Live Blogging Google's “Inside Search” Event
Everyone ready? Because the big day has arrived! Google's “Inside Search” event begins today at 9:30am Pacific Time. OK, reset your expectations. It might not be that big. But I'll be live blogging it, so stay tuned.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has repeatedly used press gatherings to frame search and mobile product changes, from its 2007 Searchology Day announcements to a 2010 mobile-features briefing. Inside Search continues that pattern with confirmed voice-based mobile search and search-by-picture announcements.
The event matters because Google entered it holding 65.5% of U.S. search share in May, according to comScore, giving changes to its core query experience unusually broad reach.
First-order effects
- Google expands mobile search beyond typed keywords by adding voice-based and picture-based ways for users to formulate queries.
Second-order effects
- Google’s large search distribution raises the competitive bar for rival search providers: matching results quality alone becomes less sufficient when Google is broadening the ways users can search.
Third-order effects
- If Google keeps integrating mobile-device capabilities into search, the market’s center of competition shifts from the search box toward multimodal input and the devices that supply it.
The trend: Search is moving from a text-led interface toward voice and visual inputs, with mobile devices serving as the bridge to those new query types.