I spoke to Google’s Marissa Mayer at TechCrunch50 on Monday (a little after she we celebrated Google’s 10th birthday with cupcakes) and asked her about the search is “90-95%” solved story over the weekend. She said she’d be posting a clarification on the Google blog. That clarification just went up, here.
In the original article, published in the LA Times, Marissa says search is “90 to 95%” solved:
Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95% of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10%. How do we monetize new forms of content as they come online such as video, maps and books. How do we help content providers transition their businesses online and build healthy businesses.
Today Marissa clarifies, suggesting that her real point is that the first 90% of the search problem is solved, but that was the easy part. The last 10% will actually be 90% of the real work, she says, and it will take decades or longer to complete it. She also compares search today to the fiields of biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s.
We’re all familiar with 80-20 problems, where the last 20% of the solution is 80% of the work. Search is a 90-10 problem. Today, we have a 90% solution: I could answer all of my unanswered Saturday questions, not ideally or easily, but I could get it done with today’s search tool. (If you’re curious, the answers are below.) However, that remaining 10% of the problem really represents 90% (in fact, more than 90%) of the work. Coming up with elegant, fitting and relevant solutions to meet the challenges of mobility, modes, media, personalization, location, socialization, and language will take decades. Search is a science that will develop and advance over hundreds of years. Think of it like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s: it’s a new science where we make big and exciting breakthroughs all the time. However, it could be a hundred years or more before we have microscopes and an understanding of the proverbial molecules and atoms of search. Just like biology and physics several hundred years ago, the biggest advances are yet to come. That’s what makes the field of Internet search so exciting.
For the record, I agree. Search is in its infancy, which is why I keep using that image of a pre-World War I airplane. To declare search “solved” today would be the same as saying powered flight was solved way back then. We’re just getting started.
Marissa also defines the ideal search engine:
So what’s our straightforward definition of the ideal search engine? Your best friend with instant access to all the world’s facts and a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know. That search engine could tailor answers to you based on your preferences, your existing knowledge and the best available information; it could ask for clarification and present the answers in whatever setting or media worked best. That ideal search engine could have easily and elegantly quenched my withdrawal and fueled my addiction on Saturday. I’m very proud that Google in its first 10 years has changed expectations around information and how quickly and easily it should be able to be retrieved. But I’m even more excited about what Google search can achieve in the future.
Sounds pretty good to me.
i knew that had to be an error
I guess someone helped larry-her, uh, sergy-her, um I mean helped clarify for her, that Google still has some intellectual property to develop. Probably they should attach an SEC disclosure, since this seems pretty relevant to a reasonable investor.
That was the point we were making in our previous comment about the evolution Search technology - a few decades from now, or even in the next century.
Anyone who thinks that the search technology we are experiencing today is representative of the technology of the future - is being extremely closed minded.
Just imagine what the next generation will experience - it will make us look like Neanderthals
We’re all chimps with twigs eating ants. The ants haven’t changed much but the twigs now come in Chrome.
It’s a bit bold to compare the “science of search” to something as big as biology or physics. If, however, you think of a search engine as a way to ask a question and get a complete answer, like the Star Trek computer, then what you’re really talking about is artificial intelligence, which is indeed a big science. But is Google an artificial intelligence company? That’s less clear.
It might be fair to say that search is 90% solved for today’s internet. But by the time we solve that other 10%, which everyone agrees will take a long time, that big picture - that 100% - might have changed dramatically. It’s not fair to the problem or accurate to look at it from 2008 and pretend that you even know what 100% will be in a few years.
Hmm that’s funny… No one listened when I clarified for her on the last post: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....nt-2461662
The first statement was a big mistake - now she is trying to cut the losses.
Sometimes it is better to read the poem before you cite the author.
algoithim search in its infancy? I disagree. marriss is definitely trying to cut losses. she spoke her mind than recanted when it made the industry look like it has very litttle future of innovation.
I do not agree with ma’s statement
“Coming up with elegant, fitting and relevant solutions to meet the challenges of mobility, modes, media, personalization, location, socialization, and language will take decades.”
It took me 5 years by myself to build the Greatest Natural Language Location Engine Domain Portfolio ever Created. I am the first to solve search by using common sense keyphrase natural location domain names. Once this 1200+ family is up and pumping it will be unstoppable.
goog and all the others have solved algorithim “search”. what they have not solved it location. If the Internet started with common sense keyphrase vertical “LocationEngines” instead of “Search engines”, we would not be in the algorthm based cyberblah fiasco that we are in now.
http://www.vator.tv/pitch/show/MyLocatorcom
http://www.killerstartups.com/.....or-network
thanks marissa for letting the cat out the bag.
the truth must be told. I have a statement to share.
The internet is 95% solved and we dont need another website.
Tip of the Day: Location, location, location is everything in cyberspace just as it is on the planet earth.
I don’t think i can sleep tonight. Google’s vision scares me.
Don’t worry, it’s just more exaggeration via the marketing mindset. Google is that much better than the standard Pareto, yet that is exactly (and merely) what she’s talking about.
Nice try at spin, but that totally doesn’t add up. She’s very full of herself.
That’s using one nonsense to cover another. Her answer seems to imply that we can only provide the 10% remaining value for the problem in the future, and it makes sense for Google to lose its focus, as the effectiveness of solving the remaining 10% is very low. Things cannot be further from the truth.
Historical examples are even being sited, but did we solve anything completely yet. We thought we have during the time of Newton, but Einstein had opened a whole new word. Human is always ignorant. We are always fallible being, regardless of how hard one tries to pretend the otherwise. The more we know, the more we discover what is unknown. Our knowledge is limit; ignorance is the only thing that is certain. How can we come up with a percentage for something infinite. I thought they are very good at math.
If 90% of the work is left, wouldn’t that mean we only have 10% complete? How did we complete 90% in 10% of the time?
I think someone is backpedaling…
In order to talk about the solution, you must first explain what the problem is. Otherwise, saying that “search is x% solved” is meaningless. If you cannot define “the” problem, then you have to frame the conversation differently. There are many different problems that have some element of search in them.
http://flaptor.com/blog/what-i.....search_22/
I agree with others- she made a mistake before and should have just left this one in the past. Her updated explanation doesn’t make any sense. When she said 10% she really meant 90%… yea right.
Cmon this happens to all of us, we can say silly things without thinking it through. In such situations its better to come clean and look silly momentarily and admit the error than compound it by trying to cover your tracks. The best way to win public understanding is to admit vulnerability, not try be perfect.
This just makes it worse, she could have buried this without fuss by admitting her mistake, now it will live on and used to ridicule her, not always fairly.
It would have been much easier if she simply had admitted her mistake than try to come up with excuses and clarifications.
There is obviously a fine line between “clarification” and “digging a deeper hole for yourself”.
Google search sucks. It hasn’t improved for years. “Monitization” and “new media” may be their commercial focus but for those of us “users” — remember us, we don’t even use quotes and don;t know about strategies to ge the info we need– today’s Google search isn’t anywhere near 10% let alone 90%. Sheesh …
Ten Years of Google innovation
the new “suggestion tool” feature
search term “techcrunch”
results “7 million”
Results actually needed? “1″
Goog really dont want CHROME to become big cause that would organize peoples search habits and keepem off the homepage and adsense. Google does not really want to help people or they would get rid of 99% of those 7 million suggestion tool results for techcrunch. People are getting smarter and this kind of nonsense wont last forever.
It’s like golf, get on the green in 2, your 99% there in distance. But it takes 2 more strokes to get in, so your only 50% there in score.
The problem with search engines is semantics. A lot of us know that there have been strives in this area to bring meaning to raw data. Google and any other search engines do this by providing things such as page ranking to bring meaning to something. So they go ahead and create lots of various different algorithms to store data in such a way that when you come through the pin hole of a search box and hit go, it invokes those alogrithms to bring back what it thinks you want. Whooopdie doo you say. Well according to the consensus of human kind today, that’s cutting edge technology… What’s really required rather than 10,000,0000,000 search results is an application, specific to the search (problem domain) itself, that provides me with relevant user interface features, such as buttons, voice interaction etc. So in other words the search engine returns an application like MS Word. The application runs and if it decides to provide me with buttons, or flash lights or whatever then obviously those things are there because its figured out that these things might be hand to interact with this application.
Anyone wanna help me build this?
Arrington kissing up to google… pathetic… her statement hasn’t changed at all… your title just shows that you didnt get it. She still says its 90% done.. but the remaining 10% need 90% of the work… so wtf… she still insists its 90% done…
Whatever she strikes me as rather incompetent anyway…
Rob-
What’s your email… I think you are 50% right… shoot me an email to james at vollbio dot de and we can chat… anyone else interested in search please let me know maybe we can do techcrunch50 next year with the answer….
anyway anyone else interested in taking on search for a new market/paradigm larger than search… shoot me an email james at vollbio dot de.. ideally located sf bayarea but not required… rockstars only…
If search will take another few decades to evolve and be more specific, contextual, thus more useful…then i think people can’t wait till then.
Human power (collective contribution) + some algorithms can solve it faster, better and cheaper. Challenge of motivating users to contribute is a challenge but will take less time to overcome.
You did it arrington, picked up a politically incorrect statement of a straightforward guy, and made them tell a politically correct statement. What a nice politics by our TC head.. Very Sorry to say, on seeing this i got verry bitter saliva in my mouth which i cant swallow, tell me where will i spit that?
I wonder why the vision for an ideal search does not scare anyone here? Is everyone so very much willing to have Google as a best friend knowing everything you already know and suggesting answers based on what and who you know. It may be good for relevance but it is too much to have a search engine as such an intimate friend, I think.
Rob/Joe take a look at this.
But this is a pretty common way of describing software projects in general no?
“We have done 90% of the work, now we only have the other 90% left” is a joke I often make to people who don’t understand how unexpected issues can and will crop up.
(Not original, I heard it somewhere, can’t remember where)
I think Marissa has been using Microsoft products for way too long. She’s probably used to seeing progress bars that zoom through the first 90% and take forever on the last 10%.
Think of it like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s: it’s a new science where we make big and exciting breakthroughs all the time. However, it could be a hundred years or more before we have microscopes and an understanding of the proverbial molecules and atoms of search. Just like biology and physics several hundred years ago, the biggest advances are yet to come. That’s what makes the field of Internet search so exciting.
Zzz.. Zzz.. ..Zzz..$$$$..$$
“like biology and physics several hundred years ago, the biggest advances are yet to come” . That seem to contradict the statement that we are 90% there (”Today, we have a 90% solution”) . Perhaps she should say “the slowest advances are yet to come” (the ones that will take 90% of the time, but only advance us 10% on the result.
I meant what I said before I sort of retracted what I meant to say. Uhh, I mean, I have not really thought this through.
Search is not 2% done. Deal with it. Whenever people make stupid 90% comments like that they end up eating their words later.
typical nonsense blather from a corporate wonk who doesn’t know anything other than talking points, mktg vomitus, and hubrus.
On the positive side search engines are very good at gathering data. On the negative side search sucks. If you are not bombarded with the “monetization of the search stream” most results are 10-50% relevant to what you were searching for and never exact unless you use overly simplistic search terms or expression.
Try this search on google http://www.google.com/search?c.....p;oe=UTF-8
The usual suspects appear on the first page (paid advertisers). Most of the links are useless or worse.
Search engine heuristics are in their infancy a best. Google has not solved 90% percent of the search problem. It hasn’t even reached 10% and that 10% is becoming increasingly irrelevant based on the amount of ad fluff that is presented upfront.
I cannot wait for an intelligent search engine to evolve but realistically I think that without humans in the machine it will take a lot more years.
I guess someone helped larry-her, uh, sergy-her, um I mean helped clarify for her, that Google still has some intellectual property to develop. Probably they should attach an SEC disclosure, since this seems pretty relevant to a reasonable investor.
She’s blathering on. She’s not making sense. When she talks about the problems they want to solve, she talks about monetization. With their stock way way down, they do have to worry about that. But figuring out how to make more money from YouTube isn’t solving the search problem.
She actually believes they solved search, and they are confusing making more money with making better search. Her first statement showed what she believes. The rest is just back-pedaling.
Search offers so much opportunity especially with the impending global recession. In the next few years, people will see really start to monetize local business search.
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