The end of the hierarchy?

I recently attended a meeting with the folks from Google, the primary purpose of which was for them to "pitch" the benefits of their enterprise search appliance, particularly their OneBox solution. When you look at their apps and how they can be used now within an organization-- branded email using Gmail, calendars and web page building features in conjunction with their search solutions, it became clear that Google is looking to expand its presence from the public side of your interactive brand to the private side--your intranet.

Part of Google's argument/rationale for why their solution is so great, and what I found to be most interesting, was their belief that the hierarchy is a failing model for finding information. You web developers and information architects have all experienced some level of information hierarchy hell. You spend countless hours researching and planning an intuitive information hierarchy only to have a user or two come back and question why you organized things the way you did. The basic rule--people process and organize information differently, so you can't please all of the people all of the time. What seems logical to some, may not be to others. Here was Google's argument, and their solution was of course search. Granted, the search engine needs to be smart enough to find relevant matches--and not many do it better than Google-- but search creates significant efficiencies when trying to locate data across multiple sources. And, most intranets are typically comprised of content stored across a variety of systems, databases, etc. So, Google's argument certainly seemed logical.

As I thought more about this I started to think about the public-facing side again. As Widgets take greater hold and the adoption of RSS continues to increase, the corporate website could very well become more of a portal with limited-to-no need for traditional navigation.

The scenario would go something like this: Company A's customers use a search engine to locate content stored in databases, files and static pages. They tag or "subscribe" to the content they want/value (as they would a feed) and select from a variety of widgets to pull, manage and organize that content on Company A's homepage. (The could even pull some of it into their Google home page) To retain some control, Company A might designate certain content or Widgets as mandatory areas on their homepage that cannot be edited or removed. (For example these areas might be saved for promotions, news etc. whatever.) With this scenario, the user experience, the whole content location and subscription process, exists without traditional navigation.

Widget and RSS implementations are on the rise. With these technologies, as content increases, the number of unique web pages decreases and the need for traditonal navigation becomes less and less necessary.

Is this the beginning of the end for hiearchical navigation?