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Our research suggests that Amazon may have a slight edge in the cross correlation of user data. Google, whether pulling a me too or simply going its own way, has decided to link online and brick and mortar data.
The effort was revealed in “Google and MasterCard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales.” Amazon has access to some data which makes it possible for those with appropriate system access to perform analyses of Amazon customers’ buying behavior.
According to the write up:
For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of MasterCard transactions that Google paid for. But most of the two billion MasterCard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.
To be fair, I am not sure any of the financial services and broker dealer firms provide much output about the data in their possession, who has access to these data, and what use cases are applicable to these data.
From my vantage point in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, Google can find its own use cases for Mastercard data.
One question: Does Mastercard pay Amazon to process its data, or does Amazon pay Mastercard?
Google, if the information in the real news article is accurate, is paying for data.
I will address Amazon’s real time streaming data marketplace in my upcoming lecture in Washington, DC. If the information in the US government document I cite in my talk in correct, Google has to shift into high gear with regard to cross correlation of shopper data.
Stephen E Arnold, August 31, 2018
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Amazon, Analytics, Google, News | Comments Off on Google: Online to Brick and Mortar Cross Correlation
I have noticed the flood of links and social media posts about semantics from David Amerland. I found many of the observations interesting; a few struck me as a wildly different view of indexing. A recent essay by David Amerland “Snipers Use Metadata Much Like Semantic Search Does” caught the Beyond Search team’s attention.
Learn about “The Sniper Mind” at this link.
According to the story:
“There are two key takeaways here [about metadata and trained killers]: First, such skills are directly transferable in the business domain and even in most life situations. Second, in order to use their brain in this way snipers need training. The mental training and the psychological aids that are developed as a result of it is what I detailed…”
We must admit that it is a fresh metaphor: Comparing killers’ use of indexing with semantic search. In our experience with professional indexing systems and human indexers, the word “sniper” has not to our recollection been used.
Watch your back, your blindside, or ontology. Oh, also metaphors.
Patrick Roland, August 31, 2018
I mentioned in the interview that Robert Steele conducted with me the possibility of human intervention in Google search and information outputs. You can find the original interview here. I spotted an interesting factoid. The article “Google Maps Mistakenly Shows McCain Senate Office Building.” I went to grade school in Washington, DC, and later worked for years in the city. I thought that the misnamed building was named something else. But I am often wrong.
The point is that “a search for Russell Senate Office Building directed users to the same building. The error was fixed later Wednesday…. Google said in a statement Wednesday that it empowers people to contribute local knowledge to its maps, “but we recognize that there may be occasional inaccuracies or premature changes suggested by users.”
It was not clear how the error occurred.
I assume that Google’s smart software misnamed the Russell edifice for Senator McCain, and then smart software recognized the error and remediated it.
But if that assumption is incorrect, the change suggests that Google engineers can make direct changes to outputs generated by the Google system.
Worth noting.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Google, News | Comments Off on Google: Smart Software or Human Intervention
I spotted a quote which I immediately tucked into my “Research” folder. Here it is:
The trouble with a walled garden is that if the thing outside the garden is bigger and better than the thing inside the garden, then the wall only serves to keep new customers out rather than lock them in.
The statement appears in “What the Hell Was the Microsoft Network?” The history of this early Microsoft adventure is fascinating. The write up does a good job of bringing alive the thought process of smart people essentially unable to think about a problem outside of their beige cubicle.
But the quote has relevance today because walled gardens may be coming back in vogue. Apple is a walled garden. Facebook is a walled garden. Even Twitter is a walled garden. And if services are not becoming walled gardens, the gardeners are busy fixing fences, locking gates, and planting thorny hedges.
Worth reading the cited article.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
I found “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Quasirandom Sequences” interesting. Random number generators are important to certain cyber analytics systems. The write up puts the spotlight on the R2 method. Without turning a blog post into a math lesson, I want to suggest that you visit the source document and look at how different approaches to random number generation appear when graphed. My point is that the selection of a method and then the decision to seed a method with a particular value can have an impact on how the other numerical recipes behave when random numbers are fed into a process. The outputs of a system in which the user has great confidence may, in fact, be constructs and one way to make sense of data. What’s this mean? Pinpointing algorithmic “bias” is a difficult job. It is often useful to keep in mind that decisions made by a developer or math whiz for what seems like a no brainer process can have a significant impact on outputs.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under algorithms, News | Comments Off on A Glimpse of Random
Years ago, I learned that Google was worried about government regulation. President Trump seems to be making moves in that direction. But my topic today is high school science club management methods or HSSCMM.
The first example is news about a group of Facebook staff who are concerned about the intolerant liberal culture within Facebook. Okay, Facebook is about friends and people who share interests or likes. The notion of a political faction within an online company is one more example of a potential weakness in HSSCM. The idea that an employee worked for a company, had a job description, and received money strikes me as inoperative. The problem is that the needs of the Science Club are not the needs of the people on the football team or the field hockey team. Will the lunchroom have tables for the Science Club folks and other tables for the sports? In my high school, the Science Club was different from the band and the student council. Snort, snort, we said, when asked to coordinate with the booster club to celebrate a big win. Snort, snort.
The second example the story “14 Powerful Human-Rights Groups Write to Google Demanding It Kill Plans to Launch a China Search Engine.” The issue for Google and China is revenue. How will the HSSCM address a group of human rights organizations. I assume that these entities can issue news releases, pump out Twitter messages, and update their Facebook pages. If that sounds like the recipe for information warfare, I am not suggesting such an aggressive approach. What’s important to me is that Google will have to dip into its management methods to deal with this mini protest.
The question is, “Are high school science club management methods up to these two challenges?
My view is, “Sure, really smart people can find clever solutions.”
On the other hand, the very management methods which made Facebook and Google the business home runs each is will have to innovate. Business school curricula may not cover how to manage revolts from unexpected sources.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Facebook, Google, Management, News | Comments Off on High School Science Club Management Methods: August 30, 2018
Robert David Steele, publisher of the Phi Beta Iota blog, interviewed Stephen E Arnold about allegations related to Google search results. The interview reveals that some Web search systems make it possible to modify search results to return specific information. The example Stephen gives comes from the FirstGov.gov US government search system powered in the early 2000s by Fast Search & Transfer.
Steele highlighted this statement from the interview:
“There is not enough money available to start over at Google. After two decades of fixing, tweaking, and enhancing, Google search is sort of chugging along. I think it is complex and swathed like a digital mummy in layers of code.”
You can read the full text of the interview titled “Robert Steele: An Interview with Stephen E. Arnold on Google and Google Search — How the Digital Mummy Might Manipulate Search.”
The three monographs Stephen wrote about Google are no longer in print. However, he does have fair copies (pre publication drafts) of the manuscripts. If you are interested in these reports, write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com.
Kenny Toth, August 29, 2018
Believe ‘em or not.
- 44% of the American executives tend to perceive blockchain as overhyped. Source: AMB Crypto
- 90 gigabytes of proprietary information stolen from Apple by a kid in high school. Source: Naked Security
- 20 million: The number of ebooks borrowed from the Toronto Public Library. Source: Digital Reader
- 54 percent of teens worry they spend too much time on their mobile phones. Source: Ubergizmo
- $1.1 million lost to cybercrime every minute. Source: PC Magazine
- 27.39 percent of Amazon products get price changes between 2014 – 2017 compared to 15.43 percent in 2008 – 2010. Source: Federal Reserve Kansas City
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2018
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News | Comments Off on Factualities for August 29, 2018
Next week, the publisher of Beyond Search and producer of DarkCyber (Stephen E Arnold) will be delivering a lecture in Washington, DC. The subject? The “new” Dark Web. Encrypted chat is becoming the go to system for certain types of information and product / service transactions.
What’s the angle?
The meteoric rise of group text and chatting tool, WhatsApp, has been well documented. In a world of tangled social media webs, this seemed like a smaller, more concentrated way to get updates from friends and family. However, the app has made some recent additions that may take it more toward the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. We learned more in a recent Make Use Of story, “The Best New WhatsApp Features You Might Have Missed.”
Among the new tools:
“Catch-up: A new @ button appears at the bottom right corner of the chat when you’ve been mentioned by someone, or if someone has quoted you, while you were away. It’s easier to catch up on something you might have missed.
“Protection From Re-Adding: WhatsApp groups don’t need your consent to add you to a group. Now, if you leave that group, an admin can’t just add you back immediately.”
In addition, there are search features and tools for deleting messages. It should come as no surprise that the program’s co-founder is a former (technically current) Facebook employee. Is this a step toward becoming a more direct competitor of the social giant? But encrypted chat has larger implications. If you are in DC, write Stephen at darkcyber333 at yandex dot com. You might be able to set up a short meet up at a physical coffee shop. No chat required.
Patrick Roland, August 29, 2018
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under cybercrime, Dark Web, News | Comments Off on WhatsApp Veering Closer to Traditional Social Media
For a long time, search has been dominated by the big names in the business and when anyone claims they might be a threat to Google or Bing it’s usually laughable. However, niche engines are beginning to really fill a void that the big dogs can’t. We discovered more from a recent Make Use Of story, “The 11 Best Sites for Finding What Books to Read Next.”
The most interesting was about Gnooks, which said:
“Gnooks is probably the simplest of these sites to use. You can enter up to three author’s names, and Gnooks will recommend another author you might like.
We noted:
“The interface is clean and distraction-free, but if you want to find out more about the recommended authors, you’ll have to take your search elsewhere.”
It’s a weird reversal to how the Internet originally felt. Everything was pigeonholed just like this back then and maybe we had something right. Aside from books, there are also niche engines for travel and, our personal favorite, to see what movies are streaming on what sites. This is a welcome service. Niche finding sites remain useful and underscore the limitations of the search superstore approach.
Patrick Roland, August 29, 2018
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