With the introduction of voice search like siri, it seems that google is doomed to me. How do you make ad revenue when all results are verbal? Even in a best case scenario you can sell one ad, not a sidebar full of them plus top advertisement driven results above the real results. Add in ads? "Siri where is there coffee?" "BUY MORE METAL SIDING AT HOME DEPOT" "Coffee 100 meters ahead at starbucks"
It'll be years before voice search is actually usable for anything. Siri and everything like it are just useless toys.
Search engines are rapidly going in the toilet. Google for years was very simple. Lightning fast, relative results etc. Over the years it has become bloated and much more than it has to be. The reverse image search is helpful, yes. But for ever feature like this, there are 3 bloat features that is seldom used. Bing was a good competitior but is slowly going the way of google. And the only other option IMO is duck duck go which has issues finding relative results on some obscure searches
not everybody speaks english, not everybody wants to be screaming to a screen, google has lot more life ahead
Google's product isn't just ads, it's also invasion of privacy, and that will work just fine with voice search. When you ask your phone for coffee, that'll get put right into the database and sold to marketers down the line who think they can profit from knowing you asked for coffee at location X, time Y.
Let me know when I can have a Librarian AI like in Snowcrash. Then I'll give a damn about voice communications.
Ha, it won't kill Google - it's more than just a search engine now. Image search, mapping, e-mail, social networking, YouTube, shopping... you can't do those things verbally. Plus their server business, don't forget!
End of Google? They've cemented their place on the internet, the end of Google would be the end of the internet as we know it. And if the internet ends as we know it, Google will probably be behind that too. Right now we're at the end of Windows as we know it so we'll have to see how *MS* makes out in a few years.
Besides Ad Revenue probably being their #1 source (?) of income, I doubt they will suffer much from this at all. Google has too many fingers in each of the pies, I think you would have to collapse multiple supports for it too ever truly crumble.
This whole Google Siri thing would be interesting. Most interesting is the fact that Google adds are tailored to each user. Imagine someone who looks up nothing but adult oriented sites. "Google, find nearest gas station." "Need some entertainment? Stop by Ed's XXX video for all your adult entertainment needs. Exxon on next block with regular unleaded going for $3.99 a gallon." Imagine your grandmother hearing THAT... (Yes, I know I ripped ASSEMbler off on that one. Just thought I'd improve it a bit.) Best way to get around all that bullshit is to use Ad Block Plus. I have yet to see another web ad again. That along with the AVG do not track software make my internet presence unknown to all those ad spouting trackers. I finish off with YouTube Options to block ALL ads from ALL videos. Never seen another ad again. Even on long videos.
Voice search ? It's that thing that still works like early voice text-entry software from early-mid 90s ? Where you had to speak like a robot and shout to get it type "pick" instead of "dick" ? Useless toy that uses crude waveform analysis instead of true speech pattern recognition. I used some software that was able to control a computer with voice. Played for a 20 minutes or so and adjusted it to work with finger snaps which was actually usable.
Siri is just for iphone 4s, plus it requires internet all the time on your cellphone. It won't work here in Brazil for at least 5 years. Is it working ok at anywhere else then USA?
The navigation part of Siri doesn't work at all outside the US, which means it's pretty much useless.
The idea of talk over text isnt really anything new. Theres been a program called Dragon Speak for quite a longtime now that enables users to have there speech converted into text. Ive never tried it before but there slogan has always been "stop typing and start talking". I also agree with other members comments that google is more than just a search engine. I think they realized a longtime ago that if they were to just stay as a search engine that they would go the way of the dinosaur. As long as google stays as innovative as they have been, I think they'll be around for sometime still.
They aren't innovative. They just see markets becoming popularized by other websites and create their own version. G+,Reverse Image Search (admittedly theirs is very good), Shopping (which is just a price comparison website), the list goes on. I would've mentioned Google video being a remake of Youtube but G-Video came around about a month before, although Google Video was pretty poor and they had to buy out youtube.
Your right, that was a bad choice in words, what I meant to say was that they are good at atleast "appearing to be innovative". They have always had that "look at what we have done" approach even though they wernt the first ones to come up with it but hey you know its worked for them so far, whether it will continue to work is another matter completely.
Kevin I laughed my ass off at that post. Google is a giant and while it was built on searches i'll bet they have something cooking to keep that portion of the business going. Worse comes to worse they just change their business model and buy everyone else while they can. That's what Facebook is doing. But then again their IPO is doing poorly to say the least.
