Is Google Gaming Its System?
July 2, 2012
In the beginning, Google said, “Don’t be evil”, and so it was written in their 10-point corporate philosophy. In 2004 the founding Googlers had a vision of a virtual world safe from evil, greed, algorithm and search manipulation. They vowed to share good deeds with the world, even at the cost of their gain.
Seriously, that was eight years ago…. Times change, ad revenue increases and Google apparently chose a somewhat less ethical path than planned. According to Google defends against claims of rigged search results the big G has forsaken its initial philosophy.
Nextag slammed Google and its practices stating:
“Google makes changes to its algorithms that effectively punish its competitors,” including my company.”
“Our data, which we shared with the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 21, 2011, shows without a doubt that Google has stacked the deck. And as a result, it has shifted from a true search site into a commerce site — a commerce site whose search algorithm favors products and services from Google and those from companies able to spend the most on advertising.”
In the end, this might just all go away. Rigged searches… perish the thought. We shouldn’t lose all faith in Google yet. There is a miniscule chance all the evidence against them has been fabricated to tarnish their reputation. There’s an old saying, “All gods forgive, with a proper tithe”. Ironically, Google may be counting on that or weighting the slot machine reels.
Jennifer Shockley, July 02, 2012
Microsoft Snags a Big Search Project
July 2, 2012
Search Content Management recently reported on a new win for Microsoft in the article “FAST Enterprise Search at Core of European Court of Human Rights Website.”
According to the article, The European Court of Human Rights has quite a task ahead of it. After nearly a decade of using a site designed using Fulcrum Technologies’ document management software, ECHR has decided to use Microsoft’s FAST Enterprise Search to overhaul its Web site in order to make it as intuitive and simple as Amazon and simplify the search process. In addition to this, ECHR is also working to make the new site accessible to mobile devices.
It is imperative that this happens because the ECHR Web site currently receives 4.6 million visits a year from lawyers, government officials, students, professors, journalists and citizens seeking rulings and information about the state of individual freedoms in Europe. In addition to this, the new site will enable search of 90,000 documents on rulings that affect more than 800 million inhabitants.
When discussing the upcoming project, the article states:
“Beginning next week, ECHR expects to expand the reach of its site search capabilities to more than 5 million users and be able to accommodate 5,000 visitors at a given time when rulings are made. The integration of document management, enterprise search and a cloud-based collaboration in the Web CMS promises automated Google indexing for public-facing documents, improved ECHR real-time collaboration efforts and reduced overhead.”
Due to the nature and status of this project, being selected to do the ECHR’s Web site redesign is certainly a win for Microsoft.
Jasmine Ashton, July 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Google Plus Is Not a Social Network
July 1, 2012
I read “Google+ Creator: Don’t Call It a Social Network.” The story makes it clear that a 20 something news service reported that Google Plus is not a social network. Okay, second, maybe third hand information is just the ticket for the 4th of July holiday crowd. For me, I was mildly curious. Here’s the passage which caught my attention:
Mashable sat down with Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social business, and Bradley Horowitz, Google+’s vice president of product, at the Google I/O developer conference. They were excited about the new Google+ features that were announced — the Events feature and the new tablet app — but they were also quick to downplay any comparisons to Facebook, or any suggestion that many people aren’t interested in joining Google+. “Google+ is just an upgrade to Google,” says Gundotra. “People have a hard time understanding that. I think they like to compare us with other social competitors, and they see us through that lens instead of really seeing what’s happening: Google is taking its amazing products, and by bringing them together, they just become more awesome.” Gundotra and others have said this before, and you get the sense that they really believe in their recipe for Kool-Aid. Google also released some new statistics to parry any stabs at accusing the network of not having a large and engaged audience — 250 million total users, with 150 million of them visiting every month, and half of those people signing in every day (if you’re doing the math, that’s 75 million daily active Plussers).
Two senior Google professionals and one interesting idea. Google Plus is not a social network.
My thoughts started to drift toward what my former history professor Dr. Philip Crane called “Stalin’s revisionism.” But I dismissed that idea. The notion that anyone today would reinvent or change the historical record is downright goose feathers, correct?
I did a quick search of Google+ social and Google Plus social and learned:
- Google.com reports that there are 423 billion hits on the query “Google+” social
- Google.com reports that there are 272 billion hits on the query “Google Plus” social
My hunch is that it will take more than a couple of interviews and a CNN story to alter the Google compensation plan which rewards Googlers for social products and services, Larry Page’s seeming obsession with playing catch up to the “new” Larry Page Mark Zuckerberg, and the series of social innovations which were flawed, late to market or flops (Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Knol, and so on).
Perhaps that chance association with Stalin’s revisionism was not too wide of the metaphorical mark. You may find “Google+: A Year of Missed Opportunities” a possible trigger for the double Googler about face.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Welcome Eucalyptus Back to Full Open Source
July 1, 2012
Open source beckons a stray back into the fold, we learn in The H Open’s “Eucalyptus Moves Back to Full Open Source.” According to Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos, Version 3.1 of Eucalyptus consolidates the company’s technologies into a single, open source version. Previously, Eucalyptus produced separate open source and enterprise editions. Source code is available through GitHub, where all new development will take place. The defect and feature tracking is to be publicly available so any community member can follow the progress of an issue.
Of the new version, the write up reports:
“The 3.1 release builds on version 3.0 which offered high-availability features, Amazon Web Services API extensions, rapid instancing, improvements to EBS (elastic block storage) and Windows image support, a redesigned administration console and better CLI admin tools. Eucalyptus signed a deal with Amazon in March which saw the companies agree to work on hybrid and on-premises clouds together. The company has been under increasing pressure with the visible rise of OpenStack and CloudStack projects which also offer IaaS [Infrastructure as a Service] cloud management.”
It seems OpenStack and CloudStack are making for some healthy competition. It will be interesting to see how that partnership with Amazon works out.
Eucalyptus supplies IT and tech-oriented businesses with the(currently) most widely-deployed cloud software platform for on-premise Infrastructure as a Service. The platform began as a research project at the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2007. Eucalyptus was commercialized in 2009, when it began to make its way through Linux distribution channels. Headquartered in Goleta, CA, the company also has an office in Beijing.
Cynthia Murrell, July 6, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Is the UK Taking Snooping to the Next Level?
July 1, 2012
The Inquirer’s Dave Neal recently reported on the UK Government’s plans to violate the privacy of its citizens when using the Internet in the article “UK Government Details Its Internet Snooping Plans.”
According to the article, the UK Government is drafting a Communications Data Bill that will give them the authority to snoop on citizens Internet communications. The reasoning behind the sudden need to snoop is due to the fact that so many Internet users are criminals. Therefore, in order to stop the crimes committed by these seedy folks is to store social networking and email records.
Home Secretary Theresa May claims that it checking communications records rather than communications content is what saves lives on a daily basis.
Neal writes:
“Communications data covered in the bill includes the time and duration of a communication, the number or email address of the originator and recipient and ‘sometimes’ the location of the device from which the communication was made. The Home Office says that the powers are ‘vital’, adding that they will ‘catch criminals, save lives and protect children’, and says this with a straight face.”
On the other side of things, a recent survey of IT managers and executives found that nearly half of respondents would steal proprietary data if they were fired tomorrow. 71 percent of respondents believe the insider threat is the priority security concern and poses the most significant business risk.
If this is the case, maybe the UK government isn’t completely out of line for wanting to keep a closer watch on its citizens.
Jasmine Ashton, July 1, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Google and Paid Search Results
July 1, 2012
It has become apparent lately that Google’s long-time stance on paid search inclusion is changing. The company has recently begun accepting payments from companies for inclusion in some of its newest search products, such as Google Hotel Finder and Google Flight Search.
Google seems to be taking payment from those desiring to be included in search results, particularly in the area of travel. Extreme Tech’s article, “If Google Cozies Up to Paid Search Listings, Will Semantic Search Suffer?,” tells us more about Google’s jump into paid search results:
“Ask Google if paid listings are starting to appear, and the company does not shy away from its change of heart. Search chief Amit Singhal told Sullivan that the company found that some queries ‘could not be answered based upon just crawled data’ and required Google to ‘license data or go out and establish relationships with data providers.’ In other words, the company’s perfectly fine with it.”
The article’s title poses the question: Will semantic search suffer from this change? We at Beyond Search think not. Our view is that payment improves relevance. With a smaller set comes better data and we are impressed with the model and Google’s openness to change.
Andrea Hayden, July 1, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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