Google Blamed for Problems in Enterprise Search
October 7, 2014
Google, believe it or not, is responsible in part for the problems with enterprise search. The idea is advanced in “Why the “Google Paradigm” Has Damaged Enterprise Search.” The core of the argument is that people use Google for Web search. The resulting perception is that “enterprise search is as easy as Google web search, and that a central index of an enterprise is the right way to do enterprise search. ”
Google’s entrance into enterprise search was one of the companies earliest attempts to enter a market in which revenue came from a subscription or license, not a fee for advertising. The Google Search Appliance was a server loaded with a version of Google’s Web search system. Based on our work with the first GSA, it was clear that like many other Google products and services from the 2001 to 2004 period, Google was operating on some Googley assumptions; for example:
- Google assumed that a version of its Web search system stripped of its ad matching was good enough for finding textual content in an organization
- The company assumed that Autonomy, Endeca, and Fast Search & Transfer, the dominant enterprise search vendors at this time were too complex for most technical staff in an organization. The time and complexity of these systems contributed to the high user dissatisfaction with these systems. The high cost of these industry leaders’ systems contributed to management grousing about search.
- Google assumed that it could disintermediate traditional information technology departments and deal directly with end users.
Google crafted a server that was positioned as a “search toaster.” The low price of the basic unit was less than $2,000 and sported an interface that required the licensee to plug in basic information and click a button to start the indexing process.
The Google Search Appliance by 2007 had an estimated 50,000 licensees. At that time, the product line had expanded but the locked down nature of the Google Search Appliance and the key word approach of the system was creating sales opportunities for other search appliance vendors; namely, Thunderstone, Maxxcat, and Index Engines.
Google added features and fiddled with the license fees, hardening the GSA product line with hot backups, connectors, and extensibility via licensed vendors. Few analysts paid much attention to the product licensing fees for the various “GB” or Google boxes. If you want to get a sense of the costs for building out a GSA system that can process 100 million documents, navigate to www.GSAadvantage.gov and search for the Google’s search appliances. The costs work out to be comparable or slightly higher than a similar installation from Autonomy, Endeca, or Fast. The high prices remain today.
Google learned from the GSA experience. Instead of offering an enterprise cloud solution, the company has left a limited and pricey GSA product line in the market and provided a modest commitment to this enterprise search solution. Google’s cloud solution manifests itself in Google’s site search features. I am waiting for Google either to kill the product line or amp up its commitment. In my opinion, the GSA is in no man’s land at this time. It appears that not even Google can respond to the needs of the enterprise findability users. If any company could crack the code, would it not be Google or a Xoogler’s start up?
As the GSA emerged as placeholder product, professionals became more and more dependent on Google’s Web search. In Europe, for example, Google’s Web search commands an market share in excess of 80 percent. In Denmark, Google’s share of Web search is north of 90 percent. In the US, Google has a 65 to 75 percent share of Web search, depending on which consultancies’ numbers one uses.
The word “search” became synonymous with Google. Enterprise search vendors began to use jargon other than search. This step was a natural reaction to hearing from prospects, “We want a search that works just like Google.” What the prospects meant was a system that was easy to use and seemed to deliver useful results in the hits displayed at the top of a results list, a page of images, or a map showing a location.
Google Web search, not the Google Search Appliance, reflected a broader shift in the information access market. Users of Web search and enterprise systems wanted and still want:
- Systems that do not require the user to invest much time and effort in getting an answer
- Systems that can produce useful outputs whether text, images, or maps with data displayed on them
- Systems that delivered “answers” without the delays (latency) many enterprise systems force on users.
Google’s ability to respond to this enterprise demand has been ineffectual. Like other Web search vendors, key word retrieval does not solve the problems basic search systems spawn. The GSA is evidence that Google does not have the key to unlock the revenue vault for enterprise search.
What Google search has done (inadvertently I might add) has been to make crystal clear that users do not want to work hard for information users perceive as useful. Precision and recall are irrelevant because voting and advertisers influence Google Web search results. Users love Google’s outputs.
In the organization, procurement teams, individual users, and senior management boil their needs down to one simple statement: “We want search that is just like Google.”
That’s a big, big problem for search and content processing vendors. Google Web search is not about relevance, objective information, or accuracy. Google is easy and “good enough.” In an organization, people want easy. But in an organization the results have to be timely, comprehensive in terms of what information is available to an organization, and accurate.
On the Web Google can skip content that is malformed or stored on a server that does not respond to a Google spider quickly enough. In an organization, the content has to be available. On the Web, the advertisers and the uses’ own behavioral data pays the bills. In an organization, the organization has to pay the bills. Google has more money from a different business model than most organizations. Google pumps money into plumbing to deliver the service that makes money. Organizations want to fix the amount spent on search and the funds are not infinite.
For search vendors, the problem of Google’s dominance in Web search makes product differentiation difficult. Google’s business model creates challenges for vendors who have to justify the “value” and hence the “cost” of their search systems. For traditional search vendors, ease of use is very, very difficult because of the nature of the questions enterprise system users have.
Google is a mirror in which societal, cultural, and intellectual changes in information access are reflected. For many years, I have called attention to the verbal push ups search vendors use to try and make sales. The struggled Hewlett Packard have had with Autonomy provide a glimpse of how “value” can be difficult to change into hard cash Microsoft’s Delve illustrates that search for Office 365 is a combination of contacts, alerts, and personalization, not key word search. The dependence on enterprise search companies for cash from venture capital sources illustrates that traditional search is a very, very tough business to make into something sustainable and profitable without financial life support. The expectations that Watson will become a $10 billion business in 60 months is disconnected from the experience of other smart companies. In the history of enterprise search, only Autonomy reported revenues of more than $800 million from enterprise licenses. IBM projects more than 10 X this revenue in 60 months. It took Autonomy more than a decade to hit $500 million.
The reality is that Google is not the problem. Google is a metaphor for what users want when it comes to information access.
The write up asserts:
The Google paradigm also ignores the challenge of scalability. Indexing the enterprise for a centralized enterprise search capability requires major investment. In addition, centralization runs counter to the realities of the working world where information must be distributed globally across a variety of devices and applications. The amount of information we create is overwhelming and the velocity with which that information moves increases daily.
Interesting statement. For me, the problem of the Google paradigm is that it another bit of jargon that sidesteps a what information retrieval must deliver in today’s business environment. Whoever cracks the code can make money. My hunch is that Google probed the enterprise search market and is trying to figure out how to make it pay off in a significant way. Google may be trapped in the same problem space through which other enterprise search and content processing vendors slog. The question may be, “Is there a way out of the swamp and into a land of milk, honey, sustainable revenue, and healthy margins?”
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2014
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
