What did we do before Google?

The Telegraph opened today with “It’s 20 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee published a proposal that has revolutionised the way we live.” And it’s right.

The more you consider just how much things have evolved in the short time I’ve been paying income tax, the more incredible it seems.

Someone alerted me to a cheesy but inspirational YouTube clip the other day, it puts a lot of perspective on what’s going on. We’re preparing our kids for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we haven’t even tagged as problems yet!

I’d go on – but the schedule’s tight today.

It’s all going to die

Well, we’re not just yet, but our access to the internet will be dead by 2010 if the doom and gloom merchants are to be believed. We’ll be on a road to nowhere.

It would appear that whilst providers of content are working hard to make the public’s use of the internet a full-on experience and a one-stop-shop for all our needs – think iPlayer, MP3 downloads etc – the actual infrastructure upon which this is being built is decidedly shaky. GB does not have the broadband capability to match the ever-growing demand and when we all change to IPTV – well, don’t even go there.

The suggestion is that fibre to the home would be the answer but that would be a costly exercise and who would foot the bill?

This conjures up an interesting vision of a sudden reversal to life without the Internet. Where would we all be? No on-line shopping, no instant answers to questions, having to post letters and press releases (having to print them off too – not very green), the list is endless.

I am sure it will never come to that but it once again it is a case of “seemed like a good idea at the time” with anyone realising where it could all lead.

Search me

So it hit the news today that Yahoo is considering a strategic alliance with AOL in order to keep the wolf from the door, following Microsoft’s much-publicised takeover bid. At the same time, Yahoo is considering channeling the lucrative advertising system of its competitor Google (itself a shareholder in AOL) in an effort to generate revenues.

Michael Holland of New York Investment fund Holland & Co. said, rather uncharitably, “The AOL-Yahoo thing reminds me of two men drowning, both grabbing on to each other”. [Guardian 11.04.08, p26]. The consensus over Yahoo seems to be that these are the acts of a company in dire straits.

More interesting, I thought, and more broadly relevant to the search space, was the story that hit the press on Monday (07.11.08). A European Commission advisory body has issued a warning to search engines concerning the lengthy periods for which they retain users data. By analysing the websites you visit, search engines can build up a staggeringly comprehensive picture of our likes, dislikes and personality types. Yahoo is one of the better search engines in this regard, retaining its users’ data for only 13 months, compared to Google’s 18. However, whether used for marketing purposes, or purely for internal development, I suspect most people remain unaware that their data is used in this way.

Without naming any names, one of the elements of PR work we do is in the open source enterprise search space. One of the things such companies are understandably passionate about is the transparency of their software: anyone can see how they work and what they’re doing. Yahoo, Google and MSN search are ‘closed books’ to the outside world in terms of their intellectual property. Many would argue that we can only know as much about a search engine’s privacy policies as they are willing, or are forced, to tell us.

These high-profile data-gathering systems, facebook included, are a cause of mounting concern amongst net users. Following the recent PR disaster connected to the ‘Phorm’ advertising system, which was decreed to gather user information in a way that was genuinely illegal, you’d think that Yahoo would manage its PR extremely carefully regarding their ‘experiment’ with the Google advertising system. But with all eyes on the share price, Yahoo are, I suspect, keen to play down this partnership. Perhaps it’s time these companies threw open the doors to show, if only to a regulatory body, exactly how their market-information software works.