Guy Kawasaki (l) talks search with Google SVP Amit Singhal (r) at SXSW.[/caption] AUSTIN, TX—How do you build a search engine that’s more attuned to natural language, capable of divining what you mean and giving back what you want? That was just one of the questions pondered when Google senior vice president Amit Singhal sat down with Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple and author, at one of this year’s SXSW keynotes. The two executives also focused a good deal on mobile, which intersects in several ways with the development of natural-language search. “Our dream is for search to become the ‘Star Trek’ computer, and that’s what we’re building today,” Singhal said. But he seemed reluctant to share much about his company on a more tactical level, parrying Kawasaki’s queries about everything from the amount of code in Google’s search platform to recent cyber-attacks on the company’s systems. Singhal was more forthcoming about the challenges facing the world’s largest search company. “All parts of the Web are growing,” he said. “Early on, people were just amazed if search at all worked… people weren’t fully expecting search to work and they were amazed when it did.” More than twelve years later, though, “people have completely come to expect search engines to work, and the questions they’ve been asking have become harder and harder.” Mobility is pouring gallons of gas on that particular fire. “Google, in the early days, we saw our search growing exponentially,” he said. “With mobile it was like watching my second child growing even faster.” As mobile search became more sophisticated, and devices such as smartphones more ubiquitous, Google realized that people never really stop searching the Web—when they step away from their laptops and desktops at the end of the workday, they simply start tapping away at the hardware in their hand. “People are searching all the time.”
SXSW: Google’s Amit Singhal Talks Natural-Language Search, Mobile
[caption id="attachment_8364" align="aligncenter" width="618"] Guy Kawasaki (l) talks search with Google SVP Amit Singhal (r) at SXSW.[/caption] AUSTIN, TX—How do you build a search engine that’s more attuned to natural language, capable of divining what you mean and giving back what you want? That was just one of the questions pondered when Google senior vice president Amit Singhal sat down with Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple and author, at one of this year’s SXSW keynotes. The two executives also focused a good deal on mobile, which intersects in several ways with the development of natural-language search. “Our dream is for search to become the ‘Star Trek’ computer, and that’s what we’re building today,” Singhal said. But he seemed reluctant to share much about his company on a more tactical level, parrying Kawasaki’s queries about everything from the amount of code in Google’s search platform to recent cyber-attacks on the company’s systems. Singhal was more forthcoming about the challenges facing the world’s largest search company. “All parts of the Web are growing,” he said. “Early on, people were just amazed if search at all worked… people weren’t fully expecting search to work and they were amazed when it did.” More than twelve years later, though, “people have completely come to expect search engines to work, and the questions they’ve been asking have become harder and harder.” Mobility is pouring gallons of gas on that particular fire. “Google, in the early days, we saw our search growing exponentially,” he said. “With mobile it was like watching my second child growing even faster.” As mobile search became more sophisticated, and devices such as smartphones more ubiquitous, Google realized that people never really stop searching the Web—when they step away from their laptops and desktops at the end of the workday, they simply start tapping away at the hardware in their hand. “People are searching all the time.”
Guy Kawasaki (l) talks search with Google SVP Amit Singhal (r) at SXSW.[/caption] AUSTIN, TX—How do you build a search engine that’s more attuned to natural language, capable of divining what you mean and giving back what you want? That was just one of the questions pondered when Google senior vice president Amit Singhal sat down with Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple and author, at one of this year’s SXSW keynotes. The two executives also focused a good deal on mobile, which intersects in several ways with the development of natural-language search. “Our dream is for search to become the ‘Star Trek’ computer, and that’s what we’re building today,” Singhal said. But he seemed reluctant to share much about his company on a more tactical level, parrying Kawasaki’s queries about everything from the amount of code in Google’s search platform to recent cyber-attacks on the company’s systems. Singhal was more forthcoming about the challenges facing the world’s largest search company. “All parts of the Web are growing,” he said. “Early on, people were just amazed if search at all worked… people weren’t fully expecting search to work and they were amazed when it did.” More than twelve years later, though, “people have completely come to expect search engines to work, and the questions they’ve been asking have become harder and harder.” Mobility is pouring gallons of gas on that particular fire. “Google, in the early days, we saw our search growing exponentially,” he said. “With mobile it was like watching my second child growing even faster.” As mobile search became more sophisticated, and devices such as smartphones more ubiquitous, Google realized that people never really stop searching the Web—when they step away from their laptops and desktops at the end of the workday, they simply start tapping away at the hardware in their hand. “People are searching all the time.”
