Development Trends of search engines

Development Trends of search engines

In the real world, there is a conflict between infinity and scarcity, that is, the contradiction between the infinite desire and the scarcity of resources. economics is a specialized study on how to solve this contradiction, that is, find the most effective way or method to use limited resources to meet human desires and needs. In the current Internet world, there is also a conflict between infinity and scarcity, that is, the contradiction between the infinity of information resources and the scarcity of human time resources. The main method to solve this conflict is, it is the continuous enhancement and development of search engines.

A few years ago, the global search engine only contained tens of millions of pages, but now it has reached several billion pages. In the face of the explosive growth of internet information, on the one hand, it greatly satisfies the infinite desire for knowledge, and on the other hand, it makes time resources increasingly scarce. This situation also gives people more and more demand and reliance on search engines. According to CNNIC's 14th internet surveys, searching has become the main way for users to obtain information from the Internet with an absolute advantage of 71.9%. In almost all surveys around the world, search engines are second only to email services on the Internet. If there is demand, supply is required, and there will be a market, and there will be a strong motivation for development. The Development Trend of search engines, the network and other media have been discussed with wisdom. I would like to intervene in the Forum and make a speech.

Some people have suggested that the Matthew effect, which makes the rich richer and the poorest, is an important potential rule for the development of search engines. They believe that the future search market will be "polarized ", the vast majority of the shares will be concentrated on one or two search giants, and predicted that the brutal market would "the vast majority of small and medium search engines will perish from an economic point of view, it is not simply a search engine." Based on different needs, I speculate that giant search engines and small and medium search engines will segment the market in the horizontal and vertical directions to form a complementary, collaborative, and common prosperity situation. This is because, in the plane direction, the nature of generic search engines makes it impossible to meet the needs of precise information services in special fields and groups. The emergence of vertical search engines is to provide valuable information and related services for a specific domain, a specific population, or a specific demand. It can be said that the development of universal search engines provides a good market space for the emergence of vertical search engines, and the emergence of vertical search engines will become a useful supplement to general search engines, in this way, the Internet search market will gradually form a diversified structure and trend.

Some may have such doubts: Search giants such as Google, Yahoo, and Baidu rely on their strong wealth and technical strength with their foresight and strategic vision, isn't there any way to split up the vertical search market with a lot of money in the future? Where are there "small people" and the "leftovers" of later people "? Li Xueling, a well-known IT industry, has profound insights. In his blog post, he cited the "gongshi Theory" in a book and put forward the idea of "industry chain Common Prosperity", pointing out that Google stands at the top of the industry chain, however, Google depends on its prosperity and climb to a higher level. It relies on its support of a large number of cornerstones. This cornerstone is to maintain the prosperity of the industry chain. He believes that some powerful companies in the past gradually declined. "The core reason is that they use their strong products to protect their weak products. As a result, they are no longer strong ." I believe that these points of view are in line with economic rules and can still be reasonably explained in economics theory.

There is a "comparative advantage" principle in economics. It is about comparing the productivity of two producers (individual, enterprise, or country, there are two situations: absolute and comparative advantages. For example, a senior software architect with a monthly salary of tens of thousands of yuan and a novice software tester with a monthly salary of several thousands of yuan can compare the efficiency of the two employees, needless to say, in terms of software architecture design (the efficiency of novice testers may be zero), there are two other software coding and testing tasks. Architects are much more efficient than testers. This is an absolute advantage when all aspects of work are more efficient than competitors. What is the comparative advantage? For example, if there is a coding task, will it be cost-effective for architects with higher work efficiency or cost-effective for testers with lower work efficiency? This requires an investment in opportunity costs. Opportunity costs refer to things that must be abandoned to get something. If an architect is asked to code, he must give up the software architecture design work for a period of time, which is equivalent to the opportunity cost of tens of thousands of yuan. If the tester is asked to do it, what he gave up would be a period of software testing work, which is equivalent to the opportunity cost of about several thousand yuan. Through this calculation, we can know that although there is no absolute advantage for the tester to do coding, it has a comparative advantage because he has invested much less opportunity cost than the architect. The principle of "comparative advantage" in economics should be explained. The professional division of labor enables people to specialize in production activities with comparative advantages, the formation of trade on this basis will benefit the productivity growth of the whole society and everyone's benefits. This principle is obviously very suitable for the search market segments.

Taking Google, a world-recognized search industry leader, as an example, its goal is to achieve "a perfect search engine needs to truly understand the meaning of users and return to the needs of users ". However, as far as the status quo is concerned, there is still a considerable gap from this goal. It should use its primary financial and intellectual resources to shorten this gap as soon as possible. Otherwise, when the gap is shortened or surpassed by others, its leading position will be in danger. Of course, with the strength of Google, we can now "attack" the vertical search market, and we are also doing this, but the premise is that the opportunity costs invested by Google will be in line with the actual benefits, the latter must be greater than the former, at least equal. Therefore, it must abandon the market segments where the opportunity cost is higher than the actual profit, and allow other small and medium enterprises with comparative advantages to operate. As Li Xueling said, "No one can defeat the world." No enterprise can swallow the world. Only by performing necessary division of labor in the world market of generic search and vertical search, rationally using resources, and making full use of their respective advantages to produce products and services can we improve the overall social benefits while at the same time, it also enhances the operating efficiency of enterprises, which is behind the economic rules.
 
Google understands the mysteries of the Chinese, its leading position in the search industry is estimated to be shaken in a short period of time. What will happen to the existence of this status? A previous incident was deeply thought-provoking: Google found that the German website of BMW had used "Technical cheating" to artificially improve its ranking in the search engine and was suspected of deceiving users, the website is deleted from the engine. BMW believes that Google's public criticism and blocking without prior notice is against the conventional rules, and actively contacts to solve the problem as soon as possible. In this regard, some people think that Google's handling behavior is not like solving the commercial disputes between equal enterprise entities, but more like an administrative organ penalizing an enterprise's violation. How does Google generate such power? Is it legitimate to exercise such power? Associate Professor Ma Shaohua from the School of Journalism at Renmin University of China believes that Google is a search engine that helps people collect information. The scattered search behavior is shared by Google. It is the gathering of demands and information, and thus the gathering of power. Such power is not only enjoyed by itself, but can also exert an influence on others.

In a market economy society, will people's needs automatically generate power? This also involves the scarcity of resources. Under normal circumstances, the market demand is scattered, and it is also satisfied by scattered or alternative supply. There is no scarcity problem. However, under the existing conditions, the demand for search information is relatively concentrated, especially in giants like Google. Of course, information itself is not scarce, but many subjects that provide information rank first on the famous information platform, but it is scarce, large enterprises with such special scarce resources have the right to develop game rules. The ranking of web pages on the Google information platform is similar to the rule of "democratic voting. For example, if someone is looking for Dr. Li Kaifu, many of the people present raised their hands and said they were Li Kaifu. So who is it true? Maybe there are several names called Kai-fu Lee, but which one is really looking? At this time, if everyone said that the Google company is true, then Lee Kai-Fu, who has the Google title, will be elected first. Of course, Google's Page Rank Algorithm is actually much more complicated, and BMW's German website tries to use technical means to undermine this fair rule, it is no longer a punishment for "one hundred punishment. But what will this event mean in the development trend of search engines?
 
Associate Professor Ma Shaohua pointed out that this incident can enable people to realize that "in the world of Internet information search, there is naturally an order. Because the order is presented on the technical plane of the search engine, it is managed by the owner of the search engine. But this order is nothing more than the market order, because it is related to the equity of interests between different enterprises ." "If the BMW German website is true, it will hurt Google while hurting other companies and consumers. While Google is safeguarding its own interests, it is protecting the interests of other enterprises and consumers." The author believes that this situation is still an example, and it is possible to start searching for market order autonomy and self-discipline in the future. As a well-known person in the Internet field in China said: "Because Google has developed the rules for the information society to play in the next stage, when everyone finds a place in the Information Age, all must comply with Google's game rules." At the same time, this also means that some common and Realistic Thinking and regulation models that have existed for a long time are not closed and constant. We should keep pace with the development of science and technology. We should blame the emerging new models and new relationships. Maybe they are a sign of social progress.