Back in 2000, when I left the USA and was working in Sri Lanka for a what would turn out to be a nearly two year stint at Slimline, I noticed something interesting. Before I left, whenever people spoke of searching on the web, the names MSN or Yahoo! would inevitably crop up, since they were the dominant search interfaces* at the time. There was some talk of Google being an emerging search provider, but it was yet to catch up with the incumbent giants. The situation in Sri Lanka, however, was markedly different. Everyone at Slimline was using Google for search.
This was intriguing for me, specially since searching the web was synonymous with using Google (although the verb “google” wasn’t in use yet). How was it that places like this were such early converts to Google search, seemingly so far ahead of the curve compared to USA where a majority were still stuck on MSN and Yahoo!?
I don’t have a definite answer, but if I were to make an educated guess, it would be this: usability.
Google was serving up more relevant search results making it more likely that people found what they were looking for, but this alone wasn’t quite enough. They also made huge strides in improving the overall search experience.
As the following screenshots demonstrate, at the time web search was treated by both MSN and Yahoo! as a feature offered on their portals. (The screenshots were made using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The pages shown were archived on or around May 10, 2000)
Yahoo! home page looked like this:
As you can see, someone visiting these pages to do a simple search were presented with an overwhelming amount of content, most of which has nothing at all to do with the interests of the visitor. How would it? The visitor hasn’t had a chance to tell them what they want. And yet, everyone wanted to make portals and everyone wanted to stuff as much content into their portal as possible.
To be fair, MSN Search had its own dedicated page, whose archived snapshot is shown below:
Even the dedicated search page wasn’t much of an improvement over the portal for someone who only wants to search for something.
Somewhere down the line, all the big providers seemed to have forgotten what search was, or perhaps they didn’t see web search as being quite so important. The usage model that these sites imposed on their users simply didn’t cater to what many people wanted. Someone who wants to quickly search for a company homepage didn’t want a brief overview of the day’s news, weather, stock tickers, horoscope, gift ideas and hundreds of links to services that they aren’t interested in. But they had little choice but to wade through a sea of links to find a tiny search box in which to type their query and then they would be rewarded by perhaps a page of results buried in more irrelevant links and advertisements.
People in places with sub-par bandwidth were even worse off. They had to sit and wait while all this useless content trickled through their slow connections just to get to the point where they can type their query in, and then it’s back to waiting. The design of these search interfaces were wasting not only space and the attention of the user, but also their time.
Then comes Google:
Google presented something which was a welcome departure from the traditional portal based search interface. Their interface was clean and to the point. People came to google.com to search and were greeted by not much more than the bare essentials they need to do so.
Google had realized what others apparently hadn’t. That users wanted search engines to be gateways instead of destinations. Stepping aside and letting the user pass through to the content he wants unencumbered by unnecessary costs, made search a light-weight activity that people didn’t mind doing. This, in turn, greatly increased the amount of search that people did. It came to the point where people would type words in just to see whether it was spelled correctly; something that was impractical with a search portal. Search engines, then, became tools that lets users get things done.
This is why, I think, places like Slimline were early converts to Google. They simply represented a market that was disinterested in what MSN and Yahoo! had to offer. People at these places had no time nor inclination to be bothered with distractions and had no bandwidth to spare. Picking Google was a no-brainer.
Letting the user focus on what he wants to do and not forcing them to pay for content (in terms of time and attention) that he has no interest in, not only changed the perception of search, but also changed the usage model of search.
* I use the term “search interfaces” because the actual search engines which powered the search feature at both MSN and Yahoo! were not run by either company. Around 2000, MSN Search was powered by a combination of LookSmart and Inktomi, while Yahoo! search was also powered by Inktomi. Yahoo! started its own search engine in 2003. Microsoft did the same at the end of 2004.
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