Google: Worms Are Turning
December 16, 2008
Google is not accustomed to having its plans jeopardized by the likes of the Wall Street Journal. After a decade of baffling the pundits with free Odwalla beverages and lunch entertainment from the likes of Tony Bennett, the GOOG is thrashing. To add to the misery of the Wall Street Journal story here, the SFGate online site published “Google Off List of 20 Most Trusted Companies.” You can read this story here. American Express and eBay are allegedly perceived as more trustworthy than Google. Wow. eBay and PayPal. More trusted. When will other shoes begin to drop? Last week I listened as a Googler ran the game plan; that is, did a standard presentation about the firm’s capabilities. The presentation was warm, interesting, and what is on the Google Web site. Googlers, I opine, only know what Mother Google wants them to know. I have often mentioned Googler Cyrus, a high ranking Googler, who told me I Photoshopped a Google report that looked a lot like a dossier prepared by the police on a suspect. I pointed out to dear Cyrus that the image came from a Google patent document. The Googler did not believe me. Now you try to find in Google a hit on my name, my study Google Version 2.0, and patents. You won’t be able to find it. Somehow the links to my study of Google patents are really tough to find. I find this amusing. I wonder if Google finds my analyses a wee bit off putting? Now the GOOG is battling a dead tree traditional media company and finding itself no longer among the most trusted companies. What’s amazing to me is that it has taken a decade for pundits, wizards, and assorted Google search experts to figure out some of the Google’s more interesting initiatives. There’s more in the closet. I can hardly wait to see what antics dead tree media and the GOOG will display. For a quick primer, check out my Google studies here.
Stephen Arnold, December 16, 2008
Wall Street Journal Figures Out What Google Is Doing, Gets Criticized
December 15, 2008
The Wall Street Journal’s Vishesh Kuman and Christopher Rhoads stumbled into a hornet’s nest. I think surprise may accompany these people and their editor for the next few days. The story “Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web.” The story is here at the moment, but it will probably disappear or be unavailable due to heavy click traffic. Read it quickly so you have the context for the hundreds of comments this story has generated. Pundits whose comments I found useful are the Lessig Blog, Om Malik’s GigaOM, and Google’s own comment here.
The premise of the article is that the GOOG wants to create what Messrs. Kuman and Rhoads call “a fast lane.” In effect, the GOOG wants to get preferential treatment for its traffic. The story wanders forward with references to network neutrality, which is probably going to die like a polar bear sitting on an ice chunk in the Arctic circle. Network neutrality is a weird American term that is designed to prevent a telco from charging people based on arbitrary benchmarks. The Bell Telephone Co. figured out that differential pricing was the way to keep the monopoly in clover a long time ago. The lesson has not be forgotten by today’s data barons. The authors drag in the president elect and wraps up with use of a Google-coined phrase “OpenEdge.”
Why the firestorm? Here are my thoughts:
First, I prepared a briefing for several telcos in early 2008. My partner at the Mercer Island Group and I did a series of briefings for telecommunication companies. In that briefing, I showed a diagram from one of Google’s patent documents and enriched with information from Google’s technical papers. The diagram showed Google as the intermediary between a telco’s mobile customers and the Internet. In effect, with Google in the middle, the telco would get low latency rendering of content in the Googleplex (my term for Google’s computer and software infrastructure). The groups to a person snorted derision. I recall one sophisticated telco manager saying in the jargon of the Bell head, “That’s crap.” I had no rejoinder to that because I was reporting what my analyses of Google patents and technical papers said. So, until this Wall Street Journal story appeared, the notion of Google becoming the Internet was not on anyone’s radar. After all, I live in Kentucky and the Mercer Island Group is not McKinsey & Co. or Boston Consulting Group in terms of size and number of consultants. But MIG has some sharp nails is its toolkit.
Second, in my Google Version 2.0, which is mostly a summary of Google’s patent documents from August 2005 to June 2007, I reported on a series of give patent documents, filed the same day and eventually published on the same day by the ever efficient US Patent & Trademark Office. the five documents disclosed a big, somewhat crazy system for sucking in data from airline ticket sellers, camera manufacturers, and other structured data sources. The invention figured out the context of each datum and built a great big master database containing the data. The idea was that some companies could push the data to Google. Failing that, Google would use software to fill in the gaps and therefore have its own master database. BearStearns was sufficiently intrigued by this analysis to issue a report to its key clients about this innovation. Google’s attorneys asserted that the report contained proprietary Google data, an objection that went away when I provided the patent document number and the url to download the patent documents. Google’s attorneys, like many Googlers, are confident but sometimes uninformed about what the GOOG is doing with one paw while the other paw adjusts the lava lamps.
Third, in my Beyond Search study for the Gilbane Group, I reported that Google had developed the “dataspace” technology to provide the framework for Google to become the Internet. Sue Feldman at IDC, the big research firm near Boston, was sufficiently interested to work with me to create a special IDC report on this technology and its implications. The Beyond Search study and the IDC report went to hundreds of clients and was ignored. The idea of a dataspace with metadata about how long a person looks at a Web page and the use of meta metadata to make queries about the lineage and certainty of data was too strange.
What the Wall Street Journal has stumbled into is a piece of the Google strategy. My view is that Google is making an honest effort to involve the telcos in its business plan. If the telcos pass, then the GOOG will simply keep doing what it has been doing for a decade; that is, building out what I called in January 2008 in my briefings “Google Global Telecommunications”. Yep, Google is the sibling of the “old” AT&T model of a utility. Instead of just voice and data, GGT will combine smart software with its infrastructure and data to marginalize quite a few business operations.
Is this too big an idea today? Not for Google. But the idea is sufficiently big to trigger the storm front of comments. My thought is, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Ignorance of Google’s technology is commonplace. One would have thought that the telcos would take Google seriously by now. Guess not. If you want to dig into Google’s technology, you can still buy copies of my studies:
- The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search Is Transforming Application Software, Infonortics, 2005 here
- Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator, Infonortics, 2007 here
- Beyond Search: What to Do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn’t Work, Gilbane Group, 2008 here
Bear Stearns is out of business, so I don’t know how you can get a copy of that 40 page report. You can order the dataspaces report directly from IDC. Just ask for Report 213562.
If you want me to brief your company on Google’s technology investments over the last decade, write me at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. I have a number of different briefings, including the telco analysis and a new one on Google’s machine learning methods. These are a blend of technology analysis and examples in Google’s open source publications. I rely on my analytical methods to identify key trends and use only open source materials. Nevertheless, the capabilities of Google are–shall we say–quite interesting. Just look at what the GOOG has done in online advertising. The disruptive potential of its other technologies is comparable. What do you know about containers, janitors, and dataspaces? Not much I might suggest if I were not an addled goose.
Oh, let me address Messrs. Kumar and Rhoads, “You are somewhat correct, but you are grasping at straws when you suggest that Google requires the support and permission of any entity or individual. The GOOG is emerging as the first digital nation state.” Tough to understand, tough to regulate, and tough to thwart. Just ask the book publishers suggest I.
Stephen Arnold, December 15, 2008
Your Identity
December 15, 2008
One of my three or four readers wrote me because in the comments section of this Web log his / her email address appeared. As Homer Simpson said, “D’oh.” If you wish to post and remain anonymous, navigate to Mailinator here or use a similar service. Another option is to NOT read my personal Web log.
The likelihood that I am assuming responsibility for what a person provides in the comments section of this Web log is addled. If you in doubt about the purpose or seriousness of this Web log, you need to read the editorial policy on the About page. If you want to jump there now, click this link. Just skip the baloney about my background and read the Disclaimer.
My approach to analysis baffles certain linear thinkers. Dear, confused Ms. Sperling–my high school English teacher–thought Robert Burns’s 1794 song “A Red Red Rose” was about really beautiful, true, romantic love. Nope. It’s about a sailor’s having a girl in every port. I believe she went to her grave misunderstanding Mr. Burns’s poetry.
If you, gentle reader, can’t winnow the goose feathers from the giblets, remove this Web log from your news reader. Feel free to complain about my for fee work for you, but this free stuff is what it is–recycled information with some notes I make for myself.
The fact that “Beyond Search” Web log is publicly available is due to the nature of the free content management system I use. I make little effort to code around WordPress’ problems. I go default all the way, gentle readers.
Stephen Arnold, December 15, 2008
Google Alert Change
December 14, 2008
My Google Alert changed today. I get an alert for the phrase “enterprise search.” Yesterday I received text only. Today I received text and embedded pictures. Here’s a screenshot of my improved Google Alert. I prefer text in alerts because the BlackBerry I have does a lousy job with html mail.
Has anyone else noticed this change? Am I late to the party? Let me know.
Stephen Arnold, December 14, 2008
Autonomy: The Next Big Thing
December 14, 2008
I enjoy the hate mail I get when I write about Autonomy’s news announcements. Some of my three or four readers think that I write these items for Autonomy. Wrong. I am reporting information that my trusty newsreader delivers to me. Here’s a gem that will get the anti-Autonomy crowd revved on a Sunday morning. The article appeared on SmartBrief.com as news. The headline was an attention grabber: “Autonomy at the Cutting Edge of New Multi-Trillion dollar Sector According to Head of Gartner Research.” You can read it here. The url is one of those wacky jobs that can fail to resolve. The core of the story for me is that Gartner has identified a “multi trillion dollar sector.” That has to be good news to those who pay Gartner to make forecasts about markets. Search and content processing has been chugging along in the $1.3 to $3.0 billion range if one ignores the aberration that is Google. I find it hard to believe that Gartner’s financial forecasts can be spot on, but who knows? In case, you want to know what a trillion is, it is one followed by a dozen zeros. The Gartner fellow with the sharp and optimistic pencil is identified as Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President, Gartner Research. The source, according the the news release, is an interview with an outfit called Business Spectator. I wonder if a few extra zeros were added as Mr. Sondergaard’s pronouncement was recorded? So, what’s this forecast have to do with Autonomy? Autonomy said in its input to SmartBrief:
Autonomy Corporation plc , a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced that its vision of searching and analyzing structured and unstructured data has now been validated as the next big thing in business IT. According to an interview with Business Spectator, Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President, Gartner Research, predicts that the next quantum leap in productivity will come from the use of IT systems that analyze structured and unstructured data. Sondergaard says that Autonomy is at the cutting edge of the new search technology, a sector in the IT industry that will ultimately earn multi trillion dollar revenues.
The story appeared on PRNewswire and on one of the Thomson Reuters’ services. With economies tanking, I am delighted to know that the sector in which I work is slated to become a multi trillion dollar business. I hope I live long enough. Since laughter is a medicine that extends one’s life, I look forward to more Gartner forecasts and to Autonomy’s riding the crest of this predicted market boom.
Stephen Arnold, December 15, 2008
Smart Folks Can Be Really Dumb, WSJ Says
December 14, 2008
Jason Zweig writes for The Intelligent Investor, a title that struck me as ironic in the context of the current economic downturn. I don’t have an online link to this column because I refuse to use the Wall Street Journal’s online service. The dead tree version is on my desk in front of me, and you can find the full text of “How Bernie Madoff Made Smart Folks Look Dumb” on page B1 at the foot of the page on December 13, 2008. Just look for the drawing of Mad Magazine’s mascot, and you will be ready to read the full text of Mr. Zweig’s column. For me, the column said, “Smart people were not smart.” The fact that wealthy people who are supposed to be more intelligent than an addled goose fell for a Ponzi scheme is amusing. However, as I read the column, I thought about search and content processing, not the self satisfied millionaires who were snookered.
Let me run down my thoughts:
- The scam worked because the alleged Ponzi artist emphasized secrecy. Quite a few vendors take this approach. I can’t name names, but in Washington, DC, last week I heard a vendor emphasize how easy it was to use a certain system. The system of course was super secret but not to worry. It’s easy because of the magic in the code. I think I saw people in the presentation quiver with excitement. Secrecy is a variant of catnip.
- Mr Madoff played the “exclusivity” card. The idea is that not everyone can get the inside track on a deal. In London, at the International Online Show on December 4, 2008, I heard this pitch in a trade show booth. The angle was that this particular content processing tool was available only to customer with the knowledge and insight to use a special approach. I saw folks eagerly crowding around a tiny laptop to get close to the exclusive technology.
Mr. Zweig taps an academic for an explanation of how baloney suckers supposedly intelligent people into a scam. The phrase “sophisticated investor” sums up nicely how one’s perception of one’s own intelligence combine to make a Ponzi scheme work. The black art of Mr. Madoff can be found among the search and content processing sector as well. I suppose Enterprise 2.0, search is simple, and we have magic technology won’t catch the attention of governmental authorities. In a way it is reassuring that some basic sales techniques work better than some enterprise software systems. On the other hand, is it inevitable that the methods of financial charlatans work in the information services business? Thoughts?
Stephen Arnold, December 14, 2008
Expert System’s COGITO Answers
December 12, 2008
Expert System has launched COGITO Answers, which streamlines search and provides customer assistance on web sites, e-mail and mobile interfaces such as cell phones and PDAs while creating a company knowledge base. The platform allows users to search across multiple resources with a handy twist: it uses semantic analysis to absorb and understand a customer’s lingo, therefore analyzing the meaning of the text to process search results rather than just matching keywords. It interprets word usage in context. The program also tracks customer interface and stores all requests so the company can anticipate client needs and questions, thus cutting down response time and increasing accuracy. You can get more information by e-mailing answers@expertsystem.net.
Jessica Bratcher, December 12, 2008
Microsoft Search Head Speaks
December 10, 2008
I enjoyed Microsoft’s interview with Microsoft’s new head of search, Qi Lu. You can find the information here. The questions were not hard balls, but gently lofted nerf balls. I found the answers intriguing. Before I read the interview, I noted with interest this story about Microsoft’s and Google’s cutting back on the big capex spending for data centers. You can read that story here. No big surprise but Microsoft’s own interview with Microsoft’s own head of search said:
Steve and I first met last September, in a hotel in San Jose, California. We spent almost half a day talking. We talked about the competitive landscape, about the possibility to really innovate and take the user experience [of Microsoft’s search capabilities] to the next level, and about creating a more competitive space, particularly in the search space. We all believe that it’s better for everybody involved when we have a healthy, more competitive environment. Two things he said really stood out. First was the level of commitment on investment. Steve made it very clear how he views that as critical for the long-term future of Microsoft, and his strong commitment to invest in R&D resources is very, very important to me.
I found this somewhat jarring. But that’s a nit. Other points that I noted were:
- “I think there is a genuine opportunity to take our search products to the next level.”
- “…we’re here to win, and my view on this is that to win in the search space, fundamentally you build on the strengths of your product.”
- “We have a clear path from where we are today, to where we need to be, and to reach that next level we need to keep executing and building winning products.”
As I read these comments, several thoughts went through my mind. Yahoo was not able to get an ad platform out the door, so Google ran away with the business. Second, Google has what in my opinion is an insurmountable lead in Web search and is now gunning directly for Microsoft’s liver–the enterprise. And, I am not sure I can accept the assertion of “clear path”. Microsoft has taken runs at Web search before. Microsoft bought Fast Search & Transfer which has a decent Web indexing system and a bit of a problem with Norwegian law enforcement. Microsoft bought Powerset and not done too much with the semantic system yet. I will keep an open mind, but time is running out and demographics are on the side of Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, December 11, 2008
Video Horserace
December 10, 2008
Many Web log wizards are chasing the story about Google’s adding magazine content to its burgeoning commercial database killing service. Old news from my point of view. The GOOG is becoming the go-to service for research with words. In fact, it is game over for Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Ebsco, and others in this professional content sector. Management at these companies can whip up Excel models to prove me wrong, but Google has demographics and infrastructure on its side. Besides I describe the trajectory of word-centric content in my forthcoming Google and Publishing study.
The real action is in video. Anyone under the age of 17 can explain what’s happening in information. Words are okay, but the future is the rich media experience where words are amplified by music. Do you have a soundtrack for your life? My neighbors’ kids do. Do you make pix and vids on your mobile phone and use these to perform communication functions for which I need pencil and paper? Check out the demographics, and you don’t need the flailing New York Times to remind you of trouble when reporting that Harcourt will not publish books for a while.
Consider the comScore video results table here. The handicappers look at the data, which are probably generally on track but off the mark in absolute values, and see that Google is at the top of the table. Google appears to have about 40 percent of the online video traffic measured and analyzed by comScore. So 60 percent of the video traffic is “in play”; that is, other companies can enter the video ballgame and have some room to maneuver. Look at the number two player, Fox Interactive Media. If comScore data are reasonably accurate, Fox has a chokehold on four percent of the videos viewed market. One of the largest media companies in the world has captured four percent of the market and lags Google’s YouTube by 36 percent. The rest of the field perform less well. Hulu.com, the darling of the old TV kingpins, is in the race. Maybe Hulu.com like a marathon runner getting a marvelous second wind can close the gap between Hulu and Google, but I think I will give Google the advantage for now.
Who cares? The action is text, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. YouTube.com could be a major cost sinkhole for Google. If video is expensive for the GOOG, how much of a dent in the bank accounts will video make at outfits like Fox, NBC, and others in the comScore table. Google, for now, seems will to spend to support YouTube.com. As the credit mistral whips through old media, a willingness to spend may winnow the companies in the comScore league table.
Demographics and time, therefore, may give Google an advantage. As pundits gnash their teeth over Google’s overt moves into commercial textual information, Google management is implementing tactics designed to bleed rich media companies, thus weakening them.
Just as the book publishers and other print gurus rolled over into a position of submission to Googzilla, the same fate awaits rich media. Google Books’ growth is old news. The real action is in rich media. The comScore table makes clear to me that the GOOG is poised to destablize more 20th century giants with its 21st century business model. Now tell me why I am incorrect. Facts, please. Catcalls make the geese honk.
Stephen Arnold, December 9, 2008
Enterprise Translation Systems
December 10, 2008
Update: December 14, 2008 I came across Nice Translator at http://www.nicetranslator.com/
Original Post
I received an email from a colleague who wanted to know about translation systems. I fired back an answer, but I thought you might want to have my short list of vendors to peruse. If you run a search on Google for “enterprise translation software”, you get more than 400,000 hits. That’s not too useful. If you want to experiment with free translation services, download this file.
BASIS Technologies licenses its various translation components to a number of search and content processing vendors; for example, Fast Search & Transfer was a customer. BASIS has been a leader in providing machine translation of Arabic and related languages. The Federal government has been a fan of BASIS’s systems. You can get some very specialized translation and language components; for example, a Japanese address analyzer.
Google provides a pretty good translation system. Right now, it is for free, which is a plus. Some of the translation systems shoot into six figures pretty quickly if you pack on the language packs and custom tuning. You can use the Google system by navigating here: http://translate.google.com. You can fiddle around and automate translation, but I have heard that Google monitors its translation system, so if you push too much through the system, the Googlers follow up. You can feed it a line of text or a url.
Language Weaver automated language translation. The company serves digital industries and enterprise customers directly and through strategic partnerships. You can hook this system into other enterprise software. Employees can access documents in their native language.The company recently added new language pairs:
- Bulgarian to/from English
- Hebrew to/from English
- Serbian to/from English
- Thai to/from English
- Turkish to/from English.
Systran has been a player in translation for years. You have to buy Systran’s software. The desktop version works quite well. The enterprise system involves some fiddling, but you can automate the translation and perform some useful operations on the machine-generated files. You can get more information about Systran here. Systran is used for the Babel Fish online translation function in AltaVista.com and Yahoo.
How good are these systems?
None of the systems is perfect. None of the systems translates as well as a human with deep knowledge of the language pairs being translated. However, the speed of these systems and their “good enough” translations can cope with the volume of data flowing into an organization. I use several of these systems. I can get a sense of the document and then turn to a native speaker to clarify the translation.
I have unsubstantiated information that suggests Google has been making considerable progress with their online translation system. Because the system is available without charge, Google is becoming the default system. AltaVista.com still offers an online translation system, but Google has surpassed that system in speed and language pair support. When Google integrates its online translation system with its other enterprise services, I think Google will continue to chew away at the established vendors’ market share. The GOOG, however, seems happy to let customers find their online translation service. The economic downturn may shift the Google into higher gear.
Stephen Arnold, December 10, 2008
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