Google outlines the future of search

Google's experts are sharing their views on how search should evolve

Google has been revealing ways in which search can evolve to better meet users' needs.

Over the next three weeks, 10 of Google's search experts will be sharing their views on how search should evolve.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, said in the first of the blog postings that search should always be available no matter the user's location, and should respond to more than just keywords.

One "far-fetched idea" is for a wearable device that can listen to conversations, carry out searches in the background and then flash the relevant facts to the user.

"Search still isn't accessible or easy enough. In the next 10 years, we will see radical advances in modes of search," Mayer said.

"These include mobile devices offering us easier search, internet capabilities deployed in more devices, and different ways of entering and expressing queries by voice, natural language, picture or song, to name just a few."

Mayer also suggested that search should be presented so that it is more accessible and less linear.

"What if results pages pulled the best media together and laid it out such that the most useful content was not only first but largest?" she said.

Mayer argued that search needs to understand more about users' locations and contacts in order to provide more intelligent results.

"Maybe the search engines of the future will know where you are located, maybe they will know what you know already or what you learned earlier today, or maybe they will fully understand your preferences because you have chosen to share that information with us," she said.

"Maybe search could analyse my social graph and realise that one of my friends works at LF, that I saw that friend this weekend, and that in that context 'LF' refers to her place of employment."

Lastly, Mayer discussed the need for Google to increase its translation services so that all of the web's services are available to everyone, no matter what their dialect.

"The basic concept is that if the answer exists online anywhere in any language we'll get it for you, translate it and bring it back in your native tongue."