Google Gets Sentimental
August 10, 2009
I got a briefing from a company called Lexalytics. The firm, as I recall, was explaining its sentiment based content processing technology. I thought it was interesting. I subsequently learned that Lexalytics’ system would be part of the Financial Times’s online service, but my recollection is fuzzy. I thought of this company when I learned about the Google patent application US20090193328, “Aspect Based Sentiment Summarization”. You can find this document at the ever so powerful USPTO via its patent search engine. The abstract for the patent application, which some wizards believe are little more than the equivalent of my mother’s making Christmas tree ornaments for her friends stated:
Reviews express sentiment about one or more entities. Phrases in the reviews that express sentiment about a particular aspect are identified. Reviewable aspects of the entity are also identified. The reviewable aspects include static aspects that are specific to particular types of entities and dynamic aspects that are extracted from the reviews of a specific entity instance. The sentiment phrases are associated with the reviewable aspects to which the phrases pertain. The sentiment expressed by the phrases associated with each aspect is summarized, thereby producing a summary of sentiment associated with each reviewable aspect of the entity. The summarized sentiment and associated phrases can be stored and displayed to a user as a summary description of the entity.
Now Lexalytics and other companies with sentiment sniffers are only part of what this document sparked in my mind. The other low voltage arc was in the Endeca “Guided Navigation” department of my addled goose brain. As I read the exciting patent document and its droll legalese, I realized that the Google is claiming that its performs the same magic that Orange Julius does when it mixes fruits in fruit shake.
Will Lexalytics and Endeca shiver their timbers? Nope. My hunch is that both companies will see their technology as light years ahead of the Google’s. I also assert that both companies will not see Google’s claims as having much impact on their enterprise and ecommerce content processing applications.
In my opinion, this type of “Google does not have what we have” thinking is going to lead to unfortunate circumstances and quickly.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
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2 Responses to “Google Gets Sentimental”
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Well, clearly I couldn’t let this one go without a comment 🙂
Clearly one ignores Google at their own peril, as their budget for paperclips is more than all the text analytics companies make in a year, but monitoring them is a long way from fearing them. They focus on a different community than Endeca or Lexalytics do. It’s not that they can’t or won’t invest heavily and eventually close the technology gap on things like sentiment, its that they won’t cater to the needs of business users.
The Google Search Appliance has been a mediocre success because its a one size fits all sort of solution. If you have a complex search problem they can’t help you, and I suspect that will be the case with Aspect Based Sentiment.
Still, thanks to Steve for putting this out there, we’re certainly going to be watching Google more closely now to see where they go next.
Steve, I’m not sure you find any time to read my blog, but a quick glance will assure you that I keep close watch on what the web search folks are doing, as do my colleagues at Endeca. There’s no question that Google in particular is filled with great minds and great ideas. But it’s actions that ultimately matter, and I don’t think Google (or anyone else) has come close to Endeca in our sweet spot of supporting interactive, exploratory search. In my view, that’s because we pick our battles and keep innovating in the areas we focus on.