover the evolution of search engines, from text search to voice search to AR/VR, smart cities, and the future of search engines…

Imagine, on a Sunday morning, you woke up and found that the Internet was gone.

Assuming you want to watch a movie this day, go to Netflix? Obviously, this won’t work…

It doesn’t happen that you don’t have this movie on your computer. You want to search Google to see which movie theater has this movie, but obviously it doesn’t work…

Maybe you can rent a DVD…

So, you want to go to the nearest DVD store, you open Google Maps, but you can’t find anything…

Okay, you can only run your own legs. Maybe you can find a DVD store on the market. You want to call Uber, but obviously, there is nothing… but it doesn’t matter, you can drive by yourself, but only if you can’t use Google Maps.

Without the Internet, do you feel that you are struggling? It can be seen how much we rely on the Internet and the services it provides.

We are lucky to live in a world like this. The Internet provides us with almost all the information we want to know. The Internet not only helps us collect information, it also helps us get information in the way we need it. This is why people have been trying to find ways to organize and obtain information from the vast ocean of information in various ways since the birth of the Internet.

So, the search engine was born.

You may not realize that your dependence on search engines far exceeds your imagination. Find a coffee shop near your location, buy clothes at your favorite online store, or search for “When is the Titanic sinking?” and then quell the dispute between friends, you are using a search engine.

Since the birth of the Internet, search engines have existed. The first search engine Archie was born in 1990 by Montreal McGeeCreated by Alan Emtage, a student at the University of Seoul. Since then, hundreds of search engines have followed suit, some of which have disappeared, some of which have remained.

More than 250 search engines are listed here. If you are curious, you can take a look:

https://hackernoon.com/searchpedia-a-list-of-250-search-engines-40198146adfc

The current search engine is getting better and better. A search engine like Google can not only provide you with search results, but also personalize your search and provide relevant information that you might find useful (even if it is not what you want).

What will Google search become in ten years?

Google Insights Everything

So what’s next?

What will these search engines look like in 10 years?

In this article, we will try to find the answer to this question. Instead of using astrology, we analyze the various factors that play an important role in shaping the search industry. We will see:

  • Interface selection;

  • Changes in the search area;

  • Market maturity of technology;

  • A business model that supports a sustainable search ecosystem.

The seat belt is fastened and the car is going to start!

interface

An interface is something that flows information between two or more participants.

For search engines, there are two aspects: one is people and the other is machines.

A good interface allows you to:

  • Enter information into the machine;

  • Export the output from the machine.

So all we have to do is compare which of the following interfaces performs better in this scenario.

We will consider 3 interface types:

  • Text;

  • Sound;

  • AR/VR (mainly AR).

To compare their efficiency, we take 3 parameters (see below). Let’s compare it.

Input convenience: natural and instant

Text

We have been using it for decades, and in many ways it seems to be very slow. First of all, it is not instantaneous. I have to take out my phone/laptop and enter a search query, which takes a lot of time.

But this way is more precise, I can accurately enter the keywords I want to search.

In addition, text does not provide the same search results for different languages. Yes, machine learning is making it better, but not so good for many languages. Finally, the text can only provide limited information.

Voice

We’ve been using voice for a long time, and the market seems to be speculating about it. Voice is very convenient, because I don’t need to take out the device, and I don’t need to be close to the device even when using it. Many times, for example, we are busy cooking or driving, in which case we can use voice. In addition, I only need to say aloud what I want to search, which is much more convenient than entering text. This is a better session-based search because entering a conversation is cumbersome when using text search.

But this is not accurate. Of course, it progresses every day, but it is still not as accurate as text input. In addition, it is still affected by the language itself.

AR (Augmented Reality)

This is a fairly new concept, and most of us haven’t used it at the time of this writing. It’s very convenient for the AR itself, we don’t need to give it too much input, it will take an image of the surrounding environment as input. Therefore, AR requires a lot of input compared to other interfaces. But these inputs don’t necessarily make much sense, because if I want to find the nearest coffee shop, I can’t tell it by typing or voice. Therefore, the AR cannot be used as an interface alone.

What will Google search become in ten years?

Show in AR Location location

Context is another important parameter when discussing interface input, and it has become an important topic in the search field. For example, I asked search engines to search for “best restaurants,” and search engines show a list of the world’s top restaurants, but I’m most likely looking for a restaurant that’s close to me. This is why the situation is so important.

Let’s compare these three interfaces from a situational perspective.

Situation or input efficiency

Text

As we have seen, today’s text interface can only get location-based contexts via GPS (or if I have a special offer). If I need to provide more contextual information, I must enter it in the search keyword. So, from a situational perspective, the text is not so good.

Voice

As with text, voice must provide contextual information by direct input.

AR

AR performs best in terms of context. Because we get a lot of information about our surroundings, AR is a critical part of context-based search.

In addition to these input media, services like Google are tracking our daily lives and trying to find patterns in them, but we may not realize or know. For example, I go to the movies every Friday, and my device will eventually detect a pattern and start recommending movies on Google Now.

In addition, projects like Behavio (http://www.behav.io/, now acquired by Google) use sensors to determine what we are doing to predict what we might want or what we might do next. So that service providers (such as search engines) understand and predict our behavior.

What will Google search become in ten years?

We’ve talked a lot about input, so let’s focus on output efficiency.

Output efficiency

Text

Text has great output efficiency. When I searched for “How to make a cake,” I got the result like this:

What will Google search become in ten years?

I can see pictures of cakes, recipes, and reviews at the same time. I can also easily scroll to any part of the recipe. But the situation output is not so good, like I am making a cake, but I don’t get any specific advice on how to bake a cake in a specific model of oven.

In general, the output efficiency of the text is quite good.

Voice

Unfortunately, the voice is very bad in terms of output efficiency.