Google spunk: What they did to search

(First of 2 parts)

MANILA, Philippines - Seek and you shall find.

In the tech realm, this is true as well. What we know today as Internet search is really seeking information and finding it in one click, in a matter of seconds.

“What does a perfect search engine look to you these days?” asked Amit Singhal, Google fellow, at the opening of The Science of Search conference in Tokyo recently. “Today, a perfect search engine gives you the information you want right away. You expect that of a search engine and yes, you should.”

In fact, he said, “You should expect even more.”

In the 12 years that Internet users have been typing a query in that classic Google search box, the Internet has become a much bigger, more complicated place. 

“We went from a situation where users have no information at all to a situation where users have literally millions and billions of possible pieces of information,” Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president for engineering and research, said in his keynote speech.

Now, no question goes unanswered, especially as you can find what you are looking for in seconds.

But search didn’t stop there, it has evolved while the world wasn’t looking or people were just plain busy with their online lives. The sultans of search have been continuously working furiously in their labs redefining the concept of search to include more possibilities for finding information on the Web.

Did you know, for example, that you can search for something on the Web without typing a word in the search box?

Through Google Goggles, one can now use pictures taken with the mobile phone to search the Web and is ideal for things that aren’t easy to describe in words.

What if your query can’t be typed? What if it’s a flower or a building you see in front of you? Google said all you have to do is open the app, snap a picture, and wait for your search results.

Search beyond text

There are thousands of rich information on the Web - images, videos and various other media. Finding these types of information in the global Internet maze is made possible by key technological breakthroughs, disclosed Singhal.

“One of these was to look through the images, analyze the millions of pixels, colors, textures and actually match them at the visual level not just on the textual level,” he said.

“A word is just a few characters, a picture is worth a thousand words and just one image is almost like a million words. What we were able to do is combine some hard technology with search metrics that allows us to match images and build the search engine of today,” he added.

Many queries also can’t be typed. Typing characters is difficult in some Asian languages. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to think of search merely as words typed on a computer screen or a device.

In Asian countries where typing is rather difficult, Google offers “click to search” solutions rather than “type to search” methods. This works via suggesting to users words or phrases used often in searches, highlighting passages to help users input one’s intentions in the search engine.

Voice search is another breakthrough for Google, albeit still in the early stage of development.

“I never thought that voice search was ever going to work,” admitted Eustace. “I supported voice search in my entire career as research director but I never thought that it will reach the point where an untrained user could walk up to a device and input a query and have it correctly find the output and I never thought it could work across languages.”

The power of data, the power of machines, he stressed, was such that scientists have attacked that problem in a way that will soon make it possible to place a phone between you and I. I will type in English, it will translate to your language. You will talk in your language and it will translate in English.

“It’s not a Star Trek fantasy but something that will happen in the next five years. In some ways it is happening now,” he said.

Search beyond language

“Google’s mission is very simple,” Eustace stressed. “It is to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. “

However, the reality is that much of the information out there is not available in bits.

So Google took the physical world and converted it into bits. Through innovations such as Google Earth and Google Streetview, it is making bits of the physical world where there are none. 

By converting all the wonderful information that the world has in books and by understanding the physical world through satellites, Google is making bits of information that are relevant to users such as location.

Before coming to Japan for the search conference, Singhal said he was already able to navigate every corner of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Roppongi Hills using Google Streetview just by sitting in his Mountainview, California office, and so do most Google executives and participants to the conference.

Eustace said it was even easier finding the hotel through his phone’s GPS than talking to a non-English speaking taxi driver.

“When we say we want to organize the world’s information, it is not just the information that you find from the Web but also information that you need every day,” he said.

This include being able to search and read information written in numerous languages of the world.

By combining translation technology with search technology, Google allows users to find websites or documents written in a foreign language and read it in English or vice versa.

If, for example, you are trying to find a noodle house around Roppongi Hills that serves ramen, chances are you wouldn’t be able to find that information in English as most information on ramen would be most likely be found on Japanese websites.

Through Google’s cross-language search, you can now read these Japanese websites in English or in any language of your choice.

It can be anything though from information on bullfighting in Spain to vacation houses in Tuscany to horseback riding tours in Tibet to finding the largest fish market in Hokkaido or the Kimchi Museum in Seoul.

“Imagine if you combine this search technology with the powerful mobile devices of today,” said Singhal. “You are not bound by language, you are not bound by geography and you are not bound by time.”

Search that knows you

“It is my dream,” said Singhal, “as a student of search 20 years ago to build a search engine that is tailor-fit to each individual.

Admittedly, it could make search more relevant though it is a very hard problem.” “Think about it, how many people do you really know out of the six billion people? Very few. And if I ask you to describe each and everyone, you’ll stop after your family and friends,” said Singhal.

But Google somehow found a way. Now, a search query typed in three different countries will yield three different results.

Take tax, for example. If you type tax on the Google search box in Japan, Singhal said it will give you links to, among others, the national tax agency in Japan. The same query in Hong Kong will give you the revenue department of Hong Kong and the same query in New Zealand will give you the revenue department of New Zealand.

“These three users are unique. We have to make search results relevant to where they are. Our job is to return the most locally relevant results,” said Singhal.

Google’s personalization technology is built on the premise that each user is “an individual and special.”

When an Indian like Singhal, for example, types “lords” in the search box, it will most likely return links to cricket.

“Like the billion Indians, I love cricket. When I type ‘lords’ in the search query and I am signed in, it will most likely give me the link to the Lords Cricket Grounds in London,” he said.

“I am individual and I am special. This search engine knows me,” he demonstrated. “If I sign out and I type the same query, it will give me generic search results and it will probably give me a very popular gaming system called ‘Lords’ and still be relevant.”

Another aspect of this personalized search is in the area of social search, which is the biggest thing in the social networking age.

“Last month,” said Singhal, “was my wife’s birthday and I wanted to buy her an iPad. What took the wow out of me was that included in my Google search results were two reviews of the iPad from my social circle.”

“This search engine really knows me, knows what I want,” he said. Although the other results are relevant for the world, the two reviews from his friends are more personalized. “They have something to say about the iPad and I would most likely read what they have to say.”

Search in real-time, search that understands

Information is generated everywhere, round the clock. The power of today’s search engine is in the power to know what is happening now at this very moment.

Now, this could give traditional media a shudder or it can give it more power, depending on what looking glass one is peering into.

“What you are tweeting now as we speak can be found by someone sitting in front of a computer in another part of the world right away,” said Singhal. “One can find the information in seconds or minutes after it was produced.”

Only recently, there was an earthquake in northern California and Singhal said Google Search beat the United States Geological Service (USGS) in reporting the incident by a full eight minutes.

Alongside this capability is the replay feature, which gives users a timeline of what happened in the last few days, the last few hours or the last few minutes.

The dream of every search engineer, however, is a search that understands. As computers do not understand language as humans do, this remains one of the hardest tasks around.

Currently though, Google’s personalization technology is one of the first strides in the attempt to make computers understand.

The holy grail of search, however, according to Singhal, is what do words really mean. How much Google understands language currently define searches.

The word change, for example, can mean many different things. “If your query is ‘how to change screen brightness on your laptop,’ Google understands that you want to ‘adjust’ the brightness of your screen,” he said.

“If your query was ‘how to change foreign currency,’ Google understands that you do not want to ‘adjust’ currency but you want to ‘exchange’ currency,” he explained further.

In the same vein, if your query was “how to change computer memory,” Google understands that you probably want to “install” memory to your computer, and it would tell you that the word memory most probably mean RAM (random access memory).

“Until about 15 years ago, print was still the primary mode of disseminating information,” said Singhal. “Imagine how much this world has changed in the last two decades.”

Clearly a lot of work remains, he said, but it is quite amazing how much progress has been made and how far we’ve come to realizing our tech dreams.

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(Next week: Geek Talk: Solving search problems in Asia)