Google, information … and lost time
Google has discreetly launched an update of an equally discreetly announced update in December last year, confirming that it is possibly one of the worst communicators in the world, arguably the most clumsy for its size and importance when it comes to telling the the world what it does.
The new development is based on a feed, a series of contents that accompany the search box and that are constantly updated according to users’ needs, along the lines of Google Now. What Google wants is to do is use its page or app to access stuff that interests us, to fill that huge white space with news or issues that their algorithms believe we want to see.
Google’s problem is clear: the search provides information when what we are doing is looking for something. But when that’s not the case, when all we want to do is find out what’s going on in the world, Google has become irrelevant with the imperfect exception of Google News (reporting on news from the media, not necessarily from any other non-media content that might interest us). For a long time now, when we want to find stuff out, we turn to sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flipboard and many others, but not Google. Google is a search engine, not a place to read about interesting things.
Now, Google intends to take advantage of all the information it gets from us so its algorithms can understand what interests us, building a feed in constant change, a permanent supply of relevant information about stuff we might be interested in. To do this, it needs to differentiate between what we are looking for, so as to obtain a rapid and possibly important result at that moment, but not necessarily representative of our interests, and what we are really interested in, keeping the former as simple searches, but allowing us to follow the second ones with a Follow button in the results that allows us to adjust the feed we see when entering Google with the relevant results relating to that subject.
It’s not such a bad idea. Some things Google has done with Google Now using information from our emails, for example, are almost magical, and decidedly useful. Undoubtedly, the initiative reflects Google’s obsession with getting away from the social networks, which it has never been able to understand and which has possibly caused its biggest failures: the relevance of our feed, the issues we want to follow and that appear before our eyes, are decided by us, not our network, nor our friends, nor the media agenda. Our feed is ours: a kind of anti-Facebook: give me what interests me, do not give me more photos of my friends’ babies, no matter how cute they are. We will have to see how it works out or if it becomes a way to lose news that we might not be interested in, but that is relevant. It’s unlikely to put down North Korea as one of my interests, but if Kim Jong Un launches a nuclear missile, I’d probably like to know about it. Equally, if something interests my friends, I will probably want to know about it, even if only to avoid the impression I live in a cave.
Google seems to try to be avoiding the mythical bubble defined by Eli Pariser in his well known book “The Filter Bubble”. In a way, Google seems to believe that by eliminating friends, Likes, choosing specific sources and all traces of social mechanisms, we can eliminate that bubble. But I fear that we create our own bubbles and that now we will live in algorithmically constructed bubbles, whereas the social networks, at least, gave us a chance to see other points of view. I have serious doubts that replacing social network mechanisms with other algorithms will end the bubble tendency.
On the other hand, the idea of actively following themes and marking them on a page generates an unpleasant feeling of wasting time, or déjà vu, of nostalgia for Google Reader, which it should never have abandoned. Google Reader not only offered a clear and unfiltered reflection of my interests, but also allowed the company to educate its algorithms about what really interested me. Google Reader, could have allowed it to build the super-product that could keep its customers actively informed. By now it would be the leader in information, instead, Google failed to understand it, sending its users to other companies and at the same time giving up leadership in what at that time, 2013, was already a growing reality: machine learning. If you wanted to learn from the interests of your users and use that information to educate your algorithms, Google Reader was the perfect product.
Seeing what Google is launching now, in mid-2017, we can safely say that closing Google Reader in 2013 was mistake of the first order, and that the small product that disappeared in a Spring Cleaning signed by Urs Hölzle represented a lot more and had far more potential significance than some slow-witted manager was ever able to see. Since the closing of Google Reader I get my information from Feedly, now home to the several million Reader refugees, and I will need some persuading to change, while I use the social networks for other kinds of information or from I decide to follow.
Google is now moving into an area crowded with apps that aspire to keep their users informed. Google is now telling people that if they mark certain searches, it will keep them informed of stuff that might interest them. Good luck with that one. I’m not saying it won’t work, after all there are many users who find stuff out on an ad hoc basis still… but it is a terrible way to recognize an error and to show that they have been wrong for more than four years.
My experience with Google’s new feeder so far? It didn’t really seem to understand my tastes. But that could just be me. Now, Google wants you not only to go to its page only to search for stuff, but to read things it has put together for you based on what its algorithms think you’re interested in. My advice would be not to get too attached to it, because Google might decide to close it down overnight. It could be a source of traffic for newspapers in addition to Google News (unless you live in Spain and do not have Google News), or a way to rely more on the algorithms of the company, something that no doubt should be taken into account. But if you still like it and you are able to accept the idea of a Google page that looks like a personal newspaper that possibly reflects your interests, then say goodbye to the iconic white space in the Google page, and go for it.
(En español, aquí)
