[Rumor] Google Developing New Search Tech that Will Know What You Want Before You Ask

dgstorm

Editor in Chief
Staff member
Jan 5, 2011
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googlepredictsx519.jpg

This news report sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but apparently, industry intel suggests that Google is trying to develop new search technology that can offer you up predictive search information before you even ask. According to a report over at MIT's Technology Review website, Google wants to be almost like an oracle of information and improve its search functionality to near mystical levels. Their intention is to develop search so that Google can offer up useful information contextually before the user even asks for it. They are using targeted surveys with mobile users to develop their criteria, and they eventually want the system to target users with information based upon their environment determined by GPS location and other factors. Here's a quote with some additional detail from Jon Wiley, the lead user experience designer for Google search.

Contextual information provided by mobile devices—via GPS chips and other sensors—can provide clues about a person and his situation, allowing Google to guess what that person wants. “We’ve often said the perfect search engine will provide you with exactly what you need to know at exactly the right moment, potentially without you having to ask for it,” says Wiley.

Google is already taking the first steps in this direction. Google Now offers unsolicited directions, weather forecasts, flight updates, and other information when it thinks you need them (see “Google’s Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead”). Google Glass—eyeglass frames with an integrated display (see “You Will Want Google’s Goggles”)—could also provide an opportunity to preëmptively answer questions or provide useful information. “It’s the pinnacle of this hands-free experience, an entirely new class of device,” Wiley says of Google Glass, and he expects his research to help shape this experience.

Google may be heading toward a new kind of search, one that is very different from the service it started with, says Jonas Michel, a researcher working on similar ideas at the University of Texas at Austin. “In the future you might want to search very new information from the physical environment,” Michel says. “Your information needs are very localized to that place and event and moment.”

Finding the data needed to answer future queries will involve more than just crawling the Web. Google Now already combines location data with real-time feeds, for example, from U.S. public transit authorities, allowing a user to walk up to a bus stop and pull out his phone to find arrival times already provided.

What do you guys think? Is Google's technology getting too spooky for its own good, or do you like the direction in which everything is evolving?

Source: TechnologyReview
 

idontknow

Alternate ATF App Tester
Jan 13, 2011
2,102
175
I had enough already of keyboards that don't let me use the words I want because they are divining other words for me....I don't need google to do that too!
 

J515OP

Super Moderator
Staff member
Jan 6, 2011
5,172
899
I for one welcome our new oracle of information (great phrase btw) overlords! :D

JP
 

weezyrider

Senior Member
Jul 29, 2011
84
6
It won't unless you want social junk. How's Google going to know whether I have an astronomy or geology question?

If it goes by your profile, there is no place you can list that you are not interested in local, entertainment, food, directions, etc. and I'm not. I don't have a profile for simply that reason.
 
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