I’m sure some of you know the service, Let Me Google That For You (LMGTFY). It’s one of those parasitically brilliant – or iteratively brilliant, depending on how you define it – sites that is used when you want to come up with a sly remark to your friend’s question, “Does anyone know any good bars near Penn Station?”
Simply type in “Bars near Penn Station” into the search bar on LMGTFY and you are then given a url which you can send to your friend. What your friend experiences, is this.
It’s hysterical but it also loops back into something that broke into the news today. Google announced that its searches are now going to be filled with results from Google+, which therefore means that your search will be influenced by what your friends are doing or what they think.
The Truth About Google Search
Google will cease to be the objective search tool that we all think it is and be more reliant on what your community is experiencing. Well actually, I lie. Google hasn’t been the objective online answering tool for over 2 years now. Google’s search algorithm tailors your search results based on your user behavior. This is how it works in real life: Below is a screen shot of my Google search window after I typed in “travel film festival.” Have a click and take a look. Does yours match? I’m guessing not.
What Does This All Mean?
It means that Google is banking on the fact that you care more about types of things you’ve searched for previously, and now, things that your friends/colleagues think is important. You might be up in arms at this fact but Google didn’t get to where they’ve gotten by being foolish.
We care what our friends are doing and the number one thing we want in life is the respect of our peers. This works when we’re looking for a bar near Penn Station or if we’re looking for a photo booth vendor. After all, if we didn’t care what our friends thought, a site like Let Me Google That For You wouldn’t exist. Why would we ask our friends when we could instead use the most powerful search engine ever made? Because we like being having things in common to those around us.
In fact, Google is banking on that.
Bassam Tarazi has been to 42 countries, holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree and a Green MBA. He is also a LEED AP and a certified Carbon Reduction Tarazi is co-founder of the tremendously successful Nomading Film Festival aimed at travelers, and recently launched his own motivational framework, called Colipera. Colipera leverages on the idea that peers publicly stating their goals to each other is more likely to inspire action among the whole group than tackling a goal individually would. Currently he lives in Brooklyn, NY.