Google’s Schmidt on Google as an Application Platform
July 24, 2008
TechCrunch’s Eric Schonfeld’s “Liveblogging Eric Schmidt Google Interview at Brainstorm” snagged my attention. You can read the full text of his write up here. The document is also available on the TechCrunch.com Web site.
The points of interest to me were:
- Mr. Schmidt: Because of the way technology works, all the technology companies are aggregating information about people. It is a political debate.
- Mr. Schmidt: The most interesting next-generation social apps will be mobile.
- Mr. Schmidt: The easiest [way] for us to enter the enterprise is to address high pain levels like e-mail, messaging, calendaring.We have something like a million companies using these services, mostly small. My view is that it will be a many-year process…
What did I learn?
First, Google is explicitly describing itself as an application platform.
Second, usage data is the common denominator among technology companies. Aggregation is underway and the stern wake is political process. The data collection continues, of course. Politics has to play catch up to reality.
Third, mobile is a big deal. That’s for sure. Google has been beavering away on mobile technology for at least nine years.
Finally, Google is dead serious about the enterprise. Over a span of years, Google’s winning the hearts and minds of today’s students is an important part of Google’s being pulled into organizations.
The summer of transparency is yielding some useful insights into Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, July 24, 2008
Knol: Encyclopedia or Brain Food for the Googleplex
July 23, 2008
Jason Kincaid does a fine job summarizing the Knol launch. He characterizes Google’s new service as “the monetizable Wikipedia” for TechCrunch. There’s a lot of repetition floating around, and you will do well to read this take on the new Google service here.
I want to identify a key point in Mr. Kincaid’s write up and then offer a different view of the service. Be aware: I will be expressing an opinion based on the research I conducted for my studies about Google. My angle of attack, therefore, is different from those who are viewing the service as a Wikipedia clone or killer.
The key point in Mr. Kincaid’s essay for me was:
The big news here is that by assigning ownership and allowing authors to include AdSense ads on their articles, Google is effectively offering a monetary incentive to create good content. In theory, the best articles will get the most attention, and in turn the most revenue. Unfortunately, this plan may backfire on Google. We’re going to start seeing a flurry of articles on the most popular content…
Dead on target.
The obvious question is, “Does Google know that many people will write about hot topics?” This will create duplicate information which will be tough for a 7th grader to figure out.
My take on this concentration on hot topics is that Know is not an encyclopedia. Knol is a mechanism to add information to the Google knowledge bases. Why does Google give away free voice directory assistance? The reason is that Google is building its knowledge base of morphemes.
Knol is another nozzle on the Google vacuum cleaner of data. What better way to approach disambiguation than to have a flow of content from known contributors, data from user behavior, and pools of information on popular subjects. The system also shakes the bugs out of the JotSpot plumbing that lurks somewhere in the bowels of Knol.
Knol is important. Knol could become an encyclopedia. But Knol pays dividends to Googzilla in many ways. In my opinion, the data Knol produces are more important than some of the other features highlighted by the many people writing about this service.
Stephen Arnold, July 23, 2008
Google Does Yahoo-Style Math
July 23, 2008
Not long ago, a Yahoo guru opined that building a Web search system cost about $300 million. I made a feeble attempt to point out that if that were indeed true, Yahoo would have accomplished the task and not collected search engines the way my mother adds to her collection of knickknacks. Similarly, Microsoft would not have bought Powerset, Fast Search & Transfer, and football-field sized data centers. I think the Yahoo math in that essay which you can read here was 1 + 1 = 3 bazillion. A bazillion is a technical term favored by the mathematical challenged. You can read about Yahoo math here.
Now, Fortune, sponsor of the Brainstorm Tech conference that featured the Beavis and Butt-head analysis I noted yesterday, offers another number. This time the number is $100 million and the person doing the calculation is Google’s employee #12, Marissa Mayer, high wizardette of the Googleplex.
You can read Fortune’s own take on this calculation here. I cannot do justice to the Fortune writer’s discourse. I can remark that Google News was a project that showed off some flashy Google technology circa 2001. Google News’s developer was, based on what I learned in my research, was Krishna Bharat. In 2006, Google News became official. In the last seven years, Google News has expanded, making it easy for me to see what’s shakin’ in France or a score of other countries.
Google’s technology spiders a subset of important news sources. The system “discovers” the important stories. The front page or splash page is automatically generated with follow on stories appearing in a cluster of related links. There have been some hiccups. These have ranged from major media outlets reminding Google that a newspaper accepting a feed from the mothership should not appear at the top of the news stack for a story. Google fixed this with some “human intervention”, which is now a key distinction of Google’s intelligent software; that is, a human makes sure the numerical recipe doesn’t add too much sugar and not enough salt to the output. The service also provided me with a good example to tell traditional publishers that unless some rethinking of their news operations took place, digital news would erode the traditional news base. I started yapping about this in 2001, but then and now, traditional publishers prefer to talk with my partners not me. I guess I’m too blunt for the white shoes and panama hat set on sultry summer days. Gee, the truth is the truth and the earnings of Time Warner (Fortune’s owner) supports my 2001 insights I suppose.
Now to the magic number.
Google News is a demo; it is not a revenue producer. I provide some information about the technology Google uses for this service in The Google Legacy and Google Version 2.0. If you want to know more, click here. The technology in Google News is darned impressive and generally unappreciated by users and competitors alike. By the way, do you wonder what Mr. Bharat has been doing since 2003, the most recent technical paper on his Google official biography page? (He’s been busy, but he is remiss in updating his research activities. For a peek, check out US20080097833.)
How do I know this? Do you see any ads on this page? As my Wall Street pals tell me, “Google’s revenue comes from ads.” So, no adds means no revenue on public facing Google pages. There’s not even a link to Google Enterprise that I could find.
“Why,” I ask, “are there zero ads on Google News?”
If my research is correct (which it may not be), the reason may be tie back to those traditional publishers. Not even Google can figure out how to divvy up a $0.83 click among the contentious, cantankerous publishers whose headlines are presented on the Google News page. A misstep can trigger another $1 billion lawsuit. Not even Google wants more of these old media new media face offs. I read here that Google even has a deal with the Associated Press, a forward looking outfit if there ever was one. Too many lawyers undermine one’s ability to do math, I have heard.
After seven or eight years, Google News’s presents an ad free face to me. Your mileage may differ, of course. And, according to the Fortune write up, Google wants to handle consumer health records in the same way; that is, traffic generation; to wit:
Mayer said that’s the way Google thinks about monetizing digital consumer health records. The company is one of many working to make it convenient for people to store and access their medical records online, a move that proponents say will improve health care by empowering consumers. But Mayer said that after some internal discussions, Google brass decided not to put ads on health record pages.
I think the strategy is for Google News and the other Google services to pull traffic to Google’s information amusement park. Overall traffic is a net benefit as long as Google can manage the costs associated with scaling to handle the hoards of visitors, buyers, and gawkers.
What strikes me as weird as why Google feels compelled to use Yahoo math–that is, making up a number–to justify its 10-year old business strategy. The top line revenue and net profit reveal the underlying math and the wisdom of Google’s approach. What’s a $100 million to Google. I can’t even get my Bowmar calculator to calculate the percentage because the zeros overflow the display.
Yahoo math from Google I don’t need. Agree? Disagree?
Stephen Arnold, July 23, 2008
Privacy Flash Point
July 23, 2008
When I speak with professional groups, I dance around the issue of “smart software”. The idea is that scripts do more than handle situations as a zero or one, white or black, on or off. The computers are binary, but programmers have numerous methods for helping a script deal with ambiguity.
One of the ways is to know what a single user or a group of users who share characteristics actually do. Looking at what a person does nine times out of ten times makes it easy to tell a script, “When this person takes this action, you take that action.”
The key to making this type of “smart software” work is data. The more data one has about an individual or a group of like-acting individuals, then the easier it is to cook up simple rules. The script runs the actions. When a decision is needed, the script looks at the usage data and makes a decision.
Endeca can integrated saved queries into a work flow. When the sales person reaches a particular point in a selling script, the Endeca system runs the query and displays the information based on a combination of rules and looking at some data about what sells, what product returns the largest commission, or some other factor.
Again, the key is rules and data.
The rules are tedious to set up and test. But once in place, the real nourishment for smart software is data. But most users are themselves unaware of what actions they take when using a computer. If I remind a user that email can be analyzed for syntactical fingerprints, friends, and insight into the preferences of the user, people are shocked. This amazes me.
Closed doors–that is, privacy–are tough to live behind in an online world.
I was thinking about this issue and privacy because the current issue of KMWorld, a tabloid published by Information Today, arrived via snail mail this afternoon. My monthly column was no more. In the July August 2008 issue, my column had become a feature story, “Cloud Computing and the Issue of Privacy”, pages 14, 15, and 22. The highlight of the story is a graphic from one of Google’s patent documents showing an exemplary data model for usage information about an individual or a group of users. The idea is that when a person can be assigned to a cluster based on some discovered similarity, probability methods make it trivial to “predict” what most members of the group will next do or prefer. This is not magic, but it is complicated and requires a honking big computer to work when there are lots of people and many groups.
To prepare for the one or two emails I get when my for-fee articles appear, I thought it might be a good idea to see what’s online. I know a little about Google but I don’t know much beyond my little area of expertise that I hone against the whetstone of Kentucky culture.
Semantra Snags $3 Million in Additional Funding
July 23, 2008
The economy is uneven. Semantra, however, has obtained $3 million in funding from CPMG, a unit of Cardinal Investment Company. The “C” means cardinal and the “PMG” means Public Market Group. No matter, the CPMG investment in Semantra totals about $9 million.
What’s a Semantra?
The company is a leader in “conversational analytics.” This buzzword means that a user of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM system can ask a question in plain English. Semantra converts the question to a syntax Microsoft Dynamics understands. Semantra then displays the answer. The company say that it :
…is a pioneer in Natural Language and Semantics that is applied in a search and information access context that enables enterprises to quickly and easily retrieve precise, critical information from complex corporate databases through inquiries in the language of a user’s business. With an understanding of linguistics, conceptual modeling and relational theory, Semantra built its software to empower business users with real time, common language commands and requests unavailable through traditional BI or enterprise search solutions. Semantra significantly improves the value of any enterprise business application. Semantra’s headquarters are located in Dallas, Texas.
A typical interface looks like this:
The company received an infusion of cash from CPMG about one year ago. The company plans a product roll out later in 2008. You can learn more about the company here.
Despite the challenges some text and content processing companies face with their sources of funding, Semantra appears to have few problems.
Stephen Arnold, July 23, 2008
CNet Uses the M Word
July 23, 2008
Charles Cooper’s “So When Do We Get over with It and Declare Google a Monopoly?” is a benchmark for Googzilla. You can read the full text of the essay here. Put aside the summer of transparency with Googlers explaining how to innovate, run cloud services, and motivate math wizards.
Writing in CNet News.com Mr. Cooper quotes noted legal eagle, Richard Schmalensee, laborer in the knowledge vineyard at MIT, probing Mr. Schmalensee about when a company becomes a monopoly:
There’s no magic threshold but with high share levels, you get to be concerned… On the other hand, monopolists are allowed to compete. The question is whether the arrangement would stifle competition.
My thought is that Google is far ahead of Google and Yahoo in plumbing. Search and advertising pay the bills but these are applications. Google is poised to move into other sectors.
Google is not a monopoly; Google is a 21st century East India Company. If you recall your history, EOC operated as a nation state but as constructs do, EOC faded.
Stephen Arnold, July 23, 2008
Intellectual Riches from the Fortune Brainstorming Tech Conference
July 22, 2008
Harrods Creek is a long way from Half Moon Bay, California. Thanks to the modern technology available here in the hills among the possums and the rabbits, I have been able to follow some of the action at the Fortune Brainstorming Tech Conference. Fortune, as you know, is the Batman of business magazines, and it uses its glittering reputation to corral big thinkers to brainstorm.
One of the most interesting articles about this conference is Stefanie Olsen’s “Viacom CEO: Great Content Is King”. I hope this discussion among Viacom, Verizon Communications, and Google finds its way to YouTube. Please, read Ms. Olsen’s full text report here.
What stopped me in my tracks was this quote from the brainstorming cyclone from Time Warner, owner of Fortune Brainstorming Tech Conference:
We [Viacom] have vast libraries of content, and we are able to find new audiences thanks to emerging distribution. People in Asia are discovering Beavis and Butt-head and it hasn’t been in the United States for seven years…For us, it’s about finding more and more places to put it.
Google’s Vint Cerf asked a Googley question about if “content and distribution of content will be separate going forward?” This is a darn good question. The Viacom and Verizon executives’ answers, in my opinion, were muddled. In my opinion, I don’t think either the Viacom or the Verizon executive knew what Mr. Cerf meant. His question was a lot clearer to me than the answers given to Mr. Cerf.
As I understand, Viacom’s answer, creating and distributing are different but the two are joined by an economic interest. And Verizon emphasize that Verizon is all about the network.
Okay. I must admit I don’t know what these two executives are trying to tell me. Viacom’s intellectual riches include Beavis and Butt-head, who have earning power in China. The Verizon person talks about network, and my last dealings with the company involved a charge for data services in Canada where the data service was explicitly not supposed to work. No one cared about that $300 charge. I just paid the bill and concluded that Verizon is about charging me for services that are not supposed to work outside the US. I paid a price for my curiosity.)
I am still laughing about the reference to Beavis and Butt-head in the context of the Fortune Brainstorming Tech Conference. If this is tech from Fortune, I am glad I live in rural Kentucky, and I am delighted that I dropped my Fortune subscription. I wonder if there are any reruns of Beavis and Butt-head on my Apple TV?
Stephen Arnold, July 22, 2008
Google: More Insight into Its Cloud Play
July 22, 2008
The summer of transparency continues. The lucky beneficiary of the Google summer of openness is Doug Henschen, the capable journalist at Intelligent Enterprise. Mr. Henchen does a good job of capturing the thoughts of Rishi Chandra. If you are a Google watcher, you will want to read the full text of this interview here.
Several points stuck in my addled goose brain after reading this interview. May I share these with you? Then I will offer a handful of observation from the hills of rural Kentucky. Now the main points for me:
- The Salesforce.com tie up with Google “is at the application layer.” The idea is that Salesforce.com can tap Google and–the interesting bit–Google can tap into Salesforce.com. Google also pats Salesforce.com on the head. Mr. Chandra says, “”…They helped us improve those APIs so they [Salesforce.com] can do a lot more than third parties could do previously.”
- App Engine is designed or engineered to “bulld onto Google infrastruture and gain the same capabilities and scalability.”
- Mr. Chndra notes, “We built our infrastructure os it’s particularly tuned for Web applications.”
- Mr. Chandra reveals, “Our appraoch will follow the model … to go from consumers to the enterprise”
I find these points significant because Google transparency talks “run a game plan.” Google is not the slap dash group of beer drinking math club members that some in the media see when scrutinizing Google. My research suggests that Google is caclulating. In fact, the subtitle of my 2007 study is “the Calculating Predator.”
Let me offer some observations about these four points. I will reference some of the research data in my Google Version 2.0, so if you want the nitty gritty, you will need to track down that 250 page, dull as dishwater report here.
Observations from the Addled Goose
First, Salesforce.com wants to do a lot more than date Google, according to my research. Google has technology that can cure the scaling and performance issues that make Salesforce.com brittle. Like eBay, making wholesale changes to the core architecture is expensive, complicated, and risky if the fix doesn’t work. Google, for its part, is cheerleading Google and providing some coaching. What’s Google get from the deal? Well, it’s not just exposure to the ways of enterprise cloud computing. Google is able to learn from the Salesforce.com efforts. I think of the Google-Salesforce.com tie up like a lab experiment. Salesforce.com also has some tasty multi-tenant technology. This invention virtualizes virtualized infrastructures. So, yoiu have an application. You run it so it is stable, scalable, and reasonably reliable. Then you allow different companies to use the application as if that application was dedicated to the one company. Everything is partitioned. Very cool stuff indeed.
Second, the reference to the “same infrastruture” is one of those phrases that carry a truck load of meaning. I remember a teacher in a required literature class making us talk in depth about William Carlos Williams’ phrase “red wheelbarrow”. The phrase “same infrastructure” means that the goodies running on the Google infrastructure can–at some point in time of Google’s choosing–be made available to an enterprise. Want to crunch 20 years’ American Express credit card data for the week before Mother’s Day in New York City? Today AMEX cannot do this without some work. With the Google data management infrastructure, the query is not only trivial. The query will return results in a fraction of the time American Express’ MBAs now wait. This is–believe me–a very big deal.
Third, Mr. Chandra says clealy that what Google built to do Web search has now, after a decade–that’s 10 years of Internet time–is tuned for Web applications. I suppose Google could buy a billboard on Times Square, but the company is crystal clear in telling Mr. Henchen and his readers that Google is an application platform. Yoiu can read more about how a Web search system works like a big distributed laptop in my 2005 study The Google Legacy here. Note: this is also dull and long, stuffed with technical diagrams that explain why Microsoft and Yahoo are lagging Messrs. Brin and Page in online services.
And, finally (actually fourthly), Mr. Chandra lays out the strategic thrust of Google. Google has been using this phrase for a number of years. I think I have a note somewhere that the first use of the phrase was in 2001. Google is not a wacky math club. Google is a supra-national enterprise that competitors, regulators, and mavens are just now–after a decade in Internet time–beginning to perceive in its broad outlines. It’s thrilling that ComScore and NetRatings report that Google has a two thirds share of the search market, but the take make it very tough to look at Act II at Google. My research suggests that ACT II will be a compelling event to watch from the sidelines. I don’t want to be under one of Googzilla’s paws when the beast heads for the Fortune 100 in earnest. Keep in mind that as Google “hooks” young folks, these little Googlers will pull Google into the enterprise. Hence, the consumer becomes the enterprise customer. An ad in eWeek or CIO won’t stop this type of demographic play.
Net net: Kudos to Doug Henschen for getting a Googler to talk. I love to watch the Jedi knights at Google run the game plan. The tactic is one that an NFL owner can understand. Senior managers at IBM and Oracle? I’m not sure.
Stephen Arnoold, July 22, 2008
ComScore: Google’s Search Share Falling
July 22, 2008
ComScore, hard on the heels of Google’s pretty good financial results, reports “US Search Rankings Issued for June, Google Share Down from May”. You can read the news story in Marketing VOX here. If you want to know how bad it is for Google, here’s what ComScore’s analysis revealed:
Google Sites retained its [sic] lead in the US core search market capturing 61.5 percent of the search conducted in June, down slightly from 61.8 percent in May (though in expanded search it gained)…
The “sky is falling headline” baffles me, but it works like a click magnet. The ComScore data are at odds with Hitwise’s recent report.
Neither ComScore of Hitwise count clicks. Both outfits rely on data provided by partners. Google, according to my sources, has the ability to count every click. When one of these outside firms calculates market share, the numbers are general indications, not absolutes.
If you are either Microsoft or Yahoo, Google’s share–whether 60 percent and falling or 70 percent and stable–are meaningless. Both of these companies have to reverse years of inattention to search. Whether Microsoft and Yahoo have to narrow the gap by 50 or 60 percent before Google gains more share is likely to be a thrilling task.
Fiddling in the board room and buying technology that may not scale or cannot be installed without a regiment of engineers is not the way to close the gap. How about a leap frog play? Why not buy Yandex? There are some bold actions to take, but third party firms want to get traffic, sell statistical analyses, and find those lucrative consulting jobs. I applaud their efforts.
Too bad the data are all to often off the mark. Googzilla is, according to my sources, accounting for a significant share of the Web search traffic and a bigger chunk of online advertising. The company faces big challenges, but when I looked out my window the sky was where it was supposed to be and Google was delivering search results with alacrity.
Stephen Arnold, July 22, 2008
Microsoft: Me-Too, Me-Too
July 22, 2008
Matt Asay’s essay “Microsoft Copies Google, Salesforce, and Red Hat in New Partner Initiative” reveals another piece of Microsoft’s “moon shot” to catch Google. You can read the full text here. The premise of the article is that after decades of honing a partner strategy, Microsoft is proving that it is not too old to learn. The notion is that Microsoft is borrowing tactics from Google, Red Hat, and Salesforce.com. For me, the most important statement in the essay was a reference to a comment in The Motley Fool:
Although partners will get a 12% cut of the first year’s subscription, and 6% thereafter, they will now be competing head-to-head against Microsoft for delivering value-added services. This marks a dramatic departure from the way Microsoft has worked with partners in the past.
Is Microsoft now competing with its own partners no matter what size the account? My hunch is that Microsoft is like the US when it first tried to match the Sputnik. The best way to do this is with a dramatic “moon shot” type program. These initiatives toss out the playbook. Engineers and business mavens start with a clean sheet of paper.
Based on my narrow angle of observation from the hollow in rural Kentucky, I see this strategy playing out in SharePoint search. First, the “free” version competes with low-cost providers of search technology. Second, larger Certified Gold Partners find themselves looking at “baked in” search in industrial strength versions of SharePoint. Third, Microsoft bought Fast Search & Technology in order to have an answer for SharePoint customers who wanted to index larger document sets, a feat which SharePoint struggles to accomplish in a snappy, pleasing way. Finally, internal search initiatives at Microsoft are trying to figure out what the future holds.
If catching Google requires the sacrifice of a handful or Airbus full of partners, well, that is an eventuality warranting some consideration. In my opinion, the Certified Gold Partners with search technology have little choice but ramp up their innovation and marketing efforts. This means that Microsoft may face some additional challenges in the enterprise. Google has an abundance of wizards, but a number of the SharePoint snap in search solution vendors have a few budding smarties too.
Catching Google may now be harder. Microsoft will have to chase down Googzilla while dealing with aggrieved former partners. Agree? Disagree? Let me know.
Stephen Arnold, July 22, 2008
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