Search 2015: When media equals the Internet In part two of our foresight exercise we look at the role of new media in 2015. In a few years time web search expanded into these new media territories. The merger of Internet and media Microsoft lost the control of the office tool market to Google, who moved everything from wordprocessors to graphics software to the Web. This development did not mean the end of Microsoft’s Internet presence, however. In 2007 Microsoft did the right thing: It turned the Xbox gaming computer into an advanced media station. Microsoft had seen that the Internet, radio, TV and film distribution was on the point of merging, and decided that the Xbox was the right tool for delivering such content to the home. They were right. By 2012 TV and radio as we had known them were dead. Only pensioners and neo-luddites were willing to have their lives scheduled by TV companies. They wanted to see their TV programs and movies when it suited them, and were even willing to pay to get rid of the advertising, if needed. As broadband became a way of life, distribution via FM or regular wireless TV distribution (analogue or digital) became meaningless, and by 2012 95 percent of sound and video media content was distributed via the Internet, through IP delivery. All the major media corporations went bankrupt. In the US NBC, ABC and CBS all died in the period of of 2011 to 2013. Fox survived until 2014, mainly due to its conservative user base. BBC survived as an online content provider in the UK, but not as a regular broadcaster. In essence this meant that the TV set and the radio receiver had been replaced by Internet computers. The Xbox was by 2009 the most popular media content computer in the world. Sony came in second, with its Bravia line of TV screens (the computer being part of the TV screen itself) and Playstation 4. Apple TV came in third and Indian Krishna fourth. The Internet is everywhere The Xbox of today is not only a gaming console. It is able to transfer pictures and sound to any receiver in your home, including the living room cinema, the home office work screen, the door of your fridge, your kitchen window, i.e. any flatscreen that is able to present digital information. The Internet is everywhere, as most of us will know. The average Chinese bathroom mirror will now identify its user and present relevant pop-up widgets or windows with daily schedules, weather reports, the latest news, web feeds from blogs and podcasts — and chances are that the mirror is powered by an Xbox. However, while Microsoft conquered the home, Apple conquered your hand bag and pocket. While the Windows operating system is close to irrelevant, Apples MacOS is till living strong. But not because of the MacBook and the iMac. Although these machines continued to sell even after most Windows machines were replaced by LINUX/Firefox constellations and later with any flat-screen, digital paper or digital surface — after all, the Macs were so much more sexy than a Dell or an HP — the MacOS survived mainly due to the iPod. The 2007 iPod (called iPhone for a short time) gave the world a truly functional portable computer that combined the music and video player with an Internet computer and a voice communication device. The big touch-screen became the paradigm for portable computing for several years, not to be replaced until 2011, and then by yet another Apple concept. Internet media and search By the end of the first decade of the 21st century it became clear that Internet searching was more important than ever. Not only was there a need for search engines for searching web pages. Now the Internet contained: Nearly all TV programs from all over the world. Given the TV companies’ need to generate revenue, you could also download programs from their back catalogue at an affordable price. Ditto for movies. You could now download any movie you want to your living room cinema display. Now there were millions of movies to choose from, from Lang’s Metropolis from 1927 to Coppola’s Five Carrots and a Coyote from 2014. Billions of radio programs and podcasts Nearly all phonograms (songs and albums) from 1970 onwards, and a large number of those published before that time as well. Many TV programs and movies contain hidden text (close captioning) in the local language or subtitles in foreign languages, and the search engines may make use of this text when indexing this content. However, many older TV shows lack such text, as do most radio programs and podcasts. By 2006 many companies had launched services that searched the content contained in the soundtrack of media files. By 2011 most of these companies were bough by the major search engines, and by that time all of them included information from such files in their regular search engine results. Book and magazine search Google and Yahoo’s book search services also expanded, and by 2012 all new books were automatically included in their book search databases. By 2013 most magazines and newspapers were also added, and the indexing of old literature continued. Now Google claims that it has scanned and indexed nearly all English Language books published in the USA, Canada, Ireland, the Kingdom of England and Wales, and the republic of Scotland since 1850. What made this possible was probably the success of Apples iTunes media store. Media producers and publisher finally realised that downloading did not constitute at threat to their livelihood, but rather presented them with the possibility to distribute content for a very low price to a world wide audience. The long tail The existence of “the long tailâ€, ie. that fact that even the most obscure topics will generate enough sales when you add up all the enthusiasts existing in the word, suddenly turned the back catalogs of record companies and book publishers into gold mines. The enormous increase in sales also led to significant drop in prizes, restricting illegal downloads to the rooms of teenagers. For the search engines this opened up a new source of revenue in addition to the traditional pay-per-click advertising. Google had for several years had a special music search feature in its regular search results, linking album entries to various online music stores. It launched its own online media store in 2008, negotiating agreements with all the major record companies and book publishers. Microsoft/Yahoo! did the same, while Ask merged with Amazon.com in 2009, offering not only media files, but also the possibility of linking book search results with the Amazon bookstore. If you have an Ask/Amazon account, one click only is enough to bring a book into your physical mail box. And yes, paper based books are as popular as ever. Until someone makes a color printer that can bind books for you, the bookstore will never die. CDs, DVDs, BlueRays and HDDVDs, however, are now history. Who needs a physical copy when you can download a high definition, wide screen, Dolby Surround movie in minutes?