Caffeine is Google's way of speeding up the indexing of news for search, but is it contributing to a trivialization of the Web through a loss of insight and depth that could eventually hurt consumers, businesses, and the Internet itself?
SEO and the sale of keywords, IMHO, tends to contaminate the notion that search could find "good" stuff, even if we could come up with objective standards on what "good" really means. Ranking does depend on rate of access, of course, but only in part.
Another problem with search and insight is that too many paying pages tend to push the real stuff out of the picture (I blogged once about this point too). All of it is combining to make it harder for real purchase decision support to come to the fore.
I think Google tried to do something with its notion of paid articles/blogs that accepted advertising, but even there the process gets contaminated because you make more if the articles are hit a lot, and really solid decision support data isn't hit a lot because the products for which it's needed don't get sold to a large audience. There are only about 150k multi-site businesses in the US, for example, so business networking tools could only have a modest number of buyers compared to an iPhone.
"I'd like to see Google provide some compensatory encouragement to depth of insight, I guess!". How should Google go about doing this? Does the current page ranking system not sufficient to be a decent encouragement to depth of insight? I know SEO experts have various ways to trick search engines but is Google not technologically limited to what it kind do in this regard?
I think every research mission has its own optimum information form, Ariella. Every industry also has its value paradigms, and those paradigms have to be met in order for the industry to profit as a whole. Advertisers want purchases, and purchases demand purchase decisions. We can sell Twinkies over Twitter to be sure, but probably nobody would take an attempt to sell heavy construction equipment that way. We could simply not convey adequate insight. My fear is that we're focusing the whole of the online process on a research information paradigm that won't support the whole range of buying processes that we're depending on for ad revenue.
I'm with you on content; I've never read a Cliff or Spark Note in my whole life, even as a student!
I think there's a difference between being at fault and being responsible here, Paul. Google is certainly not making us into shallow consumers, but the Caffeine trend is exacerbating a tendency for the Internet to do that.
Ten years ago, the trade media was the largest strategic influence on technology purchases. Today, it's the third-largest even if we count all of the Internet blogs and publications into the category. Ten years ago, the average strategy article was 2800 words; today it's 480 words. The problem is that you can't be quick, right, and insightful. When search took longer to index there was less incentive to be quick, and so correctness and insight played a greater role. If even the current media is too fast, too shallow, too inaccurate, then my concern is that the Caffeinated future will be even more so.
I'd like to see Google provide some compensatory encouragement to depth of insight, I guess!
Paul does have a point. There would be no point to offering caffeine if there were no demand for it. Personally, I'm all for quality rather than speed. But I'm the type of person who reads whole books rather than the Cliff or Spark Notes version. Take a survey among students with assigned summer reading lists, and you would likely discover they prefer the short cut, superficial and limited, though it may be.
"I can see how something like Caffeine, or this type of search in general, will only exacerbate the "need for speed" and will devalue good writing, research, and reporting even further".
Isn't this a case of shooting the messenger whose only crime is to deliver the message?
In all fairness I really don't see why Google should be faulkted as far as Caffeine is concern. We know very well how immediacy is key in certain national or international emergencies and so I don't see any qualms if Google decides to cutdown the time it takes to update its index from 30 days to a matter of seconds. How does that affect the depth of content is simply beyond me. It does not mean Caffeine is going to update any ridiculous story or sites out there as stated here: " Not every change on every site will appear immediately, though. Google looks at factors such as page rank to determine which sites to crawl faster, Cutts said. It also checks news sites and blogs more often than other sites, he said". Google is basically aggregating what is out there and the responsibility for depth of content still lies with the content providers. If I read a shallow article on Google news I don't go ripping google for that but rather will placed the blame squarely on the Content providers.
There are many folks out there who rely on gettin g updated news faster and I think Caffeine will go along way to help them in that direction:
" As a stock trader I have to have the news quick. I have found goggle to be hrs behind on a lot of news. I dissect news for 10 to 20 hrs a day. I only use goggle to find out what I might of miss during the day. They have very little articles and leave the same ones up there for days. They also cater to certain news providers. In other words I do not use them much".
What Caffeine proposes to do is to speed up the crawling/indexing of the web, particularly of news sites, so that searches will find nearly anything very quickly once the material is posted. The risk this poses, IMHO, is that because most people get information through searching, most information sources will be incented to push content up quickly to get it indexed quickly and thus available. By doing that they increase their ad revenue potential. But the quick posting process encourages shallow thinking in prep for the articles, as you suggest.
Over the past ten years, my enterprise surveys have shown that the value enterprises place on technology media to support their decisions has declined steadily, to the point where we've lost 22% of all of the tech decision support enterprises say they had available to them. I'm afraid that if we lose more, we create a world where competition is meaningless because vendor account engagement becomes the only means of getting in-depth information.
Great and insightful as usual, Tom. Google's efforts with real-time search that I'm more familiar with are its Twitter search and social search, both of which I find to be irritating and useless. How is Caffeine different? While I see the need/want for immediacy, I also see how it's damaged an industry. Speed, and being first with some bit of news, is now valued over accuracy and depth. I can see how something like Caffeine, or this type of search in general, will only exacerbate the "need for speed" and will devalue good writing, research, and reporting even further.
Getting to Work on Smart Work: How IT Is Transforming the Implementation of the 'Internet of Things' Organizations in all industry sectors are becoming more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent -- and that's changing the way they approach virtually every facet of their operations. It's up to IT to help organizations adopt a "Three I's" approach that leverages the emerging Internet of Things and enables them to work smarter. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Two studios have filed suit against an ad broker for placing ads to help monetize P2P sites suspected of copyright infringement. That's taking a dangerous step toward what might be a worthy goal.
Google's foray into pay-for-view movies may be an indicator that the days of free ad-sponsored content are numbered, or at least that ad sponsorship won't fund nearly enough content.
Google's decision to link VoIP calling of PSTN numbers with Gmail, and to let Google Voice "call" Gmail VoIP clients, will devalue the PSTN and force telcos to fund unprofitable services or create their own VoIP transitions.
Tom’s research shows that IM, SMS, and social networking distract a third of knowledge workers but make the other two-thirds more productive! Which group are you in?
Location-based services could be combined with ad malware to facilitate targeting of demographic groups such as young females, creating a safety and privacy risk.
Pew says that 53% of the US population doesn't think broadband policy is necessary. Other data shows that most consumers who don't have the Internet just don’t want it. Perhaps the Internet’s problem has more to do with content than policy. Hmmmmmm...
Google's problems in Korea and the leaked internal document on exploiting private data show that, if we want to avoid active regulation, we need more explicit disclosure of what companies do and don’t do with what they collect.
A rumored deal between Verizon and Google may finally define whether a "neutral" Internet means best-effort for all, or one where anyone with extra money can pay to deliver content to users via a premium QoS channel.
Android has passed the iPhone in sales, according to Nielson, but it's still not clear how Google plans to turn this success into profit. Tom thinks Google might want to start figuring that out.
There's a public-policy war on copyright that nobody is winning, and inconsistencies in viewpoint and interpretation seem to be multiplying. We need to step back and think our policies over again, or we risk having a strategy that fails everyone.
Google's foray into pay-for-view movies may be an indicator that the days of free ad-sponsored content are numbered, or at least that ad sponsorship won't fund nearly enough content.
Google's decision to link VoIP calling of PSTN numbers with Gmail, and to let Google Voice "call" Gmail VoIP clients, will devalue the PSTN and force telcos to fund unprofitable services or create their own VoIP transitions.
Do you ever want to send an email hours after you've written it? Ever want to receive an email at a later time? Ever want to defy gravity? You can do some of those things with Boomerang for Gmail.
Location-based services could be combined with ad malware to facilitate targeting of demographic groups such as young females, creating a safety and privacy risk.
Google's problems in Korea and the leaked internal document on exploiting private data show that, if we want to avoid active regulation, we need more explicit disclosure of what companies do and don’t do with what they collect.
As the recent Google-Verizon agreement shows, the net neutrality debate is so bogged down by partisan politics that it may require the conflict resolution skills of Richard Holbrooke.
A rumored deal between Verizon and Google may finally define whether a "neutral" Internet means best-effort for all, or one where anyone with extra money can pay to deliver content to users via a premium QoS channel.
Android has passed the iPhone in sales, according to Nielson, but it's still not clear how Google plans to turn this success into profit. Tom thinks Google might want to start figuring that out.
Google's landing page for iPhones, which essentially obsolesces the iPhone app for YouTube, signals that smartphone apps may be the battleground in the war for control over mobile services, advertising, and revenue.
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Email This
