[thomasd]

Agree. What Google did replaced plenty of functionalities that are available on desktop (math, spell-check, dictionary).

But their recent card-based solution to a lot of searches seems to show that they're trying to keep users on Google-owned properties. Try searching for a movie review. You'll notice that everything that pertains to the movie is shown on top and on the right. Clicking on actors lead to yet another google search result with another card on the right. In short, you're being kept within Google.

Does it get you the information you're looking for in as little time as possible? Absolutely. But they're doing this at the expense of the sites they took the data from.

[magicalist]

> But they're doing this at the expense of the sites they took the data from

That would be Freebase, which is what it's for.

I'm not really seeing your point for that example, though. Maybe for something simpler it would be true, but if I'm looking for a movie review, the information in the top right isn't sufficient for anything besides seeing a wikipedia summary, a screenshot, and some of the actors in it. Anything deeper would require clicks into the actual content, which is actually an apt analog to a simple timer not replacing anything of substance.

[jfoster]

You're right that they keep you on Google, and that they're taking market share from sites that used to serve such queries. From a consumer's perspective, it's possibly a better experience than it used to be, though. The only risk (which you alluded to) is that they lose focus on making a good quality search engine because they're too busy making little widgets. I don't think there's any evidence that's happening, though.