Google built a business, quite well I might add, on perfecting search and search usability. They funded the business with advertising. The brand play was not to be the world’s greatest advertising platform (something Yahoo and AOL didn’t understand), it was all about search.
Back in the day (last week, hee hee) Google search was all about the Web. Finding things digital. This week, it’s about seeing and searching for digital things in the physical world. So mobile apps and navigation are the rage. Google hasn’t led the way here, Apple has, but Google wasn’t first in search either.
What’s next?
What’s next is search for physical things in the physical world. Call it worldwide inventory. What is worldwide inventory and how will it work? Not sure, but this cantaloupe sized brain of mine says it may have to do with barcodes. Now you can’t put a bar code on an $11,000 hip replacement in Mexico (You can’t?) but you can put one on a $12.00 case of Honest Tea with torn labels. The ability for mankind to find real things, in proximity, with their smart phones is what Google will be doing over the next decade. And that hip replacement or $6,000 valve bypass in China will be something worth searching for. Stay with search Google — it will soon be atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
Worldwide Inventory may sound like a Pearl Jam song but it’s an Eric Schmidt song. Peace!
