Google is committed to NOT being a Search Engine

[tedster]

Many members here have observed that Google is no longer a traditional search engine. This is now an established fact. Google does not intend to remain a search engine:

Recently, Matt Cutts delivered the opening keynote for SES San Francisco (August 2012) where he clearly mentioned that one of the key focuses for Google is to move away from being a search engine and focus on becoming a knowledge engine. Google is so committed to this that Google's Search Quality team has been renamed to Google's Knowledge Team.

[searchenginewatch.com...]
This would be a major shift in what we know as the web. How to get found by new visitors would evolve in a big way. Those who depend on search traffic should be paying close attention to every step along this path because it WILL impact our own business models.

As one member said in our Next Generation SEO [webmasterworld.com] discussion, "Adapt or Die".

[indyank]

The only way for such third party sites to escape from this kind of scraping is not have fixed html tags for facts or answers on their site. They have to mix up the html tags or find out some innovative ways to prevent Google from doing such automated scraping.

The first important step for webmasters who do not like these Google moves is to stop using any free google product. These free products are all knitted together to serve their information or knowledge engine dreams in several ways.

[edited by: indyank at 3:02 pm (utc) on Oct 8, 2012]

[indyank]

There is a huge difference between showing a thumbnail linked to a website compared to just showing a thumbnail. Google is already providing the thumbnail image version of a search - it's the search results.

If you notice carefully, you would find that they do link to destinations including wikipedia towards the bottom of those answers. For example check the definitions for any English word and you will see them linking to those sites from whom they scrape.

[Maurice]

@simonmc so Googles is going down Yahoos route whist Marissa is trying to reinvent Yahoo.

I do wonder if the internal arguments over this is why she (Marissa) left.

[Leosghost]

If stealing the image from the original creator can be done by any visitor who uses "print screen", and has an account in a crowd sourced scraper like pinterest,( or any other scraper ) all G has to do is link to pinterest ( or any other scraper ) and say that they "found" it on the web ..

Then think of a catchy name like "carousel" to use to show loads of those "found images" as a part of "knowledge graph"..and they'd have "plausible deniability"..they'd just avoid doing it with images that they know originally were scraped from/come from Getty etc..

But Google would never do such as larcenous, duplicitous thing like that ..oh ..wait ..

[edited by: Leosghost at 3:22 pm (utc) on Oct 8, 2012]

[indyank]

Then think of a catchy name like "carousel" to use to show loads of those found images as a part of "knowledge graph"..and they'd have "plausible deniability"..they'd just avoid doing it with images that they know originally were scraped from/come from Getty etc..

but what they show as part of their carousels are thumbnails and they already have the court verdict in their favor. No?

[Leosghost]

Not in the courts where I live..and in whose jurisdiction most of my images live on the servers..and not in the EU..( specifically Ireland )..where Google claim to be based, when it comes to ( not) paying full taxes in the USA like other USA companies..

Some visitor steals an image from a page of mine in France and puts it on pinterest, the fact that G has the tech and uses it in other ways to know that the image is my copyright, means that they cannot hide behind the "it is only a thumbnail" ruling granted in the USA , to show what they know is stolen, from a jurisdiction which does not take that view about thumbnails..

Where they claim to be based as a company, shifts from continent to continent to tax haven islands, according to where they don't want to pay taxes , but do want to get "bri^^^^^lobbied" for court decisions in their favour..

[edited by: Leosghost at 3:31 pm (utc) on Oct 8, 2012]

[indyank]

Not in the courts where I live..and in whose jurisdiction most of my images live on the servers..

right. But AFAIK no one has until now dragged them to courts in places outside U.S., for the scraping they do. Even if anyone manages to win against google outside U.S. (meaning they would make it very difficult by doing everything possible to get the verdict in their favor), all they would do is to stop displaying those knowledge engine elements like carousels, short answers, knowledge graphs etc. in only that jurisdiction or country. This is the approach that they currently adopt for Youtube and I am sure it would be extended to everything else.

[Leosghost]

But AFAIK no one has until now dragged them to courts in places outside U.S., for the scraping they do.

Only because they have waaaaay more money and lawyers than anyone webmaster, and going up against them in court could take a lifetime and a fortune while they stall and string it out..that is why no-one has..they are very careful , as I said, to never use thumbnails from those companies that have deep legal pockets, whether inside or outside the USA..Google's image recognition tech makes sure that they don't get into fights with the "big dogs" of images, and cause a precedent ruling against them..anywhere..in the USA or outside..

[gehrlekrona]

All they need to do is to add an agreement to AdSense that they can use whatever they want from your site.....

[indyank]

Only because they have waaaaay more money and lawyers than anyone webmaster, and going up against them in court could take a lifetime and a fortune while they stall and string it out..that is why no-one has..they are very careful , as I said, to never use thumbnails from those companies that have deep legal pockets, whether inside or outside the USA..Google's image recognition tech makes sure that they don't get into fights with the "big dogs" of images, and cause a precedent ruling against them..anywhere..in the USA or outside..

yeah it is all well thought out and meticulously planned EVIL from some of the "brightest minds". :)

[bfpeters]

Wanted to add a new post that Google launched today about being the search engine of the future which talk about the further inclusion of the knowledge graph and sliders of images and doing a better job of guessing your intentions.
[googleblog.blogspot.com...]

[diberry]

This might finally answer our questions about why the SERPs are getting worse instead of better: they're not top priority anymore.

I don't think traditional search is dead, but maybe Google is just sick of it - from their perspective, it's all fighting SEO and being asked by confused elected officials why they can't just keep pirates out of the SERPs. Maybe they're ready to let all that be someone else's headache - and in that sense, it could work for webmasters by shifting the Google search dominance to other engines.

OTOH, the content stealing that we've already seen with Google, ehow, etc., is alarming. Maybe it finally really is time for a mass blocking of the bot.

[mhansen]

Wanted to add a new post that Google launched today

Link blog is dated August 8th, 2012

[tedster]

Indeed it is. Here's our discussion from the day it was published: Google Makes Knowledge Graph SERPs Global [webmasterworld.com]

[albo]

Once again, google knows what we want better than we do.

- Jez123

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

- Eric Schmidt

[bhartzer]

A search engine is merely a site that is a pass-thru for users, as they pass thru, on their way to another site.

A knowledge engine will tend to keep people on the site longer. If they get what they need, they will not need to go on to another site to find it.

We all know that when you keep people on your site longer, you make more money.

[Shepherd]

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."
- Eric Schmidt

August 2010

CEO Eric Schmidt made a surprise announcement Thursday that he's stepping aside for co-founder Larry Page to become chief executive

January 2011

[J_RaD]

remember when I said goog is trying to become the new AOL of the 90s......

yea 10x

and its almost the same.. you used to take AOL users hook them up to the "real" internet and they'd say wow i never knew all this was out here.... cause all they knew was "aol land" .

the old aol user now fits the new goog users.

[jmccormac]

@J_RaD Interesting idea about the Google user becoming the AOL user. However if you look at Facebook and how businesses now include a Facebook "keyword", Facebook users might be closer to the AOL user of the 1990s. And Google just can't tap into that walled garden. Rather than emulating AOL's model, Google has, through its range of products, begun to emulate Yahoo.

Regards...jmcc

[J_RaD]

either way we are going headed into werido fragmented internet land.

Nobody is stepping up to fill the gap either... anyone new that pops up just wants the user 100% walled garden style.

HEY YOU... YEA YEA... *thunk* in the van GOGOGOGOGOGOGO

[rajivatre]

IMO all this google shift is happening because of Anti trust case being investigated against google.
[webmasterworld.com ]
Logic is simple.
Once they declare that they are not search engine but they are knowledge engine or whatever.
They may get away with this Anti trust case. In that case they can argue that they are committed to show the different pieces of knowledge (read maps, videos, images, news, snippets etc) and they dont work like a search engine any more which merely shows list of websites related to the search query and link to those websites.

My 2 cents.

I remember Microsoft had argued in their own Anti trust case that IE in Windows OS is like car stereo provided in a car, Free of cost.
So basically google is doing the same thing creating some base for the arguments in court.


Thanks
Rajiv

[webindia123]

Knowledge engine is nothing but extracting snippets of information from various websites and presenting them in their own verticals. Thats next level of plagiarism where in eating visitorship of inforich websites and diverting them to their own verticals. Google is known as no. 1 search engine, but its strategy to concentrate on using search visitors to increase own page views and thereby generate revenues would surely lead to its demise. If they think, they can make change in user behavior then they should come out with something remarkable.

Its not easy to force users to adapt new technology and interface. No one can become apple by fudging with others content. And google has history on closing down several replicated projects which never took off the way they wanted them to be.

Replication is ancient. If they want to force users to follow them then better they plan it on original elements.

Its good for them if they remain search engine.

- Lalit Kumar

[bsand715]

Stephen W. Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Google the worlds largest scraper is under this illusion.

WHY is Bing's marketing department not jumping all over this?

[diberry]

WHY is Bing's marketing department not jumping all over this?

Maybe it's Bing engineers who will testify in the anti-trust suit if it happens, so they're keeping a low profile for now. I've been thinking, who else can help the government decode the algorithm, if the suit gets to that point?

[edited by: diberry at 3:43 pm (utc) on Oct 15, 2012]

[SevenCubed]

WHY is Bing's marketing department not jumping all over this?

Because jumping all over something uses up a lot of energy, and money in this case. I think Bing, and others, are adopting an aikido approach to google and letting them defeat themselves through their own aggressiveness. But if they somehow don't defeat themselves, surely somewhere out there is a project in the idea or early development phase that will eventually topple google if one of the current players don't. If that's the case, it'll likely come from outside the USA because it will require a different business cultural approach. Most of the challengers, past and present, are stewing in the same business cultural philosophy and that makes it especially difficult to beat google on their own turf.

[TypicalSurfer]

who else can help the government decode the algorithm

You don't need to decode anything from a regulatory standpoint, that is largely a red herring entertained on message boards. The only thing a regulatory body has to concern itself with is the result of an entities action. Does this behavior harm consumer choice? (yes) or (no).

Google likes to semantically hide behind the "algorithm" but truth be told an algo isn't calling the shots, its just executing them.

[indyank]

I pity the folks who think the bing team will playing this out. They would be looking at Google with envy and hope that one day they will be able to do the same. Choosing between them is like choosing between a rock and a hard place.

[diberry]

You don't need to decode anything from a regulatory standpoint, that is largely a red herring entertained on message boards. The only thing a regulatory body has to concern itself with is the result of an entities action. Does this behavior harm consumer choice? (yes) or (no).

Right, but I would have thought they'd need to understand which ranking changes are from the algo and which are manual to determine such issues as whether Google is manually penalizing sites who irritate them, such as Yelp alleges. Because if Google is doing that, then that's definitely harming consumer choice in favor of Google's own agenda. But if they can't determine that Google manually screwed Yelp over, then there is no consumer choice issue. Am i misunderstanding something?

[edited by: diberry at 4:27 pm (utc) on Oct 15, 2012]

[roadhog]

One point google seems to forget, we allow it to index our content/information. But when it stops sending useful hits/people to our domains it is nothing more than a parasite and htaccess is pretty good at keeping them out, the web is bigger then google

[mrguy]

On any site I have that no longer is receiving measurable quality traffic from Google, I’ve blocked Google.

Some of the sites have great original content that people like and use as shown by the direct hits into the site via bookmark or otherwise.

Google can be a knowledge engine all they want but not with my content.

In the beginning, it was a great relationship. I provided Google with good quality content to index and they provided me with good quality traffic to my site. Since that relationship no longer exists, I have no reason to provide content that Google may or may not use in their ever knowing “Knowledge Engine”.