Science fiction. 2075. World without search engines

 

Science fiction. 2075. World without search engines

Today, on my way to the market I came across a few females who were unaware of the world around them, because they were busy talking about their lives, their joys, their daily affairs with life and a lot of other things. 

Then one of them said something that made me realise that in future there will be no need for search engines. Wow, it was a moment of revelation and great realisation. I immediately thought of Mr. Brin, Mr. Page and Mr. Gates too, because we all interact with Google almost everyday. And Microsoft, which somehow lost its dominance over the market that it once used to rule, has launched ChatGPT in an effort to lure the Google users to engage with their search engine, Bing. Which now offers a chat based search interface. 

Nevertheless, almost all search engines in the front end act as search engines, but in the backend they are all feeding an enormous amount of data and daily human interactions to their respective databases which help them make their systems smarter, intuitive, efficient and eventually human-like as far as thinking and processing of data is concerned. To achieve culmination in General Intelligence and advanced intelligence too. And without these data interactions it will be impossible to accomplish.

So, it would not be incorrect to assume that a typical search engine is a precursor to something far more intelligent that will emerge in the market in a few years from now. 

But, will the search engine be needed in the future and would interfaces like ChatGPT be required in the future? 

When I overheard one of the women talking to her friend, I felt most of them are going the GE way. Because it is not technology that turns old, it is the end purpose that the technology serves that becomes old because the target audience that it interacts with prefers something better, easier and more accurate. And it is true for search engines too.

So what really did this female say? She said something very simple, “Today I bought a scarf from x site and yesterday I purchased slippers from amazon!”

That is all she said and there was nothing culpable about it. Nothing at all!

But for businesses that are huge and generate revenues in billions of USD, not thinking is not an option at all, and procrastinating and not evolving to meet the future demands of target audience and trends, is suicide. But this is a different kind of suicide, where the noose is cast by the hangman that lives in the future, and as less innovative businesses approach towards this future, the noose gets tighter and tighter, and eventually constricts the business, leaving it gasping. And when businesses are left in this state; and gasping. A few manage to think the unthinkable and survive. Whereas the rest slip into a curfew like state, where they are under the siege of technological irrelevance. That gradually extirpates the purpose that its target audience, during its days of popularity related easily with. And finally the business hangs on the noose forever. Never to be recovered again!

And in the current scenario it is a race against time for companies like Google and Microsoft, who will have to think the unthinkable if they have to retain their glory. They need to come up with a couture like business model that appeals to their target customers and it should comprise all countermeasures that will keep them ahead of their rivals even after 100 years. 

It is a well known fact that these companies have diversified into many other businesses as well e.g. Bio Technology, Nuclear Energy, Agriculture etc. etc. But none of these businesses will generate income to the tune of Google Ads and Microsoft’s windows and Ms. office.

But what I overheard one of the women talk about is a daily street vocabulary we come across everywhere. So why bother, or should one at all bother? To be honest, the women who were gossiping should not bother, but the business leaders who run these multinational giants ought to bother! How conscientious they are in this regard will be proven just in a few years from now.

In future search will not be open ended or external in nature. It will be targeted, and highly taste dependent; and it will mostly happen on portals like amazon, where the entire world is the market, yet the search is close ended and internal.

In the future, a close ended search trend will dominate the world. And it is inevitable there will be a mega app that will replace everything that exists online and it will be here that search will take place and it will be a close ended search. But it will offer a couple of fields that will enable the user to narrow down the search further. Allowing him/her to land on the product of choice or service of choice ( anything and everything of his/her choice ) and then proceed with the next steps. 

When it comes to this, both Google and Bing lack this precision driven and sharp search. And by 2030, if the same trend continues, I guess nobody will be using them. Google missed a huge opportunity when it did not realise that YouTube could be the world’s leading video streaming portal that could replace everything video related. They still can if they stack videos in different categories and then redevelop it like a movie portal. They have a huge advantage in the form of users and their state of the art technology that allows video streaming even at the lowest bandwidth. If they take these aspects into consideration and the scope to scale YouTube, it can be the next search giant, with close ended searches in everything video related, right from retail businesses to showcasing a Boeing aircraft to prospective buyers. It has endless potential because it is a compendium of video centric knowledge.

But, with the conventional Google search and bing search, innovation is required if they do not want to go the Nokia way. And the growing trend of closed ended search will offer them the track that they should follow.

The woman I overheard had done two online transactions, but nowhere did she mention Google or Microsoft. In the late 90s Google would surface in every conversation where people referred to anything online related. 

But this trend is declining, and for businesses when the brand name turns into a Moon without the shine, there is a lot to worry about. Bing with ChatGPT is gaining some popularity but it appears to be dropping, because it generates results which appear more like lessons and summaries, with a strong view point. But when a user executes an online search there are few searches where the intention is to gain a viewpoint, but a neutral and not so dominant view point. Neutrality of the view point helps this user to establish his/her own opinion or views. 

ChatGPT does not perform this filter as of now. Google does it, but for them it comes in the form of blessing in disguise. Google shows 10 results on each page or more, and then leaves it upto the user to review each and then arrive at a conclusion. 

And in future, the search engine that can achieve this filtration will win. And the search engine that works like a close ended search will be the king who has defeated all.

From the conversation between the females I could only conclude that we are getting very close to the day when search will be close ended and when SERPs ( search engine result pages ) will be replaced by CER ( close ended results ) and to achieve this it is necessary to offer filtration at search level, where one can choose the category of search and then execute the search. 

With this initial filter entered by the user, the search engine will gain 30% insight into what the user is seeking, and then when he/she enters the keyword, the search engine will now gain an additional insight of 40%. The remaining 30% should not be left to guess work, but to the closest probabilities associated with the initial 30% and the keyword based 40%. With this done, the search engines can now begin to behave like closed search and over the time develop better means to achieve 100% accuracy.

100% accuracy is still achievable, but for that search box will have to offer at least two fields to categorise the search terms. For example:

1- Literature  ( Field one )

2- Shakespeare ( Field two )

Key phrase- Explain the last scene from The Tempest

1 and 2 should not be drop downs, it makes the experience boring, it should allow them to type in the text. 

At least that is what was evident from the conversation between the females today. And as amazon grows in its global reach, it will for obvious reasons take away 45% of the search revenue from the search engines, because it offers close ended and highly accurate search.

But then there is a loophole too in this model that allows search engines to take advantage of.

On amazon it is mostly third parties that sell the products by creating virtual shops. And those who are quality conscious prefer to buy from the main company that develops/manufactures the product. And it offers a lot of advantage to search engines, provided they are able to work on a model that offers these authentic manufacturers’ a marketplace like representation, and pulls products from their official sites and showcases them in SERPs, now CER, and allows the user to proceed with transaction, although it is happening on Google’s frontend, the actual transaction uses the official website’s payment gateway/s and deducts few cents per transaction. It will be a marketplace of the future and this will also rid the world of monopoly, and offer customers a better and a much wider choice.

However, at this stage it will be the UX ( user experience ) that will determine whether Amazon , Google or bing wins. But Google being a giant search engine with a massive global reach, has 90% chances to win and emerge as the new giant of the industry. And it shall redefine search, at least for another 20 years.

However this does not mean that Google should take it easy, in business the day you take it easy, it is game over. Google at this stage will have to think the following:

1- How can it be omnipresent?

2- How can it be associated with everything?

3- How can it redefine search when AI driven interactive machines too offer search like interfaces?

4- Why will people search online in 2035 and beyond in presence of neural network?

5- And use data from searches to develop new thinking tools that will prove useful in the future. But a highly advanced future, say in 2075. It can easily use its infinite data to train models on recognising many important aspects of human life that matter to all humans, and accordingly make suggestions. It will be phenomenal and needed in future, because people may have all the conveniences in future, but they will have very less time. As the intelligent and self aware network grows in our cities, homes and everywhere, search will have to be redefined because it will be repurposed by the users already. And if these technology giants want to be these intelligent networks that surround us all in future, then that too is an option, but in this domain too there shall be fierce competition. 

Nevertheless, coming back to the present, close ended search is the future of search because people are bored of open ended search results. It comes with a warning though, “ It has to be a closed ended search result, that does not express a strong opinion, and knows when to express strong, mild and neutral opinion.” Any search engine that can achieve this will rule the future of search for the next 15 to 20 years. And be the trail blazer who never relied on blandishments, but on data based facts, and innovation achieved at the speed of light to surprise all its competitors and the hangman that is peeping at these multinational businesses from the future.

So, in 2075, Google may exist and so may Microsoft too, but whether they will still be the preeminent technology companies in 2075, only time shall tell. And it was in this anticipation that I wrote the science fiction novel titled, They Loved in 2075. Although it is a romance science fiction, it talks of brave technology with the plot of a story that is highly romantic.

To know how humans will express love in the presence of self aware machines, and to know how technology will shape human emotions, human feelings, please do check the science fiction novel, titled They Loved in 2075!

In 2075 what appears vacuous, now may seek new and useful meaning, and what appears exceedingly meaningful, maybe completely irrelevant and bogus. And it is this ability to draw them apart that helps a business survive and always stay beyond the reach of the hangman from the future who is peeping and always holding the noose. And my argument is simple: in 2075, the hangman from the future would have gained a new level of intelligence too, and possess the noose that can reach farther!