Ambiguity in a Google Job Write Up
December 19, 2009
Here’s the title: “Former Microsoft evangelist Don Dodge on Google vs. Microsoft (Q&A).” There are some interesting nuances of the word evangelist. My very first consulting job was for the company that owned “Intellectual Digest.” The editor signed his monthly letter with the Greek word ????????????. That was 40 years ago, and you can see the influence of this person in some of my blog posts. I use Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to separate the humans from the addled geese.
The meaning of “evangelist” can vary. Some examples identified with the Google define command:
- A preacher of the Christian gospel (when capitalized) any of the spiritual leaders who are assumed to be authors of the Gospels in the New Testament.
- The Evangelist is the fifth album by Robert Forster. It was released by YepRoc in 2008.
- A controversial play by Romanian academic and writer Alina Mungiu-Pippidi.
- A member of the band from Donegal (Ireland) and Derry.
- One who shares news of something in order to convince someone to join or otherwise accept it.
- A person who spreads the good news of Jesus. The practice of ecumenism as a vital part of any effort in evangelization.
My next thought was the “former”. The headline suggests that a Microsoft person has now hooked up with Google to perform one or more of the functions embraced by these Google definitions.
The final thought I had was the “vs” which I assume means versus. The definition of “versus” denotes a dust up, brawl, to do, tussle, battle, squabble, Pier Sixer, melee, cage fight, death match, slobber knocker, or shoot out.
Seems that the Google is firming up its resolve to tackle the Redmond fortress.
In the write up, I found this exchange quite interesting:
Venture Beat: When you announced the move, you said you were switching from Microsoft products like Outlook to Google products like Gmail. How’s that going? Do you have a favorite?
Don Dodge: Oh, it’s Gmail. The thing that surprised me is the Gmail that consumers use is the same email that every Google employee uses. I’ve found Gmail to be just terrific, particularly the threaded discussions — it’s just so much easier to keep track of discussions and email threads. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, links not attachments. With an email that’s just a link to a Google Doc, you always have the latest version. The third thing was offline Gmail. Now you can go on an airplane, go anywhere offline, and you’ve still got your email and attachments. The final observation I would make is, over my career, my first email thing was Vax Mail, which was awesome at the time, it was revolutionary. I went from Vax Mail, to Outlook, to Lotus Notes when I was working for Ray Ozzie, then back to Outlook again, and now Gmail. Email is a pretty straightforward application. They have basically the same features, it’s all a question of user interface. I’ve found the transition to Gmail simple, easy, and in many ways better, particularly due to the threaded discussions. So with a lot of the religion people have [about different products], I’d make the same point about spreadsheets. A lot of people that are my age started with VisiCalc or Lotus 123 and moved to Excel, now we’re moving to Google Spreadsheets. It’s just the next era, the next transition.
What makes this interesting is that a former employee of another Google competitor jumped ship to Google. I have email insisting that such hires are not related to competition. Got it.
Oyez, oyez, I wish to disclose to the Defense Commissary Agency. This blog post’s food for thought is offered without compensation to me. Don’t get indigestion.
Murdoch Business Acumen Sparkles
December 19, 2009
I read in the hard copy version of the Wall Street Journal a short self-congratulatory article called “Sony Reader to Offer Journal Subscriptions.? In my Harrod’s Creek, mine-drainage edition, the story was on B6 in the December 18, 2009 edition. I did a quick search on Topix and found lots of articles about this news development. I am very sensitive to the value of an important news story, and I fully expected to have to pay to see information about this news development. Was I wrong? Yes.
The story reported that Sony and the Wall Street Journal have crafted a deal for digital subscriptions. The idea is that I can get the Wall Street Journal plus some other high-value content on my Sony reader. My Sony reader suffered a broken screen. My queries to Sony went unanswered, so I disassembled the device to see what was inside and vowed never to buy another Sony book reading device. The device lacked sufficient rigidity for the rigors of this addled goose’s fast-paced life. Fatal flaw in my opinion.
The information that interested me in the Wall Street Journal and Sony announcement was I would have to pay $20 for the digital edition and another $14 for the MarketWatch information. I have documented the spam I have received from the Wall Street Journal, and I demonstrated that if I simply hold out, the Wall Street Journal will sell the paper edition to me in Harrod’s Creek for less than $80 per year.
So, let’s think about this bit of Murdoch business acumen. I wait for an email or coupon promotion and buy the paper edition for $80. I know that $80 does not cover the cost of much more than a pizza for the IT guys in lower Manhattan on the Sunday night shift.
For a mere $240 a year, I get a digital edition. For the electronic version on the Sony gizmo which costs somewhere between $150 to $400, I pay $160 more.
Yep, maybe that will work for some folks. I don’t think this will work for me in Harrod’s Creek. I heard that newspapers are being given away in a number of cities. Why? People aren’t buying them. So, will differential pricing work? In my experience, the old pricing models are not amenable to the rigors of the digital crowd.
If I search Topix for the phrase “brilliant pricing models”, will this news story come up?
Stephen E. Arnold, December 19, 2009
You got me between a rock and a hard place. I was not paid to write this article, but I have to report to the Council of Economic Advisers this sad situation. I wonder if any of those bean counters can find a way to make this Wall Street Journal pricing work?
MBA Degree Branded as Baloney by Economist; Search Thrives
December 18, 2009
Lucy Kellaway must be a salty dog. In her write up “The End of the Affair”, which I think appeared on the Economist Web site here, she is fond of the word bullshit. There was a little sniff of offal because the story seems to have originated in The World in 2010. Forget provenance. The point of the write up is, in my opinion:
There has been a bear market in management bullshit since the credit crunch began, but so far this has been on the demand side—managers have been too intent on staying in work to talk much jargon. In 2010 the decline of the MBA will cut off the supply of bullshit at source. Pretentious ideas about business will be in retreat.
The benefit is that the MBA talent will invent stuff.
I worked at a firm that was stuffed full of MBAs. In my opinion, the MBA ecosystem is alive and well here and now. One of my colleagues has a PhD and an MBA. A one-two punch, right?
Why do I think the article by Lucy Kellaway is off base? Click to Fortune Magazine’s “Morgan Stanley drinks the Apple Kool-Aid.” Baloney. To top it off, Fortune Magazine is quite happy to amp a Morgan Stanley report about the mobile market. If Ms Kellaway were correct, wouldn’t the Fortune editors spike the Morgan Stanley mobile report.
My recollection is that there are still lots of people getting MBAs—night school, online, regular classroom instruction, Saturday only programs, among others. Furthermore, it has been my experience that the top dog MBAs still get jobs. The pool of MBAs keeps growing. Like lawyers, lesser lights MBA students find themselves having to scramble for work. My hunch is that as college students flee hard programs like math and physics, the cupcake programs will swell. Where else will some unemployed art history majors go to fill up their days?
Granted the US economy is lousy, but is there a slow down in the blue chip baloney business. In fact, the amount of digital baloney generated in a down economy may be higher than in a great economy. Example: business oriented Web logs. I was at a social media conference earlier this week. Guess what? Two days of non stop baloney.
Will there be more students in grad school studying theoretical physics than business? Not in my life time. US business thrives on MBAs, lawyers, and accountants. MBA baloney is a fixture of modern life. Examples: the Economist and Fortune. Why is search hot? MBAs are looking for more fodder, an essential ingredient in baloney.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 18, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I wish to disclose to the director of the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars that I was not paid to point out that baloney is easy to make. It may be America’s most significant product.
Will Mr. Google Rustle the Adobe Cash Cow
December 18, 2009
I think most buisness intelligence write ups are dull. Corporate catastrophes can be fun! Just ask Bain, Boston Consulting Group, and other blue chip firms. I want to give you a glimpse of another Google disruption that is not in the “Sergey and Larry eat pizza books.” The informaton in this write up comes from open sources. The difference between this analysis of a single Google invention and telling anecdotes about advertising is that the Google is poised to put some major pain a some large outfits in a business sector not generally associated with Google. In this article, I refer to Google as Mr. Google and Googzilla. I find that making light of what may be one of the more significant capabiliteis of this company is fun for me. Enjoy. Oh, if you are annoyed by my writing style, may I remind you that this is my personal Web log and it available to you for free. Therefore, don’t write to complain about my approach, just go read something more appetizing to you.
Any one remember Andrew Herzfeld? Earlier this year, the New York Times pointed out that Andrew Hertzfeld, “who helped develop the original Maacintosh and now works at Google” that Mr. Google was looking for different cash cows. Graphical interfaces and related software wizardry are nothing new to Mr. Google. But Mr. Hertzfeld is a bit like Vint Cerf or Jeff Dean. These are humans with brains that dwarf the addled goose’s pitable gray matter. Mr. Hertzfeld is a wizard. In addition to the Macintosh work, he founded General Magic and then Eazel in 1999. He donned his Google T shirt in 2005. Not exactly an average Googler, but you get the idea that Mr. Hertzfeld has some graphics savvy amidst the Haskell crowd.
So, what’s Mr. Hertzfeld doing at Googzilla’s magic factory? Picasa? An in-browser image editor? I don’t know much, but I do know how to look at certain types of open source information. A recent example is US Patent 7631252, filed in July 2006. The title is “Selective Image Editing in a Browser”. To give you some context for Mr. Hertzfeld’s interests, he has a patent called “Graphical User Interface for Navigating btween Levels Displaying Hallway and Room Metaphors.” After looking at these two documents, my hunch is that the Google wants to visit the feedlot where Adobe’s cash cow Photoshop is getting fat.
You can read these documents and draw your own conclusion, but I am going to snap this invention into my Google capabilities matrix under “Graphics Disruption”. Hey, I am an addled goose, so those folks with image editing systems that run on the desktop or in the cloud can tell me I am off base. No problemo.
But, just for fun, let’s look at what the crystal clear prose of US7631252 tries to communicate.
Here’s the abstract:
Methods, tools, and systems are provided for editing an image in a browser. One method provides editing an image in a browser including maintaining a list of transformations applied to the image including a last transformation, receiving a selection from a user to rollback a transformation, the selection not including the last transformation, generating a unique identifier associated with the edited image without the selection and requesting a page using the unique identifier.
Not too exciting, right?
Now Mr. Google employs a junior poobah named Cyrus. This bright lad insists that I create illustrations for my books and lectures using Photoshop. The reason for this interesting assertion is that Cyrus does not read patent documents. Here’s a Google illustration that supports the patent:
If you know about online image editing, you can figure out that the simplified interface supports a number of controls. The feature seems to be that behind the “simple” facade are some Photoshop-like functions.
What makes the patent interesting to me is that Mr. Google is supporting some computationally intensive and storage gobbling functions. Browser based roll back is one example.
The other aspect of the invention that I noted was that there is some smart software clanking around in the background. One quick example is the auto recognition capability that invokes certain functions. Mr. Google provides 21 claims for this invention. Most of these till earth that other image editing outfits have trampled into hard packed clay. A couple of them are going to allow Mr. Google to exert some disruptive forces in the image editing markets.
To put this in some perspective, Mr. Google has a vector capability. Mr. Google has a bitmap editing capability. Mr. Google has a plan for something. I wonder if there is a confection called the “creative sweet” in Mr. Google’s candy shop.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 18, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I want to report to the Jet Propulsion Lab that I was not paid to write about this invention, the Googler who does not read patents, or the coming pressure for the kids from Adobe. I would like to get paid for this type of serious patent analysis. I won’t even get a lump of coal for Christmas.
Digital Magazines and Hope
December 18, 2009
Anyone remember the Dyke Britton or the Graham Blue Streak? These were American automobile manufacturers, and they did not survive. The automobile industry and the magazine business on the surface seem to be very different. First, the automobile replaced the horse. The magazine did not replace anything. The automobile moved people. The magazine moves intangibles stuff like pictures, ideas and cartoons. The automobile created a massive social upheaval that is responsible for fast food and Tata’s cheap vehicle. The magazine created advertising.
Those autos are gone. Lots of magazines are gone. What is happening in automobiles may be happening in magazines. One difference is that I don’t think government subsidies and bail outs will be forthcoming. An information manufacturing era may be coming to an end.
Now the magazine crowd wants to move from the intangible world of content into the Frankenstein environment of digital information and a physical reading device. Don’t get me wrong. I think the magazine crowd has to find a way to survive. Charging me $15 for a Macintosh magazine from Future Publishing is probably not a recipe for mass market success.
I know the magazine crowd in the US wants to cook up an iTunes for magazines. The idea is that a person who reads “quality” content will gladly pay for certain articles. Well, maybe? When I read “Mag+, a Concept Video on the Future of Digital Magazines”, I asked myself, “Can folks who can’t make their core business work be able to jump outside their core competency?”
I look at quite a few digital magazines. Some like Zmags are quite interesting. Others rely on hardware that is ill-suited for the arts and craft approach to information that seems to be popular today. Even the Harvard Business Review magazine is going to try and be more “with it.” Get out the party hats!
Several thoughts:
- Traditional magazines have an editorial slant; today I can get information on topics of interest to me without my having to do much work
- Traditional magazines have been trying to be design conscious; today I prefer information
- Traditional magazines delivered an audience to advertisers; today I prefer information targeted to my specific needs.
In summary, magazines—regardless of format and media—are out of step with what I do to get information. The concept of a “magazine”, therefore, is going to have to be stretched in a different way. In my opinion, that concept will not have the elastic properties necessary to accommodate the odd shapes of consumers’ information needs. What happens when an elastic sheet is subjected to frequent stretching, it weakens and then gives way.
There you have it.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 18, 2009
I have to report that this is a free write up. No one paid me, but I think I have to reveal this fact to the Internal Revenue Service, an agency stretched thin due to various exogenous factors.
New York Times Gets Excited about Traffic Analysis
December 18, 2009
Navigate to “A Day in the Life of NYTimes.com.” You will learn that the New York Times has discovered that traffic to its Web site in mind 2009 is heavier at certain times of the day. There are other insights from the New York Times’s Laboratory. A couple of questions flashed through my mind.
First, what percentage of this traffic is in some way due to Google searches?
Second, why doesn’t the New York Times command the Web presence of the entertainment site TMZ.com, which is cited in the article as a big deal?
Third, how many New York Times executives are mesmerized by the videos showing traffic patterns?
Be still my goosely heart!
Disclosure: no one paid me to point out that these mesmerizing maps did not mesmerize this addled goose. I have to report this to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This information constitutes an emergency.
Google Paper and Fast Flip
December 17, 2009
Navigate to Google Labs and fiddle with Fast Flip. The idea is that Google is once again making itself work like paper. No trees die and maybe newspapers and magazines will live. If you want an explanation of Fast Flip, you can get a useful summary in the story “Google adds New Media Partners to ‘Fast Flip’”. The obvious point is that Google is trying to help some companies survive the economic downturn. There are some other explanations as well. Are these alternates as benign? Depends on point of view I presume. Does Google need intermediaries between its paper and the readers?
Stephen E. Arnold, December 17, 2009
A disclosure. This is a freebie. I will email this fact to the House Leadership Offices, an outfit that does fast flips and consumes traditional paper.
Google Paper and Living Stories
December 17, 2009
Short honk: I don’t want to dig into the Google Living Stories services too deeply. You can use the service and see for yourself that Google partners are using Google like “paper”. This is one of the ideas I express in Google: The Digital Gutenberg. I find the irony quite delightful. Google is working with traditional newspaper companies like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Google’s technology allows these outfits to publish in an innovative way. Will this generate new revenue? Will this allow Google to make a similar service available to other publishers? Will someone like an author ask, “Why can’t I do this an eliminate my publisher?”
Stephen E. Arnold, December 17, 2009
Oyez, oyez, a freebie and I am reporting this fact to the Government Printing Office (GPO) which could use Google as paper too.
Google Apps: The Microsoft View
December 17, 2009
Navigate to “The Grill: Microsoft’s Chris Capossela on Google, Twitter and that Blue Screen of Death.” One of the questions threw me; for example, “How similar was working at a restaurant with working at Microsoft?” Okay. For me the most interesting passage was:
Google seems to be doing Google Docs in part just to hurt your revenue. It is making some enterprises reassess the value they are getting from Office, especially if they don’t do any customizations or line-of-business apps. How do you convince CIOs there is value there?
Take a people process like an annual performance review. They are usually written in Word, but the end result goes off in some HR system like PeopleSoft or SAP. Budgeting is another very horizontal process. Most companies feel a lot of pain around the workflow and approval processes. They would love for Office to be more seamlessly integrated into their PeopleSoft system or SAP systems. Another good example is Accenture. They’ve written a lot of apps around making SharePoint the Facebook of their company. Traditional skills repositories, where people are supposed to update their skills into a line-of-business app, often struggle despite their over-designed back-end because it’s not a part of anyone’s daily process. With SharePoint, their consultants can articulate what they’re working on in a more unstructured way. The People Search in SharePoint becomes their expertise finder. It feels like a real social networking tool.
Interesting to me.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 17, 2009
I wish to disclose to the General Services Administration that this is an uncompensated post. (As well it should be.)
Will a Shotgun Marriage Avert Squabbles among the Data Clans
December 17, 2009
TechWorld.com ran a story that I thought was interesting and closer to the truth about the relational databases and big data. “Sybase Embraces Google MapReduce” runs down a number of data management companies expressing interest in one of Google’s earlier innovations. One comment worth noting in my opinion was:
Relational database pioneer Michael Stonebraker co-authored a paper earlier this year contending that that SQL technology still beats MapReduce in most cases. But that conclusion didn’t stop Vertica Systems, the startup where he serves as CTO, from adding Hadoop functionality to its new Vertica 3.5 database.
This is the data management equivalent of the the Hatfield’s grandfather okaying a little behind-the-shed activity with one of the McCoys. Trouble is brewing. The coal mines are hiring.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 17, 2009
Disclosure. This is a no-dough write up. I must report this unpaid activity to Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. Some of these vendors may be going down a dark, deep hole.
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