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Google has 'dumbed-down search', says Autonomy boss
There's more to search than typing a word in a box...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Monday 19 September 2005

Mike Lynch, founder and CEO of Autonomy, has accused Google of dumbing-down user expectations of search functionality, arguing there is far more to it than simply typing a word in a box and hitting 'enter'.

Lynch said companies such as his own have moved on from such notions and that discerning users are looking for far more than keyword searches.

Lynch told silicon.com: "We're starting to see an appetite for second-generation technologies. There is no point in trying to out-Google Google."

As such Lynch said he is more intent on developing broader capabilities for search which will see users searching the content of phone calls and television programmes, as well as far more intuitive network searches within the enterprise.

He told silicon.com that Google will struggle to break into this area, even if its consumer offering will remain strong and added that internet search will "become commoditised".

"The important thing is to understand what Google does. Google is very successful at internet search. And when we talk about internet search we're talking about typing one or two words into a blank box," said Lynch.

"Google has very little impact on our end of the market. The one thing it has done is dumb-down how people search, which is a shame."

Lynch said users are still doing too much legwork for Google, searching with simple terms and then clicking through the hundreds or thousands of results returned looking for the content which best matches their needs.

"Say I'm interested in the effect of oil pollution on the penguin population of Alaska," said Lynch. "Although that's the idea someone is looking for they will walk up to a search engine and type 'penguin'."

"They would never walk up to a librarian and just say 'penguin' and that's the Google effect. We've been trained to assume the search engine is dumb and that takes a little un-training in enterprise."

Read the full interview with Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, here.