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The Goose Quacks: Arnold Endnote at Enterprise Search Summit

Editor’s Note: This is a file with a number of screen shots. If you are on a slow connection, skip this document.

One again I was batting last. I arrived the day before my talk from Europe, and I wasn’t sure what time it was or what day it was. In short, the addled goose was more off kilter than I had been in the Netherlands for my keynote at the Hartmann Utrecht conference and my meetings in Paris squished around the Utrecht gig.

I poked my head into about half of the sessions. I heard about managing search, taxonomies, business intelligence, and product pitches disguised as analyses. I’m going to be 65; I was tired; and I had heard similar talks a few days earlier in Europe. The challenges facing those involved with search are reaching a boiling point.

After dipping into the presentations, including the remarkable Ahead in the Clouds talk by Dr. Werner Vogels, top technical gun at Amazon, and some business process management razzle dazzle, I went back to the drawing board for my talk. I had just reviewed usage data that revealed that Google’s lead in Web search was nosing towards 70 percent of the search traffic. I also had some earlier cuts at the traffic data for the Top 50 Web sites. In the two hours before my talk, I fiddled with these data and produced an interesting graph of the Web usage. I did not use it in my talk, sticking with my big images snagged from Flickr. I don’t put many words on PowerPoint slides. In fact, I use them because conference organizers want a “paper”. I just send them the PowerPoint deck and give my talk using a note card which I hold in my hand or put on the podium in front of me. I hate PowerPoints.

Here’s the chart I made to see how the GOOG was doing in terms of Microsoft and Yahoo.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/

The top six sites are where the action is. The other 44 sites are in the “long tail”. In this case, the sites out of the top 50 have few options for getting traffic. The 44 sites accounted in August 2008 for a big chunk percent of the calculated traffic, but no single site is likely to make it into the top six quickly. Google sits on top the pile and seems to be increasing its traffic each month. Google monetizes its traffic reasonably well, so it is generating $18 billion or so in the last 12 months.

In the enterprise search arena, I have only “off the record” sources. These ghostly people tell me that Google has:

• Shipped 24, 600 Google Search Appliances. For comparison, Fast Search & Transfer prior to its purchase by Microsoft had somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 enterprise search platform licensees. Now, of course, Fast Search has access to the 100 million happy SharePoint customers. Who knows what the Fast Search customer count is now? Not me.
• Become the standard for mapping in numerous government agencies, including those who don’t have signs on their buildings
• Been signing up as many as 3,000 Google Docs users per day, excluding the 1.5 million school children who will be using Google services in New South Wales, Australia.

I debated about how to spin these data. I decided to declare, “Google has won the search battle in 2008 and probably in 2009.” Not surprisingly, the audience was disturbed with my assertion. Remember, I did not parade these data. I use pictures like this one to make my point. This illustration shows a frustrated enterprise search customer setting fire to the vendor’s software disks, documentation, and one surly consultant:

How did I build up to the conclusion that Google has won the 2008-2009 search season. Here are the main points and some of the illustrations I used in my talk.

First, when a person uses the word search, very few people bother to define the term precisely My point: if vendors and licensees don’t know what the other means, the stage is set for miscommunication and perhaps litigation.The tag cloud below shows some of the terms that are used interchangeably with the word “search”.

Second, I reminded the audience that vendors want to “own” their customers. This is called “shelf space”, a term borrowed from the grocery business. Once a product is on the shelf, chances of its selling and staying on the shelf rise. I don’t remember if I quoted “Good fences make good neighbors,” but I’m pretty sure I suggested that when a big vendor gets a big customer, those walls are going to be high and thick. Walls keep the customer in and the competitors out. I expect to see more of this approach in 2009, by the way.

Third, I pointed out that information is a problem. Paper still exists and its presence is leading to land office business for outfits like Brainware and ZyLABS who have an end-to-end system that can deal with paper. Some search and content processing vendors assume that the customer will be able to handle transformation. The assumption, I suggested, is flawed.

Fourth, I went on the record saying, “I think social search and related systems are significant security risks.” I then said, “Social systems will be more popular in 2009. The reason is that regular search doesn’t work. Like taxonomy, social search seems to be a silver bullet. Shoot one of these 7.62x51mm NATO rounds into a search system, and your problems are solved. I showed this social network diagram to point out the problems of making sure information does not seep from where it is supposed to be to where it is not supposed to be.

Fifth, I called attention to vendors who sell and then code what was just sold. Now I know that most licensees think their enterprise system is like installing Microsoft Word, it’s not exactly the same procedure. Search involves many sub systems. These sub systems can be tricky. Add up the dependencies, and you have a complicated system. When the vendor is bug fixing on the fly and customizing to boot, high fliers can get too near a hot headed client and fall to their metaphorical “contract” death. Here’s the image of ?????? heading down and losing feathers to boot. “As a goose, this image scares me.

My conclusion was pretty simple. I love this image. With big vendors who have deep pockets and technical resources, many customers and some of the search and content processing vendors will be in a content where winning will be tough. The image makes this point better than my words.

My last side showed the effect that Google is having on the search, content processing, enterprise application, and video markets. Google is pulling independent entities into its gravitational field. That’s why Google has “won” for 2008 and 2009. No other company is exerting this influence and to Google’s “gravitational” pull at this time.

To wrap up, I have had a number of angry emails about my talk. A Googler approached me, and I ignored the smart lad. I don’t need face to face debates about my opinions when I’m rested. When I’m jet lagged, I’m not debating. Period. Feel free to whack at my endnote’s arguments in the comments section of this Web log. Just use facts. Skip the ad hominen stuff. I’m too old for that type of feedback.

Stephen Arnold, October 6, 2008

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