Pigeons versus Kentucky Broadband
September 13, 2009
A happy quack to the caller today who alerted me to this news flash from Tom’s Hardware. Of course, living near a mine run off pond discourages the phone and cable companies from putting high speed anything in my dank hollow. The story’s headline is enticing: “Pigeon Found to be Faster Than Broadband”. I enjoyed this comment:
ISP Telom said that it couldn’t be held responsible for the slow transfer speeds to the IT company, as it has helped to advise the company in possible improvements, but thus far none have been accepted.
I heard from my local ISP that its system was really fast. Never mind that my Verizon WAN card times out when I try to access my mail via the ISP’s Web interface. “Works for us,” the company wrote. Yep, carrier pigeons. Also in Kentucky.
Stephen Arnold, September 13, 2009
Gmail Outage as Instructional Opportunity
September 8, 2009
I try to focus my attention on companies and pundits in the search and content processing sectors. I need to make a slight modification. The GigaOM write up “5 Things We Learned From the Gmail Outage” snagged my attention. I think I see the purpose of the article; that is, provide a semi-oracular spin on a high profile company’s technical problem. If I were younger, I suppose I would adopt a similar tone in an effort to curry favor with the Google and approach a subject that has caught the attention of some Gmail users. The core of the article for me was this comment:
But in the end, the fact of the outage wasn’t nearly as interesting as what it said about Google, about email and about us.
In the best spirit of English 101, Kevin Kelleher uses the fact of Gmail going offline as a way to extract some lessons about life in 2009. The five lessons disturbed me. Let me comment on each, and I don’t want to imply that you should not read the original article. Far from it, you need to go to the water bucket yourself to drink.
First, I don’t like the implication that I have to get used to “outages”. When my family lived in Brazil in the 1950s, we had outages every day. The electricity worked a few hours a day. The water, maybe it was on two or three days a week. One does not get used to outages because outages require fundamental changes in the way one goes about certain tasks. I think it is defeatist to learn that Google cannot deliver a service that does not throw a user’s / customer’s life into a tail spin. Outages are not “good enough”; they are unacceptable. This glib statement irritated me. What if a Gmail contained information for a doctor treating the author’s loved one. Without the information, the doctor muffs the bunny and the author’s loved one dies. Is that something the author will get used to? Probably not too quickly I surmise.
Second, big is bad. Excuse me. The consolidation of computing and information services is moving forward, particularly in the US. “Big is bad” but for whom? Big seems to be the trajectory in the US, and if it were bad, why is bigness accelerating? The notion that “big” – the normal situation in telecommunications, automobiles, insurance, and (my favorite) financial services – is a philosophical message. Reality is different, and I find that taking a company’s technical weakness and making a political statement a weird way to communicate with me. Do something to change the reality; don’t tell me that I learned a lesson.
Finally, chain reactions are part of networks. Nope, chain reactions are a characteristics of nuclear phenomena. A chain reaction triggers a sequence of events that continues until the state of matter changes. A network is a system and failures can cascade. Furthermore failures in network systems can be compartmentalized, remediated, and in smart networks worked around. The chain reaction is a fact of nature. The failure of a network centric system is consequence of careless engineers.
Google has to do better, and I think the lesson the Gmail failure taught me is easy to state: Google has to do better. Google should not be excused, given a free pass because “good enough” or “get used to it” is acceptable. Wrong. Google made itself a dominant outfit. Now it has to live up to its obligation. No one should excuse or make excuses for Google’s lousy engineering.
Stephen Arnold, September 8, 2009
Google Behind in Cloud Plays
August 27, 2009
I am sitting in my government influenced hotel room in Washington, DC. I don’t have access to my research material. I do remember analyzing an invention disclosed by Google sometime in 2004 or 2005 that offered some interesting functions. A client could use a computer running some Google software could hook into the Google infrastructure to perform some work. I am going to refresh my memory when I return to the saner world of the goose pond in rural Kentucky.
In the meantime, two news items caused me to wonder, “Has Google fallen further behind in the race to cloud computing?” Let me highlight the two news items and then capture the tickle at the back of my addled goose brain.
First, the world’s smartest man has engineered another cloud move that seems to leave Google flat pawed. Amazon has announced a veepeesee in its Web log. You can dig into some of the details in “Introducing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)”. As I understand the announcement, Amazon wants to make its multiple cloud services enterprise satisfying. That translates to control. This development reminds me of some Google technology.
Source: Amazon.com
What I find interesting is that Amazon seems to be in the mind space of Google. And more importantly, Amazon seems able to move more quickly than the Google. Speed and agility are often important in the high stakes world which Amazon inhabits. Has Google become to large and burdened to move like a lithe Amazonian?
Second, Salesforce.com has announced a reseller program. You will want to read “Deals & More” by Anthony Ha in Venture Beat. The announcement reminded me that Salesforce.com, a company that Google has supported with some cheerleading, now seems to be moving on its own trajectory. I thought that a tie up between Google and Salesforce.com might have had some charm a couple of years ago. Now I have a working hypothesis that Google perceives a different view of the future. Salesforce.com was among the first companies to get traction with cloud services for the enterprise. I ask myself, “What does Google see as its future in cloud centric enterprise services?” The reseller deal seems to put Salesforce.com at an acute angle with regard to Google. Does Google “get” the Salesforce.com model? How many cloud resellers will want to jump on the Salesforce.com bandwagon? Will some Google partners jump ship? No answers from the addled goose at this time.
Is Salesforce.com becoming the shadow warrior in sales as Amazon has become a ninja in cloud computing technology?
One can interpret these two events in several ways:
- Amazon and Salesforce.com are uninterested in Google. Each company moves independently of Google. Each is doing quite well as Google disrupts other business sectors. In short, Google has no material impact on either of these firms.
- Amazon and Salesforce.com have figured out that each can move more quickly than the sluggish Google. The telcos might see Google as a race car but Amazon and Salesforce.com have found ways to move more quickly than Google, thus neutralizing Google’s potential in certain “spaces”.
- Amazon and Salesforce.com are working in the “here and now”. Google either operates in another space time dimension or perceives the “here and now” markets as uninteresting. If this is accurate, the question becomes, “What is Google’s broader play in the cloud market?”
The addled goose has no answers. Just questions.
Stephen Arnold, August 27, 2009
Software as a Service: More Complexity
August 26, 2009
Short honk: A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Software as a Service Not Yet Ready”. We goslings like SaaS. Sure, there some Amazon type bugs in the woodwork, but that’s to be expected. A much stronger anti SaaS stance is expressed by Haseet Sanghrajka, a senior manager at ST Consulting. He asserted:
There are moves to develop standards in data hosting, which is good, but until the SaaS model has gone through a few iterations the market will not clearly understand the pitfalls, or work out just how to address them. From bandwidth redundancy to the strengths of service providers, organisations cannot afford to underestimate the complexity of this model.
I am popping this into the Beyond Search quotation file drawer.
Stephen Arnold, August 26, 2009
Cloud Price War
August 23, 2009
Short honk: If you have been keeping an eye on the fees assessed for cloud computing, you will want to take a look at “Amazon Lowers Fees on Reserved EC2 Instances”. The article contains a useful table of prices. What was missing were the pre discount prices, but the information is useful. When I read the write up, I thought, “Amazon is buying market share.” I wonder if Amazon will report revenues for its cloud product line. Probably not. Clarity in financial reporting is not part of the Amazon game plan in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, August 22, 2009
The Real World and the Clouds: Just Like the Weather. Unpredictable.
August 21, 2009
ITNews has been a consistently interesting source of information technology information. I have concluded that the flies in Canberra motivate Australians to stay inside and work hard to understand software and systems. “Stress Tests Rain on Amazon’s Cloud” is a thought provoking article. The main idea appears in the subhead for the story: “Availability an Issue for Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, and Microsoft Azure.” [Editor’s note: We edited App Logic to App Engine since the story refers to that Google service.] That is correct: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft face some challenges if the information in the ITNews story is spot on. The most telling comment in the write up was:
Liu said all three services lack the monitoring tools large organizations require to check on whether the platform is meeting service level agreements. “None of the platforms have the kind of monitoring required to have a reasonable conversation about performance,” she said. “They provide some level of monitoring, but what little there is caters for developers, not business users. And while Amazon provides a dashboard of how much it is costing you so far, for example, there is nothing in terms of forecasts about what it will cost you in the future.”
Hmm. No SLA monitoring tools. Hmmm. Costs are fuzzy. Hmmmm. Not exactly what the marketers wanted me to believe. Promising just no promises.
Stephen Arnold, August 21, 2009
Google Knol Gets an F
August 12, 2009
TechCrunch published “Poor Google Knol Has Gone from a Wikipedia Killer to a Craigslist Wannabe” by Erick Schonfeld and elicited a happy quack from the addled goose. Mr. Schonfeld points out that Google’s Knol (a unit of knowledge in Google speak) is a traffic magnet without much oomph. For me the killer statement in the write up was:
Sadly, Knol just never panned out. Google should just end its misery, just like it did when it killed other under-performing projects such as Lively and Google Notebooks. Knol will never come close to Wikipedia. It can’t even cut it as a classifieds listing site.
I agree with Mr. Schonfeld’s argument, but there were several thoughts that the write up triggered here in the pond choked with rain water and mine run off.
- Perhaps Google allowed resources to flow away from Knol because it was a publishing play on the surface but a test of a method for obtaining content from experts. Authoritative information from an expert is just the Googzilla food that smart algorithms feed upon. Publishing is a hot potato for the Google. Knol is better left as a sideline lest it draw enemy assaults.
- Google has a number of similar tests / betas underway. Are these products, or are they trials of key components of a less visible, more potent system? The terms of service and the various developer tools make it possible to shape Knol in interesting ways. Which of these “ways” is the one that Google wishes to encourage?
- What happens if Google, not eager users, hook together multiple Google beta services into one cohesive product that delivers and monetizes information? That is a question to which I don’t have an answer.
Google may have another Web Accelerator on its hands. On the other hand, Knol may be a cog in a larger machine. TechCrunch seems to be leaning toward giving the Knol service an F and may toss in a week in the Web detention hall based on performance to date.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
The Turtle Moves Forward a Little
August 12, 2009
The blogosphere lit up when Google announced its Caffeine project was available for the hoi polloi. I looked at the prattlings and decided to point you to PCWorld’s FAQ for this giant turtle step for the Google. Read “Google Caffeine FAQ: Your Questions Answered” and give the turtle step a spin at http://www2.sandbox.google.com. The Google has more tricks up its sleeve. No point in getting ahead of the azure chip consultants, however. The applications of sparse tables to the programmable search engine are not as easy to grasp as a sandbox open to anyone with a browser. To see content, not a results list, navigate to the Sand box and run a query for Beyond Search. Click on Microsoft. Answers without a results list. Nifty. The function has been available from big Google for a while, but it is one example of Google’s cleverness.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Google Wave: Perturbing the Data Pond
August 11, 2009
I read Anil Dash’s “What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way” and scanned some of the comments about his write up. I agree with most of the information in the write up. The one point I would add is that Wave is not one thing. Wave is a plastic bag made of Google technology that contains quite a number of features and functions. Some of these can operate as a stand alone service; for example, Gmail, the JavaScript beastie of remarkable capability. Other functions need the Google datasphere to work; for example, the time slicing across different Google functions. In my opinion, until the plastic bag metaphor is considered, analyses of Wave will be in terms of software such as SharePoint, which is too limiting for the Googlers’ innovation.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Google and Real Time Maps
August 11, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to GoogleMapMania’s “Real Time Google Maps”. The article contains a number of links to real time Google Maps created by developers. The one that I found most useful was the Chicago Transit Authority map. Google has a burgeoning transportation services business. Those operating bus, rail, and shuttle services may want to take note of this CTA-centric gizmo.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
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