The Next Web

The Web will be the Death of Google

By Boris
June 2, 2009
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There is a famous story about a meeting between Yahoo and Microsoft which took place when Yahoo was still a small start-up. Yahoo was growing at neck-breaking speed and David Filo and Jerry Yang were invited to Redmond to talk about working together.

The meeting turned into a disappointment when Steve Ballmer joined the conversation and gave his opinion on the future of search engines. According to Ballmer Search Engines were a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Ballmer claimed that “within a few years there will only be a handful of websites left. People will use their Favorites to navigate to those destination sites and nobody will need a Search engine except for a few students and professors.”

Looking back at how history unfolded you could say that Microsoft started missing the boat right there and then and has been struggling to get back to the front of the line ever since.

The Web will be the Death of GoogleAmusing as it might sound Ballmer’s prediction might not be that insane after all. He might have been wrong then, is wrong now and might be wrong tomorrow but he might be right eventually.

Bing was launched, or perceived, as a potential Google killer. I don’t think any new search engine could kill Google. So what could?

To answer that question we first have to find out what Search actually is. What solution does Search offer and when do you need Search?

The question: When exactly do you need search?
The answer: When you don’t know where to find something

So what if you did actually know where to find everything?

There are billions of webpages and knowing where they all are is simply impossible. But what if Ballmer is right? What if one day we would simply stick to a few sites and spend all our time there?

Google is generally perceived as THE ultimate Search engine. When you look at your actual usage of the Web there are dozens of Search Engines that are a lot better at serving you than Google. A few examples:

If you are looking for People, yes, you might start at Google. But there is a pretty good chance you will Find those people on Facebook, LinkedIn or any other Social Network. When it comes to searching for friends Google is NOT the preferred search solution. Social Networks are.

If you are looking for a book you will probably visit Amazon before Google.

Second hand stuff? You Search for and find it at eBay.
A cheap flight? You would use Expedia or another travel website.
Words or definitions? Answers.com and WikiPedia.org, of course.
Music and movies? iTunes, BitTorrent and Amazon.

Search is only a solution if you don’t don’t how to Find stuff. Once you know how to find 90% of your stuff a search engine will become just one more tool to find the 10% of stuff that you don’t know where to find.

Microsoft sort of understood this when they decided to focus Bing on Travel, news and shopping. These are areas in which answers are easy to supply. Finding knowledge is a never ending quest. Finding a good deal on a digital camera is not.

Bing itself won’t be a Google killer. But the philosophy behind Bing, as explained to David Filo and Jerry Yang by Steve Ballmer, might one day kill Google.

They say that even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Maybe one day Ballmer will be right too.


  • This only makes sense if you assume that 90% of what you want to search for falls into those few categories. That is certainly not the case for me, and it's depressing to think that you believe that in general people's use of the web is so narrow.

    I use google all the time (as in many times an hour) for any number of things that don't fall into those categories. I couldn't do my job (as a programmer) effectively without the vast body of knowledge represented on the web, and I don't think that the usefulness of that knowledge is limited to my profession.
  • I think that you are part of the group that Ballmer mentioned "...except for a few students and professors". Maybe we can get him to change that to "...except for a few students, geeks, bloggers, developers and professors"
  • Firstly, I think you will need to keep expanding the categories quite a lot. Secondly, it's hardly "a few" within each category.

    There are probably millions of programmers out there who rely on google. They're also the ones who are, by and large, responsible for the expansion of the web with even more pages and content that needs to be searched for. The whole thing feeds on itself.
  • A
    You are right, but that doesn't contradict the article. Once a good "answers" web site exists, you would rather use that for assistance instead of using Google.
  • Matt Jones
    Well, it's Steve Ballmer, so it should be:

    "...except for a few students, geeks, bloggers, professors and DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!!!"
  • As a developer, google is still the best place to start, but who knows for how long. There ar a couple of recent sites, like stackoverflow.com and serverfault.com, that implement a better algorithm than google for searching for answers and that may topple google in that sector in some time. Who knows, I may be one of those areas where you might change (or not).
  • Many people that I know and who don't fall into those categories use Google many times a day -- even when they know the exact address of the site they wanted to visit. For example, to visit this site they'd open "the internet" (i.e. IE with Google as the home page) and then enter "thenextweb.com" into the text box right there in the middle of the page. They click on "search" button and then on the first link in the list that appears and there they are.

    This is how they use the internets. And do you know which site will kill Google? Which ever site manages to persuade geeks and sysadmin throughout the world to set it up as the home page for all their coworkers and family members.
  • Nice piece Boris. One thing to add: the next big thing is NOT Search. We see a lot of search related new projects (Wolfram Alfa and Bing included). These can bring improvements but they will not be game changers. What can be a game changer? If I knew I would spend my time making it happen instead of talking about it. And perhaps a guy out there is just doing this, at this very moment :)
  • Stop calling Bing a search engine after reading this article. The idea is big.
  • Google does a lot more than just search, brother.
  • I know, sister.

    But is is where 98% of their money comes from...
  • Erwin
    You can also look it from the other site.. if all those different purposes have a unique site where you know you'll find it; Then a search engine should know it too. A search within a good searchengine would point you to that specific site then.

    Search for a book in Google, Google recognizes it and google points you to Amazon.
    Search for a flight in Google, google recognizes your search and points to the right location.

    Actually it is happening already in Google;
    - integration of a calculator
    - route
    - google maps
    - rate conversion
    - movies in theatre
    - times that trains leave and arrive
    - search results will point to the right location

    You don't have to remember all those different site, but you got 1 place to start
  • Good point. Taking that further we could conclude that Google is killing search by offering a single entry point to all information. Search as we know it (enter keyword, pray for relevant link) will change to question and answer based queries. Google labels everything 'information'. That might change. I'f I'm buying a book at Amazon I'm looking for a product. A flight is a service. A person is a human being. Branding everything 'information' might be too broad.
  • Actually, what google delivers at the moment is largely data. The person doing the search needs to turn that into information.

    Wolfram Alpha's big step is in attempting to turn the data into information for you. You can rest assured that google will not be sitting by idly watching that happen.
  • Wolfram Alpha is one of the best examples of the intro of linked data, a new idea of tim harper lee (founder of www) which I guess you will have watched on TED
  • Rick
    Well, it has been tried, a world where there was only one destination/supplier/brand per "need". They called it the Socialist Paradise.

    Turns out people a) like to have choice (even if it gives them headaches sometimes), and b) you need draconian measures to prevent choice from arising naturally.

    Of course the latter is exactly what Microsoft tried to do for a long time, and at the time it seemed like it might work, hence Ballmers confusion. In reality, we actually have laws to prevent choice from being reduced that way. Guess Microsoft found that out too...

    You're suggesting two concepts that have been proven to be mutually exclusive: if X is *the* place to look for a certain item, than X will never be the place to find "a good deal". In fact there will be no "good deal" anymore. The whole concept of a "a good deal" depends on sufficient choice.
  • Forcing people to use only one system is a whole other thing! Nobody tells people that they can ONLY shop at Amazon if they are looking for books, but Amazon is THE place to go.

    Same for eBay and Facebook. No forced monopolies but natural accumulators.
  • mmm, interesting.
    'What if one day we would simply stick to a few sites and spend all our time there?'
    Bing will make a good move to catch users with bing, to help them make decisions (I hate saying that)

    But remember a few days ago, when Google showed wave.

    Bing might catch the shopping users, but wave will catch the communicating users. It will be in a short time the most popular communities shall make google wave robots or apps. Because of this a large part of the people will spend hours on Google Wave.
    Think of the following: Somebody just waved (hihi) you to recommend a book. Inmidiatly the google ads on wave (which will come there for sure) will display an add to ebay or amazon which sell that book. The first place you will make the decision to search for something is because of things being appointed or said in an email, tweet or comment. With google wave, google will just be one step before bing.

    Google will catch the going-to-search-in-a-moment user with displaying relevant Google Ads on Google Wave.
  • Your post assumes too much about Google missing the boat, when in truth they have shown to act faster/more decisively than either MSFT, Yahoo, or most others:

    1) Google bought YouTube ("the Web") when it became apparent that it was the next big wave. While they are still getting dinged for not monetizing it enough, YouTube already has more SEARCHES performed on it than No.2 search engine Yahoo! So when in doubt, they can buy what's next on "the Web" (and they are typically less clumsy about absorbing than others).

    2) While MSFT and Yahoo were wasting most of last year with the Micro-hoo saga, Google has kept tweaking /executing in search and elsewhere with fearsome discipline (see: http://businessmindhacks.com/post/why-recent-go... ).

    3) Google is reacting rather rapidly to the rise of the real-time Web/Search as exemplified by Twitter: The first tweak with (recency) Search Options is already in the books for Google, and in fact it's occuring to me just now that this is a major omission for MSFT's just released Bing that it is missing a similar RTW feature.

    And of course Google may yet buy Twitter (plus I think Twitter would culturally be more inclined to sell to Google than MSFT, provided that the offer is matched sufficiently closely, plus Google stock should be more dynamic than MSFT stock from here).

    4) So no, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon...mostly because Google embraces the Web, while MSFT still secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) longs to marginalize/cripple it.
  • I agree that Google is very innovative and fast when it comes to search. No worry there.

    My point was that what if we start searching less in the future? You (Google) can innovate all you want but if most people are simply networking at Facebook, reading at Amazon, watching movies via iTunes and doing all they want at a few selected sites than Search would become a detail instead of THE starting point.

    After all, Google proved to be VERY successful at Search but is hardly a player in social networking or ecommerce.
  • Boris, I really believe we will only be searching more and more, not less, though it is true that that need not only happen on Google. The way I see it play out, Google will acquire Twitter (or maybe indirectly exert influence/control, through an investment, similar to the way MSFT did with Facebook), and so it will be Facebook vs. Twitter in the race for the Real-Time Web.

    Facebook has the problem that its info has been a Walled Garden with much higher privacy expectations from the get go, so it's a bit daunting for them to try and soften that up, though Zuckerberg is certainly trying. Incidentally, I wish Facebook had much better search in regards to my Facebook email, asf.

    Google would want to have full Twitter firehose access, and deny it to MSFT (or vice-versa), then add the Twitter real-time search results to the top of Google results (like you can already do in Firefox using a greasemonkey script). As was recently pointed out,

    "whoever acquires Twitter will in essence take possession of an army of millions (soon to be tens of millions) of humans who are actively, accurately, and enthusiastically meta-tagging pages. In the arena of human-augmented search, Mahalo is a useful wheelbarrow, while Twitter is a fleet of 747 cargo planes." ( http://parnassusgroup.com/twitterconference/200... )

    ...and I have written similar stuff in recent months. This is in essence the "nano-bot" method of search. I doubt Google will let it slip away. Of course the individual users first surfacing stuff on Twitter themseves got to the information using various search methods including Google Alerts, Google Blog Search, asf.

    In fact, I am just now writing a post I've been meaning to write on the ever-increasing importance of "search literacy". Without it, people will become functionally illiterate in the 21st Century:

    Exponentially increasing amount of information = Search isn't going anywhere.
  • econobiker
    "In fact, I am just now writing a post I’ve been meaning to write on the ever-increasing importance of “search literacy”. Without it, people will become functionally illiterate in the 21st Century: Exponentially increasing amount of information = Search isn’t going anywhere."

    You are very true on the search literacty idea. I witnessed an interaction of a middle aged librarian trying to educate/help a computer illiterate patron (who looked like 20ish homeless groovy dude type) for a simple search for an LED light conversion for a certain model flashlight. The interaction was painful in that I could have brought up the necessary answer in the same amount of time as she took to decipher just what he wanted to ask.

    You will see alot of this when people get hosed by various companies' scams. They say "I looked it up on the internet and it seemed ok" without knowing that the next best thing to finding out about a company or program is to look it up with the added search words of "scam", "sucks", or "lawsuit"...
  • TrueEyes
    People will always need broader search engines simply because they provide more information than specific searches. For an example, when I type my real name in facebook all I get is my picture and my list of friends. When I type my name in google I also get my tweeter account, myspace account, some comments I wrote on a forum, a petition to save something and tons of other crap..
    Specific searching only works when you know exactly where and what you are looking for. People are looking for too many different things to start using specific engine for every single thing. Microsoft were wrong back then because they underestimated the general public and I think the author of this article did the same thing.
    If something is going to kill the current google search engine it will probably be some sort of semantic search, since it's sometimes hard to get useful information out of the tons of crap on the web... But still, google is still developing, so maybe nobody will kill them..
  • mahrain
    Dugg!

    Because this is exactly how I use the web. I have all my favourite sites and various types of search engines (Hyves, Twitter search, Telephone directory etc.) lined up in Safari's "Bookmarks bar" and combined with RSS reader this is my web setup. Google lives in the corner until I need to find something unspecific.
  • D of Google? NOT really .... first, it's Live.com search and Yahoo.com search, which are quite moribund. But they'l survive. ...Right - "eventually, there will be just a couple of big sites, and nobody will need search" - The thing is, one of those big sites is, and will be, Google. ...... Specifically, if they evolve and adapt even better, quicker than now. ... Google now encompasses all aspects of web life - search, news, shopping, mobile, etc etc., and it does it best, arguably. In other words, simply, ==== Google is not search, Google is web. ==== And if they'd listen to me more:], they'd have now fb:, ff:, tw:, and handful of other p:eople, c:ars, n:ews sites to search quickly ... They'd display advanced search hints, use MORE keyboard shortcuts. ...And I'm telling you, any site without smart keyboard shortcuts is a mouse moribund undertaking in the end. That is valid also for TheNextWeb.com web tech news web application.
  • done .. http://friendfeed.com/zee .. i see, you have it somehow privately connected? .. seriously, how about Disqus, etc ..Friend Connect ? ... but nice, its fine as it is also .... :] /// previous comment moribund failed to include a :] ..
  • With this reasoning, perhaps Google Wave will be the next Google killer. Nowhere before have we seen such a complex aggegrated service yet, what else do you need ?
  • I talked to some trend watchers at an event a while ago (they look at cultural trends as much as technology) and they said the future is filters. Google is a brilliant filter when you want to do a general purpose search and don't have another more specialised starting point. Word of mouth from "experts" or people you trust is a very useful filter. Since I've been using Twitter, the links people post in their messages filter news/articles so I don't scan tech news sites so much. There will always be a place for a general purpose search engine(the same as no new content medium has ever killed the old ones entirely) but it may not remain as dominant and new forms of filter will emerge too.
  • Not so sure. I agree that more specific search engines are what i prefer... when they work. So i would choose to search on StackOverflow rather than Google... or at least i'd refine my search on Stackoverflow.

    But i'd rarely use Twitter search as it most often doesn't work.

    Search is complicated and i don't see many of these sites doing it as well as Google. BUT if Bing could help these other sites achieve a better search then things may change.
  • Today, my behavior is exactly as you describe. I search Wikipedia and Amazon before Google when I'm looking for information that they cover better. Cumulatively, though, Google gets a vast majority of my search queries, simply because information encompasses such a wide range.

    To the extent that search consolidates in a central place, I think Google has a strategy in place. By building up profiles and connections between people, recommendations can be made highly relevant. Their web index will further improve their recommendation engine.

    I already spend most of my time in Gmail and Google Reader, reducing the time I travel out to the "wider" web. Those products, and the approaching Wave, will be perfect places to deliver targeted information.
  • The real-time web will eventually change how consumers search for products/vendors online. It's during this transformation in search habits that will eventually kill Google and its advertising model. Google will always be the
    web’s library: archival, organized and oriented around research. It's this new type of real-time consumer web interaction and collaboration that Google has little control over.
  • Take away message from your post is that search goes beyond finding---in many cases we need specialized engine. We believe in same philosophy at Cazoodle---Our mission is to enable specialized vertical search in niche domain, like Apartment Rentals, Online Shopping, or Local Events. Try service at www.cazoodle.com
  • I know a lot of non-US non-geeks who spend most of their time on websites you've never heard of. Not all the world is mainstream America.
  • Too many things come into play to simply say Bing will do a good job on 'finding a good deal on a digital camera'. better deals pop up all the time. customer service at the shop may become a search query. besides, google can adapt, as mentioned above.
  • WebDude68
    Even if in the future people only needed to use a handful of sites (doubtful), that would not be the endgame of their information-seeking or navigational needs. You'd still need to search for specific documents, pages, answers, nuggets of info, etc. Finding facebook.com is not the same thing as finding my friend John Smith on Facebook. Language-based search is still a navigational "magic carpet" that lets you quickly find and access a needle in an informational haystack faster than browsing hierarchical directory structures or other navigational mechanisms.
  • Pat Kelly
    Steve Ballmer is a meat head, the world knows that already. What was the point of this awful story? No one will ever know how to find everything ... we still loose our keys in our own home and we're the ones who placed them in the first place. Its not just about searching, it is about the search engine understanding the context of our lives so when I search for bike it knows I am probably looking for a child's bike, a mountain bike, or a motorcycle. Search isn't going to become less important, it is becoming more important and more contextually relevant. GOOG is a decade ahead of MSFT and will only grow their lead. MSFT had a fantastic run but the run is over. Are you hungover or something?
  • Ask me again in 10 years.
  • Andrew
    Can we make a different distinction in 'search'?
    Things I don't know yet, because I've never seen them before and things I already know but am currently not able to access conveniently. Arguably, the former is the exclusive domain of monster search engines with all their search infrastructure. While the latter (call it 'recall') represents opportunity for start-ups who can more effectively index personal content.

    Recall has the potential to deliver more value than search in the longer term, because it is more personal.
    Consider Google Wave, whose value to its inventors would presumably be in the tendency for users to have so many Wavelets that they will need a Search Engine to find what they are looking for. The SE can then extract value from its access to highly personalised structured data. However, since my Wave content is already available to me, it is not self-evident that a full search engine should be needed for this task. This is why Google's decision to release Wave as an open protocol is both brilliant and risky.
  • Eagleal
    Everyone here missed the point.

    However, Google is not going to be killed by anyone, it's going to be killed from the system who brought it to, and stated, the modern market and what capital means, The Capitalist System.
    Google as all of the old companies, becomes to big and heavy, so in the big ocean (per Buoyancy) it will sink.
  • Interesting point. You are right if Google just stand and watch!
  • This is a rediculous argument as it assumes Google will just stand around and do only this one thing forever, they won't (and aren't). What people need to be looking for is an AdWords killer. As long is there is a web with data on it, people will use one main page to find it period. My mom doesn't even know what Google is, she just knows it can point her to whatever she wants. She can't even remember her Yahoo pass word, how on earth will she remember 12 different websites focusing on verticles like Travel, Cooking, Entertainment etc. For her and 80% of the planet it's the same experience, no one wants to have to 'think' about where to find hundreds of data points they seek. they just want to find them.

    That said, it's AdWords/AdSense that is what would take the wind out of Google's sales. You'll never kill them in search but if you can figure out a way to monetize the web more efficiently, then you will beat them in revenue and subsequently, maybe then you could supplant them in search like Google supplanted all the search that came before them. In their case they did it better and monetized it better.

    Can anyone do search better than Google? I'm totally unconvinced by anything I've seen so far accept the opportunities that Twitter offers (just the potential, not the current reality). If they (Twitter) figure out how to monetize their real-time search then, they stand the best chance. As far as Microsoft's Bing, they could have spent that 100 million dollars on hookers and black jack in Vegas and had a better chance at dethroning Google.
  • Pay-Per-Chat is the AdWords/AdSense killer. http://www.searchrank.com/blog/2009/03/stumpedi...
  • To be honest, if anything kills Google, it will only be bad management and nothing else.
  • anony.mouse
    You are off the tracks by a long way dude - completely nonsensical article with no basis or factual evidence. Neither does the whimsical future you talk about seem likely. Are yoiu a Balmer fanboy?
  • Walter Mrak
    I have been bugging Google to create an operating system for 10 years now. It appears that perhaps others have been doing the same; Android.

    Hopefully we will have a Google operating system in the not too distant future. Then people like Balmer, and the guy who wrote this article will realize something:

    Don't expect luck, coincidence, “proprietoriztion,” offensive, obscene, unethical copyright legislation, and an ill-informed populace, to continue blindly accepting what is offered.

    Within 10 minutes of my first encounter with Google, it became my search engine. Within a day or so, Microsoft's reliance on the above mentioned, became obvious to me.

    Microsoft has since then become a metaphor in our household for everything the current Apple commercials so wittily recognize and portray.

    Microsoft is short-sighted, foolish, greedy, dumb, a liar, a miss-representer, and is evil.

    From Gates’ lucky licensing of Dos to IBM, exploiting the elder Chairman’s ignorance,

    “What would anyone need a computer in their home for?“

    To later exposing Gates’ exact same own ignorance,

    “Why would anyone ever need more than 16 megabytes of ram?”

    Microsoft has shown that with the aid of misguided legislators and perverse legislation that protects a monopoliser form its victims, it was able to get to where it is, without innovation, improvement or even customer satisfaction.

    Indeed, it figured out how to exploit even dissatisfaction by blaming the consumer for ignorance and by introducing updates, fixes, “improvements,” and other software “glitch” remedies, to the extent that it was obvious to even the writers of the movie “Octopussy” wherein the evil megalomaniac tells Bond,

    “We will introduce software glitches in our product so that our customers will have to keep paying us endlessly for “fixes” to make their computers function.”

    Apple improves its products. Google improves its products. Most companies used to do this. Since the “Microsoftification” of Western Civilization, Consumer acceptance of mediocre products and self-blame for ignorance, has caused even those companies to re-examine their policies and begin to release ill-conceived or poorly manufactured products.

    Let’s start over with a decent company who creates products with the customer’s needs in mind. Let’s start over with a Google operating system we can trust; one funded by advertisers whose products we would benefit from and who would cover the cost of the OS and its evolution.
  • Ballmer is right only if you consider that, on the face of changes, Google will stay stopped.

    C'mom, Google won't, and it is not now. See Wave, Docs, Gmail, Maps, etc. Google has already taken cover in other areas other than search engines.
  • Ben
    im just a kid and i couldnt live without google
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