Google and American Income Square Off
December 25, 2011
Casting blame. That’s what one company is doing, rather than look to its own behavior. Media Post News reports, “Insurance Company Sues Google Over Organic Results.”
It seems that American Income Life Insurance, based in Indiana, doesn’t like having critical posts from sites like scam.com appear in the results when one searches for its name. Of course they don’t like it! But that isn’t Google’s fault. Perhaps the insurance company should spend its efforts on improving relations with its employees, rather than suing the messenger. Just a thought.
American Income is taking its case to Alabama courts, though it did offer a way for Google to get out of its crosshairs: just move the offending links to the second page of results, and they’ll forget the whole thing. Google declined to play ball; it knows the suit won’t get anywhere. Writer Wendy Davis notes:
Law professor Eric Goldman, who broke news of the lawsuit on Twitter, predicts that Google will prevail — despite the insurance company’s characterization of the dispute as a trade practices issue and not a defamation case. Either way, he says, Google should be protected by the Communications Decency Act, which generally says that Web companies are immune for posting material created by third parties.
American Income Life Insurance would be better served by doing some work for itself on its Internet presence. Objectivity, precision, recall– each matters. The insurance company wants positive traffic, but has not figured out that Adwords work. Work with Google, not against it; the odds are much better that way.
Cynthia Murrell, December 25, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Jets and a Place to Park
December 25, 2011
Too bad for Larry Ellison. He has to park his jets somewhere other than Google Air Force Base. Since mid September, Occupy Wall Street protesters have used the memorable slogan “We are the 99%” to reference the growing disparity in wealth in the U.S. between the richest 1% and the rest of the population. Google executives are not exempt from these attacks.
According to the TechCrunch article “Google’s 3 Top Executives Have 8 Private Jets,” Google executives, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt own eight jets. 2.6 jets per person, for the 2 co-founders and the executive chairman? That seems a bit excessive.
The article states:
The jets are not owned or operated by Google. Instead, the 3 Google leaders operate the fleet through an LLC called H211. Google has no official relation with H211. Ken Ambrose, the Director of Operations for H211, announced the funding offer at a public meeting this week. He also complained that NASA, which owns Hangar One, has taken too long to respond to the offer.
While it is not abnormal for CEO’s and executives to own private jets, owning eight seems extreme. I guess this is just another example of how the 1 percent lives. Hopefully it will not add too much fuel to the Occupy Wall Street fire. The deal may also pour fuel on Mr. Ellison’s ire.
Jasmine Ashton, December 25, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Paying for Firefox Love
December 24, 2011
Short honk: Navigate to “Pay to Stay.” The write up points out the the GOOG is paying $300 million to remain the default search engine in Firefox, a competitor which is struggling. Why? Lots of theories in the source article and in the “real” experts analyses. Here in Harrod’s Creek, we see one big reason—traffic. The GOOG needs clicks. Just like Adwords, buying them is the way to go.
Stephen E Arnold, December 25, 2011
Freebie unlike Adwords and the Firefox deal
Solr Overview Available
December 24, 2011
One of the founders of Lucid Imagination, Yonik Seeley, is credited in this slide deck which is labeled with the name “Abdulaziz AlShetwi.” I flipped through the deck called “Apache Solr”, and it looked like a good summary of Solr. There are a couple of useful diagrams as well as some helpful code snippets. If you are interested in Solr, we suggest you take a look. On the other hand, if you have hired the “real” consultants and azure chip consultants, why not give them a jingle. These folks will recycle the information and probably buy you lunch.
Source: http://speakerdeck.com/u/ecleel/p/apache-solr
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Blue Chip Consultant Makes Big, Wild Prediction
December 24, 2011
At Beyond Search we love crazy unsubstantiated numbers — Here is a keeper. The Economic Times of India reported this week on the projected value of worldwide financial assets in the article Global Financial Assets, Including India’s to be Worth $31y Trillion by 2020: McKinsey.
According to the article, a report prepared by the McKinsey Global Institute, the projected worth of financial assets in 2020 would be nearly double the value of the $198 trillion witnessed last year. Emerging economies made up 21 percent of the global financial assets in 2010 and grew four times the rate of mature economies, 16.6 percent annually over the last decade.
The report stated:
Depending on economic scenarios, we project that emerging market financial assets will grow to between 30 and 36 per cent of the global total in 2020, or $114 to $ 141trillion.. China’s financial assets could be as much as $ 65 trillion by then, and India’s could reach $8.6 trillion.
Yep, global and trillions. Why estimate just the size of the enterprise search market when you can size the world? I call this spreadsheet fever.
Jasmine Ashton, December 24, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Plus Plans to Dominate the Internet
December 24, 2011
The latest buzz surrounding Google has been rather polarizing. Some think that the search giant is becoming out of touch with its customer base, while others believe that it is only a few steps away from taking over the world. The article that I will highlight today believes the latter.
ComputerWorld’s Mike Elgan recently wrote an informative piece called “Why Google+ Will Become Google’s Only Product.” Elgan’s article details, what he believes is, Google’s strategy to marginalize it’s competition by creating a single super product known as Google+.
After citing every action that Google has taken since the release of Google+ this past June to integrate features that were previously separate products, Elgan explains why Google will eventually beat out all of it’s competitors — even Facebook. Elgan states:
Google+ by itself looks like no match for Facebook. But the integrated combination of every Google tool is far better and far more compelling than just Facebook — and collectively those tools already have far more users. And that’s where Google is headed. As Google integrates every major product increasingly into Google+, those products become features, and Google+ becomes the Google product.
This is definitely an interesting theory, and I will be watching closely to see who wins the final battle between these two Internet titans.
Jasmine Ashton, December 24, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Good Content Should be Paired with SEO
December 24, 2011
Today, almost everything is accessible through the Web. Therefore, many companies utilize Web advertising in the form of SEO to increase Web traffic to their sites. Read Write Enterprise recently posted a video that addresses the importance of pairing good content with SEO strategies in the post “Google’s Matt Cutts: Good Content Trumps SEO.”
In the video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of Webspam, answers a question about SEO practices and whether “poor” sites with bad SEO are penalized by Google. Cutts states:
Just because somebody dots every i and crosses every “t” and gets all their HTML structure right, doesn’t mean that it’s good content. Even if you do brain-dead stupid things and shoot yourself in the foot, but have good content, we still want to return it. In fact, Google tries to make it so that sites don’t have to do SEO. First and foremost is content, and there’s no bonus for having good SEO.
While Cutts emphasizes that Google wants to reward companies for providing good content, he also makes it clear that to receive the best results, you should work to make that compelling content accessible through SEO. If Google didn’t recognize the importance of SEO, why would they have AdWords?
Jasmine Ashton, December 24, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PLM Meets Green Innovation with Frost & Sullivan Award for PTC
December 23, 2011
We saw this write-up PTC Named Winner of 2011 Frost & Sullivan Global Green Excellence in Product Innovation Award and it made us wonder if maybe we had missed something significant.
PTC was ranked against comparable vendors in a variety of categories and came out on top for the Windchill® Product Analytics suite. It is great that manufacturers are working hard on environmental improvements and as we read the article it became obvious that the pressure is deeper than a commitment to sustainability.
The article explains:
According to Frost & Sullivan best practices research, the drive among manufacturers to improve the environmental performance of their products is gaining momentum every day. Not only have business-to-business customers and consumers demonstrated a clear preference for more sustainable products and “greener” brands, but investors are now pressuring manufacturers as well.
These motivators as well as additional regulatory requirements are a good driver for “green” innovation. Green innovation is a marvelous accomplishment.
If you are seeking systemic innovation it may be worthwhile to get a good handle on your data through effective data management. The effectiveness of the Inforbix data management solution for product lifecycle management may be just the tool needed for system wide innovations.
Constance Ard, December 23, 2011
Facebook Beats Google Plus on Android
December 23, 2011
Google is still hurting in the social media race, and this time it is even on its own mobile device.
Facebook has become the most popular app on Android, seeing a higher active reach than every single one of Google’s first-party apps.
ZDNet’s article, “Facebook is Now the Most Popular Android App”
The latest data comes from Nielsen, which ranked mobile apps by active reach: the percentage of Android owners who used the app within the past 30 days. The metrics research firm analyzed usage data from its proprietary device meters put on the smartphones belonging to thousands of participating consumers. As you can see in the chart [in the article], Nielsen broke down users by age group. Facebook had an 80 percent active reach for 18-24 year-olds, 81 percent for 25-34 year-olds, and 77 percent for 35-44 year-olds.
If accurate, very interesting. Facebook released its most recent app for Android last week, so as a twenty-something avid Facebook user, I am not surprised with this finding. I am, however, surprised with Google’s initial predictions that Google Plus would be strong competition for Facebook. The Google Plus Android App didn’t even rank on Nielsen’s top fifteen active reach rankings. What is going on, Google?
Andrea Hayden, December 23, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Ektron Brings Enterprise Search to SharePoint
December 23, 2011
SharePoint is a content management platform that markets itself as a product that anyone can use but, in reality, can be quite tricky without help from a third party solution. The Sacramento Bee reported on a new way to harness the power of existing information through enterprise search in “Ektron Announces Expanded Support for FAST Search for Microsoft SharePoint 2010.”
According to the article, Ektron, a privately held Web content management software company based in Nashua, New Hampshire, announced this week expanded support for FAST Search for Microsoft SharePoint.
We learned:
FAST Search for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is an enterprise search platform that delivers relevant, accurate and timely answers that help organizations use information for a competitive advantage. It helps people search intelligently, which reduces costs and risks with flexible, closed-loop enterprise search and security features. FAST Search for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 also helps harness the power of existing information assets and IT investments through flexible, standards-based enterprise integration.
While it is great to hear that Ektron is creating software to make SharePoint more user-friendly, we’re surprised that Ektron does not hook into more third party solutions. Our suggestion is that Ektron licensees take a close look at the Mindbreeze search and content processing solution. Our investigations suggest that users will benefit significantly.
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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