YAGG: Google Talk
February 24, 2009
Tweets and posts are flying by about an alleged pfishing exploit for Google email. Mashable reports here that another issue may be poking its snout into hapless users’ lives. Adam Ostrow wrote:
Gmail is now being attacked by a phishing scam that is spreading like wildfire.
If true, YAGG strikes again. You get message “check me out” with a link to a tinyurl. Click the puppy and you go to “a site called ViddyHo.” Lucky you. Your contacts get an email. Nifty. Love those tiny urls which mask the destination url.
Stephen Arnold, February 24, 2009
Google: Suddenly Too Big
February 22, 2009
Today Google is too big. Yesterday and the day before Google was not too big. Sudden change at Google or a growing sense that Google is not the quirky Web search and advertising company everyone assumed Googzilla was?
The New York Times’s article by professor Randall Stross available temporarily here points out that some perceive Google as “too big.” Mr. Stross quotes various pundits and wizards and adds a tasty factoid that Google allowed him to talk to a legal eagle. Read the story now so you can keep your pulse on the past. Note the words the past. (You can get Business Week’s take on this same “Google too powerful” here.)
The fact is that Google has been big for years. In fact, Google was big before its initial public offering. Mr. Stross’s essay makes it clear that some people are starting to piece together what dear Googzilla has been doing for the past decade. Keep in mind the time span–decade, 10 years, 120 months. Also note that in that time interval Google has faced zero significant competition in Web search, automated ad mechanisms, and smart software. Google is essentially unregulated.
Let me give you an example from 2006 so you can get a sense of the disconnect between what people perceive about Google and what Google has achieved amidst the cloud of unknowing that pervades analysis of the firm.
Location: Copenhagen. Situation: Log files of referred traffic. Organization: Financial services firm. I asked the two Web pros responsible for the financial services firm’s Web site one question, “How much traffic comes to you from Google?” The answer was, “About 30 percent?” I said, “May we look at the logs for the past month?” One Webmaster called up the logs and in 2006 in Denmark, Google delivered 80 percent of the traffic to the Web site.
The perception was that Google was a 30 percent factor. The reality in 2006 was that Google delivered 80 percent of the traffic. That’s big. The baloney delivered from samples of referred traffic, if the Danish data were plus or minus five percent, Google has a larger global footprint than most Web masters and trophy generation pundits grasp. Why? Sampling services get the market share data in ways that understate Google’s paw prints. Methodology, sampling, and reverse engineering of traffic lead to the weird data that research firms generate. The truth is in log files and most outfits cannot process large log files so “estimates” not hard counts become the “way” to truth. (Google has the computational and system moxie to count and perform longitudinal analyses of its log file data. Whizzy research firms don’t. Hence the market share data that show Google in the 65 to 75 percent share range with Yahoo 40 to 50 points behind. Microsoft is even further behind and Microsoft has been trying to close the gap with Google for years.)
So now it’s official because the New York Times runs an essay that say, “Google is big.”
To me, old news.
In my addled goose monographs, I touched on data my research unearthed about some of Google’s “bigness”. Three items will suffice:
- Google’s programming tools allow a Google programmer to be up to twice as productive as a programmer using commercial programming tools. How’s this possible? The answer is the engineering of tools and methods that relieve programmers of some of the drudgery associated with developing code for parallelized systems. Since my last study — Google Version 2.0 — Google has made advances in automatically generating user facing code. If the Google has 10,000 code writers and you double their productivity, that’s the equivalent of 20,000 programmers’ output. That’s big to me. Who knows? Not too many pundits in my experience.
- Google’s index contains pointers to structured and unstructured data. The company has been beavering away to that it no longer counts Web pages in billions. The GOOG is in trillions territory. That’s big. Who knows? In my experience, not too many of Google’s Web indexing competitors have these metrics in mind. Why? Google’s plumbing operates at petascale. Competitors struggle to deal with the Google as it was in the 2004 period.
- The computations processed by Google’s fancy maths are orders of magnitude greater than the number of queries Google processes per second. For each query there are computations for ads, personalization, log updates, and other bits of data effluvia. How big is this? Google does not appear on the list of supercomputers, but it should. And Google’s construct may well crack the top five on that list. Here’s a link to the Google Map of the top 100 systems. (I like the fact that the list folks use the Google for its map of supercomputers.)
The real question is, “What makes it difficult for people to perceive the size, mass, and momentum of Googzilla?” I recall from a philosophy class in 1963 some thing about Plato and looking at life as a reflection in a mirror or dream (???????). Most of the analysis of Google with which I am familiar treats fragments, not Die Gestalt.
Google is a hyper construct and, as such, it is a different type of organization from those much loved by MBAs who work in competitive and strategic analysis.
The company feeds on raw talent and evolves its systems with Darwinian inefficiency (yes, inefficiency). Some things work; some things fail. But in chunks of time, Google evolves in a weird non directive manner. Also, Google’s dominance in Web search and advertising presages what may take place in other markets sectors as well. What’s interesting to me is that Google lets users pull the company forward.
The process is a weird cyber – organic blend quite different from the strategies in use at Microsoft and Yahoo. Of its competitors, Amazon seems somewhat similar, but Amazon is deeply imitative. Google is deeply unpredictable because the GOOG reacts and follows users’ clicks, data about information objects, and inputs about the infrastructure’s machine processes. Three data feeds “inform” the Google.
Many of the quants, pundits, consultants, and MBAs tracking the GOOG are essentially data archeologists. The analyses report what Google was or what Google wanted people to perceive at a point in time.
I assert that it is more interesting to look at the GOOG as it is now.
Because I am semi retired and an addled goose to boot, I spend my time looking at what Google’s open source technology announcements that seem to suggest the company will be doing tomorrow or next week. I collect factoids such as the “I’m feeling doubly lucky” invention, the “programmable search engines” invention, the “dataspaces” research effort, and new patent documents for a Google “content delivery demonstration”, among others — many others I wish to add.
My forthcoming Google: The Digital Gutenberg explains what Google has created. I hypothesize about what the “digital Gutenberg” could enable. Knowing where Google came from and what it did is indeed helpful. But that information will not be enough to assist the businesses increasingly disrupted by Google. By the time business sectors figure out what’s going on, I fear it may be too late for these folks. Their Baedekers don’t provide much actionable information about Googleland. A failure to understand Googleland will accelerate the competitive dislocation. Analysts who fall into the trap brilliantly articulated in John Ralston Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards will continue confuse the real Google with the imaginary Google. The right information is nine tenths of any battle. Apply this maxim to the GOOG is my thought.
Stephen Arnold, February 22, 2009
TurboWire: Search for the Children of Some Publishing Executives
February 22, 2009
A bit of irony: at a recent dinner party, a publishing executive explained that his kids had wireless, Macbooks, and mobile phones. He opined that his kids knew the rules for downloading. I was standing behind the chair in which his son was texting and downloading a torrent. The publishing executive stood facing his son and talking to me about his ability to manage digital information. I asked the son what he was downloading. He said, “Mall Cop”. From Netflix I asked? He said, “Nope, a torrent like always.”
If you want to take a look at some of the functionality for search and retrieval of copyrighted materials, check out TurboWire. You can download a copy here. Click here for the publisher’s Web site. The features include search (obviously) and:
- Auto-connect, browse host, multiple search.
- Connection quality control.
- Library management and efficient filtering.
- Upload throttling.
- Direct connection to known IP addresses.
- Full-page connection monitor.
- Built-in media player.
Oh, talking about piracy is different from preventing one’s progeny from ripping and shipping in my opinion. And, no, I did not tell my host that he was clueless. I just smiled and emitted a gentle honk.
Stephen Arnold, February 22, 2009
What Is Vint Cerf Saying
February 16, 2009
Lidija Davis’s “Vint Cerf: Despite Its Age, the Internet Is Still Filled with Problems” does a good job of providing an overview of Vint Cerf’s view of the Internet. You can read the article here. Mr. Davis provides a snapshot of the issues that must be addressed if she captured the Google evangelist’s thoughts accurately:
According to Cerf, and many others, inter-cloud communication issues such as formats and protocols, as well as inter or intra-cloud security need to be addressed urgently.
I found the comments about bit rot interesting and highly suggestive. She quite rightly points out that her summary presents only a small segment of the talk.
When I read her pretty good write up, I had one thought: “Google wants to become the Internet.” If the company pulls off this grand slam play, then the issues identified by Evangelist Cerf can be addressed in a more forthright manner. My reading of the Guha patent documents, filed in February 2007, reveals some of the steps Google’s programmable search engine includes to tackle the problems. Mr. Cerf identified and Ms. Davis reported. I find the GoogleNet an interesting idea to ponder. With some content pulled from Google caches and the Google CDN (content delivery network), Google may be the appropriate intermediary and enforcer in this increasingly unstable “space”.
Stephen Arnold, February 16, 2009
Enterprise Software Pre-Buy Checklist
February 15, 2009
Enterprise software is a sector showing signs of stress. Some enterprise systems don’t work very well regardless of which vendor’s system is in a data center. Other vendors are gobbling up companies, disregarding the energy depletion that occurs when acquisitions occur. The talk is about synergy, not performance enhancing supplements required to make the deal work. Some buyers are following the “Fire, Ready, Aim” approach to decision making. Other idiosyncrasies exist. I found the Inside ERP “Midmarket ERP Solutions Checklist”, a two page write up interesting. You can download the paper here, but you will have to register to get the document. I don’t want to reproduce the full checklist. I do want to highlight three items and offer a comment about each. Most of the items in the checklist apply to enterprise search and content processing.
- Who is the owner of the project? Good question. In my experience, most organizations rotate “owners”, creating an ownerless situation that helps increase the likelihood of cost overruns.
- What is the specific business problem the system must solve? This basic question is usually answered in clumps of problems. The problem with clumps is that like a shotgun blast no single pellet will kill Bambie. A blast can wound Bambie, not get the job done in a clean, efficient, humane manner. Most enterprise search systems would the information problem and then create havoc as the procurement team tries to chase the wounded problem to ground.
- Will the enterprise system adapt to change? In my experience, enterprise software expects the licensee to change. The result is an SAP type experience which grinds down the customer. Once the system is installed, who has the energy to repeat the process?
As I read this checklist, I said to myself, “That cloud computing approach looks mighty appealing.” Snag the white paper and look at the other items. Soul searching time arrived as I worked through the list.
Stephen Arnold, February 15, 2009
Cloud Computing’s Challenges
February 14, 2009
If you have 15 minutes this weekend, you will want to download and read “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing”. You can get a copy here. Some of the challenges are blasts from the past which continue to kick the tail of 20 somethings with more confidence than knowledge of system architecture. One example is the difficulty of scaling quickly. The discussion of the challenges is interesting. For me the most interesting section was “Elasticity: Shifting the Risk”, which begins on page 12. The list of 10 challenges struck me as a useful checklist for evaluating the current Microsoft data center initiative. I then looked at the 10 challenges as a yardstick for Google. I found the comparison a helpful tool in figuring out what each company must do to remain contenders in the cloud scape that is forming.
Stephen Arnold, February 14, 2009
Google Blood Hound: The Movie
February 13, 2009
Privacy mavens will want to read Gizmodo’s “My Tracks for Android Logs Your Day via GPS, Uploads to Google Maps” here. I don’t want to spoil your fun or your paranoia. For me the most interesting comment in the write up by John Mahoney was:
Along with the mapping, the app displays statistics in real time like elevation, distance traveled, speed, etc. My Tracks can also use Google Docs’ little-known but very cool ability to receive the output of web forms in a spreadsheet, so you can track your routes and see your average speed over time.
And, yes, Mr. Mahoney includes a link to a video to make the potential of the My Tracks application quite clear to good guys, to bad guys, and all the guys in between. To crank your fear knob, read this article.
Stephen Arnold, February 13, 2009
IBM: Covering Its Bases
February 12, 2009
The love affair between IBM and Microsoft cooled years ago. After the divorce, Microsoft took the bank account and the personal computer industry. IBM entered counseling and emerged a consulting firm with some fascination for its former vocation as world’s leading computer and software company.
Jump to the present day. IBM has batted its eyes at Googzilla. IBM and Google have teamed to stimulate the flow of programmers from universities. You can refresh your memory here. In 2008, I received a copy of a letter to an intermediary that said, in part, we understand Googzilla quite well. The outfit interested in this answer was not the addled goose. The interested party was a certain government agency. That outfit was not confident IBM understood Googzilla fully. I wrote about this in a Web log story last year. You can find the article here.
IBM issued a news release here that has been picked up by various information services. The headline makes clear that IBM is not going steady with the GOOG: “IBM to Deliver Software via Cloud Computing With Amazon Web Services”. You can read the full article here. In a nutshell, IBM wants to
make available new Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) at no charge for development and test purposes, enabling software developers to quickly build pre-production applications based on IBM software within Amazon EC2. The new portfolio will over time extend to include Service Management capabilities from IBM Tivoli software for Amazon EC2 to help clients better control and automate their dynamic infrastructures in the cloud.
The idea is a good one. But the significance of this deal is that IBM is making clear to the GOOG that a certain someone is no longer numero uno. IBM is playing the field. Amazon has outpaced Google in some cloud services and by spending a fraction of the billions Google has invested. What’s IBM know that I don’t?
Stephen Arnold, February 12, 2009
Google Threatened by Twitter
February 9, 2009
I read Lew Moorman’s “Google’s First Real Threat? Twitter” after walking by the field reworked by the Great Ice Storm. Branches and trees left the line of woods gat toothed. Forces of nature reword a familiar landscape with little effort. You will want to read Mr. Moorman’s comment here. He wrote:
So Twitter has value as a niche search engine today. Who cares? No one really. But, there is more. Twitter is building a human powered search indexing engine. It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don’t know it).
If he is correct, Twitter could affect Googzilla’s paws like a gym-transferred fungus. Under certain conditions, an annoyance can become life threatening. Mr. Moorman asserts the Twitter may be a digital fungus that could under certain circumstances overwhelm the GOOG.
A metaphor of Twitter users: “Sort of organized” like a flock of my best friends. Source: http://i.pbase.com/u41/muskrat/upload/26712589.QET1245MoonandGeese.jpg
As I proofed read this post, the chimes on my newsreader delivered a clump of responses to Mr. Moorman’s article. You will want to read John Borthwick’s “Google Next Victim of Creative Destruction?” here. He adds a useful comment about Twitter’s representing a move to “real time search”. Mr. Borthwick includes a useful link to a post by Gerry Campbell here. I liked the echo of that prose master Joseph A. Schumpter, although I think Clayton Christensen may be more familiar to the Twitter crowd.
In my opinion, Twitter is in a race of sorts. The system has demonstrated some fragility as users have become interested in microblogging, breaking information down into crunchy chunks. Listening to certain podcasts originating in California, it is clear that the Twitter users have found the system useful and a convenient way to exchange information in bite-sized nibbles. Stars or Hollywood luminaries’ publicists have discovered Twitter as well.
I picked up Mr. Moorman’s idea and did some preliminary thinking, which is subject to goosely revision:
| Microblogging base with millions of users | Stub services available within Android; low profile |
| Applications are possible, driven by informed users | Google’s social publishing Knol not successful; maybe a core problem |
| High visibility among the social media adopters | Google may have greater brand impact; social functions growing visibility |
| Subject to technical glitches | Google infrastructure seems more stable |
| Content is user generated with minimal machine generation of outputs or results | Machine-centric; social operations lag |
| Monetization model somewhat uncertain; subscription like SMS may be one avenue | Google has options for its business models, billing systems in place |
| Infrastructure costs to scale unknown | Google infrastructure in place |
| Cash position dependent on investors | Strong cash position; options to get more capital if needed are available |
Mr. Moorman is correct when he identifies “tweets” as a useful content form. He is correct when he asserts that a question posed to a community of followers can produce useful information, maybe not exactly like a search system that indexes about one trillion documents, but good and different.
My thoughts are:
- Maybe Google will take a long-term view to this type of information system just as it has done in the enterprise? Google’s hanging back creates an IBM-like FUD factor. When Google moves, the action is disruptive even if it does not generate significant revenue in the short term
- Could Google embed a Twitter function in its “stubs” that connect users to the Google infrastructure? Chrome extensions, Android applications, and telco partners might offer some purchase in this space?
- Why not buy Twitter? Google has the cash and investors respond to the sight, smell, and touch of cash? The economy is not too healthy, and if a Googler makes a compelling pitch, Twitter could follow in the footsteps of Keyhole or Blogger.com; that is, become an enabler in a much larger ecosystem.
The social search and social software space is evolving rapidly. From my vantage point in the hills of Kentucky, I remain on the fence. Security, message integrity, spoofing, “ownership” of customers and content, and provenance give me some stale crusts on which to chew with my beak. These issues do not worry the young users nor the tech savvy early adopters who know the ropes of online. For more seasoned geese, Twitter is interesting. Twitter may kill Google, but I think it will like the foot fungus take some time to overwhelm Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, February 9, 2009
Ballmer on Google’s Enterprise Pricing
February 9, 2009
Not long ago, I did some poking around to get a sense for Google’s pricing of the Google Search Appliance. What I discovered was that it was among the most expensive search solutions. I also learned that organizations that wanted the GSA did not seem particularly price sensitive. Google is to some synonymous with search, and the organizations that want a Google solution simply don’t think too much about the two year licensing deal, the cost of hot spares, and the fees slapped on to switch a machine from back up mode to production mode. Makes zero difference to me. Most organizations are clueless about search, and after a few months with the new search system, users are grousing again.
I was surprised with a short news story in Truemores here, however. Steve Ballmer is reported to have expressed the opinion that Google’s enterprise products and services are over priced. I wonder if he had poked into pricing for the Google Search Appliance or he was confining his remarks to the $50 per user for Google Apps. The story contained a couple of memorable comments in my opinion.
First, Mr. Ballmer is alleged to have said: “We’re not talking about some screwball consumer thing now. We’re talking about the enterprise.” I wonder if the screwball thing is the Zune or Vista?
Second, Mr. Ballmer is alleged to have suggested: “The $50 per user per year price tag on Google’s product [is] overpriced.” Maybe but I saw some hefty price tags at Office Depot on Microsoft Office today. To be fair, Microsoft deals with CALs, an acronym for wheeling and dealing for software.
If the price insensitivity I discovered transfers to Google Apps, Mr. Ballmer may have the satisfaction of knowing that he was right. Being “right”, however, does not mean that the GOOG won’t trample through Microsoft’s most best revenue vineyard.
Stephen Arnold, February 8, 2009
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