Microsoft and Search in a Time Warp
November 2, 2008
In grade school in Illinois, I recall learning the meaning of the word anachronistic. For some reason, the explanation has stuck with me for more than 55 years. The teacher, Miss Chessman, told the class, “Ancient Greeks did not have an alarm clock.” The idea is that if you mix up when things occur, you run the risk of creating the equivalent of a dog’s breakfast.
My newsreader delivered CIO Magazine’s “Search Will Outshine KM” by Mike Altendorf to read. I don’t know Mr. Altendorf, and I have to admit that I disagree with a couple of the points he makes in this two part article, which you can read here. I am a tired goose, and I don’t want to trigger a squabble in the barn yard. I do want to point out where Mr. Altendorf and I part company.
First, the notion of search outshining KM is not something I have thought much about. KM is mostly baloney, one of those “trends” that promise much and deliver little that one can measure. When I watch intelligent people leaving one company for another, no software system captures what that person knows. IBM is trying to prevent a chip designer from leaving Big Blue to join Apple. If KM worked, IBM wouldn’t take such extreme action to prevent a person from changing jobs. That’s KM for you. It doesn’t deliver. And search? It is, in general, not too helpful either. In fact, search is one of the few software systems to engender a dissatisfaction rate among its users of 60 to 70 percent. In my opinion, search outshining KM is a silly assertion, and one that makes it seem that one lousy system can deliver information better than another lousy system. Both search and KM work best when applied to specific problems and bounded by realistic expectations and budgets.
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Second, the reference to Microsoft’s acquisition of Fast Search and Transfer and Powerset is startling. First, Mr. Altendorf makes no reference to the police action in Oslo that threatens to undermine the credibility of the Fast Search technology, finances, and executives. Second, Powerset is not complement to Fast Search technology for two reasons: [a] Powerset technology is part of the Live.com service and has not to my knowledge been hooked to the Fast Search system at this time and [b] notion that Microsoft can “tie together” disparate technologies is out of touch with reality. Let me be clear. Microsoft has compatibility issues within its own product families; specifically, SharePoint and the Dynamics range of software. When you toss in the Fast Search conglomeration of original code, the bits of open source Fast Search has used in its system, and the technology from the acquisitions Fast Search made prior to its purchase by Microsoft, you have quite a bit of integrating to do. Now add the Powerset original code with the licensed technology from Xerox Parc, and you have even more work. Microsoft’s units can’t make the ribbon interface consistent across Outlook, Word, and Visio in Office 2007. Mr. Altendorf’s blithely reassures me that Microsoft can work out these incongruities. I beg to differ.
Brainware: Nailing a Big Deal
October 31, 2008
Brainware won’t reveal the name of its client, but the “diversified energy company” bought $2.6 million worth of Brainware technology in October 2007. Brainware explains that this is a “follow on contract”. This size of this deal moves Brainware into Autonomy and Endeca territory, two vendors noted for their ability to land large search and content processing deals. Brainware describes itself as a vendor of “intelligent data capture and enterprise search solutions.” The firm offers what is called “end to end” solutions. Like OpenText and ZyLab, Brainware can put in place scanning and content capture and conversion systems, indexing, content processing, and information access tools. The idea is that paper or digital information goes in at one end of the system and the user can access that content at the other. You can read an interview with one of the Brainware executives here. I profiled the company in Beyond Search, published by the Gilbane Group. More information about that study is here.
According to the Brainware news release here:
This private sector oil company is deploying Brainware Distiller as a front-end data capture solution in conjunction with its global ERP rollout. The Brainware Distiller solution will process millions of invoice pages per year from more than a hundred different countries through their shared services centers located across Europe and the U.S.
A happy quack to the Brainware team. Now, what’s next for the Ashburn, Virginia, company? If you haven’t sold Halliburton, maybe you should aim for Shell or BP next? I found the announcement interesting because Brainware is associated with eDiscovery, not enterprise search, in my mind. Like Recommind, Brainware seems to be making an effort to penetrate new markets with its patented technology for information processing.
Stephen Arnold, October 30, 2008
Dead Trees–Cracking and Falling
October 29, 2008
I commented on the deal between Google and publishers here. I won’t retrace my thoughts. I would like to point to two news stories that presage what will happen in what I fondly call the “dead tree” business. “Dead tree” equates with paper. The “dead tree” people are those who print information on paper. Whether a newspaper or a conference organizer or a magazine publisher, the “dead tree” business model is suffering an ecosystem collapse.
Now the two news stories:
- The New York Times, PaidContent.org, and others reported that Time Inc. is reorganizing and chopping down 600 employees. Once getting a job at Time meant employment for a long time. Heck, the company has been trying to organize its photo collection for half a century. I think these layoffs will be little more than tender spring shoots in a riot of efflorescence. Summer, spring, then fall, if you get my metaphor.
- The Christian Science Monitor, according Business Week, the Washington Post, and others, is killing its daily print edition. I don’t recall a weekend edition, but I may be wrong. Whatever. The newspaper industry is waking up to the reality of the new era in publishing. I imagine the clay cuneiform crowd in Babylonia reacted the same way when folks turned up with papyrus scrolls. Goes with the territory in the information world.
Let me summarize several points that I have been dancing around in a goosey boogie:
First, the reason dead tree businesses are in trouble is that the business model no longer works. Costs are part of the problem. The Internet, as I wrote in my monograph “Publishing on the Internet: A New Medium for a New Millennium” (Infonortics Ltd., 1996), operates on different gears and levers than mashing ink on paper and selling ads. Alas, the monograph is no longer in print. It was one of my last dead tree studies. My new work is digital. I made the switch years ago.
Second, the demographics are against dead tree operations. I read books. I subscribe to four newspapers. I gave up on the Financial Times because the UK based outfit could not even mail the paper to me on a regular basis. The 12-year-old next door doesn’t look at newspapers. The junk mail and the newspapers go straight into la poubelle. Not a glace she gives them. Newspapers to her are the equivalent of baloney from charities, pizza delivery outfits, and yard service operators looking for work in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky.
Third, the content is not longer intermediated by gatekeepers in New York, London, Madrid, and Paris. When Time nukes people, that action creates a number of new bloggers. The result is that there are more people motivated to generate content. We just tallied the numbers of Web logs, calculating about 120 million Web logs, with a confidence of 15 percent. Google alone has more than 80 Web logs. How can a handful of people keep pace with this outpouring of information in digital, crunchy formats. Dead trees don’t do audio and video. My neighbor’s daughter disposes of the newspapers with ear buds stuffed into her ears. The Craigslist.org listings for Louisville have eviscerated the Courier Journal & Louisville Times where I once worked, quite happily until the take over by Gannett in 1986.
Bottomline: will the intellectual foresters who print fungible information products figure out how to save the rain forest, or will these folks like the deer and squirrels here in Kentucky rush across the interstate when “developers” run bulldozers over the land to make way for new condos. Man, there are a lot of dead squirrels and deer on the roads near my log cabin. I will wait and see and be very careful cross the road.
What’s this have to do with search? When I cross the road, I check my Google Maps. You can’t find much information using my high school library. I checked last time I was in central Illinois.
Stephen Arnold, October 29, 2008
Authors, Orphaned Books, and the Kinder, Gentler Googzilla
October 29, 2008
On October 28, 2008, Google’s posted on “The Official Google Blog” a summary of a deal to assuage some of those aggrieved–even threatened–by Google’s Book Search service. You must read the posting here. Right from the git go, the Google Web log reminds me that Google’s founders wanted to make information in books available to the world. (I now see a red applause sign flashing in my addled goose brain.) Next I am reminded how Google Book Search helped millions, including those curious about the physics of Star Trek and wood carvings in English churches. (I feel a goosely tear in my eye.) Finally, the announcement:
This agreement is truly groundbreaking in three ways. First, it will give readers digital access to millions of in-copyright books; second, it will create a new market for authors and publishers to sell their works; and third, it will further the efforts of our library partners to preserve and maintain their collections while making books more accessible to students, readers and academic researchers. The agreement also resolves lawsuits that were brought against Google in 2005 by a group of authors and publishers, along with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers (AAP). While Google, the Authors Guild and the AAP have disagreed on copyright law, we have always agreed about the importance of creating new ways for users to find books and for authors and publishers to get paid for their works.
The story has ignited that part of the blogosphere not transfixed by the Microsoft demo of Windows 7. One of the more interesting analyses is Richard Koman’s write up for ZDNet. “Will Google Book Settlement Solve Orphan Works?” is here. An orphan is a title that no publisher can squeeze money from without pulling a Penguin. Those are titles recycled in homogeneous covers and offered up to students with a preface by an expert in medieval literature or a specialist in the early writings of James Joyce. For me, the most interesting comment was this statement:
According to Google, the deal with be great for everyone.
My take on this deal is that Google is deciding to make peace with publishers. Since the tie up with the abstracting colossus Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Googlers are figuring out that publishers own communication channels that can grouse, complain, and make life generally miserable for the math club denizens. So, now there’s a revenue sharing deal.
I have several observations that are, of course, my own opinions:
- Publishers are now in the lair of the GOOG. The scent of money has brought them into the Googleplex. Once inside, it will be like the Hotel California.
- Google has made a tactical move. My thought process generates one question, “What’s next?”
- Google is ever so close to becoming a publisher. When will the company reveal its content assembly invention by Andrew Hogue and others. Google can slice and dice content, whip up a report, and sell it with a marketing mechanism that puts network TV in the 1950s to share.
I am thrilled for the publishers. I am happy for libraries. I guess I am excited about people curious about wood carvings in British churches. Only art and architecture students seem to visit the churches in Malmesbury, where I stay each year, but that’s a small sample. But most of all, I am thrilled for myself because the GOOG is going with the flow. I think once the euphoria dies down, it will be Nelly, bar the door. Google’s going to generate new information constructs and share the millions with the publishers eating in the Google cafeteria.
Stephen Arnold, October 29, 2008
ZipLocal: Another Search Engine in Red Ink
October 29, 2008
ZipLocal, according to the Canadian Press here, continues to lose money. ZipLocal is a local search engine. The company was founded in 2006 and focuses on Canadian cities. The content is available in English and French. The company was formed as a result of the merger of redCity Search Company and Zip411.net. The company says:
ZipLocal provides relevant search results from over 1.3million businesses with maps and capability for users to review, rate and tag business listings. ZipLocal is focused on creating the most comprehensive and engaging search experience at the neighborhood and city-wide level… ZipLocal is the only “made in Canada” local search site to successfully bridge a traditional business directory with the consumer-generated input required to be the next go-to search destination.
For me, the most interesting comment in the Canadian Press article was:
The full-year loss was $6.3-million, nine cents a share, compared with a prior-year loss of $6.3-million, 14 cents per share. Revenue was $4-million, down from $5.7-million.
Consistent losses and declining revenues are disappointments for investors. Beyond Search will root for ZipLocal. Let’s hope the company gets back on track, avoiding the fate of Entopia, Delphes, and the other companies I’ve suggested are struggling to survive in the search, content processing, and text mining market. Competing with Google Local is tough. Google’s free service allows a business to post information about the business and a coupon for free. Ah, the GOOG, and it’s not a directory publisher, right?
Stephen Arnold, October 30, 2008
Google and Viacom: Legal Fancy Dancing
October 29, 2008
John Letzing’s “Google Turns Tables on Viacom’s Copyright Cop” is a must read. The story appeared in MarketWatch on October 27, 2008. You can find the full text here. The hook for the story is that Viacom’s copyright analysis service, a firm called Bay TSP, has itself become a issue in the legal matter. Mr. Letzing navigates the legal thickets gracefully. I have simplified the Google thrust as pinning Bay TSP like an insect on a pin. For me the most interesting comment in Mr. Letzing’s write up was:
In its filing, Google complains that BayTSP “remained silent” about the infringement of Viacom’s content on YouTube for a months-long period in late 2006 — then deluged it with more than 100,000 requests to take down infringing material in a single day as a prelude to Viacom’s lawsuit. Google says that it has unsuccessfully negotiated on its own behalf with BayTSP during the past year for the release of its internal documents. “The need for court intervention has become obvious,” Google says in a court filing
Remaining silent is a fancy way of suggesting that Bay TSP did not disclose information when requested through normal legal procedures. When Bay TSP did not cooperate, Google took legal action.
In the big legal matter with Viacom, Google’s position is that it is not in the business of figuring out what videos may or may not violate copyright as users upload videos at the rate of one million a month, which may be a bogus figure. When a potential copyright violation is brought to Google’s attention, Google removes the video. Google’s position as I understand it is that the GOOG complies with applicable copyright regulations. Viacom says Google does not and wants $1.0 billion from Google.
I am finishing a monograph about Google as a publisher. On one hand, I understand the respective viewpoints of Google and Viacom. On the other hand, I think there are a number of examples of Google’s activities in publishing. I am not an attorney, not employed by Google, and not working on this matter for Viacom. I am sitting in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, thinking about Mr. Letzing’s article.
My conclusion: the GOOG is a clever beastie. But this is a skirmish. The decisive battle is yet to be fought.
Stephen Arnold, October 29, 2008
Microsoft Fast Want a Search Health Check
October 28, 2008
Obscured by the roll out of Azure, the Microsoft cloud made it hard to spot a new survey. A happy quack to a savvy reader in the UK for this information. If you did not get an invitation to this “The Health of Enterprise Search”, click here, and you ca participate. The survey engine is Zoomerang’s or Market Tools. I did not want to spend much time figuring out whom Microsoft Fast hired for this important data collection effort. I was more interested in the 11th questions which asks about vendors and then provides no guidance to the survey participant.
The invitation says,
Search has come a long way over the past 10 years, and many organizations are now using Search to improve customer experience, drive innovation, manage risk, reduce costs, build communities and share intelligence. We would like to hear your opinions on the Health of Enterprise Search and its impact on business performance by asking you to complete this 12 question on-line survey.
I would agree. In a decade Fast Search & Transfer dumped its advertising and Web indexing business, leaving the field clear for Google. Fast Search then asserted that it would become the world’s leader in enterprise search. Autonomy objected and turned in financial reports that made clear that Fast Search was not the only dog in the kennel. By 2007, Google outperformed Fast Search and, based on my data, surpassed Autonomy as well. Fast Search had a lousy 2007 and sold out to Microsoft in April 2008. In October 2008, Microsoft Fast started one day with several Norwegians with police authority. The police gathered up “evidence” of alleged wrong doing. Yes, it’s been an eventful decade.
Sometime in 2006 I concluded that enterprise search was dead. And, if not dead, enterprise search was not in the best of condition. Now, two years later, Microsoft Fast is doing a search health check. I find this remarkable.
Stephen Arnold, October 28, 2008
Amazon’s iTunes Like Interface
October 28, 2008
Amazon has developed a new interface. You can read the news story on TechCrunch here. The graphical presentation is intended to make it easier and more fun to browse Amazon’s products. Jason Kinkaid’s article does a very good job of explaining the features of this interface. For me, the most important comment in the write up was:
The site seems geared towards shoppers who are just looking for ideas, as there isn’t a search feature. Users can scroll through the site using their arrow keys, zooming in on individual products by hitting the spacebar. Each product includes a demo video (in the case of movies, songs, and video games) or an excerpt (from books).
I have often asserted that search is dead. I did not say that search was not useful. Amazon believes it has cracked the code on information retrieval without asking the user to type in the title of a book or an author’s name. Amazon wants to be a combination of Apple and Google. Amazon may have to keep trying to manage this transition.
Stephen Arnold, October 28, 2008
The Metabolism Metaphor
October 27, 2008
The New York Times’ article “To Survive, Net Start Ups Slow Their Metabolism” is one of those news stories that summarize a trend and give us a metaphor to guide our thinking. You can read for a while the full text of the story here. NYT’s articles may require registration or a fee to view after a story’s initial publication. The author is Brad Stone with assistance from Claire Cain Miller. For me, the most important item in the article is the metaphor of slashing staff in order to slow down a new venture. Almost as interesting to me was this comment:
The only certainty in Silicon Valley is that survival is quickly becoming more challenging. The growth in online display advertising, which helps fuel the new Internet ecosystem, is declining. Venture capitalists and other investors in start-ups, like hedge funds, are cutting back. The market for initial public offerings remains closed and potential acquirers — Google, Yahoo and the rest — are deep in their own problems. Many entrepreneurs and deal makers agree that a shake-out is indeed coming. Venture capitalists have begun preaching frugality, urging the start-ups they have invested in to cut costs and get profitable. Their advice shares themes: cut employees, do not count on raising more money and move quickly.
These actions have been well document. The Yahoo staff reduction made headlines when it was a rumor not a fact. The Hewlett Packard job chop is in the neighborhood of 20,000, but it hasn’t had the visibility of Yahoo’s retrenchment.
Do we need reminding that cutting funds, reducing staff, and spending less is prudent when credit is not readily available? The New York Times thinks we do need reminding. Judging from the flurry of comments about this article, many other people agree. We have a new metaphor, and I want to jot down my thoughts before they slip away:
- I am troubled by the metabolism metaphor. Without sufficient nourishment, perhaps weaker organizations will die. In the Darwinian environment of information, perhaps this is a good thing. Certainly the individuals affected are adversely affected. The larger benefit is that the survivors survive. I need to think about this more because the speed with which an organization fails may not change its chances for survival.
- The euphoria of the early years of the Internet fizzled when business models were in short supply in the 2000-2001 period. Exogenous shocks accelerated the thinning of the herd. Companies surviving included Amazon and Google. Now another round of thinning seems to be underway. The metaphor of metabolism does not stretch to cover this winnowing and no belt tightening will slow what seems to be happening to good ideas that can’t generate cash.
- Metabolism strikes me as an organic process. The problems of GM and Chrysler have broader economic implications than cut backs in smaller firms with little or no footprint outside of their investors’ sneakers. GM and Chrysler face problems that defies a metaphor. In my opinion, I think that Microsoft’s online initiative to “catch” Google and Yahoo’s decline present challenges for which we need a different metaphor.
I am no poet, and I don’t have an easy way to relate the problems facing information centric companies with a clever analogy. When I think about the dominance of Google, my hunch is that the companies facing metabolic problems may be saddled with a flawed business model and technology (in its broadest sense) that is out of step with the opportunities that do exist.
The problem for me is that the type of shift that Google represents has not been fully understood and internalized by organizations within the content processing sector and outside of that sector. The basic management policy of reducing transaction costs and making rapid innovation a matter of low incremental cost with short product and service release cycles is lacking. In the emergent commercial world, companies lacking this management philosophy cannot be saved by a metabolism change. The companies need something more significant, perhaps the management equivalent of genetic engineering?
Stephen Arnold, October 27, 2008
Google: Supranational Company, Emerging Nation State
October 27, 2008
A very amused and cheerful quack to the reader in the Eastern Mediterranean who sent me some useful snippets about Russia and online. I want to capture these before my flakey email system nukes the information. Gentle reader, you may want to go elsewhere if you loathe Russia or simply don’t care much about the policies of nation states. Keep in mind that this Web log is a diary and opinion drop point for me. Let me run down the items provided by my sun baked correspondent and then conclude with some comments, again designed for me to capture my thoughts on October 26, 2008.
Set Up
In Google Version 2.0 I expanded on the argument I introduced in my 2005 study The Google Legacy. In a nutshell, I presented information to support my notion that Google was not perceived correctly by competitors or regulators. The kindergarten colors and lava lamps filed down the claws of the company’s technological trajectory. Heck, Google is about Web search and online advertising. The general consensus was in 2005, “What me worry?” Flash forward to October 2008, and I think we see that publishers, telephony companies, and enterprise software vendors understand that Google is exerting some “strange force”. Most executives can’t put their finger on what Google is doing. The view is that Google is just too darned diffused, chaotic, and unbusiness like to figure out. A recent book characterizes Google as a planet. I don’t think that’s a useful analogy. The metaphor connotes bigness, but it misses the organic nature of how Google is a transformative entity. It’s not a planet; Google is an information applications platform that could alter how traditional businesses operate. Moving operations out of a location and into a barge holding servers outside the three mile limit poses some interesting challenges for Google’s competitors and opponents.
The metaphor that comes to mind is a mesh that wraps the earth. The mesh is a meta layer that puts competitors inside a planet sized drift net. Competitors can’t get away from Google. Competitors–even countries–are within Google. I see this as a Google mesh, something like this:
Source: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9/topic/com.ibm.db2.udb.spatial.doc/g7nation.gif
There is now a general discomfort triggered by Google’s trajectory is causing regulators to dig in their boot heels. The messages sent by different regulatory groups are confused, almost on again and off again. Google continues to do what it wants. The company appears to be tolerating regulatory and legal issues, but in general the company continues to move forward like gas diffusing through a closed space. You can’t pin down where the molecules are going, but the molecules are distributing themselves and each continues to wag its tail and do interesting things.
I am now thinking about Google’s buying a jet fighter. Information is here.
Insight into Why Google Wants to Acquire In Country Operations
My questions to myself are: “Does this allow a new loophole for Google in China after the acquisition of Yahoo? And is this the strategy behind the attempt to acquire Begun in Russia?” These were stimulated by Lindsay Eastwood’s “Don’t Be Evil: Google Faces the Chinese Internet Market and the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007” in the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology This is an academic write up and you can read it here. For me, the key passage was:
“…many U.S. Internet companies do not own their Chinese counterparts, but operate through local owners. One of the four main targets of the legislation, Yahoo! Inc., runs its China operations through Alibaba.com, of which it owns only a 40% stake. As a result, Yahoo! could find itself unaffected by the Act and its work in China immune from liability. Google operates its Google.cn business under a license owned by a local company, Ganji.com, but the precise nature of the relationship between the two entities has not been made public.”
My thought is that this in-country strategy may be a way to deal with certain business barriers to expansion inside of other countries.
- Two further quotes from Eastwood demonstrate intent and ethical confusion in equally opposite ethical directions:
“Choosing to ignore U.S. Internet speech violations while enacting legislation that would target similar activities abroad may seem overly hypocritical” (p.311) - “…The vast majority of Internet searches in China are for local Chinese content such as local news, local businesses, weather, games and entertainment, travel information,blogs, etc.—Google, Inc. determined that the ethical balance tipped in favor of the introduction of the new [censored or filtered ]site. Indeed, Schrage testified that Google estimated that fewer than 2% of all queries in China would result in pages from which search results would be unavailable due to filtering [out results].” (p.303)
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