Google Wrestles With Its Own Simplicity
Google has announced a new front in the move to get more book content online. It will expand its Google Print program and start actively soliciting book publishers to submit book content for scanning and indexing.
Under the new release of this program, which has been in beta for almost a year, searches that retrieve relevant material from books will display a separate box on the search results page. The books will appear above the "regular" search result listings. Any book with an ISBN may be submitted, and any "hits" will link to one of five partner online book resellers where users can buy the book. This is an exciting development, as was Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" feature. Google is pushing to live up to its self-proclaimed mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
The downside is that at some point, the simplicity of the Google idea is lost. A Google search result is becoming a Frankenstein monster of a Web page, with books here, ads over there, and news up there, with scientific journal abstracts, and licensed magazine article collections tossed in for good measure.
It is a slippery slope. The masses will still use the white-space-simple basic search page, but but all kinds of features are now hidden in various tabs and sections of the site, including Google Services and Google Labs. Even the white space page has four other menu options: Images, Groups, News, Froogle. None of those get you Google Print or Find in a Library, which currently require special syntax.
Google's 20% allocation of employee time to experiment, research and yes, our mantra, PLAY, means they are using the experimentation model well, the rough and refine approach to testing new services. But they're all over the place in how to map each service to the most receptive user. In Google Labs alone, there are unnumerable flavors of search: Personalized Search and Site-Flavored Search toolbars and other tricks.
If Google keeps this up, they'll put new life into the librarian profession: you'll need a research specialist or training classes to become a certified Google user!!
