Video Search: No Google Killers in Sight
January 25, 2009
ZDNet reproduced a snippet of the comScore data about video searches. You can see the original ZDNet post here. The comScore Web site is here where you can purchase the full data set.
| Property | Viewers, 000 | Prcnt | Google Delta |
| Total Internet | 146,064 | ||
| Google Sites | 97,928 | 67.045% | — |
| Fox Interactive Media | 58,115 | 39.787% | 39,813 |
| Yahoo! Sites | 39,956 | 27.355% | 57,972 |
| Microsoft Sites | 34,979 | 23.948% | 62,949 |
| Viacom Digital | 27,109 | 18.560% | 70,819 |
| Hulu | 22,456 | 15.374% | 75,472 |
| AOL LLC | 22,442 | 15.364% | 75,486 |
| Turner Network | 20,735 | 14.196% | 77,193 |
| Disney Online | 13,028 | 8.919% | 84,900 |
| Time Warner – Excl. AOL | 12,564 | 8.602% | 85,364 |
What I did was calculate what percent of the total Internet video search traffic each service had in December 2008. Google accounted for about 68 percent of the traffic. The Hulu.com service which someone told me was a Google killer this week has, if my calculations and the comScore data are accurate, about 16 percent of the video search traffic. Next I calculated what I call the Google delta; that is, how much traffic a site must generate to draw even with Google. Hulu.com, for example, needs to generate an additional 75 million queries.
So what? Added to Google’s Web search share, I don’t think any of these services in the short term is poised to blast past the GOOG.
Stephen Arnold, January 25, 2009
Google Dethroned: Okay, Right after the Next Financial Report
January 23, 2009
Sarah Lacy who has a sketch of a stylish woman as a logo wrote “Google Dethroned?” here. Notice that the Beyond Search Web log has an image of a pest-infested goose as a logo. You can probably figure out that Beyond Search’s analyses are somewhat different from Sarah Lacy’s.
Before I read her interesting article, I looked at the news about Google’s financial results here. The CNNMoney.com headline is more explicit here: “Google Sales Jump 18%”. I am no Ivy League sophisticate. I swim in mine run off in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, for goodness sakes. The addled goose figured out that Google cranked over $5 billion in revenue and operating income of about 33 percent. As I read this summary, I thought about the GOOG’s having somewhere between 70 and 75 percent share of the Web search market. I also keep hearing about Google. There is a certain media fascination with what is generally perceived as a Web search and advertising company. That is a false impression in my opinion. Quack.
Ms. Lacy’s view, if I understand her as she intended, Google has been on top and is now in the process of falling to the rocks below the top of the hill. She identifies some signs of Google losing its Web supremacy. I can’t reproduce her list without spoiling your fun. I will mention one example: Hulu. The idea is that YouTube.com is facing tough competition from Hulu. Hulu’s video search is better. For me, the most interesting comment in her write up was:
The last three times I’ve looked for a video clip, I’ve spent half an hour scouring Google and YouTube only to get a flood of inaccurate results. Each time, I’ve tried Hulu as a last result, and found the clips within minutes. Hulu has better fields, parameters and user interface for searching videos than Google, which still appears to search for video the way it would for text. Hulu won its own game (content) and shockingly in video beat Google at its own game (search).
I have been involved in search for a long time. Could Ms. Lacy’s failure be related to her query itself? My hunch is that formulating the appropriate query may have more to do with finding what’s needed than the search system. I find the vendors’ video search systems less useful their than text search systems. However, when I watch the Beyond Search goslings looking for video using an Apple TV and a Mac Mini, I don’t recall any problems in findability for young goslings. I think my Beyond Search goslings have video search whipped. Maybe it’s age? Maybe it’s search query formulation? Maybe it’s what the user is seeking. Monday I asked about Johnny Cash and within seconds I was asked, “Do you want Hurt? Something from his days on the road with Elvis?” I made a chance comment and the YouTube system reacted faster than my addled goose brain. The results were spot on.
I do want to state that I don’t think any company can remain “on top” forever. Check out GM. There’s a good example of how long a former giant can exist even though it is irrelevant to me.
I think the flaw in Ms. Lacy’s and her informant’s argument is the assumption that Google is a Web company.
Wrongo. (That’s goose talk for really off base.)
Google has more in common with the pre break up AT&T than Netscape. Mavens who keep thinking of Google as a search and advertising outfit are in for a really big surprise. You can get more color on this surprise in my forthcoming Google: The Digital Gutenberg (Infonortics, Spring 2009). In the meantime, take arguments like those articulated in “Google Dethroned” as received wisdom that may not be 100 percent in line with reality.
Stephen Arnold, January 23, 2009
YouTube: Squeezing More Money
January 21, 2009
Peter Kafka’s “Google Tries Squeezing More Money Out of YouTube” here is a good example of looking at YouTube.com through glasses provided by Google. The story explains that Google wants to “get serious” and make YouTube.com more than a money pit. The story runs down the various Google actions and points out that a “$99 box set” offer that is an ad variant “looks like a pretty good deal, actually”. You get some links and then the paragraph that I found most interesting:
You can argue that the company needs to do that because its core business is slowing or because the economy is pummeling the company just as it is everyone else. But expect to see many more tweaks like this in the future: Perhaps we’ll hear more about them tomorrow afternoon, when the company announces its fourth-quarter results.
There’s only one thing missing in this story. A run down of the monetization options that Google has been working on for more than a year. What are these options? Well, the money making tricks for YouTube.com and some other Google services are somewhat more far reaching than those referenced in this write up. To get the details, you can plough through Google’s open source documents or you can snag a copy of my new Google study in a couple of months.
YouTube.com is no money pit if some of Google’s revenue generating methods kick in before the economy slumps even more than the mighty Google can withstand.
Stephen Arnold, January 21, 2009
Sinequa: Embedded Search Deal with SGT
January 14, 2009
Sinequa, the French information access company, signed a deal with SGT to embed Sinequa’s search system into VEDA. According to the news story in IT Backbones Computing News here:
SGT’s VEDA software suite offers workflow automation and media content management. The VEDA Search & Retrieve function supports creation of new content and allows users to find and reuse existing content. Users can retrieve media in natural language, using their own words and expressions. VEDA Search & Retrieve leverages Sinequa’s patented technology that combines semantic, linguistic, statistic and structured analyses, to provide the most relevant answers and to automatically generate related concepts including people, geographic locations, and related ideas.
The enterprise search sector is a good news and bad news generator. On one hand, some companies are reporting significant new business. Coveo, for example, alerted me to its strong December 2008. Others, like Surf Ray, appear to be facing some managerial and financial challenges. Sinequa appears to looking for opportunities that create revenues from embedded software deals.
Stephen Arnold, January 14, 2009
Zeros and Ones Look Alike Unless There Is Litigation
January 1, 2009
The law works like a giant gravity lens. Information in a legal matter gains a different atomic mass than information printed in an airplane in flight magazine. A good example of this “weight” flux appears in “Among The Clips That Viacom Sued Google Over, About 100 Were Uploaded By Viacom Itself.” The core idea is that Viacom allegedly uploaded videos to YouTube.com. These videos were then included in an exhibit listing Viacom videos on YouTube.com that alleged stepped on the copyright toes of Viacom. For me, the most interesting comment was:
Viacom sued Google over clips it claimed were infringing, that Viacom purposely uploaded to YouTube. That alone should show how ridiculous Viacom’s claims are in this lawsuit. There is simply no way for Google to know if clips are uploaded legitimately or not. Oddly, however, the court has now allowed Viacom to withdraw those clips, but lawyers like Eric Goldman are questioning how this isn’t a Rule 11 violation for frivolous or improper litigation.
Legal eagles are going to have a field day with this alleged action. As I have said before, the uploading and downloading of content is part of the warp and woof of the post 1994 crowd. This demographic includes some of the children of the legal eagles involved in this litigation. I don’t have any problem believing that a large company uploaded content to YouTube.com. At some point, other folks in that company discovered the content and promptly asserted that Google was the problem. When this happens at home, I think it is clear that parents have lost control just like the companies.
When the horse is gone, what can you do? In today’s world, you don’t want to sit and look at an empty barn. Sue somebody even if you left the stall door ajar.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 31, 2009
A freebie. I must report this to the Library of Congress. Once information gets into the Library of Congress, it is controlled. I think Viacom might want to check out the LoC’s methods.
AI Gives Cameras Brains
November 5, 0005
Computers are capable of thinking and learning thanks to AI, now cameras might be too. According to the Eurasia Review soon it will be possible that, “Cameras That Can Think.” Despite facial recognition software and other image based technology, an intelligent camera does not exist. The Universities of Manchester and Bristol, however, are on their way to designing an intelligent camera that will learn and understand what it sees.
Currently AI interprets data only after it has been recorded:
“This means AI systems perceive the world only after recording and transmitting visual information between sensors and processors. But many things that can be seen are often irrelevant for the task at hand, such as the detail of leaves on roadside trees as an autonomous car passes by. However, at the moment all this information is captured by sensors in meticulous detail and sent clogging the system with irrelevant data, consuming power and taking processing time. A different approach is necessary to enable efficient vision for intelligent machines.”
Bristol University researchers believe implementing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), an AI that enables visual understanding, on the visual plane will classify information at thousands of frames per second. The CNNs do not need to record the images or process them. An AI camera could identify events or objects then send that information to a system, saving time, storage space, and being more secure.
An intelligent camera could soon be possible with the SCAMP architecture from Manchester University. SCAMP is a processor chip that is a Pixel Processor Array. A PPA has a processor embedded in each part of the array and every pixel communicates to each other to process a parallel form. This would be the necessary system to develop CNNs.
Cameras could become smarter tools than simply capturing images and video. Could AI cameras become tools for augmented reality own would they used as surveillance tools by bad actors? Probably both.
Whitney Grace, November 5, 2020
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