https://future.a16z.com/the-future-of-search-is-boutique/
For most queries, Google search is pretty underwhelming these days. Google is great at answering questions with an objective
answer, like “# of billionaires in the world” or “What is the population of Iceland?” It’s pretty bad at answering questions that
require judgment and context like “What do NFT collectors think about NFTs?”
The evidence is everywhere. These days, I find myself suppressing the garbage Internet by searching on Google for “Substack +
future of learning” to find the best takes on education. We hack Twitter with the “what is the best
<https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1435299942235615236>” posts over and over again. When I’m researching a new product, I
type “X item reddit” into Google. I find enormous value in small, niche, often forgotten sites like Spaghetti Directory
<https://spaghetti.directory/>.
There’s an emergence of tools like Notion, Airtable, and Readwise where people are aggregating content and resources, reviving the
/curated web/. But at the moment these are mostly solo affairs — hidden in private or semi-private corners of the Internet,
fragmented, poorly indexed, and unavailable for public use. We haven’t figured out how to make them multiplayer. In cases where
we’ve made them public and collaborative — here isa great example
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16IDgIyPcfwJGG-zmXeMAenYbePQVHkc2P6WCwKEZgpk/htmlview#gid=0>— these projects are often
short-lived and poorly maintained.
The stated mission of a company worth almost two trillion dollars is to “organize the world’s information” and yet the Internet
remains poorly organized. Or, stated differently, in a world of infinite information,*it’s no longer enough to organize the
world’s information. It becomes important to organize the world’s **/trustworthy/**information.*
*...*
I believe the opportunity in search is not to attack Google head-on with a massive, one-size-fits-all horizontal aggregator, but
instead to*build boutique search engines that index, curate, and organize things in new ways.*
...
Vertical search aggregators
Google is a great example of how the internet enabled scale and speed: every page on the web returned in an instant. But,
increasingly, we’re seeing that this scale is at odds with a fundamental human need: *relevance*. Someone who wants to find the
best freelance designer, or the best sushi restaurant, or the best NFT to buy will not find the answer on Google.
...
*When you monetize via ads, curation takes a backseat to featuring advertisers* because there is just less digital real estate
available to curate your own recommendations. So these platforms end up making ethically dubious design choices that generate
massive trust gaps <https://www.usv.com/writing/2019/05/trusted-brands/>.
....
--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
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