Apps or New Browser for Access
November 9, 2010
The Google will have to make some changes to Chrome. When the GOOG adapts, I think those pushing the apps method of content access and the fuel providers behind RockMelt will have their hands full. I think a reinvention of the browser is an interesting idea. “
“New Browser Incorporates Latest Trends in Web Technology” reported:
RockMelt, a Mountain View startup that Andreessen has invested in and advises, is releasing today a beta version of a new, eponymous Web browser built around some of the latest trends in Web technologies. It integrates social networking to a degree not found in mainstream browsers and saves user data to the “cloud,” allowing users to get the same browsing experience on their work and home computers.
Both the Apps crowd and the new browser crowd are responding to needs from the exploding market for consumerized information access. Consumers like appliances. Some can be downright weird. Think about the Dyson fan and ball vacuum. Others can be helpful when one wants a way to read Web pages in unlikely places. Think iPad. The notion of mashing up information is not a new idea, but it is gaining momentum. Think apartment listings placed on a Google Map south of Houston. The mash up and a $1,000 in cash can score an apartment more effectively than a person from Harrod’s Creek and a printed listing of available spaces.
The challenge in the consumerized world of information is that whoever has eyeballs wins. Sure, some outfits can come out of left field and take over a market segment. One only needs to think about Google to realize that in the span of 12 years, Google is on the path to an AT&T-type operation. On some days, I think Google is AT&T, where some of Google’s wizards labored in a previous life. I can also point to the Apple iPad and the 200,000 plus apps available to someone with a lot of time on their hands like blog pundits.
My view is that browsers that seek to displace the incumbents have to leapfrog the competition. That’s going to be difficult because Google and other browser developers can incorporate functionality and make that functionality available to an installed base. My hunch is that the me-too tactic will make 2011 browser competition quite unlike 1993 browser competition.
Which will win? Browsers or Apps? The companies best at playing Monopoly will decide, not the market in my opinion. Fewer and fewer users want laundry lists. Complex results lists are an issue. Funky app interfaces are a barrier as well. Inertia, not innovation, is likely to be a formidable hurdle even with the ability to melt barriers made of stone.
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2010
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Arnold Google Column to Informed Market Intelligence
November 8, 2010
After an 18 month run at KMWorld, change is afoot. Beginning with columns submitted in December 2010, Stephen E Arnold’s Google in the Enterprise column moves to Informed Market Intelligence. The monthly analysis of Google’s enterprise products, services, and strategy will appear in ETM, the independent resource for IT executives. You can access the company’s public ETM Web site at www.globaletm.com. Informed Market Intelligence also publishes hard copy as well and, like Mr. Arnold’s discussion of open source search software, some of his Google analyses will appear in other IMI publications.
What’s happened with Mr. Arnold’s KMWorld column? Beginning in December 2010, Mr. Arnold begins a new monthly column that focuses on the use of semantic technology in the enterprise. On tap for KMWorld will be critical looks at some of the surprising applications of semantic technology from some well know enterprise vendors like Autonomy and Exalead as well as explorations of next generation “understanding systems” from companies like Digital Reasoning and Palantir.
Mr. Arnold also contributes for-fee columns on a monthly basis to Information Today, Information World Review, Online Magazine, and Smart Business Network. You are reading a free blog; the good stuff appears in the for-fee columns. Mr. Arnold told me, “No duplication. The blog does one thing, usually broad topics with help from more than seven contributors. The columns do another—incisive discussion of companies, technologies, and business issues. Each column presents my viewpoint about key issues in digital information.”
Will the 66 year old Mr. Arnold be able to sustain this writing schedule? My view is that he won’t have the stamina. Betcha a dollar.
Ken Toth, November 8, 2010
Sponsored by Stephen E Arnold and ArnoldIT.com.
$5 Billion Target for SAP
November 8, 2010
Oracle’s ex-president Charles Phillips testified the company would have sought a staggering five billion dollars from SAP for skirted licensing fees had the deal happened over the table. This is twice the minimum amount sought by Oracle in a lawsuit with SAP dating back to 2007 for copyright infringement.
“Oracle Ex-President Says SAP Ducked $5 Billion in Fees” asserted that Oracle alleges that SAP’s unit TomorrowNow intentionally downloaded the “Safe Passage” software without consent to “avoid paying licensing fees and to steal Oracle customers.” SAP has admitted there were inter-company concerns over TomorrowNow’s actions and that the lawsuit was not entirely a surprise. The top producer of business application software has also conceded the downloads in question were in fact fraudulent.
Having freely admitted fault on this scale will likely make it difficult in the future for SAP to defend any settlement less than the five billion dollar figure thrown out today.
The proceedings will continue with Larry Ellison’s, Oracle CEO, testimony slated for November 8th. Kaching may go the cash register. With an infusion of eurocash will Oracle address its long-standing need for a next-generation search and content processing system? We hope so.
Sarah Rogers, November 8, 2010
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Search Vendors and Mad Men
November 8, 2010
What’s on the horizon for search and content processing companies? When it comes to marketing, there are changes afoot. I want to highlight some marketing methods that don’t work too well and identify three that seem to be working for certain vendors. Azurini, take note. Some of these methods involve your selling contacts in the guise of objective analysis. Believe it or not, you are now more Madison Avenue than most professionals understand.
My hunch is that you, gentle reader, are immersed in the excitement of every day life. You get a paycheck or send an invoice to a sugar daddy client. Life is reasonably good. Just don’t peer too far down the Road to Tomorrow is my advice.
Who can omit the lucky individuals who have to meet payroll, keep vulture capitalists high in the sky, and cope with the Peter Principle experience a different type of thrill. That thrill is the adrenaline rush of avoiding failure, ridicule, and becoming a bit on the Colbert Report.
As the search and content processing sector limps toward 2011, the challenge of generating big revenue looms larger. Maybe the proposed $600 billion in borrowed dollars will turn the trick?
Here’s what I have observed in 2010 about marketing search and content processing systems. These activities seem to be less effective than they were a year or two ago.
- Web site traffic. Vendors get really defensive when one looks at the traffic to search vendors’ Web sites. I know the usage states are wrong, but the data do indicate general trends. The trend I see is that traffic to the top 50 search and content processing vendors I track more closely than the 250 I monitor via Overflight is that Web site traffic is not so hot. Our review showed most Web sites have fewer uniques than this Web log. Run your own tests at www.compete.com. The situation is probably going to get worse in 2011, so that investment may not deliver a pay back beyond brochureware a person may stumble upon despite Google Instant.
- Web logs. These are not working. My Overflight system makes it dead easy to spot vendors with Web logs and the poor track record in updating the content with new posts and corrections. Blogs seem so easy to do, yet are beyond the reach of most search and content processing companies. Consulting firms like 451 and Gartner benefit because their services shift the content burden and the traffic acquisition from the search vendor to the marketing “experts”.
- Big trade show booths. Wow, these are expensive. One vendor told me that qualified sales leads are difficult to find at trade shows. Some types of events do work, but the 1980s style approach is a bit like wearing spurs when I drive a rental car.
- Terminology. I am not sure what some vendors are selling. The buzzwords are an effort to communicate. Most of the explanations from vendors are so similar I could cut and paste paragraphs from different collateral and most people would not notice. How about “information optimization” or “business intelligence”. So easy to say. So fuzzy today.
BBC Journalists Show News Nose
November 7, 2010
Short honk: I am not a real journalist. I don’t have a pension. I don’t strike. “BBC News Staff Strike over Pensions” alerted me that real journalists write large with their actions. I am certain the rationale is solid. Nevertheless, I noted this passage as exemplary:
Members of the National Union of Journalists at the BBC are taking part in a two-day strike in a dispute over proposed changes to the pension plan….When employees draw their pension, payments will increase automatically each year in line with inflation, by up to 4% – again up from a previous offer of 2.5%. Bectu, which represents technical and production staff, said after last month’s ballot that the amended offer was “the best that can be achieved through negotiation”.
The impression this leaves upon me is that what is offered is not enough. The goose gets nothing yet does not complain. Real journalists do that I suppose. I do remember that the BBC search boss told me that the BBC had search nailed. I suppose that type of confidence extends to financial acumen as well. Pension funding and search are obviously no brainers.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2010
Freebie, just like a pension except without the money part.
Brainware jumps to Version 5.2
November 4, 2010
Short honk: My in box overflowed with a news release about Brainware’s Version 5.2 of its enterprise search system. The news release provides some publicity for a trade show at which Brainware has an exhibit. In addition to helping out the trade show outfit, Brainware called my attention to new features in Version 5.2. These include:
- More flexible security for processed documents
- Enhanced indexing of content in relational databases
- More control over what’s displayed in response to a query.
Brainware’s approach to content processing relies on trigrams for which the firm has a patent. For more information about Brainware, navigate to the firm’s Web site at www.brainware.com. No licensing fee details are available to me at this time. I did see a demo of the new system and I think the firm will give you a peek as well. I had been watching to see if Oracle would acquire Brainware. The database giant seems happy with Brainware’s content acquisition components. Oracle, however, moved in a different direction. I will keep my ear to the shoreline here at the goose pond.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2010
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Vivisimo Generates Revenue from Recycler.com
November 2, 2010
Short honk: We learned that Vivisimo has been selected to provide search and content processing for Recycler.com. The service, owned by Target Media Partners, has created a single Recycler.com Web site for its three score print publications. Target Media wants to go after a market once dominated by newspapers and now mostly in the death grip of Craigslist. To differentiate itself from Craigslist, Target Media wants to follow Steve Jobs’s path and eliminate the nasty stuff from the firm’s new service. The Los Angeles Business Journal has a useful profile of Target Media in “Rival Reborn”.
The news item “Recycler.com Selects Vivisimo’s Velocity Platform” said [Data Monitor links can go dead so you may have to hunt around]:
Recycler.com chose Velocity for its handling of bins and facets, federated searches, and ability to customize ranking methodologies to ensure the relevant ads are displayed to users.
Our perception of Vivisimo was the company was providing federated search and integration services. The use of Velocity in an application that we associated with functions from Endeca, Exalead, Intelligenx, and other vendors surprised us. For more information about Vivisimo, navigate to www.vivisimo.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2010
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Attivio Upping Its Profile
November 2, 2010
First, I received a copy of the Attivio newsletter. Then Overflight delivered “Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine (AIE)” to me this morning (October 31, 2010). IntraLinks, a leading provider of software as a a service for managing content has licensed the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine to tame some unruly data lions. According to the write up:
AIE has workflow and alerts for a more proactive user experience. It empowers IntraLinks’ permissioning model, enabling users to find and examine critical information, while maintaining strict access rights. Unlike legacy enterprise search software that stores ACLs as a field in each document, Attivio’s real-time fields are indexed separately, so they can be updated instantly without having to re-index entire documents. Attivio also gives us the ability to execute real-time tagging and commenting. AIE retrieves all types of information – content and data – with one query. Information is linked when a query is submitted, using patented SQL-style JOINs that connect entities extracted from content to relational data ingested from databases. AIE also dynamically generates facet recommendations, enhancing navigation and information discovery.
The article provides a summary of Attivio’s strengths. The “only weakness” is AIE’s ability to process video searches. IntraLinks wants a system that does more than index the metadata attached to a video.
If you are interested in a client’s analysis of Attivio’s system, check out the article. Information about Attivio is available at www.attivio.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2010
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Blekko, Curation, and American Searchers
November 2, 2010
I agree with most of the points in “Sorry, Blekko Is Doomed.” Here’s an example of a comment similar to one I made to the worms and ants around the goose pond earlier this year:
Yes, search engines could do a much better job of telling you which restaurants you should eat at, which cameras you should buy, and many other things–but, again, the reason search is weak on those queries generally isn’t a Demand Media problem. It’s an imperfect information and subjectivity problem (which is where social media comes in.)
I think that bright young people recognize that search is generally good and often pretty lousy. I can’t figure out if I am lucky or unlucky to get a chance to see new search systems, decision support solutions, and data fusion implementations. There are new search systems coming down the dirt road that comprises America’s online infrastructure.
The challenge is making money. Google has been unchallenged in a meaningful way for more than a decade. As a result, Google fervently hopes that it will be able to maintain the charade that it accounts for about 60 percent of the search traffic. I believe that Google wants another vendor to capture some market share. Once the Google’s actual dominance of search becomes known, the “m” word becomes an even bigger deal. M, in this case, means monopoly.
However, the Google killer will not appeal to a small subset of American searchers. In my view, Google is doomed to become a $100 billion a year company and less and less important. Think about IBM or Microsoft. Neither company is that important to the average person. Google’s on the same path.
There are four reasons:
- Google is effectively neutralized at this time in some important markets. China? Russia? India?
- Google has lost the cachet of THE hot company. Say what you want. Facebook is the next big deal. Orkut? The Google Facebook killer? Buzz? Wave?
- Google has diluted its brand’s impact with legal hassles, executives who say and do things that make the residents of Harrod’s Creek ask, “What? I have to move?”
- Google is now perceived as an advertising company that has after 12 years been able to diversify into more advertising. Google Search Appliance? Knol?
I wish Blekko well. I think another search engine will help me in my research. However, I am not Chinese or Russian. I don’t live in Mumbai. Those and similar non US sectors that will spawn an alternative to Google. Google’s problem, like Blekko’s, is that it is a company designed for American searchers. That’s not where the future is pitching its tent. American’s want a Happy Meal for finding information. Complex queries and real synthesis are like a day old McRib.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2010
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Arnold For Fee Columns, November 2010
November 1, 2010
Another month and another round of for fee columns from Harrod’s Creek. Keep in mind that you are reading a free Web log and it conforms to the editorial policy stated on the About page. The for fee columns are closer to “real writing” than the swizzle in this blog. Here’s the line up of topics for what I submitted for November publication. Keep in mind that some of these publishers require my write up two or three months before the article appears in print and on a Web site. For copies of these articles, you will need to hound the publisher, not me. I just write ‘em. I don’t archive work for hire.
- For Information Today, “Open Source Search: Revolution or Evolution?”. Open source search and content processing continues to gain strength. There are upsides and downsides, of course.
- For Information World Review, “HP, Oracle, and SAP: The Crankies.” Lots of hostility in the pleasant clime of Silicon Valley land. Nasty stuff in my opinion. I explore the motives and risks of big guns shooting at one another.
- For KMWorld, “Google Levels Up Its Search Appliance.” In this column I talk about the pricing of the Google Search Appliance, using publicly available data from the US government.
- For Smart Business Network, “Google Instant: A Reason to Buy AdWords.” Google’s new search approach is designed, in my opinion, to generate more money for Google.
- For Online Magazine (yep, a new customer), “A Bitter Cup of Java: The Oracle-Google Percolation”. This article looks at the uncertainty created by the Oracle assertion that Google allegedly used in an improper manner Oracle’s intellectual property. I have written for this publication before, and I am delighted to be contributing again. In year 2000, I received an award for an article I submitted. Winning an award, however, does not make me a good writer or a journalist. At age 66, I am pretty sure my flaws are non remediateable.
Once again, a suggestion to public relations stallions and fillies. Read the About information for this blog. I sell time, ads, interviews, and stories. Each story points out that it is a freebie or in some way sponsored. Beyond Search does not do news. I write this blog for myself and the fact that some outfit has named Beyond Search one of the top 500 technology blogs means zero to me. The blog is marketing, PR stallions and fillies. If you majored in journalism and wonder why the Courier Journal recycles content instead of hiring local reporters, look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Do I pay for a daily newspaper written by liberal arts majors?” If you are like most informed Web users, you just use online stuff like the baloney in this blog.
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2010
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