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Google And Monopoly Theater

techcrunch.com

31 pointszeratul6 comments

The committee was unaware that Google mixes two distinct services: key word search and question answering.

Key word search approximates your question and returns approximate answer. The amount of interpolation of approximations forces to display a long list of links. Here, the job can be done by simple ranking algorithm.

On the other hand, if we want to answer a concrete question we need to provide a concrete information. Watson would not win Jeopardy if "he" provided just a ranking. Here, the job is done by understanding the question. After that we just need a look up table. Google is not secret about their data model. If your web site is fully annotated with OWL and RDF, surly Google can use it for question answering look up resource.

Google has some decent built in responses to things like:

atomic weight carbon, 1+2, Movies 22202, ikea Arlington VA

But, there is still no progress on open ended questions aka "When was the first flight to break the sound barrier?" Because most things seem to be hard coded responses to something like (Category) + Address; math; constants etc

Google can do some of that for certain queries:

http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+height+of+the+emp...

http://www.google.com/search?q=what+was+the+length+of+the+ti...

It doesn't know everything though - it came up blank on the first flight to break the sound barrier.

The finance snippet could have the same layout as ads, this way it is more obvious it is not in the ranks, and real ads clicks might even increase.

Both Bing and Yahoo display the same results -- summary/graph/links to finance product from search results, like Google -- and that this is just one example of how search has evolved past serving blue links and that to be competitive (good) at search, one needs to give the right answer without clicking through to results. Google got really good at this; everyone else wish they thought / got good at it first; and now Government is tasked with crippling Google's products -- hurting consumers -- and allow only competitors to practice "as a monopoly."

Personally, I've never felt like I was locked into Google, couldn't (didn't) have all of my data elsewhere, or couldn't manage without their presence. However, my life would suck a lot if Google didn't integrate with itself.

In fact Google copied this from Bing. But the difference is that Google is a search monopoly whereas bing is just a distant second or third depending how you look at it.

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