Doug Leeds, US President of Ask.com, has a point to make: “at the end of the day, people would rather Ask for something than Google it”. (credit where it’s due: the quote is from this article from yesterday’s New York Times).
More credit: Mr. Leeds is correct . . . sort of. He’s wrong if he believes that people are interested in abandoning their Google.com search habit in favor of Ask.com, but we’ve all stared at that Google search box, not quite sure what to type in, then been frustrated by the results of our choice of search terms.
So wouldn’t it be better if you could ask your questions in natural language, have your search engine understand what you mean, and return the correct results?
In theory, that’s what Ask.com does. You’re encouraged to phrase your searches in the form of a question rather than combine words and operators such as “+‘, and “not“. Ask.com uses software to look at your question and decide what it means. You just have to trust it to do the job correctly.
Yeah, right.
I don’t trust it at all. That’s partly because I’ve tried it and not been any happier with the results at Ask.com than I am with what Google spits out. But the real point is that I’ve yet to see software that understands my questions well enough to trust. And that’s where social networking becomes social search.
The nature of the word “social”, when you strip everything else away, is that you trust people you’re social with. Trust can actually be negative, as in “I trust him to try and screw me over”, but it’s easier to deal from that uncomfortable position than to just start from scratch. It’s why I “trust” Google more than I trust Ask.com. I know that I get back exactly what I put in.
In acquiring Aardvark, Google is acknowledging that the next generation of search is trust. Aardvark is a search engine, but it uses the recommendations of people you already know to provide results. It’s like that “Ask a Friend” lifeline on the game show “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?“.
Social Networking, Social Search, Social Trust . . . business change that is all about who you know, and what they know.
