What Larry Page thinks about the search

After the Google Inside Search event last week, Google’s senior vice president of search, Alan Eustace, talked a bit about what CEO Larry Page was thinking about search.

Here are some long-term goals:

• Answers, not just results. Page is unhappy that Google only provides a collection of scattered links on request, and wants the search engine to provide more organized and consistent results. For example, for the query “what's the best way to create a spacesuit?” Google could show a set of training videos, and then companies that can provide materials, engineering resources and so on to complete the task.
• Providing the right results before  you start looking. Take as an example a person who suffers from a knee problem and is looking for surgical treatments. When he finishes searching, Google may find out that there is a new experimental method that can reduce recovery time by 30% - but the person does not have the opportunity to find out about it until he searches again. Google would like to find a way to provide this information, even when people are not actively looking for it.
• Improved context. Eustace cited the example of a person planning a trip to New York next week and asking a question like “what to do in New York?”. Google should be able to understand the issue, provide a list of activities based on known interests, and then remember that you are in New York for a certain period of time on your next searches.

Eustace also noted that Google still receives more requests from desktops than from mobile devices, and the company even made a bet about when mobile search overtakes desktop.