[achive] Why the Era of Web Search is Coming to an End?

In light of recent developments regarding privacy, mass surveillance and AI, I decided to revive some of my old blog posts. This is a re-print of a post that has been originally published on my blog on 8th of December 2011.

The growing quantity of information that is coming to users from many different channels (twitter, Facebook, e-mail, etc.) and creates more and more an effect of saturation on the user’s attention. In such a situation it is reasonable to think that the user would be less and less likely to feel like in need for information and turn to Web search. It is thus more likely, that the user will prefer the information to fight for his attention than to explicitly perform the search.

If we try to look at the users and data from the supply/demand market perspective it becomes obvious that the supply of information is getting much bigger then the demand. I have found the data about the number of internet users worldwide, as well as the data about the quantity of Web information. This allowed me to calculate a Information per User index (graph shown bellow). Although the number of Web users is exponentially growing, the growth of information quantity is even steadier. It is therefore normal to expect the information to fight for the attention of the user, and not the user to look for the information.

Implications of this difference in growth are numerous. Firstly, the way we interact with information is likely to change. It is reasonable to expect the users to favor modes of acquiring information through recommendations and other means for information to reach them, and not through explicitly looking for information. Secondly, it would be interesting to observe if the information surplus and the inability of users to consume all the information would lead to the fall of information production, and thus to an “information crisis” comparable to the phenomenon of economic crisis. Our ability to manage the growth and the use of information will have major impact on the future of Web technologies.

Originally published at web.archive.org on December 8, 2011.