Google´s Universal Search to search GMail, Google Documents and Social Networks!
Open Letter to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google
August 2007
Dear Mrs. Mayer,
Your announcement of “Universal Search” in May 2007 got everyone including us excited. We would like to build on your concept of Universal Search and suggest to you the following road map to deliver to the world what we call the “Ultimate Universal Search”:
0) Include also results from Gmail, Google Docs and the other Google Applications
The value of “Universal Search” has been nicely demonstrated with the Google Search for “Nosferatu”. Not only the video is brought up as a result but all sorts of possibly interesting links to Nosferatu are offered in one screen. Delivering in the same screen also results from the users Google mailbox (Example: “Mail from Paul: What do you think about “Nosferatu”?) and Google Docs+Spreadsheets (Example: ” Todo.xls - watch Nosferatu”) seems to be the very next logical step.
1) Provide users with one simple way to structure their content across all Google Applications
Folders in a traditional file system allow users to organize their set of Documents by grouping all sorts of different file types together. It is essential that there is one and only one structure to organize and group Documents accross all Google Applications (Example: “My Summer Holiday 2007″ would be available as Label or Folder to organize Photos in Picasa, Mails in Gmail and Documents in Google Docs). Today this is not the case. This user provided structure could additionally improve Search in the same way as structure provided from Google Base does today:
“Google Base is how we get structured data. The quality of our index is better because of Google Base.”
Eric Schmid in an interview with www.wired.com
2) Let users access and manage all their content from within one user interface
Let us assume there will be such a shared structure across all Google Apps to organize user content. A further enhanced version of Google Docs is then getting in reach that will allow to manage all different document types (Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Photos, Videos, Bookmarks could be put all in one folder) together through its single user interface. The folder based user interface will be able to stay as simple as today, there is no need to scare users with functionality.
The Google Docs user interface will become de-facto the “Google Cockpit” to organize all online documents of a user. It will also continue to let users manage in one screen who can access what of their online documents. And equally important: It will also allow in one step to take away access rights without the hassle of having to remember what was shared with someone through whatever number of different services.
3) Find also all the content that is available to users from within their Social Networks
Support for iGoogle like personal pages inside Google Docs (this will be a new document type) will give users the same functionality as the home/profile pages in social networks do. iGoogle pages in Google Docs could be shared with different sets of people exactly in the same way as Documents in Google Docs can be shared already today. Sharing an iGoogle page with a Contact will be the equivalent of inviting that person to join this new “social network”. Somebody who decides to join will give as response access to an iGoogle page of his own. People who joined a network can freely navigate through the iGoogle pages of the other members and can access the content and widgets that are made available on those pages.
A list of of simple widgets for the new iGoogle pages would include a:
- “Profile widget” so that users can publish maintenance free their profile data (or only parts of it) that is to be maintained anyhow in a central Google Account
- “Folder widget” on the new iGoogle page will let network members access all files that the user is making available inside a related Google Docs folder
- “Network News widget” that will automatically tell users who uploaded a new Photo or scored high in the game on their new iGoogle page.
The setup of “Adhoc” required new social networks can get not much more simple than this:
- Whenever necessary a user can just create an additional new iGoogle page in Google Docs
- Customise it so that it serves the specific purpose of the new Social Network (or group)
- Give access to the related Documents, Photos or Videos through one or more “Folder widgets” on the new iGoogle page and then
- Simply share this iGoogle page in Google Docs with the intended group of people
This enhanced Google Docs will not only serve as a replacement for today`s Social Networks. Even more important is that Google`s Search engine will be now directly able to crawl the “iGoogle page based Social Networks” of users. This “Ultimate Universal Search” will deliver together in one screen search results from:
- all the Web
- all Google Applications content of a user and
- all content that a user can access through his/her Social Networks
(Example of such a result: George and Camilla as actors in their “home made version of Nosferatu” only available on your friends network)
It is obvious that privacy and security is becoming in this context an even more important aspect of the Google services. We believe that the suggested closer integration of Google Applications is also an opportunity for Google´s engineering to overcome issues of today’s deployed different services/technologies.
Closing Comment:
Looking at for example Socialstream it seems that Google is maybe still in favor of adding additional services (somehow contrary to earlier communicated company goals):
“Socialstream provides a compelling user experience because it aggregates content across many different networks so a user has a single location to discover new content and communicate.”
Source: googlesystem.blogspot.com
This article demonstrates the possibilities and benefits of integrating existing Google Applications and Social Networking with the goal to create a better Search. Search is Google´s core competency and value. The Ultimate Universal Search that will cover the Web, Applications and Social Networks is at the core of your business. When the Ultimate Universal Search is becoming at one point in time reality (in the hopefully not so distant future) you will be in our view one step closer to fulfill your mission:
“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
Thank you very much for your continuous efforts to provide a better service to the world.
Sincerely,
Jens + Ralf Scharnetzki
Social Bookmarking
August 21st, 2007 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Proposed Solutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Subscribe via Feed Burner
