Product Search: Hard Numbers or Flights of Fancy?
September 16, 2017
I read “Amazon Shakes Up Search, Again.” I was not aware of Amazon’s shaking up search because there are numerous ways to define the term. The write up narrows “search” to people in three countries who buy products or look for product information online. Ah, good, I think.
My hunch is that the “shake up” is related to the data that suggests Amazon has three times as many product searches than Google. The assertion did not “shake” me up because Google’s product search is not particularly useful. I thought that Froogle had a shot at becoming a daughter-of-Amazon, but the GOOG lost interest. Sure, I can search for a product using Google, but the results are often not what I want. Your mileage may vary.
But back to the write up. I noted some factoids which may be useful to those who are giving talks about product search, those who work for a consulting firm and must appear super smart, or folks like me who collect data, no matter how wild or crazy.
Here we go with the “shake up” from 3,100 consumers in the US, Germany, and the UK:
- 72 percent use Amazon to research a product before buying the product
- 51 percent use Amazon as a way to get “alternative ideas”
- 26 percent use Amazon to get information and price when they plan on visiting a real store
- 84 percent of “searchers” in the US use Google
- 71 percent of “searchers” in the US use Amazon
- 36 percent use Facebook in the US use Amazon
- 24 percent use Pinterest in the US use Amazon
- 31 percent use eBay in the US use Amazon
- 80 percent in the UK use Google
- 73 percent use Amazon in the UK
- 9 percent use Bing in France
- 6 percent us Bing in the UK
- 6 percent use Bing in Germany
- 20 percent of searchers use Bing
- Amazon stocks or “carries” 353 million products. Put aside the idea that percentages usually work on a scale of zero to 100, please:
- 59 percent are “health and beauty”
- 57 percent are “music, movies, or games”
- 55 percent are “books”
- 52 percent fashion or clothing
- 46 percent are home appliances
- 40 percent are furniture and home furnishings
- 39 percent are toys
- 34 percent are sports equipment and clothing
- 26 percent are garden equipment and furniture (?)
- 26 percent are food and grocery
- 9 percent are beer, wine and spirits.
So if there are 353 million products and the percentage data are correct, the total percentage of products is 443 percent. I did not the duplicate furniture entry but counted the percentage anyway. Also, there was no value for garden equipment and furniture so I used “26 percent”. Close enough for millennials steeped in new math.
My math teacher (Verna Blackburn) in my freshman year of high school in 1958 had an dunce cap. I think I can suggest one research report author who might have been invited to wear the 24 inch tall cap. The 443 percent would shake up deal Miss Blackburn. She also threw chalk at students when they made errors when solving on the blackboards which were on three walls of her classroom. The fourth wall looked out over asphalt to the smokestacks of the former RG Letourneau mortar factory. Getting math wrong at that outfit could indeed shake up some things.
Stephen E Arnold, September 16, 2017
Bing and Google: The News Battle
September 15, 2017
I read “Bing Battles Google News with Its Own Make-Over.” I noted the alliteration: Bing battle. I immediately thought, “Google Gropes.” Both of these companies are trying to reinvent the newspaper using zeros and ones, not dead trees. Let’s look at some of the points I highlighted:
I noted this statement everyone’s most lovable online ad vendor:
Google redesigned their desktop Google News website. Their [sic] new UI has a clean and uncluttered look.
Microsoft responded. I circled this statement:
Microsoft recently updated their Bing News experience that will help users in finding the most up to date and well-rounded information.
Note that the pivot of both sentences is a subjective assertion: “Clean and uncluttered” for the GOOG, and “most up to date and well rounded.”
Some facts would be useful. I am not sure what “clean” or “uncluttered” means. My recollection is that Einstein’s desk like most “dead tree” newspapers are organized in an eclectic manner. Facts supporting these assertions might be difficult to conjure.
The “most up to date” statement should be easy to back up. What’s the latency of the system? The superlative “most” means that Bing is the top dog in news. Hmmm. I don’t buy this.
My point is that the write up provides a useful idea: Neither Bing nor Google has figured out how to present “news” to each system’s online users. The implicit idea is that “dead tree” methods are of little use. Inspiration comes from each system’s response to what the other system does.
Cold War methods applied to online “news”? That’s what the write signals me.
Let’s step back.
Online users have different reasons for wanting news. Some folks chase sports, which as I recall was the most read section of the “dead tree” newspaper company at which I once worked. Other people have quite different reasons for scanning the news; for example, there are some who read the obituaries, others seek cartoons, and others want the latest on the real housewives.
Bing and Google have to figure out how to meet these diverse needs because the “dead tree” crowd has fallen in the forest.
The write up tells me one thing: Neither Google nor Microsoft has any idea about reinventing what “dead tree” newspapers used to do.
Now what? Shape the news to fit what each company’s filters “decide” is “real news”?
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2017
Microsoft and Open Source Software: Cost Cutting Tactic or a RedHat Type Play
September 1, 2017
Short honk: We were delighted to read “Windows 10: New Feature Sees Microsoft Blur the Line between Windows and Linux.” The write up explains that Windows allows a person to move outputs to a Linux distribution.
Few have covered Microsoft’s dalliance with Solr and the increased interest in using open source software to reduce development costs at Microsoft.
I suppose that’s understandable. The new president is not giving talks about following in the footsteps of IBM which has based dear old Watson on Lucene, home brew code, and technology from acquisitions.
Open source is an easy way to reduce development costs, keep pace with the innovations from the “community,” and free up time for marketing and sales.
Microsoft is becoming a close cousin to IBM, complete with major league strike outs like the Windows phone adventure.
A more significant misperception appears in the write up. I noted this passage:
The Free Software Foundation Europe, has previously said Microsoft’s gradual acceptance of Linux is a compliment, and a net gain for the Free Software movement.
Microsoft’s enthusiasm for some open source technology may be a precursor of Microsoft’s getting in the open source software business, emulating or duplicating the business models of RedHat and Elastic (the Elasticsearch folks).
Worth watching.
Stephen E Arnold, September 1, 2017
Time to Ditch PowerPoint?
August 23, 2017
For decades, Microsoft PowerPoint has been used for making presentations. That is all set to change as a recent study indicates that PowerPoint presentations are ineffective.
According to an article published by Quartz and titled The Scientific Reason No One Wants to See Your PowerPoint Presentation, the publisher says:
Because the human brain process information both visually (using shapes and colors) and spatially (using location and distance, the researchers said, ZUI helps audiences by locating the information in a place, allowing them to mentally retrieve it later.
The problem with the study is that it appears to be too promotional. For instance, the article says tools like Prezi are better for making presentations because it offers a lot of animated options. Why not then use Gifographics or stock videos then?
The effectiveness of a presentation mostly depends on the person presenting it. Many speakers completely do away with any type of tools so that their audience can concentrate on what the speaker says. Moreover, the presentation can be made effective if the slides are designed professionally. Don’t be surprised if, in the near future, all presentations are made using VR headsets for that truly immersive experience.
Vishal Ingole, August 23, 2017
AI Will Be Your New Best Friend
August 15, 2017
Technology is an important component of functioning in developed countries. Despite large segments of the people adopting technology, there is still a huge gap with certain demographic groups based on socioeconomic and age factors. Senior citizens cannot wrap their head around new technology, while other people cannot afford to buy expensive computers and mobile devices. Other people are just fearful of what technology can do. The Verge article, “Google Wants To Make Sure AI Advances Don’t Leave Anyone Behind” explains Google’s endeavors to reach all types of people despite their hesitancies.
Google launched the AI initiative PAIR (People and AI Research) that will study and redesign ways people from all levels of society interact with artificial intelligence.
It’s a broad remit, and an ambitious one. Google says PAIR will look at a number of different issues affecting everyone in the AI supply chain — from the researchers who code algorithms, to the professionals like doctors and farmers who are (or soon will be) using specialized AI tools. The tech giant says it wants to make AI user-friendly, and that means not only making the technology easy to understand (getting AI to explain itself is a known and challenging problem) but also ensuring that it treats its users equally.
One problem with AI is the type of data it is fed. There is a reason Microsoft’s chatbot modeled after a teenage girl became a cursing racist and anti-Semitic chatbot after one day: users fed it data of this nature. Google’s PAIR wants to fight prejudice data by using Facets Dive and Facets Overview-two new open-source tools that will allow programmers to see faults in their data. Facets Dive is being used for facial recognition software and it is sorting testers by country origin and comparing errors with successful identification.
Artificial intelligence is not intentionally biased, human data makes it so. Do not forget, people, that humans build machines and they reflect their creators.
Whitney Grace, August 15, 2017
Google and Microsoft AI Missteps
August 14, 2017
I read an interesting article called “Former Microsoft Exec Reveals Why Amazon’s Alexa Voice Assistant Beat Cortana.” The passage I noted as thought provoking was this one:
Qi Lu, formerly a Microsoft wizard and now a guru at Baidu allegedly said in this passage from the Verge’s article:
Lu believes Microsoft and Google “made the same mistake” of focusing on the phone and PC for voice assistants, instead of a dedicated device. “The phone, in my view, is going to be, for the foreseeable future, a finger-first, mobile-first device,” explains Lu. “You need an AI-first device to solidify an emerging base of ecosystems.”
Apparently Lu repeated what I think is a key point:
“The phone, in my view, is going to be, for the foreseeable future, a finger-first, mobile-first device,” explains Lu. “You need an AI-first device to solidify an emerging base of ecosystems.”
Several questions occurred to me:
- Do Google and Microsoft share a similar context for evaluating high value technologies? Perhaps these two companies are more alike in how they see the world than Amazon?
- Are Google and Microsoft reactive; that is, the companies act in a reflexive manner with regard to figuring out how to apply a magnetic technology?
- Is Amazon’s competitive advantage an ability to think about an interesting technology in terms of the technology’s ability to augment an existing revenue stream and open new revenue streams?
I don’t have the answer to these questions. If Lu is correct, Amazon has done an end run around Google and Microsoft in terms of talking to gizmos. Can Amazon sustain its technological momentum? With Microsoft floundering with Windows 10 and hardware reliability, it is possible that its applied research is mired in the Microsoft management morass. Google, on the other hand, has its hands full with Amazon taking more product search traffic at a time when Google has to figure out how to solve emotional, political, and ideological issues. Need I say “damore”?
Stephen E Arnold, August 14, 2017
Bing Expands Rewards Incentives to UK Users
August 2, 2017
We learn from the Verge that Microsoft is expanding its bribery, I mean, rewards program to the UK in, “Microsoft Is Now Paying People to Use Bing in the UK with its Rewards Scheme.” Referring to points a user accrues by using Bing, writer Tom Warren details:
The points can then be transferred to a number of different rewards, including Xbox digital gift cards, Groove Music passes, and Skype credit. Microsoft is also partnering with a number of UK charities so you can donate points to these organizations instead. Microsoft Rewards works almost identically in the UK as it does in the US. You’ll get 3 points per Bing search, and this is doubled (until August 15th) if you’re using Microsoft Edge. You can obtain a maximum of 30 points per day (60 points using Edge) through searches, or participate in quizzes to gain more. Microsoft also gives out 1 point for every pound spend at the UK online Microsoft Store. If you manage to hit 500 points in a month, there’s a second level with better rewards and the ability to earn a maximum of 150 points a day.
Is this program enough to pull a significant number of Google users Bing’s way? Perhaps the expansion overseas is an indication that it has been a success in the US. Either way, it is too bad Bing must stoop to buying traffic and click love.
Cynthia Murrell, August 2, 2017
Banks Learn Sentiment Analysis Equals Money
July 26, 2017
The International Business Times reported on the Unicorn conference “AI, Machine Learning and Sentiment Analysis Applied To Finance” that discussed how sentiment analysis and other data are changing the financing industry in the article: “AI And Machine Learning On Social Media Data Is Giving Hedge Funds A Competitive Edge.” The article discusses the new approach to understanding social media and other Internet data.
The old and popular method of extracting data relies on a “bag of words” approach. Basically, this means that an algorithm matches up a word with its intended meaning in a lexicon. However, machine learning and artificial intelligence are adding more brains to the data extraction. AI and machine learning algorithms are actually able to understand the context of the data.
An example of this in action could be the sentence: “IBM surpasses Microsoft”. A simple bag of words approach would give IBM and Microsoft the same sentiment score. DePalma’s news analytics engine recognises “IBM” is the subject, “Microsoft” is the object and “surpasses” as the verb and the positive/negative relationships between subject and the object, which the sentiment scores reflect: IBM positive, Microsoft, negative.
This technology is used for sentiment analytics to understand how consumers feel about brands. In turn, that data can determine a brand’s worth and even volatility of stocks. This translates to that sentiment analytics will shape financial leanings in the future and it is an industry to invest in
Whitney Grace, July 26, 2017
WaveNet Machine-Generated Speech from DeepMind Eclipses Competitor Technology
July 13, 2017
The article on Bloomberg titled Google’s DeepMind Achieves Speech-Generation Breakthrough touts a 50% improvement over current technology for machine speech. DeepMind developed an AI called WaveNet that focuses on mimicking human speech by learning the sound waves of human voices. In testing, the machine-generated speech beat existing technology, but is still not meeting the level of actual human speech.
The article expands,
Speech is becoming an increasingly important way humans interact with everything from mobile phones to cars. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have all invested in personal digital assistants that primarily interact with users through speech. Mark Bennett, the international director of Google Play, which sells Android apps, told an Android developer conference in London last week that 20 percent of mobile searches using Google are made by voice, not written text.
It is difficult to quantify the ROI for the $533M that Google spent to acquire DeepMind in 2014, since most of their advancements are not extremely commercial. Google did credit DeepMind with the technology that helped slash power needs by 40%. But this breakthrough involves far too much computational power to lend itself to commercial applications. However, Google must love that with the world watching, DeepMind continues to outperform competitors in AI advancement.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 13, 2017
Google, Microsoft Trail Amazon AWS Success
June 28, 2017
Is it now impossible for any fourth company to claw their way to the top of the cloud? Amazon’s AWS is still way ahead in the hosted-services game, but Google’s CloudPlatform and Microsoft’s Azure are also flourishing, we learn from “AWS, Google, and Microsoft Cement Their Cloud Dominance” at InfoWorld. Writer Matt Asay observes:
[AWS is] redefining enterprise IT forever, with everyone else having to sprint to catch up to its torrid pace of innovation and price cuts. Interestingly, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud appear to be doing exactly that. … The market is consolidating around the big three cloud vendors, and it may be too late to add a fourth.
Though both Microsoft and Google have yet to break out their respective cloud revenue numbers (they’re not required to until it represents 5 percent of their overall company revenue), both reported big increases for 2016. Microsoft’s Azure revenue grew 95 percent in constant currency, and while Google didn’t report revenue or growth numbers, it suggested it had ‘significant momentum’ in the year, a claim made more believable by deals like Snap’s ($2 billion over five years for Google Cloud services). The problem for Microsoft and Google is that AWS isn’t slowing down. If anything, it’s accelerating.
Ah, lively competition. Asay emphasizes that much of Amazon’s success has occurred because they were able to reduce prices while increasing functionality. That is indeed a difficult combination to beat. Google or Microsoft may be in the position to pull off an upset, perhaps with some remarkable feat of innovation. Fourth place and below may be wise to pursue revenue streams outside the hosting field.
Cynthia Murrell, June 28, 2017
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