The Death of Search Engines?
by Marion JensenIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
There’s an interesting article over at ZDNet UK. The idea is that people don’t need to go to a search engine to find what they need. If they want a review of a product, they will go to Amazon or CNET. If they want to find out about a place or person, they will head straight to Wikipedia. If they want something funny or interesting, they’ll got to YouTube or Digg.
I find myself doing this. Instead of going to Google (that will return 6 million pages), I will often head straight to Wikipedia. I’m not saying I don’t use Google, but I am finding that I use it less. If I’m looking for a review of a product, Google is simply unusable. Instead, I’ll go to any number of sites that I have found useful (and bookmarked), to find that information.
And this doesn’t even bring into account the possibility that the new iPhone brings into play: finding information based on where you are. While I don’t see search engines going away, I do see them losing power. The question remains, what fills the void?
Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.
3 Comments 
Recent Price Drops
June 10th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Search still is handy for fairly specific information still not available via this new crop of “social” sites. But it is true that, at this point, I use Google more as the new yellow pages or movie listing service than as traditional online search.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I think what is happening is that people are just going online more for everything. As a percentage of usage, Google may be lower thanks to Wikipedia, Amazon, etc, but as for absolute usage it is probably higher.
That still speaks to a Google losing relevance though. When I want X, Y, or Z I’m not going there (although I’m going to Live Search instead of Google anyway :).
June 11th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
The problem with SEs are becoming more and more obvious to end users. As people opt for a richer online experience, it seems traditional SEs are just failing to make that a reality.It was the same issue discuss on this provocative blog: Google devolution effect(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=644&doc_id=154069&F_src=flftwo). I don’t see them extincting in the long run but their relevance will be seriously diminish and as you correctly pointed out, are the alternatives good enough to fill the void??