Our favorite search engine Google has gone through a lot of transformation over the last 20 years. What started off as a simple index of search pages has evolved into a complex dynamics of machine learning, data science and computer vision. Google has emerged into a powerful force reaching out to billions and billions of people across the globe changing the way we receive and interpret information.
Google is embracing for more transformation over the coming years and in its recently held conference in San Francisco in September, Google discussed what lies next in its “Future of Search” event.
Google Discover
If you have noticed, recently the google.com homepage has begun to get a little packed on your mobile device. If you are using an upgraded Google Chrome version on your mobile, chances are you are already seeing a string of news feeds below your search bar. Google is rebranding this Google Feed as ‘Discover’. This is based on your search histories and the topics relevant to your life. Google says, after studying search patterns of users they have identified a general behavior to return to same search topics over a period from a certain user. Discover will cater to your search needs and present news feeds that reflects your utmost interest, like films, vacation destinations, cricket or education.
The Discover will become more prominent in the coming weeks. It will also come with a slider to sort out your preference.
Related Activity
Google has always kept a tab on your search history and patterns but this time it is going to show up right before you. As mentioned above, users show the propensity to return to same or related search topics over a period of time, so next time you search on the topic you have been researching after will show up as ‘Related Activity’ as the first thing.
But don’t worry it is only you who will be able to see this section on your device. And if that creeps you out then “opt out of seeing it out altogether”, says Google.
Information Packets
Most of the time we are looking for a host of topics that comes attached with a single thought that we are searching for. For example, you want to bake a chocolate cake, and often times you are looking for different combinations of chocolate cake, like gluten-free chocolate cake, egg-less chocolate cake, almond chocolate cake and so on and so forth. Google is smarting up the search engine to predict what you might eventually look for in addition to your primary search topic.
After a string of search results, you might find information cards down the page that might get you interested into things related to your search topic. The goal here is to present an overall information platter, relevant to what you are looking for. The notion here is to predict your needs well before you type the keywords on the search bar.
The cards might look like from Pinterest, but Google will conjure suggested pages and news feeds from your search topics and club them into information cards before you.
Stories
Almost all of our favorite social media apps have got this, you name it. Instagram has it, Snapchat has it, even Facebook and WhatsApp, Skype dabbled for a while.
Google too wants a slice, but it will be different. In its own words, Google is “doubling down” on stories generated through AI. The stories will consist of news, videos, articles, images of search topics, but it will mostly have feeds concerning celebrities.
