Google Threatened by Twitter
February 9, 2009
I read Lew Moorman’s “Google’s First Real Threat? Twitter” after walking by the field reworked by the Great Ice Storm. Branches and trees left the line of woods gat toothed. Forces of nature reword a familiar landscape with little effort. You will want to read Mr. Moorman’s comment here. He wrote:
So Twitter has value as a niche search engine today. Who cares? No one really. But, there is more. Twitter is building a human powered search indexing engine. It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don’t know it).
If he is correct, Twitter could affect Googzilla’s paws like a gym-transferred fungus. Under certain conditions, an annoyance can become life threatening. Mr. Moorman asserts the Twitter may be a digital fungus that could under certain circumstances overwhelm the GOOG.
A metaphor of Twitter users: “Sort of organized” like a flock of my best friends. Source: http://i.pbase.com/u41/muskrat/upload/26712589.QET1245MoonandGeese.jpg
As I proofed read this post, the chimes on my newsreader delivered a clump of responses to Mr. Moorman’s article. You will want to read John Borthwick’s “Google Next Victim of Creative Destruction?” here. He adds a useful comment about Twitter’s representing a move to “real time search”. Mr. Borthwick includes a useful link to a post by Gerry Campbell here. I liked the echo of that prose master Joseph A. Schumpter, although I think Clayton Christensen may be more familiar to the Twitter crowd.
In my opinion, Twitter is in a race of sorts. The system has demonstrated some fragility as users have become interested in microblogging, breaking information down into crunchy chunks. Listening to certain podcasts originating in California, it is clear that the Twitter users have found the system useful and a convenient way to exchange information in bite-sized nibbles. Stars or Hollywood luminaries’ publicists have discovered Twitter as well.
I picked up Mr. Moorman’s idea and did some preliminary thinking, which is subject to goosely revision:
| Microblogging base with millions of users | Stub services available within Android; low profile |
| Applications are possible, driven by informed users | Google’s social publishing Knol not successful; maybe a core problem |
| High visibility among the social media adopters | Google may have greater brand impact; social functions growing visibility |
| Subject to technical glitches | Google infrastructure seems more stable |
| Content is user generated with minimal machine generation of outputs or results | Machine-centric; social operations lag |
| Monetization model somewhat uncertain; subscription like SMS may be one avenue | Google has options for its business models, billing systems in place |
| Infrastructure costs to scale unknown | Google infrastructure in place |
| Cash position dependent on investors | Strong cash position; options to get more capital if needed are available |
Mr. Moorman is correct when he identifies “tweets” as a useful content form. He is correct when he asserts that a question posed to a community of followers can produce useful information, maybe not exactly like a search system that indexes about one trillion documents, but good and different.
My thoughts are:
- Maybe Google will take a long-term view to this type of information system just as it has done in the enterprise? Google’s hanging back creates an IBM-like FUD factor. When Google moves, the action is disruptive even if it does not generate significant revenue in the short term
- Could Google embed a Twitter function in its “stubs” that connect users to the Google infrastructure? Chrome extensions, Android applications, and telco partners might offer some purchase in this space?
- Why not buy Twitter? Google has the cash and investors respond to the sight, smell, and touch of cash? The economy is not too healthy, and if a Googler makes a compelling pitch, Twitter could follow in the footsteps of Keyhole or Blogger.com; that is, become an enabler in a much larger ecosystem.
The social search and social software space is evolving rapidly. From my vantage point in the hills of Kentucky, I remain on the fence. Security, message integrity, spoofing, “ownership” of customers and content, and provenance give me some stale crusts on which to chew with my beak. These issues do not worry the young users nor the tech savvy early adopters who know the ropes of online. For more seasoned geese, Twitter is interesting. Twitter may kill Google, but I think it will like the foot fungus take some time to overwhelm Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, February 9, 2009
More Trouble for Microsoft: GMail Guns for Hotmail
February 9, 2009
I don’t use GMail. Call me careful. Call me an addled goose. What I do is irrelevant because Garrett Rogers reports that the gap between Hotmail and GMail is closing. You can read his article “Gmail usage appears to be closing in on Hotmail” here. If true, Google seems to be making significant progress in territory that Microsoft once considered part of its dominion. For me, the most interesting comment was:
Google still has a long way to go to catch up to Yahoo, but it’s realistic to think that it could happen as soon as 2011 if you look at current growth rates. Part of the reason Google’s email service is becoming so popular is their ability to push out updates and useful features extremely quickly.
It’s 2009, and I think that 2011 may arrive more quickly than Microsoft expects. What can Microsoft do to respond to Google? Well, cutting back staff and chopping data center spending do not strike me as particularly innovative. As an addled goose, I must be missing a key part of Microsoft’s strategy in search. With big search announcements looming, I am hopeful that Microsoft will leap frog the GOOG. Stay tuned.
Stephen Arnold, February 8, 2009
Ballmer on Google’s Enterprise Pricing
February 9, 2009
Not long ago, I did some poking around to get a sense for Google’s pricing of the Google Search Appliance. What I discovered was that it was among the most expensive search solutions. I also learned that organizations that wanted the GSA did not seem particularly price sensitive. Google is to some synonymous with search, and the organizations that want a Google solution simply don’t think too much about the two year licensing deal, the cost of hot spares, and the fees slapped on to switch a machine from back up mode to production mode. Makes zero difference to me. Most organizations are clueless about search, and after a few months with the new search system, users are grousing again.
I was surprised with a short news story in Truemores here, however. Steve Ballmer is reported to have expressed the opinion that Google’s enterprise products and services are over priced. I wonder if he had poked into pricing for the Google Search Appliance or he was confining his remarks to the $50 per user for Google Apps. The story contained a couple of memorable comments in my opinion.
First, Mr. Ballmer is alleged to have said: “We’re not talking about some screwball consumer thing now. We’re talking about the enterprise.” I wonder if the screwball thing is the Zune or Vista?
Second, Mr. Ballmer is alleged to have suggested: “The $50 per user per year price tag on Google’s product [is] overpriced.” Maybe but I saw some hefty price tags at Office Depot on Microsoft Office today. To be fair, Microsoft deals with CALs, an acronym for wheeling and dealing for software.
If the price insensitivity I discovered transfers to Google Apps, Mr. Ballmer may have the satisfaction of knowing that he was right. Being “right”, however, does not mean that the GOOG won’t trample through Microsoft’s most best revenue vineyard.
Stephen Arnold, February 8, 2009
Cengage: A Publisher to Watch
February 9, 2009
I chopped this factoid out of the foul papers for Google: The Digital Gutenberg, my forthcoming study of our pal, Googzilla. More information is here. I was poking around for weaknesses in the traditional educational publishing business model. I came across an interesting document on the Web site of an outfit called Cengage Learning Inc., which is an “indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Cengage Learning Holdings II L.P (formerly known as TL Holdings II L.P. To me it looks as if an outfit called Apax Partners in the UK and the Ontario Municipal Retirement Service in Canada bought the “old” Thomson Learning in 2007 according to the information here.) You can read this document here. One catchphrase for a unit of the company is “A company that delivers highly-customized learning solutions for universities, instructors, students, libraries, government agencies, corporations, and professionals worldwide.”
If you are sensitive to pre-crash ownership methods as I am, the naming of this company is interesting to me. I did a little reading and located one factoid that may or may not be spot on. Here is the segment that caught my attention. Remember. This is the pre-financial crisis environment of June 2008:
On the Closing Date, Cengage Learning entered into an Incremental Amendment to its existing Credit Agreement, with The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, as administrative agent, collateral agent and swing line lender, and the other lenders party thereto, pursuant to which the Company borrowed an additional $625 million to finance the Acquisition. The borrowings were issued at 97.625% of the principal amount thereof and require annual principal payments of 1% with the remaining amount payable on July 3, 2014. Cengage Learning can elect the term of the borrowing period and each respective rollover period, as well as which benchmark interest rate will apply, subject to contractually specified minimum rates, plus a predefined margin. The minimum interest rate on the additional borrowing is 7.5%.
In short, Cengage borrowed to buy a group of properties. Some of these are in the educational publishing business. I did not do a deep dive on this because I located some references to various legal actions and in my opinion legal issues are like sleeping dogs. Let them rest quietly.
An investor conference call is scheduled for February 12, 2009. Source: www.cengage.com
I did some informal and opinionate thinking.
In my opinion, if traditional publishers are struggling and if buy out deals rely on this Cengage-type financing, I wondered who was going to pay the bill for the interest on the loans. Several thoughts crossed my mind as I realized that Cengage owned such online and publishing operations as Gale Research (now Gale Cengage Learning), some of the “old” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, Wadsworth Group, and Macmillan among others. (You can look at the same source I located here.)
Upgrades to ArnoldIT.com’s Google Patent Collection
February 9, 2009
I have made an effort to gather Google’s patent documents filed at the US Patent & Trademark Office. When The Google Legacy came out in 2005, I posted some of the Google patent documents referenced in that study. When Google Version 2.0 was published in 2007, I made available to those who purchased that study, a link to the patent documents referenced in that monograph. These Google studies were based on my reading of Google’s open source technical information. Most of the Google books now available steer clear of Google’s systems and methods. My writings are intended for specialist readers, not the consumer audience.
You can now search the full text of Google’s patent documents from 1998 to 2008 by navigating to http://arnoldit.perfectsearchcorp.com. The Perfect Search engineers have indexed the XHTML versions of the documents which have been available on the ArnoldIT.com server. ArnoldIT.com has provided pointers so that a user can click on a link and access the PDF version of Google’s patent applications and patents. No more hunting for a specific patent document PDF using weird and arcane commands. Just click and you can view or download the PDF of a Google patent document. The service is free.
The ArnoldIT.com team has made an attempt to collect most Google patent documents, but there are a number of patent documents referenced in various Google documents that remain elusive. Keep in mind that the information is open source, and I am providing it as a partial step in a user’s journey to understand some aspects of Google. If you are an attorney, you should use the USPTO service or a commercial service from Westlaw or LexisNexis. Those organizations often assert comprehensiveness, accuracy, and a sensitivity to the nuances of legal documents. I am providing a collection that supports my research.
Google is now a decade old, and there is considerable confusion among those who use and analyze Google with regard to the company’s technology. Google provides a patent search service here. But I find it difficult to use, and in some cases, certain documents seem to be hard for me to find.
I hope that Googlers who are quick to tell me that I am writing about Google technology that Google does not possess will be able to use this collection to find Google’s own documents. I have learned that trophy generation Googlers don’t read some of their employer’s open source documents, government filings, and technical papers.
Perfect Search Corp. is the first company to step forward and agree to index these public domain documents. You will find that the Perfect Search system is very fast, and you can easily pinpoint certain Google patent documents in a fraction of the time required when you use Google’s own service or the USPTO’s sluggish and user hostile system.
“The Google Patent Demonstration illustrates the versatility of the Perfect Search system. Response time is fast, precision and recall are excellent, and access to Google’s inventions is painless,” Tim Stay, CEO of Perfect Search, said.
Perfect Search’s software uses semantic technology and allows clients to index and search massive data sets with near real-time incremental indexing at high speeds without latency. It is meant to augment the Google Search Appliance.
Perfect Search technology, explained in depth at http://www.perfectsearchcorp.com/technology-benefits, provides a very economical single-server solution for customers to index files and documents and can add the capability of indexing large amounts of database information as well.
Perfect Search is a software innovation company that specializes in development of search solutions. A total of eight patents have been applied for around the developing technology. The suite of search products at http://www.perfectsearchcorp.com/our-products is available on multiple platforms, from small mobile devices, to single servers, to large server farms. For more information visit http://www.perfectsearchcorp.com/, call +1.801.437.1100 or e-mailinfo@perfectsearchcorp.com.
In the future, I would like to make this collection available to other search and content processing companies. The goal would be to allow users to be able to dig into some of Google’s inventions and learn about the various search systems. Head-to-head comparisons are very useful, but very few organizations in my experience take the time to prepare a test corpus and then use different systems to determine which is more appropriate for a particular application.
If you have suggestions for this service, use the comments section for this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, February 9, 2009
Daniel Tunkelang: Co-Founder of Endeca Interviewed
February 9, 2009
As other search conferences gasp for the fresh air of enervating speakers, Harry Collier’s Boston Search Engine Conference (more information is here) has landed another thought-leader speaker. Daniel Tunkelang is one of the founders of Endeca. After the implosion of Convera and the buys out of Fast Search and Verity, Endeca is one of the two flagship vendors of search, content processing, and information management systems recognized by most information technology professionals. Dr. Tunkelang writes an informative Web log The Noisy Channel here.
Dr. Daniel Tunkelang. Source: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quixote/dt.jpg
You can get a sense of Dr. Tunkelang’s views in this exclusive interview conducted by Stephen Arnold with the assistance of Harry Collier, Managing Director, Infonortics Ltd.. If you want to hear and meet Dr. Tunkelang, attend the Boston Search Engine Meeting, which is focused on search and information retrieval. The Boston Search Engine Meeting is the show you may want to consider attending. All beef, no filler.
The speakers, like Dr. Tunkelang, will challenge you to think about the nature of information and the ways to deal with substantive issues, not antimacassars slapped on a problem. We interviewed Mr. Tunkelang on February 5, 2009. The full text of this interview appears below.
Tell us a bit about yourself and about Endeca.
I’m the Chief Scientist and a co-founder of Endeca, a leading enterprise search vendor. We are the largest organically grown company in our space (no preservatives or acquisitions!), and we have been recognized by industry analysts as a market and technology leader. Our hundreds of clients include household names in retail (Wal*Mart, Home Depot); manufacturing and distribution (Boeing, IBM); media and publishing (LexisNexis, World Book), financial services (ABN AMRO, Bank of America), and government (Defense Intelligence Agency, National Cancer Institute).
My own background: I was an undergraduate at MIT, double majoring in math and computer science, and I completed a PhD at CMU, where I worked on information visualization. Before joining Endeca’s founding team, I worked at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center and AT&T Bell Labs.
What differentiates Endeca from the field of search and content processing vendors?
In web search, we type a query in a search box and expect to find the information we need in the top handful of results. In enterprise search, this approach too often breaks down. There are a variety of reasons for this breakdown, but the main one is that enterprise information needs are less amenable to the “wisdom of crowds” approach at the heart of PageRank and related approaches used for web search. As a consequence, we must get away from treating the search engine as a mind reader, and instead promote bi-directional communication so that users can effectively articulate their information needs and the system can satisfy them. The approach is known in the academic literature as human computer information retrieval (HCIR).
Endeca implements an HCIR approach by combining a set-oriented retrieval with user interaction to create an interactive dialogue, offering next steps or refinements to help guide users to the results most relevant for their unique needs. An Endeca-powered application responds to a query with not just relevant results, but with an overview of the user’s current context and an organized set of options for incremental exploration.
What do you see as the three major challenges facing search and content processing in 2009 and beyond?
There are so many challenges! But let me pick my top three:
Social Search. While the word “social” is overused as a buzzword, it is true that content is becoming increasingly social in nature, both on the consumer web and in the enterprise. In particular, there is much appeal in the idea that people will tag content within the enterprise and benefit from each other’s tagging. The reality of social search, however, has not lived up to the vision. In order for social search to succeed, enterprise workers need to supply their proprietary knowledge in a process that is not only as painless as possible, but demonstrates the return on investment. We believe that our work at Endeca, on bootstrapping knowledge bases, can help bring about effective social search in the enterprise.
Federation. As much as an enterprise may value its internal content, much of the content that its workers need resides outside the enterprise. An effective enterprise search tool needs to facilitate users’ access to all of these content sources while preserving value and context of each. But federation raises its own challenges, since every repository offers different levels of access to its contents. For federation to succeed, information repositories will need to offer more meaningful access than returning the top few results for a search query.
Search is not a zero-sum game. Web search engines in general–and Google in particular–have promoted a view of search that is heavily adversarial, thus encouraging a multi-billion dollar industry of companies and consultants trying to manipulate result ranking. This arms race between search engines and SEO consultants is an incredible waste of energy for both sides, and distracts us from building better technology to help people find information.
With the rapid change in the business climate, how will the increasing financial pressure on information technology affect search and content processing?
There’s no question that information technology purchase decisions will face stricter scrutiny. But, to quote Rahm Emmanuel, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste…it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” Stricter scrutiny is a good thing; it means that search technology will be held accountable for the value it delivers to the enterprise. There will, no doubt, be an increasing pressure to cut costs, from price pressure on vendor to substituting automated techniques for human labor. But that is how it should be: vendors have to justify their value proposition. The difference in today’s climate is that the spotlight shines more intensely on this process.
Search / content processing systems have been integrated into such diverse functions as business intelligence and customer support. Do you see search / content processing becoming increasingly integrated into enterprise applications? If yes, how will this shift affect the companies providing stand alone search / content processing solutions? If no, what do you see the role of standalone search / content processing applications becoming?
Better search is a requirement for many enterprise applications–not just BI and Call Centers, but also e-commerce, product lifecycle management, CRM, and content management. The level of search in these applications is only going to increase, and at some point it just isn’t possible for workers to productively use information without access to effective search tools.
For stand-alone vendors like Endeca, interoperability is key. At Endeca, we are continually expanding our connectivity to enterprise systems: more connectors, leveraging data services, etc. We are also innovating in the area of building configurable applications, which let businesses quickly deploy the right set features for their users. Our diverse customer base has driven us to support the diversity of their information needs, e.g., customer support representatives have very different requirements from those of online shoppers. Most importantly, everyone benefits from tools that offer an opportunity to meaningfully interact with information, rather than being subjected to a big list of results that they can only page through.
Microsoft acquired Fast Search & Transfer. SAS acquired Teragram. Autonomy acquired Interwoven and Zantaz. In your opinion, will this consolidation create opportunities or shut doors. What options are available to vendors / researchers in this merger-filled environment?
Yes! Each acquisition changes the dynamics in the market, both creating opportunities and shutting doors at the same time. For SharePoint customers who want to keep the number of vendors they work with to a minimum, the acquisition of FAST gives them a better starting point over Microsoft Search Server. For FAST customers who aren’t using SharePoint, I can only speculate as to what is in store for them.
For other vendors in the marketplace, the options are:
- Get aligned with (or acquired by) one of the big vendors and get more tightly tied into a platform stack like FAST;
- Carve out a position in a specific segment, like we’re seeing with Autonomy and e-Discovery, or
- Be agnostic, and serve a number of different platforms and users like Endeca or Google do. In this group, you’ll see some cases where functionality is king, and some cases where pricing is more important, but there will be plenty of opportunities here to thrive.
Multi core processors provide significant performance boosts. But search / content processing often faces bottlenecks and latency in indexing and query processing. What’s your view on the performance of your system or systems with which you are familiar? Is performance a non issue?
Performance is absolutely a consideration, even for systems that make efficient use of hardware resources. And it’s not just about using CPU for run-time query processing: the increasing size of data collections has pushed on memory requirements; data enrichment increases the expectations and resource requirements for indexing; and richer capabilities for query refinement and data visualization present their own performance demands.
Multicore computing is the new shape of Moore’s Law: this is a fundamental consequence of the need to manage power consumption on today’s processors, which contain billions of transistors. Hence, older search systems that were not designed to exploit data parallelism during query evaluation will not scale up as hardware advances.
While tasks like content extraction, enrichment, and indexing lend themselves well to today’s distributed computing approaches, the query side of the problem is more difficult–especially in modern interfaces that incorporate faceted search, group-bys, joins, numeric aggregations, et cetera. Much of the research literature on query parallelism from the database community addresses structured, relational data, and most parallel database work has targeted distributed memory models, so existing techniques must be adapted to handle the problems of search.
Google has disrupted certain enterprise search markets with its appliance solution. The Google brand creates the idea in the minds of some procurement teams and purchasing agents that Google is the only or preferred search solution. What can a vendor do to adapt to this Google effect? Is Google a significant player in enterprise search, or is Google a minor player?
I think it is a mistake for the higher-end search vendors to dismiss Google as a minor player in the enterprise. Google’s appliance solution may be functionally deficient, but Google’s brand is formidable, as is its position of the appliance as a simple, low-cost solution. Moreover, if buyers do not understand the differences among vendor offerings, they may well be inclined to decide based on the price tag–particularly in a cost-conscious economy. It is thus more incumbent than ever on vendors to be open about what their technology can do, as well as to build a credible case for buyers to compare total cost of ownership.
Mobile search is emerging as an important branch of search / content processing. Mobile search, however, imposes some limitations on presentation and query submission. What are your views of mobile search’s impact on more traditional enterprise search / content processing?
A number of folks have noted that the design constraints of the iPhone (and of mobile devices in general) lead to an improved user experience, since site designers do a better job of focusing on the information that users will find relevant. I’m delighted to see designers striving to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in information seeking applications.
Still, I think we can take the idea much further. More efficient or ergonomic use of real estate boils down to stripping extraneous content–a good idea, but hardly novel, and making sites vertically oriented (i.e., no horizontal scrolling) is still a cosmetic change. The more interesting question is how to determine what information is best to present in the limited space–-that is the key to optimizing interaction. Indeed, many of the questions raised by small screens also apply to other interfaces, such as voice. Ultimately, we need to reconsider the extreme inefficiency of ranked lists, compared to summarization-oriented approaches. Certainly the mobile space opens great opportunities for someone to get this right on the web.
Semantic technology can make point and click interfaces more useful. What other uses of semantic technology do you see gaining significance in 2009? What semantic considerations do you bring to your product and research activities?
Semantic search means different things to different people, but broadly falls into two categories: Using linguistic and statistical approaches to derive meaning from unstructured text, using semantic web approaches to represent meaning in content and query structure. Endeca embraces both of these aspects of semantic search.
From early on, we have developed an extensible framework for enriching content through linguistic and statistical information extraction. We have developed some groundbreaking tools ourselves, but have achieved even better results by combining other vendor’s document analysis tools with our unique ability to improve their results through corpus analysis.
The growing prevalence of structured data (e.g., RDF) with well-formed ontologies (e.g., OWL) is very valuable to Endeca, since our flexible data model is ideal for incorporating heterogeneous, semi-structured content. We have done this in major applications for the financial industry, media/publishing, and the federal government.
It is also important that semantic search is not just about the data. In the popular conception of semantic search, the computer is wholly responsible derives meaning from the unstructured input. Endeca’s philosophy, as per the HCIR vision, is that humans determine meaning, and that our job is to give them clues using all of the structure we can provide.
Where can I find more information about your products, services, and research?
Endeca’s web site is http://endeca.com/. I also encourage you to read my blog, The Noisy Channel (http://thenoisychannel.com/), where I share my ideas (as do a number of other people!) on improving the way that people interact with information.
Stephen Arnold, February 9, 2009
Google Israel Re Googles
February 8, 2009
Globes.co.il reported that Google Israel has shuffled its organization. "Google Israel Restructures" here reported on February 8, 2009, that Professor Yossi Matias will run the new one office operation. The GOOG will combine its Tel Aviv and Haifa R&D facilities. The article reported: "The new center will have additional responsibilities including data analysis and search. The expanded search responsibility will be lead by Dr. Yoelle Maarek, a specialist in search technologies."
My take: cost rationalization. Stay tuned. Keep in mind that the links to Globes.co.il content 404 after a short period of time. A news hound or pundit will carry a version of the story I assume.
Stephen Arnold, February 8, 2009
Microsoft Rolls Out Low Cost Search to Counter Google in the Enterprise
February 8, 2009
Computerworld’s “Microsoft Unveils Enterprise Search Products” here makes public one of the worst kept secrets in the enterprise search and content processing arena in my experience. The Computerworld story reports that the enterprise search market is “at a tipping point.” (More about this idea below.) In response, Microsoft will release “a pair of low-cost enterprise search products.” The announcement will be given a big hoo ha at the Fast Forward Conference where the believers in the $1.23 billion Fast ESP search system gather each year.
The Computerworld story trots down a familiar path. Autonomy’s products are expensive. Google offers a low priced search solution which costs less than $2,000. Microsoft is now responding to an opportunity because Microsoft has a habit of playing “me too” games. Microsoft has lots of partners. The company has put up a new Web site to explain the low cost solutions. It is located at www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch.
Now I don’t want to be a wet blanket, but I have to capture the thoughts that flapped through my mind after reading this Computerworld story. I was walking my two technical advisors, Kenlico’s Canadian Mist (a former show dog) and my rescued, hopelessly confused boxer, Tess. She, as you know, tracks Microsoft search technology for me.
The thoughts are jejune and my opinion, but I value them this morning:
- Any enterprise search system is expensive, not just six figures but often seven figures. The reason is that low cost solutions have to be matched to specific user needs and the context of the organization. Whether the tailoring is done by the licensee’s staff or by consultants, time is the killer here. The research I have done over the past decades about the cost of behind-the-firewall search is that vendors have to be cautious about their assertions regarding customization. A quick example surfaces in the event of a legal matter. The cost of the basic behind-the-firewall search system becomes an issue when that system cannot meet the needs of eDiscovery. A single system could be free like Lucene or SOLR, but the cost of behind-the-firewall search skyrockets over night. Similar cost spikes occur when non text content must be processed, the company must comply with a government’s security guidelines, when the company acquires another outfit and has to “integrate” the systems for information retrieval, and so on.
- Google is not cheap. The cheap system is a way to let an organization kick the tires. A Google system with several hot spare GB 7007s costs more than Autonomy and Endeca in similar configurations. Why is this? People want Google and are price insensitive in my experience. Sure, Google’s resellers can wheel and deal some, but most competitors are clueless about the cost of the Google solutions and what the Google solutions do to disrupt the existing information technology systems and procedures. The GOOG for its part lets the customers figure out Google functions on its own, so the penetration of Google and its costs move at a snail’s pace. The Google snail, however, is pretty smart and has a bigger picture in mind than a couple of GB 7007s.
- Enterprise search–what I rather pedantically call “behind the firewall search”–is hugely complex. A simple solution reveals the hot button for the licensee. Once in the crucible of a operating organization, the notion of search quickly yields to entity extraction, semantic analysis, reports, answering questions, and search without search. For basic search and retrieval, there are many options, including Microsoft’s. But for more significant methods for giving organizations what users need to keep the company in business, simple search won’t do the job. Companies ranging from Attivio to Relegence exist to deliver a different type of solution. In my experience, there is no single enterprise search solution.
- Where does the Fast Search & Technology, Linux centric suite of search technology fit into this free offering. If Fast ESP is now free or discounted, what will SharePoint administrators do when confronted with the need to assemble, customize, script, and baby sit a quite complex code assembly. Fast ESP consists of original code, acquired technology, licensed technology, and other pieces and parts created by different Fast engineers in different Fast offices. SharePoint is complex. Making SharePoint more complex is good for job security but not good for the organization’s debugging and maintenance budget line item in my opinion.
I think the significance of these announcements is that price pressure will be put on the vendors who offer snap in search and content processing systems for SharePoint. I like the products and services from a number of vendors in this space. The functionality of BA-Insight, Coveo, Exalead, or ISYS Search Software, among others, may offer SharePoint licensees more options than either the Microsoft solutions or the Google solutions. This announcement will lead some Microsoft faithful to say, “Well, Microsoft’s solution is good enough and cheap. Let’s do it.” But that will not be sufficient to stop the bubbling up that the Google approach uses to give Microsoft itself wet feet and chills.
Microsoft Wants Users to Help Live.com
February 8, 2009
Google ignores user inputs in many cases. Microsoft, on the other hand, has made available via Softpedia and other news sources a list of emails to which a person can submit notices of abuse or improper content. You can read the story “Microsoft Keeps a Close Eye on Windows Live Servers” here. The article looked like a PR write up, but I had another idea as I thought about this quote in the article:
“Windows Live aims to protect you in these ways: blocking instant messaging spam and inappropriate communications in Windows Live Messenger and providing a means for you to report abuse; filtering incoming e-mail messages in Windows Live Hotmail for spam/junk; scanning attachments you receive, download, and send in Hotmail; scanning comments on Windows Live Spaces for spam; monitoring shared photos for abuse and inappropriate imagery; and providing abuse@live.com for issues you want to report directly to our Direct Mail Abuse team,” Cannon stated.
Google’s policy of ignoring some inputs may irritate me at times, but I know that Mother Google is deaf from blandishments from the addled goose in Kentucky. As a result, I don’t bother communicating with Googzilla any longer. It is what it is. Microsoft on the other hand has posted via Softpedia these contact points:
Messenger: Report abuse
Hotmail: Report abuse
Spaces: Report abuse
SkyDrive: Report abuse
Calendar: Report abuse
Events: Report abuse
Groups: Report abuse
People: Report abuse
Profile: Report abuse
What happens when a person with a peculiar sense of humor floods these addresses with reports that may be false? If anyone has any information about the method used to determine if a complaint is accurate or false, let me know. The policy seems to open the door to issues.
Stephen Arnold, February 7, 2009
Ask.com: Vertical Search Push
February 8, 2009
The harsh world of Web search seems to have ground down Ask.com even further. Search Engine Watch’s “Ask.com Parent IAC Sees Disappointing Revenues, Plans Vertical Search Strategy” here tells the tale. You can read the financial details yourself. For me, the most interesting comment is the strategy intended to turn the sea of red ink into a salmon fishery was:
Instead of attempting to take on Google head-on, Ask.com will follow a vertical search strategy, which kicked off last month with deal where Ask will power the search experience on NASCAR.com, provide a NASCAR toolbar, and sponsor a car. IAC plans to roll out from 8 to 10 similar relationships this year.
Yep, the search engine of NASCAR will seek “similar relationships”. One hopes that Ask.com tries to locate a relationship not experiencing sponsor defection and declining attendance. When I was at Ziff, one of the Ziffers was involved with the original AskJeeves.com site. Since its founding more than a decade ago, Ask.com has never been useful for my type of research. Maybe this vertical search approach will work? Vertical search is sort of a hassle for me. I prefer to go to one place and get results. Running the same query on different “vertical” systems means I have to federate the results. Nope, I want the system to do the grunt work.
Stephen Arnold, February 8, 2009
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