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The big search upgrade and how Amazon could

beat Google at its own game
Ivan Bercovich, Graphiq June 18, 2016 10:10 AM
Despite the tremendous technological innovation weve witnessed over the past two decades (smartphones,
cloud computing, social networks), search interfaces and their underlying mechanics have remained fairly
stagnant. The familiar portals of the early naughts are largely what we see today: empty text boxes, usertyped queries and blue-link responses that point users to web pages or documents.
We think of search as being a state-of-the-art product an index that can provide answers on anything.
But think about it. Isnt it strange that some people are good at Googling, as if its a skill? If this were a
human-to-human interaction and I asked my smart friend a question, I wouldnt have to be good at
asking questions to get the information I needed. Shes smart, she can infer what Im saying, regardless of
how I phrase it. If Im ambiguous, shell ask for clarification. If my question is too broad, shell ask for more
details. If I am too precise and she doesnt know, shell inform me that she doesnt know.

Why search isnt working

Despite years of aggressive investment, search technology still fails to solve meaningful, tangible problems
in the world today. This is largely due to:

No authority. When the Internet started, the digerati were the ones writing and sharing content.
There were lots of answers to lots of questions, and we trusted the answers. Now, everyone writes
and games the system, and the Internet is full of spam and trolling. Authority is becoming harder to
obtain, and were left not only trying to decipher the information were reading but also wondering if
the source were retrieving it from is credible. Ultimately, you have no idea if the answer youre
getting is right or wrong. Google has made progress fighting spam, but the cold war between
spammers and search is bound to continue until a paradigm shift occurs.
Higher expectations. People are becoming more data literate and expecting data and facts to back
up their queries. Now more than ever, everyone is asking an increasing number of complex
questions. In the past, people searched for the best ski resorts. Now, they want to know which ski
resort has the optimal balance of vertical drop, skiable acres, and total snowfall. They have more
precise questions; they want more precise answers.
Interfaces are shrinking. Perhaps mobile interfaces were once little desktop interfaces, but the
paradigm continues to shift away from traditional GUIs. There is no space. Were seeing an uptick in
the popularity of voice interfaces. The traditional search experience with a bunch of blue links that
open pages of articles and ads does not shine in a mobile world.

With the advent of the Information Age, people are increasingly digitally literate and have higher
expectations of technologys ability to answer their most complex questions especially when theyre on

the go. Theyre not going to tolerate a slow experience, an ad that interrupts their workflow, or a system
that fails to answer their questions.

Tomorrows search: more authority, precision, adaptability

Do we know what the future of search and information retrieval looks like? Not exactly, but we know it has
to include:

Authority. An evolved level of editorial oversight and curation of content, which will provide more
authority.
Precision. A precise understanding of what the user is asking, and being able to give them exactly
what they need in a digestible and consumable format.
Adaptability. An acknowledgement that society has evolved to consume different types of media
beyond text including data, videos, and visualizations and being able to provide the user with
the right format at the right time.

Weve created a world where information is free and readily available for anyone who has a question.
Incentives like advertising and online reputation are in place, encouraging people to share their wisdom.
However, information in this system is created in fragments, requiring little to no production process.
Communities like Stack Overflow and Quora are full of people willing to provide their expertise, but that
doesnt always align with the trust factor.
Additionally, continuing to have myriads of tiny websites with tiny edits from a million sources is not
sustainable and will not suffice for creating an experience that gives people answers to unique, long tail
questions, nor is it scalable or fresh. In order to build the next generation of search, we need to do more
than just index other peoples content.

Knowledge graphs will power the new search

Google Maps is a great example of what the future of search should look like augmented public data,
powered by a knowledge graph. Google has thousands of employees on staff constantly correcting errors,
machine-learning clusters interpreting addresses, cars driving through streets to get ground-level data,
satellites taking photos, and millions of phones constantly sending updates. With this infrastructure, Google
is able to maintain a real-time representation of the world and answer geospatial queries that have never
been asked.
As humans continue to ask more complex questions, the future of search is going to need to adopt a
similar model for every single knowledge vertical. This will be impossible if there isnt a level of complexity
and infrastructure built into the process. This same level of complexity and process needs to be applied to
all data domains in the future. Google has started to provide more structured results in its search product,
but its still lacking a lot of information. Given search was built on the foundation of crawling others content,
where will this data come from? Will Google change its approach and become a content creator?
Google is actively investing in a knowledge graph, and it is not the only one. Microsoft, IBM Watson, Apple,
Yahoo, and many others (yes, including Graphiq, the company I work at) are working on developing a

knowledge graph of their own. A knowledge graph allows people to ask questions in a precise manner and
instantly get an answer even if nobody has asked the question before. The future of search has to be
sufficiently broad in scope, precise in information, and instantaneous in delivering results.

Googles dilemma
Despite being the strong and obvious player to lead search into the next century, Google will have to
confront one of the biggest challenges any successful technology firm has to overcome the Innovators
Dilemma. It evolved in a desktop world, when it made sense for search engines to show content and ads
side-by-side. But todays world is not a desktop world. And when you make 90% of your revenue from
advertising, how do you pivot? How about when mobile advertising is not working as well as we had
hoped? How do advertisers display an ad on your Apple Watch? What do you do when theres no clear
answer as to how a voice interface (i.e. Siri) will ever generate revenue from advertising?
With each paradigm shift, the walls protecting incumbents will weaken, creating a window of opportunity
for new players. Mobile has already put a lot of evolutionary pressure on search, and the imminent
transition to conversational interfaces (voice and messaging) will push even harder. In many ways, Google is
the best positioned to reign in this new world. It has the data and engineering expertise to do so. But its
this very fact that puts Google in the middle of the Innovators Dilemma. If it disrupt the market, it will hurt
its own bottom line the most. If a less qualified actor takes action, Google will innovate less, but its cash cow
will live longer.

The big contenders

So who are the contenders to take over the billionaire business of information retrieval?

As predicted, Apples Tim Cook announced at WWDC this week that the company will be opening
Siri to developers. But he didnt stop there. Apple is aggressively investing in conversational
interfaces and creating a whole new ecosystem, which includes opening iMessage to developers. A
few killer apps could carve away market share from search engines: sport scores/stats, news,
restaurant reviews. Will Apples new APIs be powerful enough to create the right opportunities? How
quickly (if ever) will iPhone users embrace this new paradigm? How long will it take to develop
critical mass with conversational apps?
Facebook didnt impress with its first release of M, its intelligent assistant. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg
is quickly developing his AI superpowers. Messenger and WhatsApp are the biggest chat platforms
in the world. Smartphone users spend a LOT of time on Facebook-owned apps, likely more than on
native iOS apps, such as iMessenger. With the shift from stand-alone apps to conversational apps,
Facebook might have an upper hand over Apple.
Amazon is an interesting player right now. The company gets its revenue from retail, so it
theoretically could provide free answers 24 hours a day, as long as there is an occasional purchase.
Whereas, 90% of Googles revenue stream is ads. With Amazons release of Alexa, you could argue
the company might be the future of search. Its not disrupting its own business model, its enhancing
it. By getting people conditioned to talking to Alexa, theyre getting people used to talking to

Amazon. What will this lead to? More purchases. Theyre in a position to care less about ads; its all
about the purchase.
Who will make this future a reality? Google has done a great job with maps but is struggling in disrupting
itself with general search. Bing has done some interesting work in structured search, but nothing
revolutionary over Google. Siri had an early shot, but Apple delayed further investments for years.
Facebook had some good initiative, but we have yet to see something concrete. IBM Watson on the
enterprise side, or the academic Wolfram Alpha could have a good hand, but we have yet to see traction.
And then there are the smaller newcomers such as Graphiq, ViV, and Hound. The race to own the future of
search has started, and one of the biggest businesses in history is up for grabs.
One thing is certain: Whoever wins will have to build the largest data library in the universe.
Ivan Bercovich is vice president of engineering at Graphiq, where he has spent the last six years leading the
development of its knowledge platform.
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