Microsoft: The Future and a Key Admission of Weakness
September 26, 2008
A Microsoft wizard shared Microsoft’s view of the future of computing. CNet’s Dan Farber does a very good job summarizing the key points. Mr. Farber has included some interesting screen shots. You can read his story “Microsoft’s Mundie Outlines the Future of Computing” here. Tucked away deep in the write up was a comment attributed to Mr. Mundie that caught my attention. Here’s the statement:
Programming tools, which have been a strength of Microsoft, will play a crucial role in the emergence of spatial computing. To create a kind of parallel universe–a cyberspace version of the physical world–everyone has to contribute on a continuous basis, Mundie said. Sensors and users will be generating trillions of bits of data, which requires addressing concurrency and complexity in a more loosely coupled, distributed and asynchronous environment, he said. “Our tools are not designed to address this level of system design,” Mundie explained. “We have to see a paradigm change in the way we write applications.” [Emphasis added]
My research suggests that Google has invested in programming tools. One interesting patent document discloses that JavaScript can be automatically generated. The idea is to free up talented programmers to tackle more substantive tasks. Google’s janitor technology can clean up certain ambiguities by checking methods out of a library, trying them out, and remembering which method worked better. No human programmers required.
Microsoft needs to shift from catch up to leap frog mode. Is it possible that Microsoft is so far behind that despite its best efforts it will be Fox Rental Car to the Hertz of cloud computing? Share buy backs won’t address this value issue in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, September 26, 2008
Battle of the Business Models: The Mobile Front
September 26, 2008
Fresh from the victories in online advertising and Web search, Google is using its auction business model to disrupt the mobile telephony sector. Now patent documents are not products. Compared to IBM or Intel, Google does not run a high output patent factory. Furthermore, some of Google’s several hundred patent documents are interesting but not particularly substantive; for example, the cooling gizmos for Google’s servers.
On September 25, 2008, the USPTO published US20080232574, “Flexible Communication System and Methods.” The abstract for the invention, filed in March 2007, states:
A method of initiating a telecommunication session for a communication device include submitting to one or more telecommunication carriers a proposal for a telecommunication session, receiving from at least one of the one or more of telecommunication carriers a bid to carry the telecommunications session, and automatically selecting one of the telecommunications carriers from the carriers submitting a bid, and initiating the telecommunication session through the selected telecommunication carrier.
In a nutshell, Google has applied its auction methods to mobile telephony. Carriers bid to handle your call. You can read Wired Magazine’s discussion of this invention here. Let me offer several observations:
- The notion of a battle of business models, for me, is quite important. Telcos may find themselves innovating within a closed room. Google innovates outside those boundaries. Those in the room may find themselves conceptually unable to break of their confines. Could this trigger a replay of what’s happening in newspaper advertising?
- The computational infrastructure required to handle mobile call auctions is going to get a work out. Based on my research, no telco has a Google-killing infrastructure in place and on line. Will one or more telcos have the cash to match Google’s ability to compute at scale.
- In my briefings to selected telcos earlier this year, I recall the easy dismissal of Google’s telco dreams. I wonder if those executives are rethinking their earlier position?
With online advertising and Web search in the bag, Google is moving into another business sector with more to come.
Stephen Arnold, September 26, 2008
Knol Understanding
September 23, 2008
Slate’s Farhad Manjoo’s “Why Google’s Online Encyclopedia Will Never Be as Good as Wikipedia” takes a somewhat frosty stance toward Knol. You can read his interesting essay here. For me the most significant point was this one:
Knol is a wasteland of such articles: text copied from elsewhere, outdated entries abandoned by their creators, self-promotion, spam, and a great many old college papers that people have dug up from their files. Part of Knol’s problem is its novelty. Google opened the system for public contribution just a couple months ago, so it’s unreasonable to expect too much of it at the moment; Wikipedia took years to attract the sort of contributors and editors who’ve made it the amazing resource it is now.
Knol is one of those Google products that appear and seem to have little or no overt support. I agree. I would like to make three comments:
- Knol may be a way for Google to get content for itself first and then secondarily for its users. Google wants information, and Knol is a different mechanism for information acquisition. Assuming that it is a Wikipedia may only be partially correct.
- Knol, like many other Google services, does not appear to have a champion. As a result, Knol evolves slowly or not at all. Knol may be another way for Google to determine interest, learn about authors who are alleged experts, and determine if submitted content validates or invalidates other data known to Google.
- Knol may be part of a larger grid or data ecosystem. As a result, looking at it out of context and comparing it to a product with which it may not be designed to compete might be a partially informed approach.
Based on my analysis of the Google JotSpot acquisition and the still youthful Knol service, I’m not prepared to label Knol or describe it as either a success or failure. In my 10pinion, Knol is a multi purpose beta. Its principal value may be in the enterprise, not the consumer space. But for me, I have too little data and an incomplete understanding of how the JotSpot “plumbing” is implemented; therefore, I am neutral. What’s your view?
Stephen Arnold, September 23, 2008
VideoSurf: Video Metasearch
September 23, 2008
I received an invitation to preview VideoSurf, a video metasearch provider, based in San Mateo, California. I tested the system whilst recovering from my wonderful Northwest Airlines flight from Europe to the US of A. When I fired up my laptop with the high speed Verizon service, I couldn’t get the video to run. When I switched to a high speed connection in my office, the search results were snappy and the videos I viewed ran without a hitch. Nice high speed network, Verizon.
The system offers a number of useful features:
- When I misspelled Google, the system offered a “did you mean” to fix up my lousy typing
- A handy checkbox in the left hand column allowed me to exclude certain video sites from the query. I noticed that the “world’s largest video search engine” Blinkx was not included.
- There’s a porn and no porn filter, which you can use to turn on porn. However, when I ran my test query “teen dancing” on the non-porn setting, I got some pretty exciting videos in my result set. I was too tired to watch more than a few seconds of gyrations to conclude that the non porn filter needs some fine tuning.
VideoSurf analyzes the contents of video. Most video search engines work with metadata and close caption information. Googzilla, not surprisingly, has introduced its own technology to index the audio content of files. For now, I thought VideoSurf was useful for general purpose queries. I did not find it as helpful for locating Google lectures at universities or for pinpointing presentations given at various Microsoft events. But it’s early days for the service.
This is what I saw when I ran my test query “Bill Gates”.
The company says here:
VideoSurf has created a better way for users to search, discover and watch online videos. Using a unique combination of new computer vision and fast computation methods, VideoSurf has taught computers to “see” inside videos to find content in a fast, efficient, and scalable way. Basing its search on visual identification, rather than text only, VideoSurf’s computer vision video search engine provides more relevant results and a better experience to let users find and discover the videos they really want to watch. With over 10 billion (and rapidly growing!) visual moments indexed from videos found across the web, VideoSurf allows consumers to visually navigate through their results to easily find the specific scenes, people or moments they most want to see. Users can now spend less time searching and more time being entertained! VideoSurf was founded in 2006 by leading experts in search, computer vision and fast computation technology and aims to become the destination for users looking to find, discover and watch online videos. The company is based in San Mateo, California.
The company was founded by Lior Delgo of FareChase.com fame. The technical honcho is Achi Brandt, who is a certified math whiz. The rest of the company’s management team is here.
The service merits a closer look.
Stephen Arnold, September 23, 2008
Google Yahoo: A Contrarian’s View
September 21, 2008
In high school, I would get into trouble by asking, “What if we look at this idea from a different point of view?” My high school teachers were kindly but not too eager to listen to a question and then a suggestion that their world view was out of kilter. I am not sure why I developed this habit of mind, but I learned when I got to my first real job at Halliburton (Nuclear Utility Services), I discovered that the nuclear physicists and mathematicians that made up 80 percent of the unit liked my approach. Instead of ignoring me or putting my desk in the hall as my high school teach Miss Sperling did, these guys and gals would light up light up like white LEDs and dig in, intellectually speaking.
After reading Randall Stross’s analysis here, I felt he was on the roight track for 180 degree thinking, but he was hitting the snow covered peaks, ignoring the basalt layers on which his big idea rests. Then I read with enjoyment Michael Arrington’s “Why the Google Yahoo Ad Deal Is Something Fear.” You can read that essay here. Not only did I enjoy his writing, several of his points resonated with me. Nevertheless, my contrarian approach levered both of these astute gentlemen’s comments into several ideas that are rotated a few degrees from each’s positions.
First, the barn is on fire. It’s burning fast. The horses gone. The hay is burning fiercely and the Harrod’s Creek fire engine aided by fire engines from elsewhere can’t douse the flames. So the fire fighting professionals hose some bushes, squirt water on the roof of an adjoining building, and watch the barn burn. My view is that Google was ignored in the period from 1995 to 1998 when Messrs. Brin and Page were fooling around with BackRub. Then in the period from 1998 to 2004, some smart money urged the Googlers and their small cohort of former DEC / AltaVista.com, Bell Labs, and Sun Microsystems’ colleagues forward. When the IPO loomed, Google settled with Yahoo for about a billion dollars. Yahoo realized that Google had learned from early GoTo.com, Overture.com, and other ad efforts. Instead of reinventing the stone wheel, Google had vulcanized a Michelin radial. Clumsy metaphor but if you have a stone wheel and your friendly competitor has Michelins you have limited choices. Yahoo sued and elected to keep using stone wheels. The result is that Yahoo has the kind of choice that BF Goodrich gives NASCAR teams. Use our tires or don’t race. Works in auto racing, and it is working in online advertising.
Who wants to stand in front of this and slow down this bullet train?
Second, Google really doesn’t “sell” advertising. Like the local utility monopoly or the local water company, you can sign up for power and water or spend your money drilling a geothermal hole, erecting solar panels, and buying Evian by the truck load. Google is a service, and if the users and the advertisers did not want to make whoopie, there’s not much Google can do about it. In fact, legislating to company dependent on Google traffic that it can no longer advertise is probably one of those remarkable opportunities to explore the law of unintended consequences in detail. I don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet a government paenl or regulatory committee who has a solid grasp that Google is a giant digital computer. Ad matching and users searching are just applications. If Google removes these functions, develoeprs can use Google’s APIs to build their own systems and Google can charge a fee and take a piece of the action. The result? No changes and maybe even more money for Google because there is a great deal of interest in tapping into Google traffic.
Oh, My. Google Personal News
September 21, 2008
Newspapers worldwide no longer ignore Google. Nope. The “kill more trees” crowd sees the LCD message. The GOOG does news. If you have not explored Google’s personal news service, here’s the url http://news.google.com.my/news
The Star Online here has a good summary of what the service delivers to users worldwide. The Star is published in Malaysia. Users in more than 48 countries can use the service in the country’s native language. If you find a story you can’t read, you can use Google Translate to sort out the meaning here.
After some clicking you can configure a nifty summary of what’s happened in the last 36 hours. Some headlines turn up more quickly, but for the personalized topics that I track, Google lags me by about eight hours. Your mileage may vary.
There are no advertisements on the Personal News page that I could spot. Even Google seems reluctant to jab more digital lances into the media bulls’ necks. What’s interesting is that I can replicate most of the Google functionality with other free services. What sets the GOOG’s service apart is the easy to use configuration tool and the speed with which headlines, images, and snippets render on my cheap laptop in Utrecht via a snagged, open WiFi signal.
Will the global media titans be able to stop Googzilla? In my opinion, the media titans are about 10 years too late and Googleplex of technology savvy short. But, just for goose fun, let’s assume that the newspaper titans get this Google News “my” service turned off. Here’s a scenario for you:
Google offers to share revenue for stories posted by freelance journalists, retired journalists, or Web log people whom Google certifies. Slap a few ad slots on the “my” page and call it a day.
I know many people love Yahoo News. I have a personal Yahoo news page, and I find headlines that don’t update, weird configuration tools that don’t give me control, and a content selection function that makes me do too much work. The standard news page features weird pop ups, which I dislike, and the tab that I have to select to see stories from services that are not featured. In the last year, I have learned to put up with Yahoo and love newsreaders. Now “my” Google News is flirting with me.
In this scenario, three constituencies may have some trouble:
- The media titans are in for a long slog through a revenue Sahara
- Web 2.0 newsreader providers may have to do some additional work
- Yahoo, long number one in Web news, may face some competition
Check out the “my” service. I used to work for a traditional newspaper which was purchased by a global media titan. After watching the daily news hole shrink, talented journalists fired, and the paper chopped down to the size of a legal pad, I must say, “Well, dudes, you are in a bit of a pickle now.” Chuckle. Chuckle.
Stephen Arnold, September 22, 2008
Google: Unchrome Chrome’s Tracking Functions
September 20, 2008
Silicon.com has a useful article “Google Browser’s Tracking Feature Alarms Developers, Privacy Advocates” about Google Chrome. The writer Elise Ackerman references the browser’s “phoning home” feature. But the most important item in the write up is the unearthing of a piece of software that can be used, she asserts, to blunt some of Google’s usage tracking functions. She writes:
I firmly believe that it is better to have control over your own privacy without having to trust that Google doesn’t do anything bad with your data,” said Sven Abels, president of Abelssoft, a software company in Delmenhorst, Germany, that is offering free downloads of its UnChrome software.
This download link worked for me at 5 18 am Utrecht on September 20, 2008. I have not tested this script, so use it at your own risk. More information about Google’s tracking, ad injection technology, and usage data models appear in various Google technical papers and documents available from the USPTO. I included a description of some of the Google methods in my 2005 study The Google Legacy, which is still available from the publisher here. Usage tracking is a bit of old news given new life because of Google’s Chrome release. Chrome, as I noted in my speech on Thursday afternoon at the Hartmann Conference, is perceived as a browser. In my opinion it is an umbilical that connects any computing device to the Google data centers. The computing device and its operating system are little more than booster rockets that get the user into Google orbit.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
HP Gets Googley
September 20, 2008
The story in InfoWorld “HP Applies Google Model to New Storage System” marks a turning point in vendors of expensive, brand name iron. You can read the story by Mikael Ricknas here. For me the most important point in the article was:
Hewlett-Packard’s ExDS storage system is an online content repository that will cost less than $2 per gigabyte or $2,000 per terabyte.
HP sells significant amounts of hardware to Microsoft. At this bargain basement price, HP must think it can make money on what may be knife edge margins. As important, Hewlett Packard appears to be emulating Google’s approach to storage. Google’s technical papers reveal significant details about its storage methods five years ago. If you read between the lines, Google references its storage techniques in its discussion of other Google innovations.
The HP technology could assist Microsoft and other companies wrestling with storage. I wonder if Google has improved its storage methods in the same 60 month interval. Catching up to where Google was won’t provide a substantive payoff over the long term.
Can HP innovate to leap frog Google? Let me know your thoughts?
Stephen Arnold, September 19, 2008
Google and Government Content
September 19, 2008
In the furor over Google’s growing share of the search market and the GOOG’s decision to move forward with its Yahoo ad deal, I can’t fault anyone for overlooking this Federal Computer Week article. “The Search Mandate” by FCW’s John S. Monroe is a brief but important comment about Google. You can read the September 15, 2008, item here. Google, according to Mr. Monroe, does a better job of indexing US government information than the US government. For those unaware of the Government Information Locator Service or GILS, this 1994 initiative was supposed to market it easy to find US government information. The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) is killing the program. The reason is that Google and other commercial search engines do a better job than the US government. For most people, the idea that a service like Google’s government search here or the Microsoft-Vivisimo service here or even the little known Yahoo service available by limiting the query to the Dot Gov domain here are better than the Federal government’s home grown GILS is obvious.
For me, this announcement triggered several thoughts. I want to outline these so I don’t have them slip away, and you may want to comment on my opinion about this GILS dead end.
- The scope of the Google government index, based on my test queries, seems broader than the indexes of either Yahoo or Microsoft-Vivisimo. Even queries run on the Department of Energy Web site, indexed by a third party engine, perform less well for me than the same queries run on Google’s government index. Try it yourself. Among my test queries were “ECCS”, “nuclear fuel pool”, and “SWU”. Let me know what you find out.
- The bread and butter of high end professional information services is indexing content from various courts, government agencies, and related sources such as routine documentation about specific programs. Companies generating revenue by indexing public information and adding metadata include LexisNexis (a British Dutch outfit) and Thomson Reuters (Canadian and American). These outfits could witness an increasing erosion of their revenue as knowledge about the usefulness of ad supported or free search services’ ability to offer the same data without the big price tag.
- Useful tools such as those available from Yahoo, for example, make it easy for savvy developers to integrate government information with other services. These mash ups may create more useful ways to look at Economic Research Service data, the reports available from the Department of Commerce, and procurement needs of local, country, state, and Federal entities. Such services would have broader ripple effects than making it easier and cheaper for an attorney to locate a court document.
I have not figured out how important or unimportant the GILS decision is. My hunch is that unless Microsoft and Yahoo can do a better job of indexing US government information, Google may well dominate this information sector as it now dominates Web search. With advertisers and newspapers pawing the ground about the Google Yahoo deal, perhaps some folks smarter than I might want to consider the implications of Google being the primary way to locate government data. A server glitch in such circumstances might make it tough for government workers or citizens to find what they are seeking. The Library of Congress, the individual executive agencies, and various quasi-government organizations seem unable to make their content available and searchable in a comprehensive and timely way. There may be enough Federal employees to print out documents and go through them by hand. A fine kettle of fish is that scenario.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2008
The Google Zeitgeist Bomb Shell
September 18, 2008
News accounts of the Messrs Brin, Page, and Schmidt at the Google Zeitgeist announcement are playing second fiddle to the cratering of the US financial sector. I’m tempted to link to the Associated Press stories, but I won’t. Who wants to be sued when newspapers are in a death spiral, and their house pet are trying to keep their noses out of a sea of red ink.
I’m watching the news flicker across my laptop screen, and most of the stories are about Google hooking up with GE for “green energy.” I ignored this story because Google’s floating data centers remind me of nuclear plant cooling technology. GE knows about these efficient cooling systems, and it struck me that Google’s floating data center patent was a retake on what the utility industry has been doing for decades. There’s a fascination with Google Android and the snubbing of the Apple iPhone for the nifty street imaging. There is a rehashing of Google and Yahoo working to explain that their tie up won’t make much difference in Web advertising. I liked Steve Shankland’s story “Google’s Schmidt: Full Steam Ahead Yahoo Ad Deal”, although the headline is not smooth. You should read his take here.
My take on all this is that the major message from the Zeitgeist hoe down is simple:
We are doing what we want.
I think that focusing on the frippery does me little good. Google is moving forward at increasing speed to leverage its competitive advantages. Whether regulators, competitors, or ad associations are unhappy with the GOOG warrants one of those math club dismissals. Zeitgeist’s meaning for me is, “We are the commercial equivalent of the control exercised by Qin Shi Huan’s ecosystem. Don’t remember who this fellow was? Click here. Think Google dynasty. Agree? Disagree? Share your metaphors.
Stephen Arnold, September 18, 2008
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