Powerset as Antigen: Can Google Resist Microsoft’s New Threat
August 20, 2008
I found the write ups about Satya Nadella’s observations about Microsoft’s use of the Powerset technology in WebProNews, Webware.com, and Business Week magnetizing. Each of these write ups converged on a single key idea; namely, Microsoft will use the Powerset / Xerox PARC technology to exploit Google’s inability to deal with tailoring a search experience to deliver a better search experience a user. The media attention directed at a conference focused on generating traffic to a Web site without regard to the content on that site, its provenance, or its accuracy is downright remarkable. Add together the assertion that Powerset will hobble the Google, and I may have to extend my anti-baloney shields another 5,000 kilometers.
Let’s tackle some realities:
- To kill Google, a company has to jump over, leap frog, or out innovate Google. Using technology that dates from the 1990s, poses scaling challenges, and must be “hooked” into the existing Microsoft infrastructure is a way to narrow a gap, but it’s not enough to do much to wound, impair, or kill Google. If you know something about the Xerox PARC technology that I’m missing, please, tell me. I profiled Inxight Software in one of my studies. Although different from Xerox PARC technology used by Powerset, it was close enough to identify some strengths and weaknesses. One issue is the computational load the system imposes. Maybe I’m wrong but scaling is a big deal when extending “context” to lots of users.
- Microsoft is slipping further behind Google. The company is paying users, and it is still losing market share. Read my short post on this subject here. Even if the data are off by an order of magnitude, Microsoft is not making headway in the Web search market share.
- Cost is a big deal. Microsoft appears to have unlimited resources. I’m not so sure. If Google’s $1 of infrastructure investment buys 4X the performance that a Microsoft $1 does, Microsoft has an infrastructure challenge that could cost more than even Microsoft can afford.
So, there are computational load issues. There are cost issues. There are innovation issues. There are market issues. I must be the only person on the planet who is willing to assert that small scale search tweaks will not have the large scale effects Microsoft needs.
Forget the assertion that Business Week offers when its says that Google is moving forward. Google is not moving forward; Google is morphing into a different type of company. “Moving forward” only tells part of the story. I wonder if I should extend my shields of protection to include filtering baloney about search emanating from a conference focused on tricking algorithms into putting a lousy site at the top of a results list.
Agree? Disagree? I’m willing to learn if my opinions are scrambled.
Stephen Arnold, August 20, 2008
Clarabridge: Cash Infusion
August 20, 2008
Following in the footsteps of Endeca and Vivisimo, Clarabridge nailed $12 million in financing. The additional infusion marks the company’s third round of funding. The money came from Grotech Ventures, Harbert Venture Partners,Boulder Ventures, and Intersouth Partners. You can read the company’s official news release here. VCAonline provides additional color here. The money will allow Clarabridge to increase its presence in a crowded market. The expectations for fast growth are often high, and pumping Clarabridge to $100 million in revenue in 24 to 36 months seems to be a relatively challenging job. At my age, it makes my heart palpitate just thinking of the work ahead.
The question that nags at me is, “Will these cash infusions in text and content processing pay off?” Despite the lousy market, smart money seems to say, “Absolutely.” The challenge will be to break through the glass ceiling that keeps most text crunching companies well below Autonomy’s lofty $300 million in revenue, achieved after a decade of hard work, and Endeca’s $110 million (another 10 years of effort as well). Agree? Disagree? Use the comments section to offer your views.
Stephen Arnold, August 20, 2008
Attensity Lassos Brands with BzzAgent Tie Up
August 20, 2008
Attensity, a text analytics and content processing company, applies its “deep extraction” methods to law enforcement and customer support tasks. The company has formed a partnership with BzzAgent. You can find out more about this firm here. This Boston-based firm specializes in the delightfully named art of WOM, shorthand for “word of mouth” marketing. The company’s secret sauce is more than 400,000 WOM volunteers. Attensity’s technology can process BzzAgent’s inputs and deliver useful brand cues. Helen Leggatt’s “Marketers to Get ‘Unrivaled Insights’ into WOM.” You can read this interesting article here. For me, the most interesting point is Ms. Leggatt’s article was:
Each month, BzzAgent’s volunteers submit around 100,000 reports. Attensity’s text analytics technology will analyze the data contained within these reports to identify “facts, sentiment, opinions, requests, trends, and trouble spots”.
Like other content processing companies, Attensity is looking for ways to expand into new markets with its extraction and analytic technology. Is this a sign of vitality, or is it a hint that content processing companies are beginning to experience a slow down in other market sectors? Anyone have thoughts on this type of market friction?
Stephen Arnold, August 20, 2008
Microslump: If Search Data Are Accurate, Bad News for Microsoft
August 20, 2008
Statistics are malleable. Data about online usage are not just malleable, they are diaphanous. Silicon Valley Insider reported Web search market share data at Silicon Alley Insider here. The article by Michael Learmonth was “Google Takes 60% of Search Market, While MSN Loses Share.” The highlight of the write up is a chart, which I am reluctant to reproduce. I can, I believe, quote one statement that struck me as particularly important; namely:
MSN, which lost more than two percentage points of market share from month to month, going from 14.1% of searches to 11.9%. So if Microsoft’s “Cashback” search engine shopping gimmick actually helped boost search share in May and June, its impact seems to be dropping.
The data come from Nielsen Online, specifically the cleverly named MegaView Search report. Wow, after pumping big money into data centers, buying Fast Search & Transfer and Powerset, and ramping up search research and development, the data suggest that:
- A desktop monopoly doesn’t matter in search
- Microsoft’s billions don’t matter in search
- Aggressive marketing such as the forced download for the Olympic content doesn’t matter.
Google is like one of those weird quantum functions that defy comprehension. What else must Redmond do? Send me your ideas for closing the gap between Microsoft and Google.
Stephen Arnold, August 20, 2008
Five Tips for Reducing Search Risk
August 20, 2008
In September 2008, I will be participating in a a conference organized by Dr. Erik M. Hartman. One of the questions he asked me today might be of interest to readers of this Web log. He queried by email: “What are five tips for anyone who wants to start with enterprise search but has no clue?”
Here’s my answer.
That’s a tough question. Let me tell you what I have found useful when starting a new project with an organization that has a flawed information access system.
First, identify a specific problem and do a basic business school or consulting firm analysis of the problem. This is actually hard to do, so many organizations assume “We know everything about our needs.” That’s wrong. Inside of a set you can’t see much other than other elements of the set. Problem analysis gives you a better view of the universe of options; that is, other perspectives and context for the problem.
Second, get management commitment to solve the problem. We live in a world with many uncertainties. If management is not behind solving the specific problem you have analyzed, you will fail. When a project needs more money, management won’t provide it. Without investment, any search and content processing system will sink under the weight of itself and the growing body of content it must process and make available. I won’t participate in projects unless top management buys in. Nothing worthwhile comes easy or economically today.
Silverlight Analysis: Not Quite Gold, Not too Light
August 19, 2008
In my keynote at Information Today’s eContent conference in April 2008, I referenced Silverlight’s importance to Microsoft. Since most organizations rely on Windows desktop operating systems and applications, Silverlight becomes a good fit for some organizations. I also suggested that Silverlight would play a much larger role in online rich media. I was not able at the time to reference the role Silverlight would play in the Beijing Olympics. Most in the audience of about 150 big time media executives were not familiar with the technology, nor did those in attendance see much relevance between their traditional media operations and Silverlight. Now that the Olympics have been deemed a success for both Microsoft and NBC, I hope that some of the big media mavens understand that rich media may be important to the survival of many information organizations. I’m all for printed books and journals, but the future beckons video and other types of TV-type material.
Tim Anderson’s excellent analysis of Silverlight is available in The Register, one of my favorite news services. The analysis is “Microsoft Silverlight: 10 Reasons to Love It, 10 Reasons to Hate It”, and you should read it here. Unlike most of the top 10 lists that are increasingly common on Web logs, Mr. Anderson’s analysis is based on a solid understanding of what Silverlight does and how it goes about its business. The write up provides the advertised 10 items of strengths and weaknesses, but he supports each point with a useful technical comment.
Let me illustrate just one of his 20 points, and then you can navigate to The Register for the other 19 items. For example, consider item five in the plus column is that Silverlight interprets XAML–Microsoft’s extensible application mark up language–is interpreted directly by Silverlight “whereas Adobe’s XML GUI language, MXML, gets converted to SWF at compiling time. In fact, XAML pages are included as resources in the compiled .XAP binary used for deploying Silverlight applications.”
Mr. Anderson also includes one of those wonderful Microsoft diagrams that show how Microsoft’s various moving parts fit together. I download these immediately because they come in handy when explaining why it costs an arm and a leg to troubleshoot some Microsoft enterprise applications. This version of the chart about Silverlight requires that you install Silverlight. Now you get the idea about Microsoft’s technique for getting its proprietary technology on your PC.
A happy quack to Tim Anderson for a useful analysis.
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2008
When Old Media Finally Think Hard about Google
August 19, 2008
You need to read David Smith’s long Web log essay about Google. I’m not going to try and summarize it, nor will I pull out a single interesting comment. Published by the Guardian, a UK old media company, the essay combines the best and not so good aspects of old media’s take on Google. The essay is “Google, 10 Years in: Big, Friendly Giant or a Greedy Goliath?” You can find it here. You will get the received wisdom on garage to riches in Silicon Valley. You will learn that Google is a power politics player. You will get the run down on the highest profile products. The most important part of the essay is that it makes clear to me why traditional media are like deer in headlights. The balanced view of Google doesn’t work because the understanding of what Google has built has gone missing. Amazing article and it includes the PR fodder of a quirky picture of the Google guys hanging out and having fun. Magicians use misdirections to awe and entertain. Mr. Smith likes that magic, and it works on traditional media quite well too.
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2008
Search Engine Optimization Meets Semantic Search
August 19, 2008
I’ve been sitting in the corn fields of Illinois for the last six days. I have been following the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Conference via the Web. If you have read some of my previous posts about the art of getting traffic to a Web page, you know my views of SEO. In a word, “baloney.” Web sites without content want to get traffic. The techniques used range from link trading to meta tag spamming. With Google the venturi for 70 percent of Web search, SES is really about spoofing Google. Google goes along with this stuff because the people without traffic will probably give AdWords a go when the content-free tricks don’t work reliably.
I was startled when I read the summary of the panel “Semantic Search: How Will It Change Our Lives?” The write up I saw was by Thomas McMahon, and it seemed better than the other posts I looked at this evening. You can read it here. The idea behind the panel is that “semantic search” goes beyond key words.
This has implications for people who stuff content free Web pages with index terms. Google indexes using words and sometimes the meta tags play a role as well. If semantic search grabs on, people will not search by key words, people will ask questions. The idea is that instead of typing Google +”semantic Web” +Guha, I would type, “What are the documents by Ramanathan Guha that pertain to the semantic Web.” The fellow helped write the standard document several years ago. He’s a semantic Web guru, maybe the Yoda of the semantic Web?
Source: http://www.kimrichter.com/Blog/uploaded_images/snakeoil_1-794216.jpg
Participating in this panel were Powerset (Xerox PARC technology plus some original code), Hakia (original technology and a robust site), Ask.com (I’m not sure where it falls on the semantic scale since the rock band wizard from Rutgers cut out), and Yahoo (poor, fragmented Yahoo).
The elephant in the room but not on the panel is Google, a serious omission in my opinion. Microsoft R&D has some hefty semantic talent as well, also not on the panel.
In my opinion the semantic revolution is going to make life more difficult for the SEO folks. Semantic methods require content. Content free Web sites are going to be struggling for traffic unless several actions are taken:
- Create original, compelling information. I just completed an analysis of a successful company’s Web site. It was content free. It had zero traffic. The short cut to traffic is content. The client lacks the ability to create content and doesn’t understand that people who create content charge money for their skills. If you don’t have content, go to item two below.
- Buy ads. Google’s traffic is sufficiently high that an ad with appropriate key words will get some hits. Buying ads is something SES attendees understand. Google understands it. You may need to pump $20,000 per month into Googzilla’s maw, but you will get traffic.
- Combine items one and two.
- Buy a high traffic Web site and shoehorn a message into it. There are some tasty morsels available. Go direct and eliminate the hassle and delay of building an audience. Acquire one.
Most SEO consulting is snake oil and expensive snake oil at that. The role of semantic methods will be similar to plumbing. It is important, but like the pipes that carry water, I don’t have to see them. The pipes perform a function. Semantics and SEO are a bit of an odd couple.
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2008
Search Engine Plumbing Revealed
August 19, 2008
Explaining search is a very difficult business. I want to recommend “The Linear Algebra Behind Search Engines” by Amy Langville. The discussion was developed several years ago and is now available without charge on MathDL, a service of the Mathematical Association of America’s Digital Library. You can find the excellent write up here. Dr. Langville does include equations, something most publishers quickly delete from most books and reports about search and content processing. Useful comments and explanatory material set this essay apart. If you are interested in the inner workings of some of the search methods in use today, this is must read material. Two–yes, two–happy quacks to Dr. Langville and her excellent work. Now on the University of Charleston team, Dr. Langville has a Ph.D. in operations research from North Carolina State University.She is a recipient of the multi year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. She has a new book about Google’s PageRank method in the works.
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2008
Tuesday Trivia: Misspell Google And
August 19, 2008
If you enter the address www.goole.com, you will end up at “the town and port of Goole.” Goole helpfully provides a number of links to Ask.com. Thanks for the reader who called this to my attention. Watch your spelling, gentle reader. I would put more than a single advert on this page, however.
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2008
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