[LINK] The Future of Search Is Boutique

[Kim Holburn]

https://future.a16z.com/the-future-of-search-is-boutique/


> For most queries, Google search is pretty underwhelming these days. Google is great at answering questions with an objective 
> answer, like “# of billionaires in the world” or “What is the population of Iceland?” It’s pretty bad at answering questions that 
> require judgment and context like “What do NFT collectors think about NFTs?”
>
> The evidence is everywhere. These days, I find myself suppressing the garbage Internet by searching on Google for “Substack + 
> future of learning” to find the best takes on education. We hack Twitter with the “what is the best 
> <https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1435299942235615236>” posts over and over again. When I’m researching a new product, I 
> type “X item reddit” into Google. I find enormous value in small, niche, often forgotten sites like Spaghetti Directory 
> <https://spaghetti.directory/>.
>
> There’s an emergence of tools like Notion, Airtable, and Readwise where people are aggregating content and resources, reviving the 
> /curated web/. But at the moment these are mostly solo affairs — hidden in private or semi-private corners of the Internet, 
> fragmented, poorly indexed, and unavailable for public use. We haven’t figured out how to make them multiplayer. In cases where 
> we’ve made them public and collaborative — here isa great example 
> <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16IDgIyPcfwJGG-zmXeMAenYbePQVHkc2P6WCwKEZgpk/htmlview#gid=0>— these projects are often 
> short-lived and poorly maintained.
>
> The stated mission of a company worth almost two trillion dollars is to “organize the world’s information” and yet the Internet 
> remains poorly organized. Or, stated differently, in a world of infinite information,*it’s no longer enough to organize the 
> world’s information. It becomes important to organize the world’s **/trustworthy/**information.*
>
*...*
> I believe the opportunity in search is not to attack Google head-on with a massive, one-size-fits-all horizontal aggregator, but 
> instead to*build boutique search engines that index, curate, and organize things in new ways.*
...

>
>     Vertical search aggregators
>
> Google is a great example of how the internet enabled scale and speed: every page on the web returned in an instant. But, 
> increasingly, we’re seeing that this scale is at odds with a fundamental human need: *relevance*. Someone who wants to find the 
> best freelance designer, or the best sushi restaurant, or the best NFT to buy will not find the answer on Google.
>
...

> *When you monetize via ads, curation takes a backseat to featuring advertisers* because there is just less digital real estate 
> available to curate your own recommendations. So these platforms end up making ethically dubious design choices that generate 
> massive trust gaps <https://www.usv.com/writing/2019/05/trusted-brands/>.
>
....


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net   aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn  - PGP Public Key on request