As people in relationships spend time with each other they start to leverage each others natural strengths to efficiently store information about the world around them. "Honey, what is the name of my Aunt's employer?" "Babe, what do you call that thing that heats bread?" They rely on each other to store information that is mutually beneficial. Some believe this process is one of the reasons breakups are so hard. “I feel like when s/he left, s/he took a part of me.” It is common to hear statements similar to this because when it comes to memory, it is more true than many may realize.
While this phenomenon has historically happened between two people offline, it is now happening online between people and technology. How many times have you checked Google for a fact that you once knew? How many times have you Googled for a resource that you have already read? Like it or not, Google is quickly becoming a second brain in much the same way loved ones have done in the past. While this search engine has benefits that humans don’t (ubiquity), it does have some severe limitations that should be examined.
The self declared mission of the people who run Google is to “organize the world’s information...”. While they have done a remarkable job of this online, they have failed to do this offline in the tangible world. To understand these unspoken failures, all you need to do is examine the five major senses humans use to organize the world’s information.
Limitations
Sight
“Who is that guy?” “I recognize that place, where was that scene filmed?” “What is the name of that color?” For most people, sight is the primary sense for experiencing the world. While technology does exist for identifying objects within images (facial recognition algorithms, OCR, color detection, etc...) you can’t utilize these tools directly through Google. This may possibly be the biggest limitation of Google. Be it remembering the name of a person after a date or an entire government agency trying to identify a suspect, identifying someone or something by sight is critical for organizing the world’s information.
Smell
Smell is the closest sense tied to memory. Have you ever walked by a stranger and instantly been flooded with memories of a significant other who happened to wear the same perfume or cologne? It can be a jarring experience. Want to identify that scent? Google can’t help you. While the technology exists for detecting smells and there are databases for identifying smells, a method to easily cross reference and identify a smell online is not available.
Hearing
You are watching How I Met Your Mother and you recognize the voice in the opening sequence. Whose voice is that? You hear an obscure tune as a car blaring loud music drives by your home. What is the name of that song? Like the situation with sight, the technology for identifying sounds exists (Shazam, SoundHound, etc...) but it is not available through Google. While you can search via verticals for text, video and images, you can’t search for sounds. This is almost certainly a legal limitation rather than a technology one. (After all, Google can identify audio clips in YouTube videos.)
Taste
You are traveling in Greece and you order the most interesting looking item on the menu. When it arrives, it looks like nothing you have ever seen. You bite into it and instantly recognize the flavors but can’t remember the name of the meal as it is hidden by an “unique” texture. Again, Google won’t help you (although a napkin might). The same problem happens more frequently with allergies. Want to make sure a meal a friend made for you doesn’t have an ingredient you are allergic to? Some technology can help but Google isn’t one of them.
Touch
BEEP BEEP BEEP! It is 6:00 AM and your alarm clock is screaming. Eyes still closed and crusty, you reach across your bed and use touch to identify the snooze button on your alarm clock. Later that same day, you reach into your bag and navigate its contents by touch to pull out your cell phone. Although more subtlely tied to memory than the other senses, touch can also help you identify objects.
But why would you need to search for something by touch if the object is already at arms length? Good question... unless you are blind. Many blind people use their sense of touch to catalogue the world. Imagine you are not able to see and you find something new and want to know what it is. A friend might be able to help but Google won’t.
And these major limitations are only the beginning:
Where are you?
In the United States, the most common text message is “where are you”. While other websites (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare) have been getting better at answering this question, Google has largely remained stagnant.
Where did I put that?
You are getting ready for work but can’t for the life of you remember where you put your favorite shirt. This type of situation happens daily. Be it car keys, shoes or your little sister, countless man hours have been spent looking for things. When it comes to finding the location of personal items, again Google can’t help.
So Google has some major limitations, why is that a big deal?
These limits are worth writing a blog post about for two reasons; context and awareness.
The great thing about being alive is that everyone is constantly at the forefront of human progress. Right now we are the most evolved we have ever been. And right now, we are even more evolved than when you read that last sentence. It is very likely that while you have read this post, someone, somewhere has invented something that will make your life better moving forward. Google is a great example of that. The limitations I listed above could be fixed with the creation of new features. That is not the point. The point is that while we are currently living in the most technologically advanced time that has ever existed, we still have a long way to go. The Google of today is not the end-all-be-all, it is only a milepost on a much longer stretch of highway.
The second reason I am writing this post is to promote awareness. Whether you like it or not, Google is becoming an important factor in how you experience the world. Just like a person wearing glasses literally sees the world through predefined frames, humans are seeing the Internet through the limits of Google.
Think about that.
If you were a fish living in a fish bowl, would you know the bowl existed? You would certainly know there was an edge to your environment (the glass) but having been enclosed in a bowl throughout your entire existence, you wouldn’t be able to “organize your world’s information” beyond what you could sense. Google is not sensing the world like we do. It can’t see, smell, hear, taste or touch. Yet at the same time, it is largely defining how we experience the Internet. As the Internet becomes an increasingly essential part of our world, the search engine’s limitations become our limitations. These limitations whether noticed or not are limiting your potential to experience the world.
Update 11/4/10 - 9:20AM:
Hey everyone! I want to address some of the comments below. I stick by my argument that Google's limitations are limiting our potential to view the world but judging by the comments, it looks like I didn't explain my word choice well enough.
I hold Google to the standard they set for themselves. The company's mission is to "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." When I refer to limits as failures I am doing so in the context of their self declared mission. Google does amazing things with technology but it has failed to do what it set out to do. In this way, these major limitations are failures of their mission.
Although no one brought this up (yet!), I want to note that this post could have easily been about Microsoft. I chose to single out Google simply because they are the dominate market leader. Sitting at my desk right now, I have three devices that have Google set as the default search engine. In my life at least, Google is almost ubiquitous.
Below grasshopper commented: "But as with any utility - and Google is just that, a utility - it's important to remember to switch it off. "
I like that comment as it illustrates a point I was touching on but didn't fully hit. (Forgive me as I am taking your comment slightly out of context ;-p) Just like a utility, you can't actually turn it off. Like gas in your house, you can "turn if off" but this just restricts your access. It doesn't actually remove the gas from the lines under and around your house. Grasshopper continued "Go for a walk outside, talk with your friends and family face-to-face, etc." This is where the problem of ubiquity comes into play. Odds are you will be going on a walk but taking your Internet-enabled cell phone with you. As the drastic growth of mobile searches shows, even on a walk you are not experiencing the world without Google. (This is not meant to be an attack on your comment grasshopper, rather your word choice got me thinking and I was inspired to make another point ;-p)
If you have any other related limitations that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post it in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!
I think Google employees and visionaries would completely agree with your post. Information, as we view it on Google, is quite limiting. I believe the technology exists to be less so, but we humans are quite protective of our human status. If Google (or other technology) could immulate the senses you describe in the post, it would be AI. We're decades away from being comfortable with this concept living among us, but people are working on it. How it will be incorporated into a search engine is very intriguing, but "Googlebot" may take on a whole new meaning before long. I can imagine an AI interface in sunglasses or on a vehicle that processes surroundings and provides helpful reminders.
"Googlebot, what restaurant is that smell coming from that we just passed?"
"Driver, that smell comes from Bobby's Pizza. Would you like me to drive you there?"
What interests me about this post are the implications for SEO in a world where Google even approaches the functionality that Danny describes. Imagine it!
"That lavender's <smell> tags are all incorrectly labelled <roses>! That's what's been dragging us down in the ScentSERPS!
"We figured it out - your movie theatre chain has had rel=canonical incorrectly applied by the consulting company. That's why 99% of your theatres have only hobos in attendance while the first theatre has about 60,000 visitors in line every night."
And I suppose while it's got less to do with SEO, we might have an issue with this kind of thing.
"Open the Bay Area Restaurant doors, Google."
"I can't let you do that, Dave."
"Wait, what? Why not?"
"It's a really bad restaurant, Dave. Look at these one-star reviews!"
Anyway, it's nice to see this kind of philosophical stuff popping up on Moz. Thanks for the post, Danny - it's one to think about!
I love when people think completely out of the box.
I am however glad that Google has not figure out all these things, much like how spell check has created a new generation of people with terrible spelling and grammar (I guess we can blame text messaging and rap music too). If Google has a perfect pulse on our memories, locations, and feelings, we may head towards the path of zombieness.
In my opinion, Google can't limit my potential to experience the world unless I choose to let Google do so. Google is a tool, one of many, and it has done more than most to help facilitate learning. However, it's my responsibility to leave my computer and "experience the world" first-hand, not Google's. As previous posters have commented, it's outside the scope of Google to do everything. Personal responsibility and free will will always reign supreme.
Before long we are going to be wearing HUDs that see what we are seeing, hear what we are hearding, and smell what we are smelling non-stop. All the data will be pumped into Google where they will process every second of our lives and enable us to search for things we can only dream of today.
I hope google will never hear what Im hearding. Be it goats, sheep, cattle, whatever. Google has no place in knowing what my flock consists of. lol/
:-D
This is a great article. Borderline creepy, and I can't even begin to imagine how SEO would be done if this was the case. But I bet it would be a good time. Conferences would be entertaining.
I am a little hung up on the hearing. There's usually an easy way to get that information from Google. If you hear a quote, you punch it in. If you heard a song on a show, you look up the show (there's almost always somewhere out there that houses this info), and in the case of How I Met Your Mother, a simple query will give you an answer in the first result: https://www.google.com/search?q=voice+in+how+i+met+your+mother&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1MOZA_en___US397
So maybe Google isn't failing as much in that context. Of course there are still limitations. When the touch-based stuff starts, humanity may lose to the robots!
I caught myself reaching for CTRL+F while turning around in my living room looking for keys. Wouldn't it be just awesome if they went fluoro and levitated in air! I'm looking forward to the day when search engines become intelligent and you can ask them normal human questions to get answers. If Google doesn't do it someone else will and then they will get a feel for what Microsoft and Yahoo went through...
Its not a failure until its actually been tried and its not a limitation unless there is actual need for something, but for me these features will come under "want" not need but i guess we will have to see how our online and offline worlds evolve
I agree with algogmbh here - the word "limitation" would be more appropriate than "faliures". I don't think that many of these can be counted as faliures, and if they are they cannot be Google's faliures. We don't have the technology to input anything except text and sound into Google and as you note the sound part cannot be deciphered for legal and copyright reasons, rather than because Google don't have the technology or ability.
You often refer to very personal experiences with the other senses - the meal in Greece is something I have experienced, as was trying to work out the spices used by a Jerusalem falafel maker to flavour his food. It turned out to be black cardamom and sumac, spices I had never experienced before then, but I only found this out when I bought both a couple of years later on a whim. The only person you can ask the question "what is that taste like the taste I experienced when..." is yourself. In this case, it is a faliure of your memory and nothing but an external brain and a Synapses 2.0 connection can help with.
The touch faliure is technology-based, not Google based. When braille monitors are developed I'm sure blind people will be Googling as much as we are. Until then, there is nothing Google can do to reach this market.
Google being unable to answer the question "where are you" is probably the one thing that may a faliure - they certainly have tried, but the attempts they have made have taken off like a flock of lead balloons. But is that Google, or is that an insinctive anti-Big Brother reaction precipitating through our subconcious?
Coming full circle to the beginning of the post, does this mean all that the headline should be
"Our unspoken faliures, personal and technological,are increasing Google's potential" ?
You've made many good points and I agree on most.
Though I do question the "anti-Big Brother" sentiment you sited as why people may not be utilizing Google featured technology to show their locations.
I'd be more inclined to agree if, say, GPS in phones weren't so widely used. Or, if more people were actually, actively concerned with their privacy on social sites, the Internet at large, and in the real world via accepting ridiculous "security" measures as matter-of-fact (I'm looking at you imaging machines with faulty security and the inability to actually catch dangerous substances).
I think more often than not people forget their living in a world where their actions are continuously monitored "for their own good".
Plus, if the Big Brother concept were to work out, people wouldn't Tweet or check in on Foursquare or update their statuses constantly about where they are now.
While Google has a ways to go on this I'm sure they're working on it. If they can't build it they will acquire the technology. It's only a matter of time.
Personally, I'd prefer to see a map with a moveable arrow indicating "you are here" while I wander aimlessly around a new city. At least then I'd know where I was.
Otherwise, if you don't know where I am, perhaps I don't want to be found.
Good points, in the post and comments.
The thing about social media is that it's always ready to answer the "where are you" question, especially when the answer is something like "in bed" or "going for a bath" (we all have a friend who thinks their baths are that interesting, for their own strange reasons). The question is therefore less of a GPS-related issue and more closely tied up with the suffixes "and what are you doing" and “and why are you there”.
My idea of people not wanting Google as Big Brother was based on the thoughts that so many of us use Google to find out about the things around us, so the thought that they (Google or other people) could know everything about us, down to our thoughts and movements is a strange one and certainly akin to having a large flat-panel TV screen telling you to do exercises in the mornings and berating you if you don’t try hard enough. Though socialism pervades so much of modern culture we as a culture draw the line somewhere; for Google this is it.
The thing about social media is that it's always ready to answer the "where are you" question, especially when the answer is something like "in bed" or "going for a bath" (we all have a friend who thinks their baths are that interesting, for their own strange reasons). The question is therefore less of a GPS-related issue and more closely tied up with the suffixes "and what are you doing" and “and why are you there”.
My idea of people not wanting Google as Big Brother was based on the thoughts that so many of us use Google to find out about the things around us, so the thought that they (Google or other people) could know everything about us, down to our thoughts and movements is a strange one and certainly akin to having a large flat-panel TV screen telling you to do exercises in the mornings and berating you if you don’t try hard enough. Though socialism pervades so much of modern culture we as a culture draw the line somewhere; for Google this is it.
Good points. I touched on your failure vs limitation argument in the update to the post. Well put, I didn't define my context well enough. A few other points you brought up:
"You often refer to very personal experiences with the other senses - the meal in Greece is something I have experienced,"
That was something I have experienced as well :-) I took that anecdote from a dinner I had last week in Greece.
"as was trying to work out the spices used by a Jerusalem falafel maker to flavour his food. It turned out to be black cardamom and sumac, spices I had never experienced before then, but I only found this out when I bought both a couple of years later on a whim."
This is where I am optimistic for growth from Google. If it really wants to organize all of the world information, it will need to be able to answer search queries exactly like the one you mentioned. Imagine how different the world will be once we can do that :-)
I love Greek food - even though it can take time to work out what is going on. I can read enough of it to pronounce the words, although the mixing of two alphabets is very confusing, but it's not usually until the plate arrives that you can start translating. Where in Greece were you?
I think it would be very interesting to see an algorithm that could take the experiences you have had and interpret them. It would have to be taken straight from source, though, since trying to use words would never convey the full amount of information - for example I can picutre the vendor I bought that falafel from, the street I was in (not on, The Arabic Quarter of Old Jerusalem is one huge covered market), and although I enjoy being pretentious about wines and have a decent palate I wouldn't have a chance of describing the flavours and smells at that point. Having Google tapping into my brain would definitely be a step too far, if not a day's hike too far.
However, if I wanted to share that information it would be a different matter - to go so someone and say "here is my memory, I cannot identify this component can you", be it a spice shop owner, a florist or any other kind of expert, would be a powerful thing. I think the difference for me is that I would then have complete control over what I was sharing, and there would be no dubious data storage or data sharing policies.
Hi Danny, I think you post will certainly arouse different opinions. I personally don't bother that Google has some limitations - contrary: I like those limitations. On the other hand I am curious which major breaks are going to come in the future. We have to deal with that anyway.
Hi algogmbh,
I responded to your comment in the post above. Just to clarify, I am glad Google has limits too :-)
Great point about upcoming major breaks. I am excited too!
Dear Danny,
you are an amazing blogger able to shoot funny WBF sessions and then write down quite scaring post like this or this old one.
I say scaring because the lowest note of this post is indeed the same of that 2009 post: Control.
Thanks God still there are those "limitations" with Google (and Bing and Facebook...), even though the Google Goggles can be the 1st step to an all comprehensive ability in catalogue the offline world by the online one.
I don't want to get philosofical, but this sort of cyberpunk panorama with Google controlling our life (and with the paternalistic excuse to serve us better), is something we reluctantly accept because we feel we live easier with it.
And I believe that not far is the time when, like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, we will enter in a shop, and a cute girl from a screen with smooth voice will announce us that we can choose between XX new season shirts selected over the base on our past buys and all the private data (of every kind) we put online.
But, you're right, sometimes we should have to be brave and try to rediscover the world online from a different perspective, quitting the Google frame. Maybe making Stumbles?
Post Scriptum: If you don't remember where you have parked the car you can use Evernote... shot an geolocated photo when parked, upload it on Evernote with a note... and when you're coming back it pop up in your phone saying: "Boy, your car is there!"
Oh yes, Minority Report. I didn't consider it to be an accurate portrayal of the future at the time but as we are moving forward and privacy/security is becoming less available, the scene with the virtual salesperson at the clothing store starts to seem more accessible (FourSquare, mobile advertising).
Looks like I'm going to have to steal somebodys eyeballs to survive in this world! (Its from the movie)
Everything inspired by Philip K. Dick is a good approximation to our next present (just remember Blade Runner)
Got some great controversial points Danny
I'm finding that Google is certainly the additional member in my household, besides the dog. The more I learn about Google the more I find I want it and need it.
Professionally, Google is a cool resource for research and extraction of search data.
First off great post. I believe "failure" was the wrong choice of words. To quote you:
"everyone is constantly at the forefront of human progress"
as is google.
This is what is wrong with your statement:
"they have failed to do this offline in the tangible world"
I would compare this to how the mass media generalizes or sensationalizes our world today, destructive... Have they failed? Or have they simply not yet reached their goal. Could it be that they as you and I are constantly shooting for the Moon? As they say "Shoot for the Moon. If you miss you'll land among the stars"...
Don't get me wrong I really found your post inspiring. If anything, I just find the word "failure" a bit contrary to the general theme of your post. What I take away from your post is the realization that even though today we have achieved many great things, there are still more things for us to achieve in the tangible world. Very inspiring.
Whoa Danny! You have morphed from an SEO/author dude into a true Renaissance man. LOVE this post. It is both material and philosophical at the same time.
I'm in agreement with you that Google has failed so far to gain ground in all the areas you outlined, and I'm in agreement with everyone above who have expressed gratitude for that very fact.
All this notwithstanding, I do believe that Google wants to be able to do all you've stated that they currently can't and I'd bet a few quid that they have at least a few people working on most if not all your points.
PS - When is your book coming out?????!!!!!!! If I get another delay notice from my preorder at Amazon I'm going to scream!
You're asking way too much. Yeah, you can't use Google for touch or smell. That's like saying an iPhone fails because it can't transform into a helecopter and fly you to work.
When Apple makes an iPhone which can fly me to work I'll recognize these as legitimate failures of Google :)
Easily the deepest post about google I have ever read.
Google is known for search, but what most don't realize is they are exponentially becoming so much more as a result of search. Here are my thoughts on Google: https://www.digitalovercast.com/thoughts-on-google.html
On the SIGHT "sense", I think google has made some progress on this front, see the link below, but I am not sure about the smell ;-)
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html
Danny, a very interesting post, and an interesting extension of Malcolm Gladwell's point on "transitive memory" in The Tipping Point. Ordinarily occurring between people, now we offload some burden of remembering to the cloud.
However, I think that, while this allows for individual laziness, it arguably is more than made up for by exposure to new information. We now have the opportunity to remember much more than in the past, simply because we're exposed to so much more.
But as with any utility - and Google is just that, a utility - it's important to remember to switch it off. Go for a walk outside, talk with your friends and family face-to-face, etc. Google is a lens through which we see the world, but the important things is the world, not the lens.
Hey grasshopper,
I responded to your comment in an update to the post. Good insight!
Hello Danny, I don't consider either these facts as failures neither as unspoken. They are limitations, borders of the online world with the offline one, which we will eventually cross (with the help of technology!)
I am not sure how these are even limitations. Google is a search engine indexing the internet. While the internet may be limited to senses outside the binary world, Google seems not limited to what is within the internet's scope. Therefore its purpose, it is not limited.
Ah yes, its purpose is not just to index the Internet, it is organize all of the world's information. That difference is huge!
Exactly! But compared to other companies which have existed for decades, google is still young. Becoming the number 1 in search globally before reaching puberty (12 years of age) is certainly an impressive start. If google continues at this pace, organizing (almost) all of the world's information could be possible in the long run- and to me is a bit scary...
Very inspired post!
I was just thinking of some ranking theories closely related to this. Great Post Danny as always.
Keep it up!
-Ian
I had similar ideas recently too!
I was just remarking to my wife how I would be doomed if I had to Spell using my memory anymore. Google is my lazy Spell checker
CUSSING awesome post!
Interesting post. I think as technology and search continue to evolve the major engines will try to incorporate more of the human senses in search. How exactly I’m not sure, and I’m pretty sure there won’t be smell indexes anytime soon. Besides, there are certain smells that can’t be unsmelt (i.e. a humid trash-pickup day in NYC).
It's an interesting thought! These limitations are likely there for a while since a robot is not human.
Definitely AI is going to be embedded into the serps, just like the real times searches did. But the million dollar question is when ?Overall a really good post, on the same lines as 24 hours privacy post. And
Great post! Just a note Google is actually working on the sight side of things with Google Goggles https://bbes.us/dfQBLY
Google Goggles have been in development for a long time now. I remember watching a piece about Google on MSNBC one night a couple years ago where they were discussing the technology. Its obviously something that can't be finished quickly and if it is taking Google this long to get it right, don't you think its pretty advanced stuff?!
I know you can get Google Goggles on the Android market right now so check it out if you haven't seen it yet. Not perfect, but it will be pretty close one day!
It's interesting that many of these 'sense limitations' can be bypassed by putting them into words (after all, that's how we explain a lot of them to someone else anyway). Even if we aren't thinking in terms of keywords specifically, Google can be quite good at understanding what you mean - although, unlike a partner it doesn't understand 'where's the thing with the stuff?' - a favourite phrase of mine.
Some of the visual issues have been solved on Android, for example with the Google Goggles app. And surely Google maps/navigation on phones counts towards the geolocation stuff?
- Jenni
I, too, agree with algogmbh. Google may have limitations like answering personal questions. However, I like those limitations of Google too. Think about it, if Google will be able to store every info from any individual's life in order to answer queries like "Who is that guy?" or "Who is that person who wears the same perfume?" then that would only mean that even our deepest secrets will be known worldwide or at least, internet-wide. Personally, I want to remain my secrets as secrets. I think you like it too. So don't wish for Google to do all those stuffs--you may regret it.
-Casey Removed Links