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
Data Warehouse Leader to Reinvent Data Warehousing
August 26, 2009
“IBM Announces ‘Smart Analytics System’ Aimed at Reinventing Data Warehousing” reminded me of Einstein’s discomfort with some of the implications of his theory of relativity. Invent one thing, then scramble to find a way to deal with problems that won’t go away. IBM, one might assert, invented data warehousing. It was an IBM researcher who developed our old friend the relational database. The Codd approach has been the big dog in data management for a long time. Options are now becoming more widely available, but when one says, “Data warehousing”, I think IBM. That’s why I am an addled goose I suppose.
Mr. Data Warehouse. Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd
This article-interview makes clear that something is not right in IBM land. For me, the most suggestive comment in the Intelligent Enterprise write up was this passage:
Though IBM is promising better performance, a big part of the appeal seems to be targeted at executives who would favor contract simplicity and a single “throat to choke” over enterprising, but potentially riskier, in-house development, integration and innovation.
The “reinvention” seems to be to be little more than fixing responsibility for a mission critical system on a company big enough to take to court if the data warehouse has a leaking roof. In my experience these traditional data warehouses have more problems than a fast-build Shanghai apartment building.
My thought is to take a hard look at the assumptions about data warehousing, then poke into some options. Dare I suggest Aster Data? What about a Perfect Search enabled system?
Stephen Arnold, August 26, 2009
Silobreaker Update
August 25, 2009
I was exploring usage patterns via Alexa. I wanted to see how Silobreaker, a service developed by some savvy Scandinavians, was performing against the brand name business intelligence companies. Silobreaker is one of the next generation information services that processes a range of content, automatically indexing and filtering the stream, and making the information available in “dossiers”. A number of companies have attempted to deliver usable “at a glance” services. Silobreaker has been one of the systems I have relied upon for a number of client engagements.
I compared the daily reach of LexisNexis (a unit of the Anglo Dutch outfit Reed Elsevier), Factiva (originally a Reuters Dow Jones “joint” effort in content and value added indexing now rolled back into the Dow Jones mothership), Ebsco (the online arm of the EB Stevens Co. subscription agency), and Dialog (a unit of the privately held database roll up company Cambridge Scientific Abstracts / ProQuest and some investors). Keep in mind that Silobreaker is a next generation system and I was comparing it to the online equivalent of the Smithsonian’s computer exhibit with the Univac and IBM key punch machine sitting side by side:
Silobreaker is the blue line which is chugging right along despite the challenging financial climate. I ran the same query on Compete.com, and that data showed LexisNexis showing a growth uptick and more traffic in June 2009. You mileage may vary. These types of traffic estimates are indicative, not definitive. But Silobreaker is performing and growing. One could ask, “Why aren’t the big names showing stronger buzz?”
A better question may be, “Why haven’t the museum pieces performed?” I think there are three reasons. First, the commercial online services have not been able to bridge the gap between their older technical roots and the new technologies. When I poked under the hood in Silobreaker’s UK facility, I was impressed with the company’s use of next generation Web services technology. I challenged the R&D team regarding performance, and I was shown a clever architecture that delivers better performance than the museum piece services against which Silobreaker competes. I am quick to admit that performance and scaling remain problems for most online content processing companies, but I came away convinced that Silobreaker’s engineering was among the best I had examined in the real time content sector.
Second, I think the museum pieces – I could mention any of the services against which I compared Silobreaker – have yet to figure out how to deal with the gap between the old business model for online and the newer business models that exist. My hunch is that the museum pieces are reluctant to move quickly to embrace some new approaches because of the fear of [a] cannibalization of their for fee revenues from a handful of deep pocket customers like law firms and government agencies and [b] looking silly when their next generation efforts are compared to newer, slicker services from Yfrog.com, Collecta.com, Surchur.com, and, of course, Silobreaker.com.
Third, I think the established content processing companies are not in step with what users want. For example, when I visit the Dialog Web site here, I don’t have a way to get a relationship map. I like nifty methods of providing me with an overview of information. Who has the time or patience to handcraft a Boolean query and then paying money whether the dataset contains useful information or not. I just won’t play that “pay us to learn there is a null set” game any more. Here’s the Dialog splash page. Not too useful to me because it is brochureware, almost a 1998 approach to an online service. The search function only returns hits from the site itself. There is not compelling reason for me to dig deeper into this service. I don’t want a dialog; I want answers. What’s a ProQuest? Even the name leaves me puzzled.
I wanted to make sure that I was not too harsh on the established “players” in the commercial content processing sector. I tracked down Mats Bjore, one of the founders of Silobreaker. I interviewed him as part of my Search Wizards Speak series in 2008, and you may find that information helpful in understanding the new concepts in the Silobreaker service.
What are some of the changes that have taken place since we spoke in June 2008?
Mats Bjore: There are several news things and plenty more in the pipeline. The layout and design of Silobreaker.com have been redesigned to improve usability; we have added an Energy section to provide a more vertically focused service around both fossil fuels and alternative energy; we have released Widgets and an API that enable anyone to embed Silobreaker functionality in their own web sites; and we have improved our enterprise software to offer corporate and government customers “local” customizable Silobreaker installations, as well a technical platform for publishers who’d like to “silobreak” their existing or new offerings with our technology. Industry-wise,the recent statements by media moguls like Rupert Murdoch make it clear that the big guys want to monetize their information. The problem is that charging for information does not solve the problem of a professional already drowning in information. This is like trying to charge a man who has fallen overboard for water instead of offering a life jacket. Wrong solution. The marginal loss of losing a few news sources is really minimal for the reader, as there are thousands to choose from anyways, so unless you are a “must-have” publication, I think you’ll find out very quickly that reader loyalty can be fickle or short-lived or both. Add to that that news reporting itself has changed dramatically. Blogs and other types of social media are already favoured before many newspapers and we saw Twitters role during the election demonstrations in Iran. Citizen journalism of that kind; immediate, straight from the action and free is extremely powerful. But whether old or new media, Silobreaker remains focused on providing sense-making tools.
What is it going to be, free information or for fee information?
Mats Bjore: I think there will be free, for fee, and blended information just like Starbuck’s coffee.·The differentiators will be “smart software” like Silobreaker and some of the Google technology I have heard you describe. However, the future is not just lots of results. The services that generate value for the user will have multiple ways to make money. License fees, customization, and special processing services—to name just three—will differentiate what I can find on your Web log and what I can get from a Silobreaker “report”.
What can the museum pieces like Dialog and Ebsco do to get out of their present financial swamp?
Mats Bjore: That is a tough question. I also run a management consultancy, so let me put on my consultant hat for a moment. If I were Reed Elsevier, Dow Jones/Factiva, Dialog, Ebsco or owned a large publishing house, I must realize that I have to think out of the box. It is clear that these organizations define technology in a way that is different from many of the hot new information companies. Big information companies still define technology in terms of printing, publishing or other traditional processes. The newer companies define technology in terms of solving a user’s problem. The quick fix, therefore, ought to be to start working with new technology firms and see how they can add value for these big dragons today, not tomorrow.
What does Silobreaker offer a museum piece company?
Mats Bjore: The Silobreaker platform delivers access and answers without traditional searching. Users can spot what is hot and relevant. I would seriously look at solutions such as Silobreaker as a front to create a better reach to new customers, capture revenues from the ads sponsored free and reach a wider audience an click for premium content – ( most of us are unaware of the premium content that is out there, since the legacy contractual types only reach big companies and organizations. I am surprised that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have not moved more aggressively to deliver more than a laundry list of results with some pictures.
Is the US intelligence community moving more purposefully with access and analysis?
The interest in open source is rising. However, there is quite a bit of inertia when it comes to having one set of smart software pull information from multiple sources. I think there is a significant opportunity to improve the use of information with smart software like Silobreaker’s.
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
Is Search the Answer to Short Attention Spans
August 25, 2009
I thought about the essay I read that danced around the subject of Google making me more stupid. The current variation on this theme appeared in the UK Daily Mail. The story that caught my attention was “Digital Overload Is Making Us More Easily Distracted.” The premise struck me as odd. Someone digital plumbing is altering how a human concentrates. Hmmm. I thought humans made choices about concentration. For example, I decide to read a book. I decide to read and focus my concentration of the act of reading. Ask the goslings. When I concentrate, a person can walk up to me and touch my shoulder. I will jump and sometimes let out a yelp. I concentrate. Digital inputs don’t mean anything to me when I focus. I blot out distractions.
Not for the Daily Mail’s writer David Derbyshire. He wrote:
Some neuroscientists argue that the brain is geared to handle one thing at a time. When asked to juggle several things at once, it is forced to flick frantically between them, like a performer spinning plates. This puts the brain under stress and means it doesn’t perform as well, it is claimed.
Ah, the Daily Mail is not talking about individuals who can concentrate. The Daily Mail is talking about researchers who have studied a sample composed of people who cannot concentrate because these individuals ** choose ** to put themselves in situations where distractions are the norm.
I buy that. The young driver I saw run over a bicycle was not paying attention. I thought I saw a cell phone or an MP3 player. No one was hurt, but that bicycle cannot provides its side of the story. What’s the fix? None. If people ** choose ** to create an environment flush with distractions, those folks will have a tough time concentrating.
I don’t need a university researcher to “prove” that. Obviously the Daily Mail and its editors did.
I had hoped the article would talk about the role of search. It did not. At least the author of the Google-is-making-me-stupid essay challenged my thinking. The Daily Mail’s article did not in my opinion.
What can top this study? How about USA Today’s write up about social networks making students dip into self love?
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
Yahoo and User Experience
August 25, 2009
Lots of posts from gurus, azure chip consultants, and real journalists about Yahoo and search. I have plowed through about 15 of the online write ups. A couple jutted above the plain; most we in the low lands. A good example of the thinking that is not quite up the mountain is the write up “Yahoo: We’re Still in the Search Business”. The main point for me was this passage:
“I fully anticipate that our front-end experience will evolve differently from Bing,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Yahoo labs and search strategy, during a presentation to journalists at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. “We collaborate on the back end, but we are competitors on the front end.”
So the plumbing is the plumbing. The differentiator is the user experience. To me that means interface. A search box is a part of the interface. Ergo Yahoo cannot do much with the white rectangle into which people type 2.3 words. Yahoo must add links, facets, and any other gizmo that allows a person to find information without typing 2.3 words.
I just looked at the Yahoo splash page for me:
I find this page unhelpful. I can personalize the page, but I see the Excite type of clutter that annoys me when I have to hunt for the specific link I want. Examples: NASCAR news. Three clicks. Email. Log on and extra clicks to get past the news headlines. My account for for fee email? Good luck finding this page.
I look forward to user experience changes, but I don’t think interface alone will address the issues I have encountered with Yahoo Shopping, locating news stories that have been removed even though links in the wild to the story are available, and finding specific discussion group content quickly.
I want more than punditry and user experience. I want a system that provides information access. Right now, Yahoo has many opportunities to improve, but the key will be the plumbing. If I understand the posts I have examined. Microsoft and Yahoo will collaborate on plumbing. I had a house once with two plumbing contractors. I recall some exciting discussions with the two plumbers. No one had responsibility for the leaky pipes.
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
Sci Tech Content as Marketing Collateral
August 25, 2009
The notion of running a query across a collection of documents is part of research. Most users assume that the information indexed is going to be like like mixed nuts. In my experience, a more general query against an index of Web logs is likely to contain more of the lower grade nuts. A query passed against a corpus of electrical engineering or medical research reports will return a hit list with higher quality morsels. Those who teach information science often remind the students to understand the source, the bias of the author, and the method of the indexing system. Many people perceive online information as more accurate than other types of research material. Go figure.
When I read “McGill Prof Caught in Ghostwriting Scandal”, I thought about a rather heated exchange at lunch on Friday, August 21. The topic was the perceived accuracy of online information. With some of the new Twitter tools, it is possible for a person to create a topical thread, invite comments, and create a mini conversation on a subject. These conversations can be directed. The person starting the thread defines the terms and the subject. Those adding comments follow the thread. The originator of the thread can add comments of his / her own steering the presentation of information, suggesting links, and managing the information. Powerful stuff. Threads are becoming a big deal, and if you are not familiar with them, you may want to poke around to locate a thread service.
The McGill professor’s story triggered several ideas which may have some interesting implications for marketing and research. For example:
A scholarly paper may look more objective than a comment in a Web log. The Montreal Gazette reported:
Barbara Sherwin – a psychology professor whose expertise in researching how hormones influence memory and mood in humans – was listed as the sole author of an April 2000 article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society arguing that estrogen could help treat memory loss in older patients. In fact, the article was written by a freelance author hired by DesignWrite, a ghostwriting firm based in New Jersey. The company was paid by Wyeth to produce ghostwritten articles, which were then submitted to reputable scholars.
I would not have known that this ghostwritten article was a marketing piece. In fact, I don’t think I would have been able to figure it out by myself. That’s important. If I were a student or a researcher, I would see the marketing collateral as objective research. A search system would index the marketing document and possibly the Tweets about the document. Using Twitter hashtags, a concept space can be crafted. Run a query for McGill on Collecta, and you can see how the real time content picked up this ghostwriting story. How many hot topics are marketing plays? My hunch is that there will be more of this content shaping, not less, in the months ahead. Controlling the information flow is getting easier, not harder. More important, the method is low cost. When undiscovered, the use of disinformation may have more impact than other types of advertising.
What happens if a marketer combines a sci tech marketing piece like the Sherwin write up with a conversation directing Twitter tool? My initial thought is that a marketer can control and shape how information is positioned. With a little bit of tinkering, the information in the marketing piece can be disseminated widely, used to start a conversation, and with some nudges in a Twitter thread directed.
I am going to do some more thinking about the manipulation of perception possible with marketing materials and Twitter threads. What can an information consumer do to identify these types of disinformation tactics? I don’t have an answer.
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
Grokker Status
August 24, 2009
This news stuff ruffles the addled goose’s feathers. A post in response to my observation that Grokker was not answering its telephone brought this post to the Beyond Search Web log. The author is Randy Marcinko. Here is his response in full:
Let me clarify the purported mystery…. As many of you know, Groxis had gone through tumultuous times following the dot.com days. Having survived the dot.com generation as a company able to create glowing expenses, it needed to learn how to come to terms with revenue generation. My predecessor (Brian Chadbourne) and I attempted to right the ship and seek out the best path forward.
I took over as Groxis’ CEO in September of 2007 and it became almost immediately apparent that Groxis’ sweet spot was and is with content creators and aggregators–publishers large and small, traditional aggregators, syndicators and others of the content world. This is a group of clients who have a need, for whom Groxis is compelling and a “need-to-have,” not “nice-to-have” purchase. They are also a group of prospects with sales cycles that are manageable for a small company. So we moved down that path. With a great team we were able to make quick changes to the product, making it more vital and current. We jettisoned many old product lines in favor a short list to whom we had the resources to sell. The results were great and we were on track to a cash flow positive Q4 of 2009.
Unfortunately, in Q2 of 2008, we were also on track to close a Series D round of funding, necessary to allow Groxis to move quickly enough to succeed. The round was all but completed in Q3 along with the onset of the economic downturn. With the change in the economy our Series D investors decided that it was not feasible to continue with that financial plan. This was a reality, despite a rich pipeline and refurbished products.
Thanks to a diligent and hardworking team at Groxis, we did our best through 2008 but by the end of Q1 of 2009 the only feasible next step was to close down the current operation. We closed down the day-to-day operation in March 2009. Since that time I have been negotiating with possible acquirers and investors. We have had a great response only time will tell whether a long term solution will emerge.
As information becomes available, I will post it.
Stephen Arnold, August 24, 2009
Microsoft and SEO Optimization
August 23, 2009
Whilst poking around for the latest Microsoft search information, I came across a Web site called Internet Information Services at www.iis.net. I was curious because the write up on the Web site said:
The Site Analysis module allows users to analyze local and external Web sites with the purpose of optimizing the site’s content, structure, and URLs for search engine crawlers. In addition, the Site Analysis module can be used to discover common problems in the site content that negatively affects the site visitor experience. The Site Analysis module includes a large set of pre-built reports to analyze the sites compliance with SEO recommendations and to discover problems on the site, such as broken links, duplicate resources, or performance issues. The Site Analysis module also supports building custom queries against the data gathered during crawling.
The word “experience” did it. I zipped to whois and learned that the site is Microsoft’s. The registrar is an outfit called CSC Protect-a-Brand. Microsoft does not want to let this url slip through its hands I assume. You can download the tool here.
What interested me was that Microsoft has written the description of the tool without reference to its own Web indexing system. Furthermore, the language is generic which leads me to believe that this extension and the other nine in the category “Search Engine Optimization Toolkit” apply to Google as well.
If you are an SEO wizard and love the Microsoft way, you will want to download and experiment with these tools. Testing might be a good idea. If the tools work equally well for Bing.com and Google.com, has Microsoft emulated the Google Webmaster guidelines? If not, what will be the impact on a highly ranked Google site. With 75 to 85 percent of Web search traffic flowing to Google.com, an untoward tweak might yield interesting effects.
Stephen Arnold, August 23, 2009
Convera and the Bureau of National Affairs
August 22, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a Tweet that pointed to the International HR Decision Support Network: The Global Solution for HR Professionals. You can locate the Web site at ihrsearch.bna.com. The Web site identifies the search system for the site as Convera’s. Convera has morphed or be absorbed into another company. This “absorption” struck me as somewhat ironic because the Convera Web site carries a 2008 white paper by a consulting outfit called Outsell. You can read that Convera was named by Outsell as a rising star for 2008. Wow! I ran query for executive compensation in “the Americas” and these results appeared:
The most recent result was dated August 14, 2009. Today is August 21, 2009. It appears to me that the Convera Web indexing service continues to operate. I was curious about the traffic to this site. I pulled this Alexa report which suggests that the daily “reach” of the site is almost zero percent.
Compete.com had no profile for the site.
I think that the human resources field is one of considerable interest. My recollection is that BNA has had an online HR service for many years. I could not locate much information about the Human Resource Information Network that originally was based in Indianapolis.
Convera appears to be providing search results to BNA, and BNA has an appetite for an online HR information service. The combination, however, seems to be a weak magnet for traffic. Vertical search may have some opportunities. Will Convera and BNA be able to capitalize on them?
But with such modest traffic I wonder why the service is still online. Anyone have any insights?
Stephen Arnold, August 21, 2009
More Local Loco Action: Guardian UK Gets the Bug
August 21, 2009
Short honk: I don’t want to dig too deeply into the efforts of a traditional newspaper company to get more traction in the Webby world. You will want to read Online Journalism Blog’s “The Guardian Kicks Off the Local Data Land Grab” and ponder the implications of the write up.” The idea is that a newspaper wants to hop on the hyper local toboggan before the run dumps the sledder into the snow at the base of the mountain. Mr. Bradshaw, the author of the article, wrote:
Now The Guardian is about to prove just why it is so important, and in the process take first-mover advantage in an area the regionals – and maybe even the BBC – assumed was theirs. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone: The Guardian has long led the way in the UK on database journalism, particularly with its Data Blog and this year’s Open Platform. But this initial move into regional data journalism is a wise one indeed: data becomes more relevant the more personal it is, and local data just tends to be more personal.
For whatever reason, hyper local information is getting as much attention as real time search and Twitter. I wish the Guardian good luck with scaling, monetizing, and marketing. My thought is that the hyper local crowd will want to move quickly before Googzilla wanders through this information neighborhood. Finding is a big part of the local information challenge. The deal breaker will be monetizing. The Guardian may well have the most efficient monetization method known to man. I hope so. The Google’s a good monetizer too.
Stephen Arnold, August 21, 2009
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