Amazon, Google, and Android: The Stakes Rise
December 11, 2011
Amazon has added incentive to compete more aggressively with Google. The kids in Mountain View have decided to emulate Amazon’s Prime free shipping model. Google is also collecting different features to build what looks to me like a similar, Amazon type service. Hey, that’s innovation today. Live with it.
Is Google being exploited? It’s hard to imagine, but Datamation makes the case in “How Amazon Is Making a Sucker Out of Google.” Writer Mike Elgan insists that Google’s anything-goes Android policy, in which any company can use Android for any purpose, gives Amazon the leverage it needs to seriously wound the search giant.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which runs a version of Android, is positioned to undercut its competitors. Amazon is literally selling the Fire at a loss, intending to make up the money in easy tablet-based ordering form Amazon.com. This clever bit of manipulation will deal a blow to Android tablet makers and, by extension, to Google. It will also place Kindle Fires in many, many hands, which is where the real trouble starts, according to Elgan. The article asserts:
Amazon sells Kindles in order to sell products and services on the Amazon.com web site. And nearly all these products and services directly compete with Google’s. . . . “The Kindle Fire is the cloudiest of cloud tablets. To use the device is to become a user of Amazon’s cloud services. Cloud storage is free and unlimited for Kindle Fire users, which means there’s no reason to bother with Google’s cloud services.”
Perhaps Elgan is right: Google should play some defense and change its licensing rules before it’s too late? Our view is that Chinese four SIM phone manufacturers will be doing their own thing with Android too. Cat is out of the bag and eating tuna in Seattle.
Cynthia Murrell, December 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
China: Quite a Market Despite a Softening Economy
November 29, 2011
My recollection is that Facebook and Microsoft are working to find a way to tap into the China market. Other outfits—for example, Google—tried to change China’s policies. I wonder how well that is working out. Why the interest in China. The Economist reported that the country’s ecommerce sector seems to be chugging along. I read the dead tree version of the story “The Great Leap Online”, The Economist, November 26, 2011, page 78. The authoritative sounding super capitalistic machine shop asserted:
In a new report, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) calculates that every year for the foreseeable future another 30 million Chinese will go online to shop for the first time. By 2015, they each will be spending $1,000 a year—about what Americans spend now. BCG calculates that ecommerce could rise from 3.3 percent of China’s retail sales today to 7.4 percent by 2015—a jump that took a decade in America.
You may be able to find a free digital version of the information at either www.bcg.com or www.economist.com. Finding a way to work with the political realities of China may be of more utility in the economics sense than trying to get the koala to knock off the nocturnal leaf munching. I can see a zoo keeper lecturing a koala, but the koala may be disinterested.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Offers Free Web Sites for New York Businesses
November 24, 2011
Search Engine Watch reported this week on website services in the article “Websites are Now Free For New York Businesses.”
According to the article, as a way to promote Google’s services to New York businesses, Google is now offering free websites as part of a deal they have made with the website building firm Intuit to get more local businesses online. In conjunction with the new product, Google is also holding events throughout the state to provide people with information about online marketing.
Google’s Website states:
“Small businesses are vital to America’s economic future; the nation’s 27.5M small businesses comprise half the US GDP and create two-thirds of all new jobs. While 97% of Americans look online for local products and services, 52% of New York small businesses do not have a website. That’s a lot of small businesses that are virtually invisible to potential customers looking online.”
Since web hosting and domain names are cheap as it is, Google can make more money from selling ad space on these free websites. Both Google and small businesses can increase their profits through this deal. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Jasmine Ashton, December 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
McKinsey Measure’s The Economic Impact of the Internet
November 14, 2011
The global system of interconnected computer networks that we know as the Internet serves billions of users worldwide. But few people realize the financial impact it has on the world. I came across a fascinating article this week that sites a recent McKinsey report explaining the different facets of the Internet as a global economy in three sections.
According to the Atlantic article, “The $8 Trillion Internet: McKinsey’s Bold Attempt to Measure the E-conomy,” with an $8 trillion global economy, the Internet accounted for 21 percent of GDP growth in the world’s largest economies over the last 5 years. That makes it larger than the economies of many countries.
The article states:
“As an industry, the Internet contributes more to the typical developed economy than mining, utilities, agriculture, or education. In Sweden, fully one-third of economic growth in the five years leading up to the recession came from Internet activities. For the entire G-8, the average was 21 percent. In an analysis of France since the mid-1990s, McKinsey found that the Internet created more than twice the number of jobs it destroyed.”
While it is difficult to measure the impact that the Internet has on our daily lives, I think McKinsey did an excellent job of visually and numerically presenting this data. Kudos to you!
Jasmine Ashton, November 14, 2011
A9 Flow Augments Shopping Reality
November 4, 2011
Amazon is putting a new spin on search, as reported in Cnet News’ “A9’s Flow app: Augmented consumerism.” This new app for the iPhone allows you to point your device at a product in a brick-and-mortar store and compare and log the price at Amazon. If you wish, you can order it from Amazon right then. The existing Amazon app allowed you to do this, but writer Rafe Needleman finds A9’s Flow, which operates closer to real-time, to be a lot more fun:
The recognizer seems faster and more tolerant of operator sloppiness than other scanner apps. You don’t have to hold very still or align the camera at a right angle to what you’re pointing it at. It’s not like it will pick up multiple items as you just walk by them, but it’s faster and more intuitive than other apps of the type.
As a side note, you can do the same thing at eBay with that company’s RedLaser (though the author finds Flow to be superior to that app, too.)
As the author points out, this sort of app could be but one more nail in the coffin of local businesses. No surprise there.
Cynthia Murrell, November 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Natural Language, a Solution Who’s Time Has Come
September 29, 2011
Editor’s Note: The Beyond Search team invited Craig Bassin, president of EasyAsk, a natural language processing specialist and search solution provider to provide his view of the market for next generation search systems. For more information about EasyAsk, navigate to www.easyask.com
This past February I watched, along with millions of others, IBM’s spectacular launch of Watson on Jeopardy! Watson was IBM’s crowning achievement in developing a Natural Language based solution finely tuned to compete, and win, on Jeopardy.
By IBM’s own estimates they invested between $1 and $2 billion to develop Watson. IBM ranks Watson as one of the 3 most difficult challenges in their long and successful history, along with spectacular accomplishments such as the Deep Blue chess program and the Blue Gene, Human Genome mapping program. Rarified air, indeed.
While many were watching to see if a computer could defeat human players my interests were different. Watson was about to introduce natural language solutions to the broader public and show the world that such solutions are truly the wave of the future.
The results were historic. Watson soundly defeated the human competitors. On the marketing side, IBM continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to tell the world that the time for natural language is now.
IBM is not the only firm to bring natural language processing (NLP) into the application mainstream:
- Microsoft acquired Powerset, a small company with strong NLP technology, to create Bing and compete head-on with Google,
- Yahoo, one of the original Internet search companies, found Bing compelling enough to strike an OEM agreement with Microsoft and make Bing Yahoo’s search solution,
- Apple acquired a linguistic natural language interface tool called Siri, which is now being incorporated into the Mac and iPhone operating systems,
- Oracle Corporation bought Inquira for its NLP-based customer support solution,
- RightNow Technologies similarly acquired Q-Go, a Dutch company also providing NLP-based customer support solutions.
Many companies are now positioning themselves as natural language tools and have expanded the once tight definition of NLP to include things such as analyzing text to understand intent or sentiment. This is the impact of Watson – it has put natural language into the mainstream and many organizations want to ride the marketing current driven by Watson regardless of closely aligned their technology is with Watson.
But let’s also look at Watson for what it really is – one of the most expensive custom solutions every built. Watson required an extremely large (and expensive) cluster of computers to run – 90 Power Server 750 systems, totaling 2,880 processor cores. It also required substantial R&D staff to build the analytics, content and natural language processing software stack. In fact, IBM didn’t come to Jeopardy, Jeopardy came to IBM. They replicated the Jeopardy set at IBM labs, placing a a great deal of horsepower underneath that stage.
The first foray of Watson into the real world will be in healthcare and the possibilities are exciting. Clearly IBM intends to focus Watson on some of the largest, most difficult challenges. But how does that help you run your business? You’re not going to see Watson running in your IT environment or on your preferred SaaS cloud anytime soon.
If Watson is focused on big problems, how can I use natural language solutions to better my business today? Perhaps you want to increase website customer conversion and user experience, better manage sales processes, deliver superior customer support, or in general, make it easier for your workers to find the right information to do their job. So where do you go?
That’s where EasyAsk comes in.
Exorbyte and xTxTx
September 20, 2011
Exorbyte introduces Rapid xTxTx Multi-Search Engine Technology. Well, the product name is certainly interesting and it should be findable in any of the public Web search engines.
The site says that conversion rates gains are guaranteed. The description states:
Exorbyte core search technology, MatchMaker, is a unique proprietary database search and data matching engine, made especially for structured data such as directories, ecommerce, ERPs, etc. 10 years of intense development have led Exorbyte to breakthroughs in semantic, phonetic and algorithmic search technology. Unique features Advanced error-tolerance search technology never leaves a search user without relevant results. Exorbyte’s algorithmic, phonetic and semantic software makes misspelled queries or synonyms product names problems from the past.
Incorporated in 2000, Exorbyte has advanced rapidly in the field of structured data-matching software and search systems; its customer base now spans the globe. The company prides itself on their MatchMaker platform’s ease of installation, speed, and error-tolerance, correcting spelling and other errors as you go. It also boasts of cutting edge algorithmic, phonetic, and scripting features.
Perhaps I should rename Max the Boxer to MaXaXaX. Nah, I can’t spell Max.
Cynthia Murrell, September 20, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
DollarDays Seeing Success With EasyAsk
September 6, 2011
An Expert System Flash Report
Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about EasyAsk’s innovative natural language analysis-commerce search software. In June, EasyAsk partnered with the social networking giant Facebook to allow users to search and purchase products without having to ever leave the confines of Facebook’s familiar interface. Now, EasyAsk customer DollarDays International, one of the premier online wholesaler and closeout companies, is talking about the success they are having with the EasyAsk eCommerce Edition solution.
DollarDays selected the EasyAsk eCommerce Edition, the industry’s leading e-commerce search and merchandising solution to help increase conversion rates, deliver a better customer experience and give its marketing team a more agile merchandising capability. The EasyAsk natural language technology (NLP) provided a more powerful, yet easier to use search and merchandising for their e-commerce site which distributes over 140,000 products with over 5,000 categories and sub-categories.
DollarDays President and CEO Marc Joseph stated in a September news release entitled, Dollar Days Rings Up E-Commerce Dollars Using EasyAsk Natural Language Search and Merchandising:
The most successful e-commerce sites get the customer to the right products the fastest, speeding the buying process. EasyAsk natural language search allows our customers to find the exact product in a single click, increasing our customer conversion rates. EasyAsk also makes our merchandising more agile, which is essential in our business where product offerings are continuously changing.
Online retailers like DollarDays are recognizing the fact that in order to stay ahead of their competition their products must be as accessible to their customer base as possible. EasyAsk software products go far beyond traditional keyword search, allowing users to express searches in a highly descriptive way; for example:
blue mens polo shirts under $50
The EasyAsk system then delivers on point results. Our research suggests that the more quickly the customer gets to the products he/she wants, the more likely the customer is to purchase. Improving customer conversion is one of the key benefits of the EasyAsk approach in my opinion.
My take is that EasyAsk appears to be gaining momentum as they continue to adapt its e-commerce search and merchandising software to meet the needs of the various companies they serve. EasyAsk offers versions of its patented system which both in a SaaS (software as a service or hosted) environment and as an on premises installation. The architecture of the EasyAsk NLP and e-commerce system allows an EasyAsk customer to to switch easily between the two implementations if the client’s needs change.
EasyAsk works with virtually all of the leading e-commerce platform software. EasyAsk’s system now supports all three commerce channels: the Web, mobile and Facebook. At this time, EasyAsk may be one of the few if not the only e-commerce vendor able to support each of these three options. The result? EasyAsk gives its licensees a powerful solution and options which help enhance return on investment.
Stephen E Arnold, September 6, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
EasyAsk Right Choice for InkJet Superstore
August 29, 2011
Have you ever tried to find ink or toner for a not-so-new printer? The process can be confusing, and shoppers are unlikely to feel warm and fuzzy about any ink seller whose Web site only adds to the frustration.
One purveyor of ink and toner made a wise choice when it picked EasyAsk’s eCommerce Edition. EasyAsk asserts, “NetSuite Customer InkJet Superstore Jets Past Competitors Using EasyAsk Natural Language E-Commerce Search Software for SaaS.” The press release states,
Using EasyAsk eCommerce edition, InkJet Superstore has dramatically simplified finding the right printer cartridges and accessories, providing the easiest online experience for customers, increasing online orders and revenue. The news release said: “InkjetSuperstore.com sells toner and ink cartridges for virtually every make and model of printer, copier, and fax machine, with over 6,000 items. InkJet Superstore’s vision is clearly articulated on the company website: ‘To be the best, the easiest, the cheapest and friendliest place to buy printer accessories.’ To back this up, InkJet Superstore offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which includes paying for return shipping cost.
Source: http://www.inkjetsuperstore.com, powered by EasyAsk NLP technology
EasyAsk is helping InkJet Superstore deliver on its promises. Since the business implemented the solution, the site has had 80% fewer “no results” returns; increased order conversion rates by six percent; and decreased its phone calls and live chat requests, indicating that customers are more easily finding what they need.
The solution didn’t stop there. With their its rapidly expanding, Inkjet Superstore is taking advantage of the EasyAsk’s auto-sync feature to assimilate new products into the Web site. Furthermore, rich analytics mine customer search terms for items that are in demand, suggesting potential new products.
EasyAsk Enhances User Experience in Mobile Apps
August 24, 2011
EasyAsk is a company that leverages its incorporation of natural language processing in order to boost its information retrieval technology. EasyAsk offers an alternative to traditional enterprise search and is having a strong impact on eCommerce as it relates to “findability.” The company told us:
Founded in 1999 by Dr. Larry Harris, a computational linguistics professor and internationally recognized expert on database systems and computerized natural language. EasyAsk technology is used today by leading retailers, manufacturers, financial services institutions, government agencies and pharmaceutical and health care organizations around the globe.
Mobile commerce is the undeniable way of the future and EasyAsk is shaping how it will look. John Morell, VP of Product Marketing, wrote “Mobile Apps and User Experience” for the company blog, addressing how navigation and search must be treated differently in the mobile context. He spoke to some of the considerations made when developing EasyAsk eCommerce mobile. We learned:
The screen real estate on a mobile browser is vastly smaller than that on a PC or Mac. This says that excellent search is critical. You need to pinpoint search results because wading through pages of results in a mobile browser would frustrate a user and cause them to abandon. But excellent navigation is also important due to the screen real estate constraints. Using richer, dynamic search criteria in the navigation, such as product attributes . . . allows visitors to find products in 1 to 2 clicks, rather than plowing through pages of categories – increasing the chances of conversion.
Other vendors, such as X1, are pushing into this territory as well. However, EasyAsk has a definite edge in its tested usage of natural language processing. An “Interview with Craig Bassin,” EasyAsk CEO, is a good reference for how the company got its start and why it can currently stand toe-to-toe with others in the field like Endeca. Mr. Bassin said:
EasyAsk’s unique natural language technology helps people find information faster and easier by enabling them to perform e-commerce searches or enterprise data searches in plain English, making it easier for users to express what they want and delivering a more accurate answer. The technology is used in two products: EasyAsk eCommerce Edition, an e-commerce search and merchandising solution that has proven to drive the best buyer conversion rates in the industry, and EasyAsk Business Edition which offers the easiest, most intuitive manner to search and explore corporate data.
EasyAsk is proven in the market, but it is not stuck in the success of its past. Continuing to innovate, the company looks for new ways to improve not only user experience, but also client satisfaction. EasyAsk and its natural language processing looks good to me.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
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