A Look Back and into the Potential Future of Search

Second Annual Conference on Competition, Search and Social

Greg Sterling May 16, 2012 About Me

• Jobs: lawyer, editor, startups, analyst, blogger • Coverage: “SoLoMo” • “The impact of the Internet on offline consumer buying” • Twitter: @gsterling Quick Audience Poll

• What is your primary search engine?

• Do you search on a mobile device? Search as popular as email

Pew Internet & American Life Project, March 2012 (N=2,253 adults) „Gateway to the internet‟

“The Google”

The consumer Content audience A Little History A brief history of search

• 1990 – 1993: Archie, Vlib, Excite, Aliweb (early directories)

• 1994 – 1997: Infoseek, Webcrawler, AltaVista, Yahoo, Hotbot, AskJeeves, Looksmart, Inktomi, Lycos

• 1998 – 2001: Google, Overture, DMOZ, AllTheWeb

• 2002 – present: MSFT Live Search, Powerset, Cuil, Bing (2009), Blekko, DuckDuckGo

• 2013 – Facebook? Google circa 1998 A quick chronology of Google

• 1996: Brin& Page (@stanford) develop “BackRub” – the original “social search engine” (PageRank)

• 1997: BackRub renamed Google

• 1998: Google launches

• 1999: Google gets funding, AOL selects Google as search partner

• 2000: Google replaces Inktomi to power Yahoo search

• 2002: Google launches AdWords, Yahoo offers to buy Google

• 2003: Google launches AdSense (Applied Semantics)

• 2005 – 2010: Google buys YouTube, DoubleClick, Android, AdMob Google #1 or #2 global brand

Brand Finance ranking, 2011 Search the biggest piece of online pie

IAB FY 2011 analysis released 4/12 Key initiatives for Google

• Social search: using “social signals” to help determine relevance and order search results (+1, Google+)

• Personalization: using your web history and network to determine results/ranking (component of social)

• Universal search: providing “answers” and rich (vertical) content in search results rather than just “links”

• Mobile search: adapting PC search for different form factors (voice, visual search, scanning)

• Local search/maps (especially for mobile)

• Speed & spam fighting Google today (with Knowledge Graph) Real-time search: the trend that wasn‟t

2009 – 2011: • Collecta • CrowdEye • Summize • Topsy • OneRiot • Tweetmeme • Scoopler

Google, Bing and Yahoo “co-opted” this trend by incorporating the Twitter feed into their results. But this created a poor user experience Official market share numbers

US April Search Market Share (comScore)

Google 66.5%

Bing 15.4%

Yahoo 13.5%

Ask 3.0%

AOL 1.6%

comScore “qSearch” data, April 2012 Search engine people use „most often‟

2004 2012

8% 5% 6% 6% 19% Google Google 47% Yahoo Yahoo Other Other None/DK None/DK 26% 83%

Pew Internet & American Life Project, surveys: 2004, 2012 n=2,000+ US adults Users having mostly positive experiences

Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults Survey: like search, not personalization

People like search …

• 66% think search results “fair and unbiased”

• Over 50% think search results are getting better

But . . .

• 65% see “personalized search” as a bad thing

• 73%: not OK to collect user info to personalize results

• 68% disapprove of (behavioral) ad targeting

Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults Social Search The battle over social search Google efforts to be more social

• Google CEO Larry Page has become preoccupied with Facebook and the apparent threat it poses

• Google Buzz (failed; 20 years of FTC privacy audits)

• +1 button: Google’s answer to Like button

• Google+ 170 million users but limited engagement?

• New privacy policy (collect/analyze more data) Evolution of Google social search

• Google introduced “social search” in 2009, which annotated traditional SERP with relevant content from one’s “social circle” as determined by Google

• Search Plus Your World (1/12) introduced more personalization social content directly into search results The „New Bing‟ with Sidebar

Integrates Facebook, Twitter onto the page The (Human) Q&A Engines Mobile Search US PC internet access has plateaued

Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults Mobile devices outselling PCs

Source: IDC, March 2012 Mobile as primary internet device

• Pew 2012 survey: 25% of smartphone-owning survey respondents said that their mobile devices were their primary Internet access method

• More likely: young adults, minorities, those with no college experience, and those with lower household income levels • Opus Research: 17.6% preferred mobile devices (smartphone/tablet) as their primary Internet access device (laptop was top choice)

Pew Internet & American Life Project 2012 n=2,000+ US adults; Opus Research 4/12, n=1,502 US adults Analysts: Android OS will dominate

Global Smartphone OS Market Share 2011 2015

45.4%

39.5%

20.9% 20.9%

15.7%15.3% 14.9%13.7%

5.5% 3.5%4.6% 0.2%

Android RIM Apple/iOS Symbian Windows Others

Source: IDC, March 2012 Google dominates mobile search Mobile search market share

97.23 Google 94.79

1.79 Yahoo! 3.59

0.64 Bing 1.4 Global

US Market YANDEX RU 0.16

0.13 Ask Jeeves 0.18

0.32 Other 0.04

Source: StatCounter, May 2012 Apps dominate mobile engagement

• comScore (5/12): “4 in every 5 mobile media minutes” is spent with apps (vs. the mobile browser)

• Mobile time spent with FB: 80% in app, 20% in the browser

More time w/mobile apps than PC

Flurry Analytics Q4 2011 Google‟s mobile search sources

We’ve seen data that shows that while Google absolutely dominates searches emanating from the iPhone (95%+), ~50% of iPhone Google searches come from the toolbar, 42% from Google’s homepage and less than 10% from Google‟s app.

-- Macquarie Group, March, 2011 Voice & Virtual Assistants Google voice actions/search

25% of Android-based Google searches in the US market are initiated by voice . . .

-- Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (2010) Enter Siri the virtual assistant

• Not a “speech technology” • A natural- language understanding technology developed by SRI International, which was funded by DARPA • Breakthrough product Siri usage

• 87% of iPhone4S owners use Siri at least monthly • 30%+ use Siri “almost daily” • 26% use Siri to send email daily • Initiating calls/texts most common Siri-related activities

• 55% satisfied with Siri • 9% unsatisfied

Parks Associates, March 2012 (n=482 iPhone 4S owners) Siri most popular feature of iPhone

What do you like best about iPhone 4s?

Siri 49% Ease of use 39% 8MP camera 33% Faster web browsing 24% Screen resolution 23% iCloud 19% 3rd party apps 13% Ability to sync with multiple PCs 11% Multitasking 11%

ChangeWave, November 2011, n=215 Apple iPhone 4S owners Siri before Apple was transactional

Taps into APIs/verticals. In “ideal” scenario it renders general “web search” unnecessary Other „assistants‟

Beyond Siri there are a range of “assistants” that claim varying degrees of “AI”:

• Assistant (Speaktoit) • Evi (TrueKnowledge) • Kngine • IRIS • Several in enterprise: Indisys, Anboto, NextIT, Artificial Solutions Assessing the Threats to Search (Google) Assistant sits on top of search

• Combination of NLU and semantic speech processing with “artificial intelligence” – and a pleasing UI is a potential successor to current search engines

• Google inserted itself between publishers/content producers and end users

• Assistant could become primary for users and reduce Google to one of many data providers

• Assistants could tap directly into vertical or branded content via APIs; eliminate need for “search” except where no alternative Apple to get into map-based search

Apple has acquired three mapping companies: • Placebase (in 2009) • Quebec-based Poly9, a Google Earth-like product (2010) • C3 Technologies (2011)

Apple about to launch own maps and local search capability Facebook search terrible today Will be forced to launch better product Threats to Google • Speech driven “AI” assistants become the primary entry point to a wide range of functions and content - Google’s brand and relationship with consumer weakened - Google will mitigate with own assistant and Android OS - Google default backfill for assistants • Mobile shift: substantial “search” and internet usage shifts to mobile and devices Google doesn’t control (i.e., iPad) - Google less central in mobile context - Apps a primary consumer access point to content - Google becomes secondary • Facebook enters search market in earnest Over the next 3 years Next 3 years

• Mobile continues gains (smartphone, tablet)

• More “AI”/assistant development

• Search continues to “diversify” from its original form as a “query in a box”

• Search Uis and entry points grow: - Voice - Camera (AR) - In-car - Map (around me) - Clothes (glasses)? QuestionsFollow or Contact Me

Greg Sterling [email protected]

Twitter.com/gsterling