Category Archives: Web Search

Bring Me the Head of Jerry Yang

In 1974, Sam Peckinpah directed the film Bring Me the head of Alfredo Garcia, the story of a bounty hunter who set out to avenge family dishonor (through rape and abandonment) by bringing back the aforementioned anatomical appendage.

If I were part of the Yahoo! family of shareholders, I’d be having similar thoughts about Jerry Yang. This just in..Yang wants to go back to the table with Steve Ballmer to open up the deal. Of course this time, the price will be a fraction of what was originally offered.

Yang isn’t stupid. This is hubris disguised as stupidity, which is worse. Hubris deludes the holder into thinking they know more than they do. It’s pride that overcomes rationality, clouds judgement and obscures reality. Effective leaders should know better, they should be able to see through hubris, especially when acting on behalf of shareholders. Yang failed miserably. He has, through hubris, crushed Yahoo! beyond repair. Semel started the decline through his arrogance, Yang simply took it in a new direction. When humble self evaluation was desperately needed, Yahoo! got bravado and blind delusion.

This isn’t new for Yahoo! Those goes back to the very cultural foundations of the company. In their glory days, they had a cockiness that makes Google seem positively Uriah Heep-ish (the Copperfield character that was “ever so humble”). But at some point during the past decade, you would have thought that Yang and company would have realized that they were a rapidly fading second place player and would have made the necessary adjustments. Not so. Yahoo! has been suffereing from a massive and chronic case of denial.

Here’s the thing. If Microhoo happens (can’t see how it won’t at this point) it’s still going to be a disaster for search. I’ll reserve judgement on the Display side of things, but I tend to agree with some opinions saying that Microsoft should get out of the media business. Yahoo deal or not, Microsoft doesn’t have the culture to build a successful media business. But let’s just talk about search. If Yahoo! is cocky, Microsoft is ten times so. Microsoft just doesn’t know how to play catch up. This, as I said when people started talking about the original Microhoo deal, is two dysfunctional families joining together. It will distract Microsoft from what they need to do, which is become truly innovative and disruptive in redefining search. They’ll think they bought breathing room. They’re wrong. Yahoo’s search business is obsolete and bleeding market share quickly. And the enormous task of integrating two cultures under the given circumstances will sink both ships. There can be no good that comes from this.

Which is sad. At this point, the only hope for search is Google and some amazing start up somewhere. The mighty haven’t fallen yet, but their shoelaces are tied together in what is essentially a sprint, so it’s only a matter of time.

Why Google Books is Important – Massive Even!

The announcement that Google has settled a $125 million lawsuit with publishers didn’t really get too much press. It also didn’t cause too much of a ripple in the blogosphere. But for an avid reader like myself, this is huge.

Much of the press that has happened has settled, predictably, around Google’s business motives. What will online browsing mean for publishers, or e-commerce channels like Amazon. Interesting questions, I’ll admit, but not nearly as interesting as what the digitization of all this information means for Google’s Mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Before I go into why this is so exciting for me, let me share how I read books. I read every book twice. The first time it’s by my bedside and I try to get through a set number of pages every night. The goal is just to enjoy the book. The second reading is going over and making notes, drawing out ideas I find interesting, cross indexing with notes from other books, and expanding on ideas that are sparked by different things that I’ve read. I keep these notes in an Excel spreadsheet so I can sort, search, filter and manipulate them, based on what I’m trying to do. So, in my own way, I’ve been doing my own Google books project. Often, other books are referenced and I add them to my reading list. By the way, interesting blog posts and online articles get the same treatment. It’s my way of organizing my own little world of information.

What I’ve found is that there is a disconnect between the printed world and the digital world. When I find an interesting concept that I want to explore further, my options are limited. I can search for a book that might be about the topic, but that’s often not granular enough. Some of the best information I’ve found are a few pages on a topic in a book about a totally different topic. This would never show up in most book searches. For example, the book I’m currently reading is about neuroplasticity (the ability of the mind to remap itself) and, there  buried on pages 240 to 280 is a pretty fascinating look at Quantum mechanics and the implications on the mind/brain debate (I know, I know..but these things are fascinating..to me, anyway). You need full indexing and keyword searchability to find these things.

That’s what’s fascinating about Google’s intentions with book search. This tremendous mountain of information, fully searchable and browsable. It breaks down the current publishing module and makes it more granular, relevant and accessible. It does for publishing what MP3’s did for music. And that, potentially, is huge.

Already, the digital revolution has pushed the traditional publishing model to it’s limits. Authors release free ebooks. There are blurred boundaries between published books and online commentary. Digital rivers flow past the old traditional channels and there is no stopping it. What Google Books does is finally update and make accessible the incredible back log of information that already out there. For any lover of books, that’s big news. And about time.

Chrome’s Shiny, but is it enough to Break a Habit?

How ironic!

After going on at length about how Google’s competition is the victim of the search juggernaut’s ability to make searching Google a habit, now they’re running up against the same brick wall with the introduction of Chrome.

With the introduction of a new product that’s vital to future strategies, one has to account for cognitive lock in and habitual behavior. Let’s do a walk through of two examples.

Searching by habit

First of all, my Google analogy. Using Google as a search engine isn’t a conscious choice, it’s habit. We don’t think about it, we just do it. And because we don’t think about it, you can’t take a rational approach to convincing us to do otherwise. You have to disrupt the playing out of the habitual script. And you can’t just disrupt it once. You have to destroy the script completely and permanently.

So Microsoft’s Cashback scheme was doomed to failure from the beginning. It was a rational appeal based on Microsoft’s offering to pay you an incentive for using their search engine. It’s a fundamental human appeal and, on paper, appears to make sense. The problem is, sense isn’t really enough to change habits. Here’s what will happen. Someone will hear about the Cashback offer and may actually rationally suspend habitual behavior in order to try Live Search. Their autopilot will be switched off and they’ll consciously take over the controls. But we’re programmed to revert to autopilot in order to save energy. So unless the experience offered such a tremendous benefit that it’s worth our while to continue to rationally keep our hand on the controls, we’ll turn our attention (remember, attention is a one task at a time proposition, so we have to be very judicious about where we choose to spend it) to other things and go back to autopilot behavior. Cashback would have to blow away our previous search experiences, giving us a benefit worthy of investing the time to create a new habit. Cashback simply didn’t raise the bar enough.

What Goes Up will probably Come Down

So, with that psychological foundation, one could predict with a fair degree of confidence what would happen with the introduction of Cashback. There would be a temporary blip upwards in marketshare as the least loyal of Google’s habitual users consciously decided to give it a try, and then because the experience wasn’t a revolution in search, habitual behavior would take over and they would go back to Google. Marketshare would quickly return to previous levels. In fact, because there are a number of subtle psychological scripts built to help us maintain our habits (habits are a evolutionary advantage because they allow us to function with less cognitive effort) we might even become more frequent Google users and less frequent Live users. The bounceback could actually cause Live to lose marketshare.

Now, let’s look at what actually happened. The early summer introduction of Cashback seemed to be the answer to Live’s woes, as Compete’s Jeremy Crane was quick to point out.  Marketshare took a quick jump upwards. But two months later, Cashback’s initial glow is quickly fading. Search users are switching their auto pilots back on, and the default setting is Google.

Chrome Plated Strategies

Now, with the introduction of Chrome, Google is facing exactly the same challenge. They’re calculating that Chrome will have what it takes to break the Explorer or Firefox habit. And exactly the same pattern is emerging, as people take Chrome for a spin to decide whether it’s breaking-habit-worthy. And at this point, the answer seems to be no.

There’s one potential difference here. Chrome is much more than a browser. Google has a shiny future planned for the web app interface. If they raise the bar enough, people may make the investment required to break their existing habit and reform a new one around Google’s browser. But don’t expect any big marketshare shifts until that bar is raised.

Note to Cuil: Read My Columns!

Cuil was introduced when I had other things on my mind, namely trying to jam 2 months of work into 2 weeks so I could take my family on a long vacation to Europe. So I didn’t get a chance to caste my jaundiced eye on the much touted Google killer that has so resoundingly flopped since it’s introduction. That’s too bad, because I could have saved everyone a lot of time. I don’t care how “cuil” the technology is in the background, from a search user perspective, Cuil is a disaster!

For the past several months, I’ve been writing on MediaPost and Search Engine Land about inherent human behaviors and how they play out on search. I’ve talked about the limits of working memory, information foraging theory, how we pick up scent, how we navigate the results page, how we respond to images versus text, how we’ve been conditioned to search by habit and how what we read on the results page connects with our unexpressed intent in our minds. Cuil fails miserably on all counts. It frustrates the hell out of me that people don’t pay attention to the basic rules of human behavior. If the founders of Cuil had read our eye tracking reports, read Pirolli and Card’s information foraging theory, read any of my posts or blogs or read any post by Bryan or Jeffrey Eisenberg or Jakob Nielsen, millions of dollars of VC funding, thousands of hours of development time and a lot of actual and virtual ink could have been saved. Unless Cuil completely revamps their interface, they’re doomed to failure.

Cuil completely disregards the conditioned patterns we use to navigate results pages. This is a risk, but an acceptable one. You can change things up, but you better damn well deliver when you do. All Cuil delivers is confusion. It’s almost impossible to pick up scent. The eye is dragged all over the page because there’s no logical presentation. Functionality is ambiguous, not intuitive. The mix of images and text does nothing to establish relevance. Perceived relevance of the SERP is nil. If I would have looked at this a few months ago, I would have predicted that users would try it once because of the hype, been mildly intrigued by the look but found it almost unusable, quickly beating a path back to Google. I didn’t need to do eye tracking. A quick glance at the results page was all I needed. Unfortunately, because my mind was on the French Alps rather than the latest Google killer, my first glance was 3 months delayed and my would-be brilliant prediction just sounds like “me-too” hindsight.

Ah well..

For others that have Google in their sights, a word of advice. Mix up the search business..shake the hell out of it. It’s time. Come up with a better algorithm, blow up the results page and see where it lands, jolt the user out of their conditioned behavior. By all means, take millions in eager VC capital and reinvent the game. It’s way past time. But please, don’t ignore the fact that humans are humans and there will always be certain rules of thumb and strategies we operate by. You can destroy the paradigm, but you can’t change generations of inherent behavior. Cuil never bothered to learn the rules. That’s going to cost them.

Search Behavior: I Don’t Know What I Want, or Where to Find It

First published July 31, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In my last two columns, I looked at how search plays a part when we’re in two information gathering states: I know what I’m looking for and where to find it; and, I know what I’m looking for but not where to find it. Today, I’ll look at what happens when we don’t know what we’re looking for or where to find it.

In the first two states, our intent is pretty well defined. We’re looking for a piece of a puzzle and we know the shape of that piece when we see it. In information-foraging terms, we’ve already defined our diet. It’s just a question of which patch we look in. When we extend that to search engine usage, we have already defined our query, and it’s just a question of how we interact with the results page. In both these states, search engines work pretty well.

The Missing Puzzle Piece

But what if we have no idea what the puzzle piece looks like. We don’t know the shape, we haven’t assembled the adjacent pieces and we only have some vague idea what the finished picture should look like. This is the ultimate challenge for online search, and one that all search engines have largely failed to meet until this point. This is where we need a guide and advisor, a connector between ourselves and the universe of potential knowledge available. Because our knowledge is imperfect, we need a sage whose knowledge is perfect — or, at least, much less imperfect than our own.

Of Disambiguation, Discovery and Berrypicking

This is where three concepts play an important role: the need to disambiguate, the thrill of discovery, and a revisit of Marcia Bates’ concept of berrypicking. Let’s begin with disambiguation.

When we have no idea what we’re looking for, we don’t know how to define it. We don’t know the right query to present to the search engine. The more imperfect our knowledge, the more ambiguous our query. This is where search needs better knowledge of who we are. It needs to know — through implicit signals such as our areas of interest, our past history and our social connections –what it is we might be searching for. If a search engine is successful in lending more definition to our query, it stands a chance of connecting us to the right information.

The second piece is discovery. If a search engine is successful in introducing potentially relevant information to us, our interaction is quite a bit different than it is in the first two information gathering states. We spend more time in our interaction and “graze” the page more. We’re also open to more types of content. In the first state (know what we want and where to find it) we’re just looking for the fastest navigation route. In the second state (know what we want but not where to find it) we’re looking for confirmation of information scent to judge the quality of the patch. But in the third state, we could be enticed by a website, an image, a news story, a video or a product listing. We’re pretty much open to discovering anything.

And this brings us back to Bates’ theory of berrypicking. Because we have no preset criteria for the type of information we’re looking for, we can change direction on the turn of a dime. In our pursuit, we fill in the definition of our prey as we go. We follow new leads, change our information-gathering strategies and sometimes completely change direction. Our interactions with search turn into a serendipitous journey of discovery. It is in the third state where our patience is generally higher and our scanning pattern the broadest. Any cues on the page that trigger potential areas of interest for us, including brands or cultural references, could catch our attention and lead us down a new path.

Search Pursues Discovery

It’s this type of search that Ask’s 3D interface or Google’s Universal results set was built for. It’s also the thorny problem of disambiguation that has spawned a number of approaches, from Google’s exploration of personalization to the human assisted approaches of ChaCha and Mahalo . Even Yahoo’s Answers is a discovery tool, using the more natural approach of question and answer to lend some definition to our information quest. But even though we are defining our criteria as we go, we still seek to conserve cognitive energy. We have a little more patience in our seeking of information scent, but just a little. We still spend seconds rather than minutes looking for it, and because search is still trying to get discovery right, our sense of frustration can mount rapidly. We’re still a long way from finding a universally satisfying online source for discovery.

Digging Still Deeper into the Search Branding Question

First published June 12, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I love debate. I love defending my ideas, and in the process, shaping, refining and sometimes discarding them as they prove to be too unwieldy or simply incorrect. My last two columns have generated a fascinating debate around the concept of branding in search. Fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, his senior vice president of search and media, James Lamberti, Erik du Plessis, Millward Brown executive and author of  “The Advertised Mind” (fascinating book, by the way), as well as a host of others, have taken up the debating gauntlet on this particular topic.

As luck would have it, we just wrapped up a study with Google in Europe — and data there seems to show that I’m dead wrong about the inability of unclicked search ads to build brand, reinforcing the view of Gian and Aaron (Aaron has his own research, and ours seems to support his findings). We saw brand lift (based on traditional metrics) of anywhere from 5 to 15% on even unclicked ads. And this was with thousands of respondents across four different product categories in three different markets, so I don’t think it’s an anomaly.

The easy thing would have been to toss in the towel and admit I was wrong. But I’m not so sure about that. I’m convinced the neurobiological underpinnings I outlined in my column two weeks ago are sound and that the reasons for the apparent contradictions lie in some aspects of the search interaction and brand recall that I overlooked and the metrics we use to measure them.

But, in looking at this, I realized that this topic lies at the heart of a fundamental and not-yet-explored aspect of search: how does it influence our brand relationships? In one regard, I’m wholly in agreement with Aaron, Gian and James. There’s a tremendous amount of branding value being left on the table with search. Where we differ is in the nature of that value. But that’s not an easy thing to explore. It’s certainly beyond the scope of a single column. So yesterday I sent an email to my MediaPost editor asking if I could use this column over the next several weeks to lay out my hypothesis for how we interact with search. Thankfully, she agreed. So, beginning this week, I’d like to begin unraveling that knot.

In my weekly columns over the next few months I’d like to explore several questions:

Why do we search: This goes to Aaron’s comment that we don’t always search for information about a purchase. And this is absolutely true. We search for many different reasons. I’ll look at what motivates us to search and our mental frame of mind when do so. Is searching a conditioned behavior?

Why we search the way we do: Through all Enquiro’s research, we have found very consistent search patterns. Why do we search the way we do? How do we forage for information? And why is a search engagement “thin,” while a Web site engagement is “thick”?

Why does searching trigger information retrieval, but doesn’t necessarily create new memories: I’ll look at how memory works, specific to the act of searching, and how this differs from other types of advertising.

Why we use search differently at different stages in our purchasing behavior: The way we use search early in the process can be significantly different than the way we use it later. And it’s not the classic search “funnel” you may think.

Why the traditional brand metrics used are not accurate measures of likelihood to purchase, especially when applied to a search interaction.

Why search can be the most important brand tool in a marketer’s arsenal, if it’s used in the right place. It’s a matter of understanding what search can do and what it can’t. And, even more importantly, understanding how to measure that value.

And finally, will the changing nature of search change the way it acts as a branding strategy?

In this process I hope to provide supporting research where I can (there’s little empirical research in this area). I’ll also be reaching out to others, including my debating partners, to capture their views as well. And, as always, I invite you all to join the conversation.

How Much Would You Pay for this Unclicked Search Ad?

First published May 29, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

As David Berkowitz mentioned a few columns back, comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni pondered the implications of the fact that 95% of Google’s search advertising inventory never gets clicked. All those millions and millions of impressions get thrown out there, just to fade away as a non event as soon as one leaves the results page. Our own research, which Fulgoni refered to, shows that presence at the top of the page does have an impact on brand awareness and propensity to buy. So, logically, even if a link is not clicked, there must be value there. Fulgoni wondered if perhaps Google was leaving significant amounts of money on the table with their cost per click model.

David looked at the implications of Fulgoni’s musings from a business model. I, staying on more familiar ground, would like to explore this from the user’s view. Ironically, although Fulgoni used our research to prove his point, I’m not so sure there is a latent brand impact from search if a link remains unclicked. Let me explain why.
Will You Remember Me?

There’s a distinct divide between the impact realized from interaction with the search results page and interaction after the click-through, on the Web site. And the difference lies in how the interactions get loaded into our brains. When the spotlight of attention is turned on, things go directly into the executive function mode of our brains, which is commonly called working memory. This is like a white board, where we gather the details needed to make decisions and store them. There are two limiting factors to working memory, capacity and duration. We can only load so much on this whiteboard, and it will remain only as long as we’re actively using it. After that, the board gets wiped clean, ready for the next decision.

When we’re using working memory, we’re fully engaging our rational loop. Things go directly to working memory. Depending on the importance of the information for us in the long term, we’ll either start creating the long-term memory hooks to retain it, or it will be left to be erased from short-term memory. Think of when you look up a phone number. Obviously, there is lots of other information on the page or Web site where you go, but you’re focused on just the number you need. You find the number and begin repeating it to yourself, effectively beginning the transition from short-term to long-term memory. The rest of the information you saw on the page, even if you were actively focused on it during the task, is almost mmediately wiped from your memory.

The memory hooks you create will depend on how long you need the number, and how often you use it. If this is going to be an oft-used piece of information, it will get stored for the long run in your semantic memory. If not, it will eventually wither away in memory purgatory, caught between the transience of short term and the enduring stability of long term.

Focus of Attention

When we interact with a search engine, our working memory is in high gear. We are very much focused on the task at hand, “berry picking” our way through the information presented on the search page. In split seconds, we filter our way through incredible amounts of information, seeking the cues of relevancy, or information scent, required to indicate which result best matches our intent. We don’t spend a lot of time qualifying the quality of the match. Click-throughs are low-risk investments. If we click through on a listing and it doesn’t provide what we’re looking for, we can easily click back to the results page and try another one. So we don’t spend a lot of time considering the results. We scan, filter and click. There’s little opportunity for unclicked messaging to pass beyond working memory and stick.

Fulgoni’s theory has one other thing working against it. Much brand impact is acquired implicitly. Even when we’re not focused on acquiring information, images, sounds and messaging are filtering into our brains at a subconscious level, there to help create our brand perceptions. But all interaction with the search results page is explicit, a very focused acquisition of information. Everything passes through executive function and working memory. There is no opportunity for brand messaging to sneak past the guard and find a nook or cranny of our cortex to lodge itself in. We’re diligently wiping the slate clean.

Fulgoni’s theory is interesting, but I’m not sure it holds up when we look at the neurobiology involved in the process. There is a tremendous branding opportunity in search, but unfortunately, it doesn’t lie in the unclicked ad. But more on that next column, when we look at the interaction on the search page, and what happens after the click-through.

Great Summit – But What Will We Call It Next Time?

First published May 22, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Less than 24 hours ago, my fellow columnists were sitting on a stage on Captiva Island, Fla., recapping the events of the three-day Search Insider Summit. It was Insider Aaron Goldman that first noticed the dilemma. “You know,” he mused, as he looked at his famous Summit Buzz Index list (more on this in Aaron’s next column), “I don’t see the word search in here.” We realized, together with the attendees, that in three days of earnest, thoughtful, engaged and even passionate discussion, we had talked about a lot of things: marketing, branding, conversations, engagement, intent, convergence, communities, mobile and local. But somehow, search remained implicitly rather than explicitly present in these conversations.

The Essentially Human Nature of Search

Perhaps we had outgrown search. But no, that wasn’t it. Search had outgrown us, or, at least, the box we kept trying to stuff it in. It went to something that I had touched on a few times over the past three days. Search isn’t a channel. Search is glue, search is ether, search is a synapse, a connection, a completion. Search is a fundamental human activity. Search isn’t a marketing tactic. It’s how we express ourselves.

Perhaps it’s the human need to categorize things. We tend to pigeonhole search and put labels on it. It’s direct response, it’s transactional, it’s pull rather than push. But search isn’t a noun, search is a verb. And it was only on the plane ride back that I started to realize how important that is.

Battelle’s Big Idea

John Battelle did a great job of poking at the import of this in his book “The Search.” But I’m not sure people realized how mind-boggling Battelle’s “database of intentions” is. It’s a vast concept, and that scares the hell out of most people. Similarly, Google’s goal to organize the world’s information can be as deep as you want to make it.

Let’s dissect this a bit so we can start to put appropriate scope to it, and you’ll realize that Google’s goal is maybe the biggest, hairiest, most audacious corporate goal in history.

There are few things humans need on a daily basis. We are biomechanical machines, so we need oxygen, water, food and sleep. We are social creatures, so we need to communicate. And we are rational beings (or at least, we come equipped with the necessary equipment for rational thought) so we need information. Given that, organizing the world’s information sounds like a good thing, right? It makes our life easier. But whoever organizes the world’s information also controls access to it. We pass at their pleasure.

A Toll on Information

Recently I had the opportunity to cycle up the Rhine Valley in Germany. Dotted along the valley are dozens of castles overlooking the river. The castles exist because the Rhine was the primary navigation route of central Europe, and robber barons realized that if they could control even a small part of the river, they could exact tolls and become fabulously wealthy. But even as bold as the baron’s were, their plans pale in comparison to Google’s goal. Imagine the ability to impose a toll on every single bit of information that we, as humans, need on a daily basis.

In a remarkably short time, Google has created a connection to the biggest repository of information ever collected, and each day, the company adds to it. Each day, our ability to access the information we need to function relies more and more on search, which means it relies on Google.  For almost any decision we make, we need information. Sometimes, the information is at hand, but when it’s not, we have to search for it. And, we will take the easiest possible route to do so. That’s why for more and more of our actions and decisions, there are corresponding searches. Search is not a channel, it’s how we act on our intentions and aspirations.

Search Centered by Default

Gerry Bavaro, another Search Insider, said it best. If you truly put your prospect at the center of your marketing strategy, it can’t help but have search at the core. It’s a given. When your prospect reaches out for the information required to make a buying decision, it’s highly likely they’ll reach out through search.

So, as we tried to put the wraps on three days of high-level thinking about search, we realized we had actually unwrapped something bigger than any of us realized. I’m not sure what you call it, but one thing’s for sure. It won’t fit in any pigeonhole.

Don’t Crown Google Yet – The Rules of Engagement are Still Being Determined

First published May 15, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

According to an article in the Financial Times, the search war is already over. Google’s won. Everyone else can go home now. Microhoo was the last potential challenger, and now that that deal is in shambles, the victory has been ceded to the search empire of Mountain View. Even fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman has been searching for a Google Killer, and so far hasn’t found one. I myself said Google was going to be an extremely hard habit to break (in five parts, no less).

It’s true that these are dark times for desktop search. There is barely a whisper of resistance to the Google juggernaut. But to declare unconditional victory is a little premature. As Google itself is fond of saying, we’ve barely begun to play the search game. To declare it won now would probably be as myopic as awarding the crown to AltaVista in 1997. True, Google has a huge head start, but we’re not even sure which route the race will take.

Microhoo never could have won…

I’ve never been a fan of Microhoo. I think the acquisition would have been a huge mistake. The strategy seemed to be that by tying two sinking boats together, you could somehow catch Google. But the outcome was inevitable. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have fundamental issues in corporate direction and strategy, cultural cohesiveness and respect for their users. They have to get their own houses in order before they can challenge anyone. Putting two dysfunctional families together doesn’t make things any better. It just doubles the number of people yelling at each other. If the Microhoo deal had flown, it would have blown up in under a year. Google would have won regardless.

I’m not sure where Google’s competition is going to come from, but based on what I’m seeing (and the unfortunate Ballmer video that David Berkowitz made me aware of) it’s not Microsoft or Yahoo. In their hearts, they’ve already given up on Web search and are hoping to use ad networks as the next battleground.

Against the Rising Consumer Tide

Giving up on search and falling back on ad networks is monumentally stupid. I’ve said this so many times I can’t believe I have to keep repeating it, but I will. Ad networks are firmly rooted in yesterday. They’re an extension of an advertising mentality that’s based on disrupting prospects and keeping control in the hands of the marketer. Search propelled Google to its current status because it’s a discontinuous innovation. It’s customer-initiated marketing, marketing rooted in tomorrow, where the prospect is in control. By focusing on ad networks, you’re ignoring the voice of billions of consumers that have already spoken loud and clear. Yes, you can target. Yes, you can segment. Yes, it’s a whole new take on marketing, but it’s still marketing. It’s not innovative or paradigm breaking.

So, if we ignore search for a minute, and think about other ways that customers can exercise this control, we start to understand how vast the potential is. Mobile is often touted as The Next Big Thing, and I tend to agree. But really, mobile is just one channel. The really big thing is that now the masses have control, and they will exercise it. The winners will be the ones that figure out new and innovative ways for consumers to do so — and that requires a different kind of thinking. That, first of all, requires acceptance of the power shift. Ironically, Google started here, but the user-side focus is becoming a little blurry with the acquisition of DoubleClick. There is a mix of religions now in Mountain View, so even the Googleplex is starting to have signs of dysfunction.

Just When You Least Expect It

I think Google’s competition will come from the same place Google did. It will sneak out of nowhere. It won’t come from the stuck-in-yesterday mind ruts of Microsoft. It won’t come from the desperation of Yahoo. It will come from someone small enough, visionary enough, obsessive enough and ballsy enough to still do great things, without those great things being picked to death at the boardroom table. But, even here, Google might still win. Google’s greatest success came from not being swallowed by one of its competitors too soon, because no one was smart enough to recognize the threat. Despite Google’s not insignificant hubris, I think its executives are still able to recognize when their lunch is in danger of being eaten.

Making a New World Up as We Go

First published April 10, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The frequent flier blitzkrieg continues. This week’s stop, Sydney, Australia for SMX. In the opening keynote, Danny Sullivan asked Google’s Marissa Mayer what keeps her at Google. Her answer was that there are just too many really interesting, really hard questions still to be answered. She likened it to the world of scientific discovery and pegged the current state of search and online as analogous to the 15th or 16th century. Sir Isaac Newton has just discovered gravity.

From a timeline perspective, I think Marissa’s analogy works. There’s no doubt we’re at the early stages of something, but what that something is remains to be seen. The difference between us and Isaac Newton is that Newton was exploring the guiding principles of the real, physical world. We’re building a new world up as we go. More correctly, a new world is emerging organically from the efforts and thoughts of millions of people. It’s a world defined in an ethereal middle space, a world of mind-spawned musings and accomplishments, shared and propelled one packet at a time. We’re not discovering anything, we’re building something entirely new. At any given moment, hundreds of millions of us are making it up as we go along. It’s a Darwinian experiment on a grand, grand scale.

The other difference is that the physical world afforded us a certain leisurely pace of exploration. Apples were falling from trees for millions of years before Newton finally got around to wondering why. Even Darwin had the luxury of time to define his theory of natural selection. Not much happens in the way of evolution in any time scale that we can perceive.

But this online witches’ cauldron we call the Internet moves much quicker. It is a world driven by innovation, and it is the fastest innovators that will not only survive, but prosper. Mindful musing is a luxury we can’t afford. Things move too fast.

Despite the seemingly blank canvas that stretches before us, there are limits to the world we create, and these limits are those imposed on us by our human nature. The virtual world we create must fit within the sphere that defines us as a species. It must not take advantage of our foibles and failings. It must empower the best of us. The human mind is a convoluted, complex mechanism that is only 5% rational. The other 95%, the really fun part that makes us human, brews under the service, messy, murky and sometimes manipulative. And the truly scary part is that we know almost nothing about this dark underbelly of our minds. We’ve discovered much of the world that lives outside our skulls, thanks to Newton, Darwin, Galileo and their scientific brethren. But we’re only beginning to discover the world that sits locked in our three pounds of grey matter.

Humans haven’t really changed much in 250,000 years. Yet man’s greatest creation, our society, has changed by leaps and bounds — and the pace of that change is still accelerating. The creation of the Internet is perhaps the most significant leap forward yet. We are literally redefining the structure we use to build society. This, I suspect, changes everything. Our challenge, then, is to use our technology, our passion and our intellect to create a society that breaks the restrictions imposed on us not just by our physical world, but also by our baser human instincts.

I can understand why Marissa Mayer still wants to get up and go to work in the morning. She’s driven by the same thing that drives many of us who have chosen to dedicate our passion to this new online world that is the biggest group project in history.

Maybe, just maybe, this time we’ll get it right.