Google Evolution Video: The Past, Present and Future of Search

November 29th, 2011 by Search Influence Alumni

As a followup to their recently-released peek under the hood, the Google team has produced this video showing the remarkable evolution of their search service. Watch the once-humble engine (check out that MS Word Art logo!) exploding in under fifteen years from plain-text results with a month or more’s lag time between indexes to the omnipresent, light-speed information giant we all know and love today. Since its inception as a tool for data-gathering, Google has taken a keen emphasis on speed of results, with the end goal being an almost “seamless” meld between the user’s query and the answer to such; they’ve also expanded in other dimensions, covering new paradigms such as images, breaking news, and semantic results to help users navigate to the information they’re seeking as efficiently as possible.

Google has evolved to an almost unthinkable degree of complexity in such a short time — and advances are coming at a breakneck pace, particularly with the social and business opportunities afforded by the introduction of G+. What do you think is next for Google and us?