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There's a book I love to send people: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001REFRZG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect (old school. no kindle. just hardcover. :) ) "Something Really New" How innovation works. First question in the book is: you need to come up with a new idea for a faucet company. Customer research says: Users want lots of variety in their faucets. Everyone then immediately comes up with the same exact ideas: faucets that are easily customizable. Faucets that have skins. Etc.

When really innovative stuff is just about removing steps. If a process has 10 steps, remove as many as you can, and now you have something truly innovative on your hands.

I feel like Google did exactly that. Pre Google steps: search for XYZ, wait, check first link, second link, spam, spam, check next page. Post Google: search for XYZ, get XYZ.

2 comments

Of course blog and SEO spam is such a problem on Google now that it looks more similar to your Pre Google steps.

I don't know how to easily fix that though. Simply "crawling the entire internet" is still not a simple problem, let alone doing something more useful with the result than google can. Ahrefs is an interesting business but not what people mean when they say the next google. "Machine learning" but I think google is all over this already (and has been for years).

Google does a bad job at getting user feedback about results while reddit does better so people search reddit, maybe a hybrid is an opportunity.

eh... except google is now basically just the pre-google product: Search for XYZ, wait, skip promoted link, skip second promoted link, third promoted link is actually the direct competitor to what I fucking searched, click result that was on top ten years ago, but is now almost below the fold.

Or worse - Search for exact term: get a page full of "Missing X - must include X" links hidden in tiny text below a result, click "Must include X" get the SAME FUCKING RESULTS again, click tools, click the dropdown, select verbatim, finally see decent results