Google has dominated search for decades by delivering information to our fingertips in a fraction of a second. But even they recognize the need to innovate further. Which is why they are hoping to pivot to predictive search, to algorithms that will know what we want before even we do.
But what if the future of search doesn’t even involve a search bar at all. What if it’s possible to intuitively know what people want without even thinking about it. Based not on their search history but on their prior actions, movements, and habits as they browse a particular web page. It sounds a little bit Orwellian but it may very well be the future of e-commerce. With TikTok and now Instagram Shops leading the charge.
As Josh Constine puts it on his Substack blog:
“Turner Novak of Gelt VC has writen the must-read deeeeep dive into TikTok. It’s almost an eBook with tons of fascinating tidbits from parent company ByteDance’s inception to the app’s savvy engagement hacks. It also indexes all of ByteDance’s new product attempts as it strives to grow beyond TikTok into a Google-like empire of apps encompassing consumer finance, education, music, gaming, and enterprise software.
The most important passage is perhaps this one on how TikTok’s AI lets it rapidly learn what you like without explicit input:
Zhang, ByteDance’s founder and CEO, has stated his primary strategy is to eliminate the need for search – how Google and Amazon serve their very profitable advertising products – and immediately serve users exactly what they want.
Imagine this applied to commerce? With no search bar, an app could just track your swipes, hovers, taps, and buys to curate a shopping feed. An AI-powered standalone commerce product could bullseye your taste in clothing much faster than apps that mix shopping with friends’ posts or inspirational images like Pinterest. In fact, this is why Instagram is building a dedicated shopping feed, as announced by Mark Zuckerberg this week…”
In other words, the future of the Internet may already be upon us. Hiding in plain sight on a popular video sharing platform and debuting under the inauspicious guise of a new shopping platform.
It may not seem like it now but these are paradigm shifting moves. Ones that may upend the balance of power in the tech world. Google’s grip on the Internet may have just loosened. Just a little bit. Unless of course they really can read our minds. Really can predict what we want, before we even realize we want it. I wouldn’t bet against them that’s for sure. But until then I guess it wouldn’t hurt to go with the flow and enjoy some cool videos and online shopping deals. Just in case this really is a preview of what the future of search will look like.
The future of search is upon us.
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