Google As Navigation

My brother spent some time as a product manager at Alta Vista and as he put it, the Holy Grail for a search company is to become navigation, not just search. Despite an early lead, Alta Vista never managed it. People went to Alta Vista to find results, not as a general jumping off point for the web. On the other hand, I believe that Google has begun to make the transition from search tool to navigation tool.

Ultimately the navigation question is one of speed and efficiency. What will get you where you want to be on the web as quickly as possible? I find it more efficient to type "American Airlines" into Google than to try to remember if it's www.americanairlines.com or www.americanair.com or www.aa.com (and that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that even if I knew the URL, I'd likely misspell it). As a result of this shift in my thinking about Google, it has become an invaluable navigation tool.

The Google navigation experience has unquestionably been aided by integration with the web browser and the operating system itself. The Google toolbar on Explorer for Windows and the built-in Google search box on Safari for the Mac make a Google search one click closer and temporally top of mind. Better yet, a senior developer from Google recently turned me on to another great tool called Dave's Quick Search Deskbar. The Deskbar creates a search box in the Windows task bar that allows you to directly launch Google searches from the desktop (or searches of Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.). What's more, if you're confident that your search will land you where you want to be, just put a bang ("!") at the end of the search and you've done the equivalent of hitting the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. The result is an incredibly efficient navigation tool that uses Google as its intermediary.

I've got to hand it to the folks at Google. It is not happenstance that has led to them making the leap from search to navigation. They have done it by both creating their own navigation tools and by producing a relatively simple API to allow third parties to access the search database. As a result, Google the upstart has managed to infiltrate the browser and the desktop -- the domain that behemoth Microsoft has so jealously guarded for years. It just goes to show that superior technology and a bit of cleverness can still be used to challenge even the strongest of competitors.

Comments

[Eli Chapman]

I believe Google has already evolved past navigation and is becoming a media and entertainment destination. By making search so easy and satisfying Google is eating away at the time people spend with traditional media and entertainment. News.Google.Com is only a taste of what Google will someday soon be able to do.

By providing users with software and/or interfaces that make it easier and easier to navigate through information, Google, like Nielsen Media Research, can track how users interact with the information. Acquiring Pyra/Blogger allows Google to track more than just how users browse the web, it allows them to track 1) the user's preferences and 2) the user's thoughts. By acquiring Applied Semantics, Google now has an additional method by which to interpret context and annotations.

Google suddenly knows what I want and why I want it. And that's entertainment.

[Buzz Bruggeman]

I heard Bob Metcalfe once say that using Google adds 100 points to your IQ.

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Google should buy Kazaa next. :)

[john ludwig]

Hmm. I go back to google everyday not because they are a great navigation site, but because they do search incredibly well. I don't think they want to get distracted from that. It is all about finding relevant info for each user, as fast as possible. Navigation pages and UIs don't help me do that -- smarter search is what I want. And there is so much yet to do here, if Google takes their eyes off the ball, someone else will eat their lunch (certainly Microsoft has the ambition to do so).

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