Google’s mission is to “organise the world’s information”, but is the nature of information itself changing and with it the Google way of search slowly becoming out dated (at least in some areas)?

To understand this shift, it might be worth quickly reminding ourselves of how we got here. Around the time Google came along — roughly 17 years ago in 1998 — the web was dominated by web sites which were essentially sitting ducks begging to be algorithmically indexed, page ranked and made searchable. This Google did magnificently (even though it sometimes took multiple searches and trial and error, it was way better than anything else on offer).

Some of the high profile disruptors of today — Uber, Ocado, Netflix or even Medium — are changing that by doing two things simultaneously.

First they facilitate the creation of new, very specific types of information that are no longer sitting ducks. In Uber’s case the precise location and availability of a taxi at any given moment has no “home” in the page ranked Google universe, it is way too ephemeral. The best Google can do is throw up the phone numbers of a few local cab companies or integrate Uber into maps.

Second, they create interfaces that make finding and accessing this information a doodle. One does not have to go on Uber and type “I need a cheap taxi to come to me at _____, in 5 minutes, to go to ______”. They do this by paying great attention to the users’ mindset and headspace at the time of using their product.

This is not as simple as Google missing out on “in-app” search. The crucial point here is that the interface to find the information is inextricably linked to the information itself.

What these services have in common is that new forms of information are being created on their platforms that can only really be accessed, on these very platforms.

In effect we may be witnessing the limitation of the Google way of search. As these companies are demonstrating, there are plenty of potentially lucrative use cases where simply “organising the world’s information” is insufficient. These demand both the creation of new, bespoke types of information, and well crafted interfaces of organising and presenting. When these products come along, we’ll probably wonder how we got by with Google searches alone.

As ever comments and challenges are welcome.