"In John Borthwick’s post this week, he brings up the idea that Google is soon to suffer from the Creative Destruction… So true. I can go beyond that and say that we – the people who make stuff on the web – are suffering from a bigger-than-big creative draught. Tom cat starts chasing Jerry mouse. They run in a circle… and soon Jerry stops running and steps off to the side while Tom runs faster and faster in a circle completely forgetting what he was up to in the first place. They were both up to something when the games started and now they’re completely distracted. That’s how we are with Search and information discovery – and possibly the entire web X.0 product. We’ve been running in circles for years and years, chasing index size, market share and revenue growth and have forgotten that the whole point in the beginning was to help people find information."
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Search is broken – really broken. | luckyrobot.com - Gerry Campbell

Rafer sez:

@JohnBorthwick Lucky robot jumped on the other themes of your post, which may have been more appropriate. Certainly, Google is now ripe to suffer from Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction, whether by Christensen’s Dilemma or in some other form — unless they learn to cannibalize themselves repeatedly like Intel is pretty good at. Notably, Intel has been Christensen’s most significant corporate fan and benefactor.

I think LuckyRobot is right to give more focus to discovery than you did. UCG lends itself far more to discovery than search and so confuses the GOOG. GOOG excels at math, not people. The Facebook feed is discovery, not search. Ditto my Twitter feed.

Discovery is about local maxima, not global ones. Give me the best that I have ready (emotional, physical, …) access to, not the global best that I can never attain. Help me to aspire, not become a fantasist.

[In Lookery’s case, support my ad sales force in making the most we can. Don’t maximize RPM at the expense of account control and handing my destiny over to a third-party network.]