Simon’s Blog

A few days ago, popular tech blogger Robert Scoble posted a series of videos in which he discussed why he thought that a combination of companies like Mahalo, TechMeme and Facebook could take on Google in search in a few years. The response has been pretty shocking.

People have seemingly universally (slight exaggeration, perhaps) called the man an idiot. Scoble links to his detractors here, and here. But why are they beating up on him like this? I don’t get it. All Scoble was doing was brainstorming a few ideas for future development of search. New ideas are certainly needed because it’s not as if search is a “solved problem”. In fact, it’s worse than that. Far from being searching being “done”, search is actually getting worse.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to “find the stuff I want” on Google. Now, to be fair, part of Google’s problem is that people’s expectations from search are going up; the Internet has increasing numbers of web-sites that Google can’t index; and people are wanting to use search in new ways, and in different situations. However, that doesn’t alter the fact - the development of the Google search experience isn’t keeping pace with people’s expectations. Certainly, it’s not keeping pace with mine. And, if Google isn’t keeping up, then that represents opportunity for others.

Which bring me back to Scoble’s videos. He threw out a few ideas, which could have started an interesting conversation. Now, maybe you think the ideas are good, maybe you don’t; but even if the ideas in the videos aren’t brilliant in themselves, perhaps they might have sparked some better ideas in someone else. That’s what can happen with brainstorming and conversations.

So, why are people so keen to stamp on one individual’s enthusiasm? It’s really not helpful. After all, anyone that’s ever achieved any real success in any field knows that enthusiasm is 90% of the battle…