Research Data Smiles on Google. Competitors, Maybe?
December 13, 2010
There’s some good news for Google and Facebook in the “2011 Budget Survey Shows Marketers Show More Interest in Lead Quality, Search Engine Marketing” from TMCNet. The annual study Marketing Budget Trends states that businesses are focused on steady budgeting and producing quality over quantity. Companies are finding ways to the use the changes brought on by the recent economic downturn to their advantage. They want steadier budgets and concrete actions to bolster future projects and spending.
“The ratio of online-to-traditional spending settled in at 51% traditional to 49% online; two years ago, 60% of budgets were spent on traditional tactics such as literature/catalogs, direct mail, trade shows, print advertising, etc. Web development, online advertising and search engine marketing will consume 38% of budgets in 2011 and are the clear priority of decision-makers as they’re crafting spending plans for the coming year.”
While these ads generate leads, most businesses still rely on brand awareness to sell their products. Businesses will never find a surefire method to increase their sales, but online advertising certainly does help.
Whitney Grace, December 13, 2010
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Endeca: Perfect in the Eyes of CTOLabs, Just Perfect
December 13, 2010
CTOlabs has a write up titled “Endeca’s MDEX Engine Review” that finds no fault with the Endeca system whatsoever. The system is glorified by describing the MDEX features and what popular websites use it, i.e. Walmart.com, ESPN.com, and HomeDepot.com.
“Endeca uses a powerful and revolutionary semi-structured database to provide advanced capabilities for high-performance search and information access across the entire spectrum of structured and unstructured enterprise data. The MDEX engine mixes search, navigation and exploration to dig and guide the user to discover.”
Endeca advertises the MDEX engine to have the following features: integrated API, semi-structured database, generational data updates, security, performance and scalability, end-to-end web services support, and extensibility. This is interesting, because most systems we test struggle with petascale dataflows, connecting to such content sources as the i2 ANB format, query response time under heavy load, and generating revenue. Perhaps these issues are not drawbacks in the informed eyes of the CTOLabs’ crew?
Guess Endeca is the leader in search, not Vivisimo, as we learned in the UK last week. Poor Autonomy, Google, Microsoft Fast, and Exalead. Maybe each should just become Endeca resellers.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2010
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Informatica Embraces Pay as You Go
December 13, 2010
Computer World details how “Informatica Debuts Pay-As-You-Go Data Integration Service.” This new service is described as low-cost and uses the cloud-based integration. Informatica dubbed their new innovation Informatica Cloud Express. The company won’t start this service until January, but the wait will be worth it with a plan that starts at $99/month and it also creates 250 integration jobs/day. The pay-as-you-go feature has eight price tiers based on usage.
“The offering is the newest pricing plan for the company’s Informatica Cloud, which was introduced in 2006. This service allows an administration to create online integration job that fuse data from multiple sources, including databases, flat files and software-as-a-service applications.”
Informatica announced this new service at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference. Informatica Cloud Express has been described as an “extremely flexible, economical and easy way to integrate enterprise data with Salesforce CRM and [Salesforce’s] Force.com applications” and it is one of the highest used applications on Salesforce’s AppExchange.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2010
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Amazon: About That Uptime
December 13, 2010
Systems fail. Cloud systems are supposed to be redundant. Big companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are supposed to have the dough, the expertise, and the motivation to keep systems online. But systems fail.
I read “Amazon Websites in Europe Suffer Outage” with interest. I assume the statements in the article are accurate. The basic idea is
Amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr and amazon.es were all down for more than 30 minutes until around 2145 GMT when they appeared to work normally again. Amazon.com’s U.S. website was unaffected.
Lucky US. If true, the Big Outfits have some engineering work to do. Whatever the cause, that cloud stuff has to remain online. If not, it’s back to the old, crazy way to manipulate information.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2010
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Google and Microsoft: Two So Far Unsuccessful Attempts to Buy into Social Media
December 12, 2010
I read a short news item on Neowin.com. The article–“Microsoft Tried to Acquire Facebook for $15 Billion”—reports that Facebook was the object of a $15 billion buyout attempt. Microsoft was not able to get the entire company and apparently settled for a stake in the social universe for 650 million members. The reason for the big number is partially explained in this snippet:
What the future holds for Facebook is unknown as the site contains so much personal information, its literally a treasure chest full of information to marketers. But, as the technology world goes, its not about the products that currently exists that will challenge Facebook, its the new startup that no one has heard of yet that may eventually lead to Facebook’s demise.
Advertising.
Now recall that Google tried and may still be trying to buy Groupon, a local ad service. Daily Finance reported in “Why Groupon Said No to Google”:
The answer, it seems, is antitrust concerns. Groupon’s top brass thought Google’s offer could have drawn more scrutiny from regulators than any other deal the Internet behemoth has ever done, a source told Business Insider.
That sounds like a valid reason. We may never know, of course, exactly why the deal did not work on. Google is a smart operator, so more machinations may be underway, just out of sight.
These two failed deals raised a thought.
Neither Google nor Microsoft have been able to develop online information winners. Google has its search and ad business. That’s a home run, but it is a home run that is anchored in an idea from GoTo.com many years ago. Microsoft is in the search and ad game as well. However, Microsoft’s climb to its present level of success was via a tie up with Yahoo. Google has not cracked the social media ecosystem the way it shattered search. Microsoft, to its credit has a stake in Facebook, but it has not been unable to roll out its own hat trick performance in the social space.
These points beg this question: “Why has neither Google nor Microsoft been able to duplicate or approximate the success of Facebook and Groupon?”
Google and Microsoft are definitely in the position to spend billions for companies that are perceived to have a money factory inside their office space. Image source: http://nahright.com/news/2009/10/31/game-big-money-prod-cool-dre-clean-mastered/
My view is that Google and Microsoft are moving in a way that makes both companies increasingly similar. The approach generates billions in revenues, but it also seems to make home grown, organic social media innovation difficult.
What other limitations with the management methods in these two companies create? Right now the follow hypotheses are in the forefront of my mind:
- Microsoft forced IBM to adapt to its disruptive presence by becoming a services company
- Microsoft is now acting a bit like the “old” IBM
- Google is becoming more like Microsoft
- Facebook and Groupon seem to be moving in ways that parallel the disruptive actions of Google and Microsoft
- Amazon has shifted from vendor of fungible books to a giant services company that is similar to Wal*Mart.
Online has changed. With that change, search has fragmented and become plumbing. The action has shifted from the complexities of information retrieval to a utility that “snaps in” to the various service arrays companies are offering consumers.
No wonder the hapless enterprise search procurement teams are dumb founded about what vendor to tap for search technology. Isn’t it easier to ask one’s friends or just use a coupon offer than chops a price down to an attractive offer?
I think 2011 may be an interesting exercise in acquisitions, successful and unsuccessful.
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2010
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Google and Search without Search
December 12, 2010
I read “Marissa Mayer’s Next Big Thing: Contextual Discovery—Google Results without Search”. The key point in the article, in my opinion, was this passage:
“The idea is to push information to people.”
Years ago I wrote an article about push technology. I explained the benefits of search and described the efforts of PointCast and Backweb. My recollection is that I wrote the article in 1997 or 1998. The ERIC citation is here. I won an award for that article, but no one cared. No problem for me because I am not an academic and certainly at age 66, I am not interested in applying for a job in the Ivory Tower. I prefer the goose pond in Harrod’s Creek, thank you.
The phrase “contextual discovery” is short hand for the content system knowing who is logged in, what actions the user has taken in the past, and what the user is doing now. The “now” part comes from geographically aware software and some Julia Child-type numerical recipes. These “inputs” formulate a search query or point to content that others in a closely knit statistical neighborhood have recently accessed. Add salt and queue up search results. The user glances at his mobile device screen and, presto, relevant content appears.
Search without search.
Several observations:
- Pushing content is not going to be the next big thing in my opinion. The next big thing is having your Facebook environment provide you with the context for the information you want. No matter what fancy math is applied to search without search, I think the social experience in information retrieval is becoming more, not less, important. Of course, Google lacks a viable social search service, so it is understandable that the company wants 1995 technology to be the next big thing. Er, it still is 1995 technology. Even the word “push” dates from that era. It is almost 2011 and 15-year-old methods won’t hit home runs. Doubles, maybe?
- Google has tried several times to find a winner. In 2010, I suffered through Buzz, Wave, and the baffling Google TV service. I just don’t see Google having the same magic touch that it had prior to 2006, a point in time when Google began to shift from “text search” Google to “wild and crazy” Google. Push or contextual search is a great feature, but it is not going to set the 20-somethings’ hearts a-flutter.
- Google is fresh from some painful rejections. Math Club members are still struggling to gain social acceptance. The big turn down may be the Groupon.com brush off. I can tell you this: If I were Groupon, I would have grabbed that $6 billion and figured out something else to do that interested me. The rejection is all the more stunning because Google apparently was serious and so was Groupon. Maybe the deal will come back to life with another few billion added to the original offer. But the damage is done. Not only don’t major TV content people want to fall in love with Google, now a person-intensive, coupon sales company is not interested.
So what’s the next big thing? In my opinion, it is rejection. Google has to get its mojo back. Push may help, but more is needed than buying a digital rights outfit and quietly spending dough for content. Lots more.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2010
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Live Protest Map
December 11, 2010
Short honk: The new approach to search is to create an app that shows information. No search required. An interesting example of this is the Live Protest Map for London protesters. I am not sure how long the map will be online, but if you click now (9 am Eastern, December 11, 2010), you can view the map at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2010
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Google and Discordant Music
December 11, 2010
Gobble. Gobble.
Black Friday has come and gone, and Google’s music service is still not off the ground. “Delays Dog Google’s Digital Music Service” reports that major music labels are balking at Google’s planned cloud-based “digital locker” service admit fears that users will also store pirated music there.
The article says that “Google wants to sign wide-ranging deals that give it streaming permission for the locker service alongside rights for a music download store tied to its search engine,” but the labels aren’t ready to sign on for the downloads until their fears about the locker service are assuaged. Ad revenues are also not yet set as the labels question how artists will be compensated.
If Google had made a deal with Catch Media, would some of these rich media problems have been fixed? Despite these issues, all the players seem optimistic that the service will be available sometime in 2011.
Google’s solution may involve buying more companies like Wildvine, the outfit that provides DRM to Netflix and Best Buy. Details of this acquisition are here.
Alice Wasielewski, December 11, 2010
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Netflix on S&P List, New York Times Booted Off
December 11, 2010
Short honk: In a broad sense, you have to “hunt” for movies on Netflix. That hunting is close enough to search to permit me to note “Netflix Joins the S&P 500.” Netflix is, like Facebook and Apple, redefining what dominates the Web and what doesn’t.
Netflix is now on the S&P 500, a long-in-the-tooth service for the suspender and Gucci crowd. However, the big news is that the New York Times, once the toniest of the tonies, was given the old boot in the tail feathers.
The Washington Post said “bad news for traditional media.” Maybe, but not unexpected or unwarranted in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2010
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Exalead Brightens the Cloud
December 10, 2010
In many ways the computer makes old business practices obsolete, but in other ways it still feels like we have a messy desk stacked with papers and stickies—it’s just on our hard drive now. Global search solutions provider, Exalead, http://www.exalead.com is attempting to fix this feeling with a new release, CloudView 360, as we learned from Exalead’s Web site.
CloudView, according to a recent press release, aims to simplify search by offering an “extended package of CloudView modules developed specifically to integrate information from legacy CRM, ERP, HR enterprise applications, PLM systems and web content.” This is done by offering applications, “built on a flexible, scalable search backbone,” and “customized to incorporate knowledge of a business process.”
Faster searches, better structure and Exalead’s reputation of flawless search will make other search tools feel like using a manual typewriter again. When accurate info is necessary in a snap, programs like CloudView look like the answer.
Patrick Roland, December 10, 2010
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