When search starts and ends with Google
As more and more search queries are answered by Google is Google's dominance in search becoming a danger to the rest of the internet?
One of the features of Google's Glass project that caught my interest was how users could ask a common question like "How tall is the Eiffel Tower?" and "Glass" returns the answer. So rather than acting as a facilitator that directs users to the answer to their question Google is acting as not only the starting point for the user's search but the end point too.
Google seems to be handling more and more of these sort of common questions itself so if I ask something like "what is my IP?" Google will provide the answer right on the search results page. Is this a good thing, for users? Yes, I can find what I'm looking for far quicker. For the internet? Perhaps not so good. If you have created a website thats sole purpose is to return the users IP address this is bad news.
Fast forward into the future and where might we be, could Google automatically be handling 25%, 50%, 75% or more of users searches? So gradually the wider internet sees fewer referrals from Google and Google itself is keeping users within their own products for longer.
Obviously, it's in Google's interests to keep users within their own products for longer as their exposure to advertising is greater so with that incentive I'm sure this trend is likely to continue.
