The Future of Search

I’ve been thinking about what the future of search is gonna be like recently since I hate myself searching and taking so much time just to find information.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate search engine such as Google, Yahoo, etc…..they are awesome. They have revolutionized the way we search, the way we find information. However, since there are way too much information coming out everyday and you almost get a feeling of like “How can I choose one from way too many options!?”. For example, when I type “Asakusa restaurant” on Google, they shows me 482,000 results. And then you go to Yelp. You’ll hit 1993 results after you put in “Asakusa food” on Yelp. You will try to find the best option out these by looking through reviews and comments, and you finally find the one. Ut usually takes 3~5 minutes just to decide ONE restaurant and yet you are not still sure if you made the right choice. There should be a better way.

I came to one clear answer to this which I assume most of you guys agree on. To put it simple, Recommendation. I want someone to tell me the best restaurant around me when I want so that I don’t have to google. I don’t want to google, I just want the answer.

The questions is how we can get there? Since I work at a venture capital, I have seen a lot of startups that say like “our product give you a recommendation on food or grocery or whatever”. None of them are successful yet. They are too ahead of us. We need tons of date on each user to make it possible.

What I think is a key at this point is “Eliminating MOST of effort on searching”. Here are two key words. First, “Speed (Quickness)”and secondly “ Curation”. People don’t want to spend a lot of time searching. They want an answer ASAP. If it shows people only a few results, we find it so much easier.

Only companies that acquire enough users and collect enough information on user’s behavior, they will be great enough to provide “recommendation” in the future. For startups, I think Speed and Curation are key words. They can’t ignore these words in order to pursue a path to prividing recommendation.