Kids say the darndest things — and what they do say may make Google's search engine something of a mind reader.
Search engines already finish your sentences. Start typing "president" into Google or Bing or Yahoo and you're immediately presented choices you may have been thinking of. But, as you see from the examples below, the choices vary widely:
They also assume some pretty non-obvious things, like I am interested in politics, or in a particular president — or, as in the case of Bing, that I am a Turkish national?
Also, that I am probably an adult.
What if Google knew more about me before I touched a key?
A newly-revealed initiative by Google may be an important building block for an enhanced search engine that could further zero in on what I really want to know. In a lengthy interview with USA Today, Google VP of Engineering Pavni Diwanji talks about a "Google for Kids" initiative that would tailor some products for the under-13 set.
While she talks about protecting and serving kids (and their parents) it's not hard to connect some dots. This is a powerful way to achieve something it failed to do with Google+ — learn who its users are.
Diwanji recounts a story involving her own daughter, who pointed out the biggest flaw in the world's most-used search engine. It happened when she Googled 'trains.' "She came to me and said, 'Mommy, you should tell Google about Thomas the Tank Engine, because Google obviously doesn't know about him.'"
The secret to robust search is context, but greatness in search is requiring the searcher to provide as little ad hoc context as possible. It's a good first guess that you might be searching for something others are — hence those predictive type ahead suggestions.
But with more implied context, search can serve up better results. And nobody wants to craft Boolean sentences to refine the yield. We all want to live by the motto: "Do what I mean — not what I say."
Children are a great focus group. Kids searching the darndest things could inform other customizations that will yield results based on the data about me and only me: that I am a fireman, don't eat meat, or own a classic car. Relevant things that I wouldn't even think to mention in any given search session.
Backchannel Editor in Chief Steven Levy, author of "Inside the Plex," sees this as a natural fit. "What Google seems to want to do for children is very much in the spirit of what it wants to do for all of us — show us personalized results," he wrote in reply to an email.
Sure, there are privacy concerns (which Diwanji acknowledges), especially when it comes to targeting children. Google's entire business model is about looking over our shoulders to profile us for marketers, which is why special care and special laws are required when children are involved.
But I think this is a right-headed effort that doesn't exploit children. It leverages their unique thought processes to come up with answers for questions we wouldn't know to ask without them. The array of Google products tailored for children (not clear yet what they will all be) will be controlled by a parental dashboard, not by little Billy and Mary.
Is this right-track / wrong track? Will — should — the other search engines do something similar?
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