George Dafermos' Weblog

Thursday, March 04, 2004

Do you google?

A new paper at First Monday titled Do You Google concludes that:

Instead of focusing so much rhetoric on the popularity of one proprietary technology, it would be better to focus on users’ actual experiences online. Although Google is a very powerful and helpful service, many people do not use it, do not know about it, or even if they use it they may not know how to do so well (Hargittai, 2003a). Those who study technology use and those who contribute to new systems development must remember that average users are different from expert user populations. I like Google as much as many other Google users. However, we should not let our own experiences taint our view of millions of people’s Web experiences that do not include a visit to google.com or the use of an advanced search query on a search engine, ever.

I didn't go through the entire paper for the sake of retaining my calm state of conscioussness. the conclusions section which i pasted in full in the above table was enough to drive me mad.

First, google is indeed the heart of the Web. There's no doubt about that. Second, google is not complex. On the contrary, its so useful to normal folk (and not just to power users as the paper's author suggets) exactly because its user-interface is so clear, simple, and elegant. Its minimalistic design makes it more usable than other search engines. any trained user-interface expert can attest to this, as well as masses of ordinary users.

Having said that, there are two more things that need to be mentioned. Whether google delivers more accurate, less biased results matters less than its perceived ease-of-use by many users regardless of their level of technical expertise. That assumption helps explain why some people like this one search engine (can't recall its name now) that instead of delivering its search results in text form only, it loads a page full of clickable pics inside frames that are a microscopic version of how the resulting page looks like (just like when searching for images at google). well, I guess there will always be some people who will prefer using hotmail and msn.search.com than other more reliable, trustworthy, easier-to-use options.

7:17:09 PM

Say it loud [] Trackback []