IBM vs Google: A Better Filter?

October 19, 2010

Last week in Washington, DC – a dismal place, indeed – a person asked me, “Have you read “IBM’s New Search Engine Filters Results Better than Google”? My response, “Nope.”

The story appeared on Fool.com. The story concerns a new analytics based search engine. The school involved in testing the engine is North Carolina State University, which has a killer math program. (I used to do some work for mereology and rough set expert, Dr. Zbigniew Michalewicz’s NuTech Solutions.)

The system, according to the write up:

works like Google or Yahoo! but allows users the options to refine the search further with different adjustment parameters and filters. With analytics tool in use, the search becomes much more intelligent than merely searching for key words.

Okay, but the write up is pretty darned lean. IBM is using open source search solutions. The analytics stuff has been around for decades and has had many names and pushes. The one I like to use as a touchstone is WebFountain. Each of these systems is supposed to deliver answers.

In addition, IBM owns SPSS, Cognos, and other properties that perform analytics of different types. In short, for a consulting company, IBM seems to be promoting different collections of technology when revenues dip or when a particular sector starts to boom. In case you had not noticed, the world of analytics is getting lots of misinformed coverage. One good example is the attention lavished on Recorded Future. This blog post allows me to answer the person who posed the question to me last week, “Yep, and I don’t care.”

IBM is a consulting engineering firm. The puffery about innovation and mainframes is interesting but the outfit would be gasping unless it had the high margin services business to hawk. IBM may not be a blue chip consulting firm, but it does quality as an azurini, which has allowed it to hit $100 billion.

Mover and shaker in search analytics. Not quite in my opinion. Stick with i2, Megaputer, or a hot new start up like Digital Reasoning. You can also fall back on what we learned in college: SPSS or SAS.

Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2010

Freebie unlike an FRU

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Marketing, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.