This note preserves the original context of the Facebook post. Some tools, interfaces, and external links may have changed.
This post collates what Google has to say about the future of search as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.
The first direction is from one-time answers to search journeys, allowing users to continuously see related sub-topics and next steps as they explore the journey, learn the topic, or solve the problem.
The second direction is from waiting for queries to actively providing information, which is the Discover type experience that is more commonly discussed later.
The third direction is from pure text to more visual information discovery, including pictures, videos, Lens and AMP Stories at that time.
The names and interfaces of these products may have changed long ago, but “users don’t just ask a question, but gradually understand the topic in an information journey” is still a useful concept when planning content and internal links.
Links mentioned in the original post
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