Microsoft Advertising to Aim $80 Million Blast at GOOG
May 25, 2009
Abbey Klaassen’s “Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search” signals an escalation in the contention between Microsoft and Google. The money–$80 million—strikes me as a hefty chunk of change for the search and content processing sector. In fact, only a few companies engaged in search have annual revenues in that range. The subtitle of her story makes the view of the ad community clear: “Here’s why an $80M ad effort for a search engine, Bing, makes some sense.” You can read the story here.
For me, the key comment in the Ad Age story was this passage:
Consider that Google has conducted internal tests, according to people familiar with them, in which the company put its logo and treatment on another engine’s search results. Users still prefer the results with the Google logo, even if they’re not Google results. Or consider that a revamped Ask.com made its debut in 2007 to a glowing review from The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, who said it “holds its own with Google, and even beats the champ on some searches.” Two years later? Ask’s share of search is down 28%.
The last paragraph of the Ad Age article put a key point in the mind of this addled goose. The story said:
It doesn’t take a lot to switch people from one type to another and usually it’s a unique feature that gets people excited,” said David Karnstedt, CEO of Efficient Frontier and former head of sales for Yahoo. He reflected on his days at AltaVista, which Google supplanted. “Google got people excited because it got people and places right early on. That got people to really start to switch, and once developed the habit of using Google, it was hard to get them to switch back.”
My thoughts on this ad campaign reflect my view from the polluted pond in rural Kentucky in which I paddle; to wit:
- Brand has power. A new brand whether Bing or Kumo has to be built. That takes time. Time is running out because Google continues to increase its grip on the Web search market. Its brand is still quite strong despite the hassle over copyright and other issues.
- Google’s been plugging away at search for more than a decade. Microsoft has made numerous runs at the GOOG over the years. Now consumer advertising is the “solution”. Last time I checked, traditional advertising was losing its oomph because of demographic shifts, the decline of certain mass media, and the lousy economic climate.
- Google works. When the company experiences a glitch, the outage becomes a major news story. Google is now like a utility, and I think that a free utility that has become a habit may be tough to displace.
Google is, therefore, in the cat bird seat because it is good enough, has a 70 percent market share, and is free. Ads can’t change those facts even for $80 million. Microsoft needs to leap frog Google, not send messages to the same audience that Ask.com chases with its “search engine of NASCAR” promotion.
The addled goose’s prediction: great for agencies who get the $80 million in business. No substantive impact on search share. More is needed and quickly.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2009
Amazon to DC
May 25, 2009
With the Army embracing Windows Vista and the Google moving appliances, Amazon has, if this news report is accurate, decided to chow down at the Federal feed bag. TechFlash here reported that Amazon wants to hire a government savvy manager. If you are tracking Amazon’s non book activities, you will want to read Eric Engleman’s “Amazon Targets New Web Services Customer: Uncle Sam”. Mr. Engleman wrote:
There are certainly lots of technology possibilities emerging with the incoming Obama administration, including the president-elect’s proposal to digitize the nation’s health care records (Microsoft and Google have projects to put personal health records online). Is Amazon lining up to tap federal dollars?
The answer may be yes.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2007
Newspapers Seem to Be Facing Four Wolves
May 25, 2009
If you are a former employee of a major newspaper, you will want to read the Open Democracy essay “Journalism’s Many Crises” by Todd Gitlin here. Mr. Gitlin does a good job of summarizing the plight of this business sector. For me, the core of the article was this passage:
Four wolves have arrived at the door of American journalism simultaneously while a fifth has already been lurking for some time. One is the precipitous decline in the circulation of newspapers. The second is the decline in advertising revenue, which, combined with the first, has badly damaged the profitability of newspapers. The third, contributing to the first, is the diffusion of attention. The fourth is the more elusive crisis of authority. The fifth, a perennial – so much so as to be perhaps a condition more than a crisis – is journalism’s inability or unwillingness to penetrate the veil of obfuscation behind which power conducts its risky business.
These wolves are not like to huff and puff. These wolves will devour. The senior managers are likely to escape. The unfortunate ones are those who have often devoted their lives to the newspaper.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2009
Firm Promises the Moon and Stars: SEO Magic
May 25, 2009
In case you missed this interesting article about instant SEO experts, you will want to click here and read “SEO Companies Springing Up Like Dandelions”. The Search Engine Roundtable includes some useful links, including one to a write up about how an instant business can be grown.
My approach to search engine optimization is to rely on content. But as the economy craters, organizations are desperate for their Web sites to throw the firm a sales lead and revenue life preserver. Some clever folks scent fear and are ready to offer services that promise a good night’s sleep, a high Google ranking, and a life of bliss and joy. Some SEO mavens focus on such basics as a site map and clean code. Others emphasize content. Some like Search Engine Partner shift to the moon, stars, and magic approach. Here’s an example of the firm’s explanation of its services:
In partnering with you, we will ensure your web site will be more accessible on the Internet in terms of first page rankings for specific keywords across the major search engines, specifically Google. We as team members of SE Partner along with our consortium of SEO firms look forward to taking your business to the next level. In considering partnering with us, please keep in mind that we also specialize in seo 2.0, first page rankings, and top ten placement (rank) in Google. We will be available at a moment’s notice! We guarantee to never outsource any of our work in any respect and promise that all of our work will be done in-house, in an ethical white-hat manor per Google’s webmaster guidelines, and in one of our offices in the United States, the UK, Israel, or South Africa. Nothing will be outsourced to India, China, Poland, or anywhere else, where they may not understand where your business is coming from and needs to be! The Bottom line is to get your small to medium business site on the first page of Google!
You can read more here. Bold stuff.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2009
Digital Reef Makes Microsoft Fast Work
May 25, 2009
I puzzled over “Digital Reef Partners with FAST, Helps Manage SharePoint Content” in CMSWire here. The article covers a number of content functions that I try to keep separate; for example, unstructured data, “out of the box support for eDiscovery, compliance, Office SharePoint Server management, data security, and storage initiatives”, and analytic tools. Oh, I almost omitted manipulation of structured data. Who provides this happy family of services? Digital Reef. You can read more about this company here. The company asserts that it handles these different functions. My view is that the company knows how to tame SharePoint and implement Fast Search’s ESP “out of the box”. In my experience, prior to the acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer, implementing Fast ESP as an “out of the box” solution was time consuming, difficult, and required a Fast engineer with email and phone access to senior Fast Search wizards in Boston and Oslo. Dark days ahead for third party vendors of alternatives to Microsoft SharePoint services.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2009
Wall Street Journal Documents Citizen Spies
May 25, 2009
If you already use online services to locate information via humans, you may find the information is “Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea’s Veil”. The story appeared with a May 22, 2009 dateline. The author is Evan Ramstad, and you may be able to view the article here. No guarantees when it comes to the “new” Wall Street Journal. For me,the most interesting passage in the write up was:
“We’re relying on the North Koreans to keep publicizing” Mr. Kim’s movements, Mr. Melvin says. “This leads to great discoveries.”
I find it interesting that traditional information methods are still a source of wonder and surprise.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2009
Hiding Information and Blinding Spiders
May 24, 2009
Two stories reminded me that search won’t work if content is not exposed. The first story is the decision of a college newspaper to prevent its archives from being indexed by Google. The idea is to avoid embarrassing graduates. My thought is that the information should be indexed if it is available. To blind a search engine hides potentially significant and useful information. You can read that story here. Censorship is censorship.
But the second story was even more annoying. Bloomberg News, according to Gawker here, now suggests that its reporters neither link nor mention competitors’.
My view is that the value of linking is similar to a fax machine. A single fax machine is useless. Its value increased when there were lots of fax machines. Fax is dead but the same analogy applies to content.
Censorship and intentional limiting of links are two examples of a fundamental change in publicly accessible online information. Not good in my opinion. Tough to search when the spiders have their eyes poked out.
Stephen Arnold, May 24, 2009
Search Server: You Have Six Months to Live
May 24, 2009
Channel Web reported that an error in SharePoint Service Pack 2 shuts down Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express. You can read the story “Microsoft Warns Of SharePoint 2007 SP2 Glitch” here. With search a mission-critical service, the glitch could disrupt some organizations. The fix involves a manual reentry of the product identification number. No software fix is available but Microsoft is working on one. Nice Labor Day weekend news for the SharePoint admins. When a billion dollar revenue stream hiccups, the social embarrassment may be considerable. Enterprise search is not yet a no brainer.
Stephen Arnold, May 23, 2009
SirsiDynix Search Plus Discovery for Libraries
May 24, 2009
Brainware landed a deal to provide search and discovery to SirsiDynix. After a bit of poking around, I learned that SirsiDynix wanted to move beyond key word search and provide users of its library systems with discovery functions. “Discovery”, as used in this sense, refers to giving a person looking for information easy-to-use methods to look for related information and suggested information also germane to the user’s query. Endeca hooked up with Ebsco to provide “guided navigation” to Ebsco customers. Most online public access catalogs and library-centric search systems match the users’ query terms or force the user to search by entering an author’s name. Change, at long last, seems to be coming to the library for search of an institution’s textual information. I wrote about some of the Brainware system’s capabilities in my 2008 study “Beyond Search” for the Gilbane Group here. I also did a short write up about Brainware in this Web log in early 2008 here.
A reader alerted me to an announcement here that SirsiDynix will roll out an enhanced enterprise search and discovery system to over 30 libraries. You can read that announcement here. The system includes such features as:
- Trigram analysis, or “fuzzy logic” which evaluates each trigram in a word to allow for typos, diacritics and more: a first in the library search and discovery market
- “Did you mean” suggestions which are based on terms in the catalog (rather than a generic third-party dictionary)
- Dynamic search suggestions
- Delivery of saved searches through an RSS web feed
- Email and print options for search results
- Built-in “Library Favorites”
- The capability for libraries to define their own “Favorites”, profiles, languages and filters.
You can test the Brainware power “enterprise” service at the Wells County Public Library here.
The library market has been under severe price competition. This information sector is coming under more and more pressure from Google. The world’s largest search provider has been slowly expanding its services, including the controversial Google Books’ program. So far, specialized vendors of library information systems have been able to maintain the grip in today’s slippery economic one lane highway. The impact of Google on this market will be interesting to observe.
Stephen Arnold, May 24, 2009
Mindbreeze: In the Top 100 According to KMWorld
May 24, 2009
Mindbreeze is now one of the KMWorld’s Top 100 Companies that Matter. If you haven’t heard much about Mindbreeze, you can find some basic information in my three Web log posts about the firm, which is based in Germany. These two articles are:
- Mindbreeze Enterprise Search, October 2008, here
- Mindbreeze Profile Now Available, October 2008, here
The company, after reorganization, has stepped up its marketing in the U.S., hence the Top 100 Award. ThomasNet reported here:
Mindbreeze Enterprise Search 2009 Spring Release indexes heterogeneous databases and sources such as email clients, files, DMS-systems, Intranet, and Internet throughout company network. It features SharePoint® Server 2007 integration and supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux v5.2, CentOS v5.2, and SAML v2.0. Semantic contexts between information objects are also supported, while access rights, application, and user contexts are protected. Program includes optimized user interface.
The market for new enterprise search and content processing systems is crowded. The goslings at Beyond Search wish this new Top 100 company good fortune as it enters the search wars.
Stephen Arnold, May 24, 2009
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