SearchMash: Google Reborn

The (Inevitable) Conclusion

SearchMash is really cool. It’s definitely something worth looking into, especially if you’re the kind of guy that needs to know everything new and exciting in technology. It contains some rather nice hints as to the future of Google and what directions search is taking, and leaves you looking forward for what’s to come. If you couldn’t figure that stuff out, here’s some hints.

Search is taking a fork in the road. It’s no longer about words, text, essays, and documents. Now “real” content like Videos and Images matter just as much. They obviously matter enough that the biggest search engines today are trying to put them in very-visible places on the front page. It’s no longer about deciding what content is most valuable, but rather about letting the user decide for him or herself. The search engines now give you what you need to make a decision, based on who you are and what you’re looking for.

Blogging. It’s definitely not just for geeks or narcissistic folks only. It’s where the real news is to be found, where valuable opinions come up, and where the real analysis and research is done now-a-days. Peer review the way we know it is dead, long live the internet the online communities. It’s nice that Google/SearchMash gets that; because not only do blogs appear in the blog-box on the side, but also in the normal search results too if they’re popular enough. It’s double the attention, because it matters. That much.

Natural Interfaces. It seems to be a big deal. Pagination just isn’t cool (but until we implement such a feature here, you’ll still have to deal with the pages ;P) and it’s a good thing corporations are taking heed. It’s not enough to bring the content to the user, you also have to make the user comfortable with the results. The Vatican has a plethora of un-indexed and undiscovered knowledge and hidden secrets in its libraries, but most people would rather the ease of a Google search over that any day.

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But nothing is without complexities and issues. Notice that SearchMash doesn’t have any spam errr ads on the side. When it goes gold, you can bet they’ll be there. Will the be interspersed with the i-frames on the side? Or are they going to be (gasp!) one and the same? The dynamic content blocks are cool, but they mean extra overhead, and the presence of the much despised JavaScript bloat.

Add to the content blocks all the other AJAX on the page and you’ve got a problem. AJAX is nice, no one’s denying that, but how much is enough? Whereas Microsoft’s Live Search works without JavaScript enabled in the clients’ browsers, SearchMash doesn’t. It just dies.

Google’s taking quite a few hints from Microsoft as far as design and interface go, let’s hope they learn to make SearchMash as aesthetically pleasing because right now it’s rather scary-looking.

All in all, SearchMash is nice. If you’re not addicted to Google, you might be interested in changing your default browser. If you are, maybe that’s not such a good idea just yet. It certainly does provide plenty of food for thought, from the new directions Google might be taking with this platform to the plethora of UI changes¹. In short, give it a shot, it looks promising. If you don’t like it, switch back, no one’s going to fine you for it.

1. This includes the amazing amount of borrowed ideas, it’s actually bugging us a bit just how many ideas Google, masters of innovation and user-happiness, are borrowing from others in the field as far as the UI goes. Is it possible that’s why SearchMash is SearchMash and not Google2.com? We don’t know… ↩