twopointouch

Philipp Lenssen has put together a list of common queries found through Google Suggest, the service that autocompletes your search queries based on popular searches.

Google is pretty good, but I reckon people’s expectations might be a tad too high.

Is love …
… real? … a fancy or a feeling? … enough? … blind? … a choice?

How to kill …
… a mockingbird? … yourself? … someone? … a tree? … a cat?

Does God …
… exist? … play dice? … love me? … change his mind? … answer prayers?

Does Satan …
… exist? … have a son? … know our thoughts?

Do dogs …
… dream? … go to heaven? … see in color? … smile?

Will she ever …
… be happy again? … come back to me? … like me? … love me again?

Will he ever …
… marry me? … love me? … leave his wife?

Is my boss …
… spying on me?

Quoted from Mr. Scoble (who is not specious):

“I do note that Google’s stock is up. Yahoo and Microsoft’s are down.”

The market believes this can work. Long-time readers will know that I am a believer in the Wisdom of Crowds. As the book says, when they’re properly orchestrated, the masses can make better decisions than experts. Stock Markets are not ideal examples of this, I think, since reputations and rumour holds sway; success breeds success and vice-versa, but they come close in some respects.

What made YouTube so madly successful? Clips from copyrighted TV? People doing crazy stunts? Talented pets? All of those things. What made YouTube work was that it was “the place”. It was the corner of the park after 7pm; it was the back of the bike sheds; it was where to go. It was where to waste some time; it was where to find stuff to stick on your page and mail to your friends.

The technology doesn’t matter; it never did. YouTube’s technology was ripped off a thousand times in the first year. Like others have said, though, you can’t clone a community. There may be a thousand digg clones, but there’s only one digg. YouTube has the community; none of the others do.

Lanjut →