Predicting Search Value - Pareto 2.0

Speaking of prediction markets, I've become quite intrigued with following Google's Marissa Mayer as one such. Earlier this year she shifted Google off the "Don't be Evil" petard it was hung on - and shortly thereafter Google started up with a whole slew of controversial privacy invasive services.

More interestingly this week she noted that search was "90% - 95% done". When pressed on this to clarify, she noted that*:

Today, we have a 90% solution: I could answer all of my unanswered Saturday questions, not ideally or easily, but I could get it done with today’s search tool. (If you’re curious, the answers are below.) However, that remaining 10% of the problem really represents 90% (in fact, more than 90%) of the work. Coming up with elegant, fitting and relevant solutions to meet the challenges of mobility, modes, media, personalization, location, socialization, and language will take decades.

I've graphed the implications of this above - ie 90% of search is "done", but it took 10% of the effort. The real sweat is in the last 10% - in other words the Return On Investment is appalling, unless you believe that a lot more than 90% of the value is still there to be captured.

Assuming that Ms Mayer can be used as a Prediction Market, the implications are that Google is moving away from Search as its primary business (Content AOwnership, Ads and Clouds seem to be the main areas).

* I saw this on TechCrunch, the original is over here