At the AIIM Expo, Cyrus Mistry from Google stated that everything should be saved/indexed and all you need is to search and find everything. Find everything??? Wow, I don’t need to find “everything”, I just need to find what I am looking for. Further into the discussion, he touted the lack of structure within Google and that process is considered a four letter word.

I never thought I would be concerned about Google’s future until now.

Respecting that an overabundance of process can be counterproductive; the larger danger is not knowing what you are doing.  The Google methodology that employees should “get your work done, and get it done fast” illustrates the core failing in their search tool… the lack of cohesive thought. Yep, I said it; Google – the giant of all giants is so large that they are “doing” without “thinking”. Lack of process creates fragmentation; too much flexibility means no cohesiveness. How can an organization be productive if everyone is doing things differently? Simple, they exist until their money is gone… and Google is borrowing against time.

Yes, they have some cool tools, but rather than try to be “cool” try to be effective. Their search mechanism is really search without thought. It is a massive collection, where users try to find what they are looking for based on paging through millions of results… or they click on an Adword. It has gotten to the point that organizations that want to be found know they have to pay to be found. There it is; the giant Achilles heel of Google… what happens when users get tired of searching and searching and searching or clicking on ads that lead them into non-relevant content.

Users will demand tools that “find”, and organizations will stop paying the highwayman in order to be found.

Content must have context. Users that are able to filter results based on metadata will find what they are looking for, and will continue to use the tool which meets their needs. Imagine being able to search for all the results related to “SharePoint ” and apply filtering by topic (i.e. “How to Install”, “PowerShell Scripts”, “Benefits of SharePoint”), the type of content (i.e. “Web page”, “Blog”, “Whitepaper”), and version (i.e. “2007”, “2010”).

What you have is an intuitive method of “finding” that mirrors the human thought process, instead of a giant robot that merely “collects” without care for the meaning of the content. These intuitive search mechanisms already exist (check out FAST Search), and users are migrating to these “decision engines”.

Note to Google: It may be time to have a meeting, you might find it useful…

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