Google Is Dead

Google Earth, Google Sun, Google Moon, Google will be your phone, Google will clone your sheep, Google will beat your wife - ok fine.  But somebody better send some money over to the Google-Will-Find-Stuff-On-The-Internet Department, because that dog don’t hunt no more.

I can’t find Jack with this fricking thing.

It's been on a steady decline for years and I've had enough!  So I’m calling it. Stop compressions. Google, the search engine, has finally succumb to the weight of the internet, and it’s own self-neglect, and died.

It’s been going down hill quite a while now and Google’s eyes have been elsewhere.

The patient  is dead and I can prove it.  How?  Well, I could cite statistics and graphs showing how search satisfaction per web query has fallen over the years, but I don’t have any.

Or I could use drunk-Vulcan logic to make my point:

             Socrates is a man.

             All men are mortal.

             Therefore the Google Search Engine has bit the dust.

Compelling, but there are gaps. So instead I offer the following, more rigorous, proof that Google is dead: The “Dude, come on, I mean come-on, dude. Really think about it” proof.

Here's how it goes.  Think back to 2001 or so when you did a search for something on Google. Remember how impressed you were that it found what you wanted even though your search terms were crummy. Fast forward to now and think about your last few Google searches.  Now compare the two.  You know there’s an ocean of difference. How many times have you had to "refine" your search terms?  How many times have you clicked and groaned only to click and groan again?  How many times have you got stuck in internet mud, or finally found what you wanted on page seven of the search results?   Am I right?  Let's face facts.  Compared to back in the day, this puppy's dead.  Ipso Facto Proofo.

The decline has just been so gradual most people haven’t noticed.  

I won't waste your time with my personal pet peeve with Google.  Well ok, since you brought it up.  I wish Google would have some setting to force them to respect the term "exact phrase."   Ever since Google fully implemented it’s strategy of “Sure I’ll search for your exact phrase but I know best so I won’t” philosophy I’ve been totally disarmed.

(Searching for an exact phrase, including spaces, punctuation, weird characters and small words was really helpful if you were tricky about it.)

Ironically, it’s Google’s own popularity that has helped create the problem. The internet has become this forest of reverse-engineered link goop that tries to mirror and exploit Google's search engine. So Google evolves counter measures to improve search quality and, of course, sites try to re-evolve to again mirror what Google is looking for. And the cycle repeats.  The trouble is, with each iteration of this dance, actual useful sites are becoming less visible in the crowd.   Somehow this evolution has become de-evolution.  And the problem becomes more complicated as the internet rapidly expands.  

The net result is Google can't produce the good results like it once did.

It is a tough job to be sure.  But didn’t Google get something like a thousand dollars in that IPO a few years back?

Well they better spend some of that money on the search engine before they come up with the next Google-brand back scratcher.  Because the guy who brought them to the dance is laying dead on the floor.

And the place is starting to stink-up a bit.