Google Is Remaking Search, Maps for the TikTok Generation (bloomberg.com) 51
Alphabet's Google unveiled a series of planned upgrades to its search and maps services revealing the company's augmented reality ambitions -- and its appeal to a generation of internet users drifting away from the company. From a report: The new features include ways for people to search for nearby items using images and identify physical objects with their smartphone cameras. On Google Maps, the company promised a way for people to explore detailed 3D digital models of landmarks and neighborhoods before setting foot in person. Google shared the plans on Wednesday for the first day of its annual I/O developer conference held near its Mountain View, California headquarters.
Google is working to keep its products relevant and growing as users' needs evolve beyond text. "Search should be something that you can do anywhere, in any way you want, using any of your senses," Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's senior vice president and product chief, said in an interview. Google's core search advertising business has continued to grow steadily during the pandemic, despite recent middling financial results. Yet the I/O announcements underscored nascent threats Google sees to its flagship services. People in emerging markets are more likely to search with voice features than typing, which has driven Google to invest more in its voice assistant feature.
Google is working to keep its products relevant and growing as users' needs evolve beyond text. "Search should be something that you can do anywhere, in any way you want, using any of your senses," Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's senior vice president and product chief, said in an interview. Google's core search advertising business has continued to grow steadily during the pandemic, despite recent middling financial results. Yet the I/O announcements underscored nascent threats Google sees to its flagship services. People in emerging markets are more likely to search with voice features than typing, which has driven Google to invest more in its voice assistant feature.
Any of my senses? (Score:3)
How do I search using my taste? Lick the screen?
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How do I search using my taste? Lick the screen?
Other way around i think...
That only works in Russia -- or use to anyway.
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That only works in Russia -- or use to anyway.
So like...
In Soviet Russia, country you invade annexes YOU!?
Re:Any of my senses? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a bad FP, though it sounds naive. Here's my initial thoughts on the answer: By using the data from Google Maps to find out what restaurants you've been eating at, analyzing the data to figure out what you like to taste, and then predicting more accurately how to manipulate you. For profit. In MANY ways.
I think the linked article should go deeper into the why side (but it's paywalled AND biased for the big-money boys, so I won't read it). Based on the Slashdot summary, the article is solution-focused, but I bet it's a more substantial solution approach than my typical Castle-in-the-Sky thinking. The google used to have a fuzzy focus on not being evil, but now the google has a laser focus on money. Too bad that's a fake and unsolvable problem, eh? "There ain't no profit big enough."
My why? Why am I hating on the google so much? It's the freedom thing. I'm for it and the google is against it. Not just the google, but pretty much every gigantic corporation is in the racket of trying to manipulate me to solve their "Insufficient Profit" problem. (How about that as a new definition for IP?) But I think the google has become especially harmful because of the mental stress. I basically feel trapped by the google's services. Sometimes the best available or sometimes the alternatives are even more evil, but the result is using software from a company I don't like very much. Not at all.
The only trace of good news I can see in the story is that the google is worried about users "drifting away", but I bet LOTS of users would run away if they had the freedom to do so. So the good news is that they want to run like hell? "We have met the enemy and he is us."
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Eh, but the 'taste' facet in your example is an incidental. The correlation of popular destinations associated with other destinations need not specifically understand what sense that would correlate to. It's just seeing that of those who go to place A, there's a correlation with place B, which could be because they are restaurants with similar tastes, or it could be because one place is a tire shop and the other is an oil change shop. The 'sensory' facet isn't explicitly covered.
It's just a silly throw awa
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It sounds like you need to read some books about training deep neural networks. The networks don't care why things are correlated. At all. They just "notice" patterns like "This person goes to Italian restaurants more often than McDonald's" and "Such people are receptive to ads for white soap rather than orange". Sell those ads!
PROFIT!
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Yes, that was my point... That it's dealing in correlations without regard to senses.
The senses comes from a place of trying to say they are going to do things like '3d-ify' streetview, which is still vision, just more vision.
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Basically a concurring ACK.
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How do I search using my taste? Lick the screen?
Google already knows your taste. The rest of us are thankfully spared.
Great... (Score:4, Interesting)
All I can really say is "Get off my Lawn!"
Unfortunately, not even the chickens listen. Four are crossing the lawn as I write.
Ok, maybe one other thing... why the hell don't people want to experience things for themselves? Ankor Wat is not about just seeing the place in immersive video or even the tour information for context. It is also about the shit crazy reality that Siem Reap and Cambodia offer in contrast to the temples... it is about seeing the things that people don't want you to see. (It was also about having to pee off a pickup truck because there were landmines everywhere along the road from Thailand... but those days are gone.)
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why the hell don't people want to experience things for themselves? Ankor Wat is not about just seeing the place in immersive video or even the tour information for context
Uhm, money? I love google maps even for its shitty 10% way of letting me experience how it is to be anywhere in the world. Make that 15% with augmented reality 3D AI reconstruction or whatever, even better. Better than nothing. And sure I have enough money to go to one place, but not see all continents and all the places that I believe are interesting enough (and there are lots of them). Then there's safety in beautiful shithole countries, and other factors.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Interesting)
why the hell don't people want to experience things for themselves?
My wife and I knew we wanted to visit a Greek island in the Aegean this summer. We read travel reviews and looked at airbnb pictures and narrowed it down to three properties on three island that all looked awesome. I used Google Maps to look at photos that people had taken from nearby beaches. Some of the photos clearly revealed one of our candidate properties to be a soulless row of five identical buildings in the middle of a barren desolate sunburnt plain, entirely different from the impression conveyed by its rental photos.
I'm eager to experience things for myself! and have been to Angkor Wat, and spent half a year traveling around India with my copy of Lonely Planet in the 1990s. But in the new decentralized world of AirBnB and do-it-yourself itineraries and free-for-all travel review sites, no longer buying your travel from a travel agent with expertise, you need some kind of objective anchor in reality to know how to plan your trips. I think that google maps+photos might be well positioned to provide that.
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Google Maps has been very useful for getting around in Japan, where addresses are kind of vague and the local knowledge that Google soaks up (using AI to look for entrances, users submitting corrections etc.) really helps.
I wish Maps had better trip planning features though. You can plan routes with multiple stops, but it's a bit limited in terms of saving them for later. They seem to be retiring My Maps too, but Google Maps doesn't have all the functionality. In particular if you create custom lists in GMa
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Well, I don't know how ambitious Google is actually going for, but I can say VR can make a pretty compelling environment with zero travel time and zero travel cost.
Being in person is a luxury that is not always feasible for people, and enriching the experience for 'virtual' visit is nice.
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It is also about the shit crazy reality that Siem Reap and Cambodia offer in contrast to the temples... it is about seeing the things that people don't want you to see.
Sounds interesting, and it's precisely what you can learn about by googling rather than hoping you stumble across a random internet post by someone whose username can only be described as a cry for help :-D
Experiencing a place can be anything you want it to be. Knowing what it can be, that's where Google comes in. Not everyone goes on holidays wanting to pee off a pickup truck to prevent being separated from their dear body parts, Google can answer that too rather than leave it up to be a nasty surprise.
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Heh... never really thought about it as a cry for help, but the username was created 25 years ago and that might not be far off. My other username from that timeframe (a string of curse words) would be more likely to fall into that category. I thought it was a reflection on the coopting of the term Piracy for copyright infringement, but it seems like that would be about 2 years early.
TikTok Generation? (Score:1)
TikTok Generation? More like Illiterate Generation. I thought we had hit the bottom when McDonalds had to put pictures of hamburgers and fries on the buttons of their cash registers but apparently we have a long way yet to fall as a society. Idiocracy here we come.
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Every generation insults the next generation.
They aren't worse than the generations that precede them. At worst, internet access enables the more obnoxious behaviors common of just being young more in the spotlight.
Second it's a narrative that people leverage to get what they want. For example, when pitching the 'new fancy open workspace' part of it was management claiming that the graduating college kids *loved* open workspace. The intern called bullshit, they want normal chairs, desks, cubicles, and offic
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You are telling me that you never saw your own generation do stupid things nor did you see the previous generation bemoan how lame your generation was?
I know Gen X, Millenials, and Gen-Z have all been insulted in their youth by the older generation, probably Baby Boomers got theirs too, but that sort of criticism was before my time. It's not virtue signalling, it's basic mundane reality that everyone complains about their successor generation, generalizing them as unworthy losers compared to themselves.
Have they considered.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they considered making their search engine suck less?
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The google won't consider that because they don't have to. All they have to do is keep their search (and other software) slightly less sucky than the alternatives. (But if that becomes too hard, then they just buy the trouble-making alternative. (And if any of the political referees object, then they just bribe them. (It shouldn't be legal, but it certainly is.)))
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The google won't consider that because they don't have to. All they have to do is keep their search (and other software) slightly less sucky than the alternatives.
Unfortunately, that is exactly the case.
Google search results contain useless shit that has nothing to do with what I typed. And any search engine that is not-Google is even worse.
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Basically concurrence, except that if it includes "useless shit" then they are missing the target. Don't forget that YOU are the target.
However, don't think you got away. They also track the misses and they'll keep shooting "useless shit" at you until they start hitting. Think of it like bracketing the mortar rounds. (Putting on my 0341 hat...)
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Soon ads will be the only thing visible for most people (I have an ad blocker)
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Have they considered making their search engine suck less?
In what way? Nearly everything I am looking for shows up straight away in the first few results, but then Google does provide personalised search results.
If you're having a problem with the results have you considered asking your split personality to get their own account?
Memento (Score:2)
ugh (Score:2)
google maps for the tiktok generation? so when you put in an address an animation of some idiot pops up dancing in place and pointing at the location? sounds just fantastic.
Re Making? (Score:2)
Specially devised (Score:4, Insightful)
...for those with the attention span of a gnat.
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Mod parent funny but too true.
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...for those with the attention span of a gnat.
And that's good. On Google I'm rarely if ever interested in a story, I'm interested in an answer. If I wanted a long discussion or a therapy session I'd go talk to the bartender not do a Google search.
meaning? (Score:2)
"...growing as users' needs evolve beyond text..."
Call me old, but to me this reads "as they become functionally illiterate"?
Idiocracy becomes more accurate every fuckin' day.
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In other words (Score:2)
Continuing the dumbing down of the country. Most people can't read maps and rely solely on some nebulous piece of software they hope is correct. If it's not, they're completely lost because instead of taking a look at where they're going, they rely solely on software.
There was a story a while back about millenials and the like not having even basic understanding of file structures or how to organize what they have. They simply say Save and the file is somewhere on their phone that they then have to "searc
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It's silly marketing speak, but the ambitions are not 'dumber', they are declaring to make more immersive experiences.
Originally google just let you search text and get text back. Then you could use text to search for images, and then able to paste images to find related images, and find video results. None of these changes are bad or detract from what came before, merely more rich.
So now I can use google lens to search for something I don't recognize, and is also hard to precisely describe. For example wh
What Tick-Tock means to me. (Score:2)
Great, now we're going to have an annoying, ugly, moving watermark on every Google website and app.
How will they incorporate duckfaces and boobdrops (Score:2)
into Maps and Search is still a mystery to me.
So basically for the mobile phone generation (Score:2)
The biggest thing they could do to improve Maps (Score:2)