Google and a Digital Little Big Horn
August 20, 2009
Short honk: Lookin’ gloomy, dude. The Google faces the new three amigos: Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo. You will want to read the Thomson Reuters’ story “Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo Join Coalition Against Google Book Settlement” which originated at PaidContent. After 11 years of watching Google’s roaming the open prairie, the forces of right have decided enough is enough. For more on this epic, The Wall Street Journal helps leads the traditional media forward.
Stephen Arnold, August 21, 2009
Yahoo BOSS to Push Around Bing
August 20, 2009
Quite a headline this: “Yahoo BOSS Might Be Bigger Than Bing”. Eric Schonfeld reported that Yahoo’s Build Your Own Search engine racked up:
At 30 million queries a day, that comes out to about 900 million queries a month, which would make Yahoo BOSS the fourth largest search engine in the U.S. with about a 6 percent share. That is just below the 9 percent share (and 1.2 billion queries a month) comScore estimates for Bing.
The article provides data galore and a number of useful links. My question: “With this type of success how will Yahoo leverage this advantage?” If the Microsoft Yahoo deal is approved, will BOSS push Bing around or will Microsoft shunt BOSS aside with a lateral arabesque?
Stephen Arnold, August 21, 2009
Entity Extraction from Google and Yahoo
August 19, 2009
I found the announcement reported on the Programmable Web a harbinger. “Yahoo Quietly Axes Two Search APIs” disclosed that Yahoo is out of the entity extraction business * before * the Microsoft deal closes. I can see nuking this type of service once the deal closes, but killing off a service quietly is more troubling to me. Programmable Web provides a link to “Being Optimistic at the Deathbed of Yahoo Search API”. I am not so optimistic. You can read Yahoo’s announcement on the YDN:
What is the impact? Yahoo offers no information. What about those BOSS fans? Yahoo offers no information.
To my surprise, Mashable here reported that Yahoo has not killed its term extraction API.
What’s ironic is that at about the same time as Yahoo’s entity flip flop flip was taking place, the Google’s patent document US20090204592 was published. Now entity extraction is no big deal any longer. You can poke around and find open source routines or you can click on Google ads for Teragram’s solution. I find these Google patent documents interesting because it suggests to me that the Google is cognizant of the functions that search vendors such as Autonomy and Endeca have been including in their upscale systems. With the Google nosing into these functions, I have a hunch that Google will be looking to add some new zing to its Google Search Appliance and its enterprise applications.
You can read the patent document using the wonderful USPTO system here. The abstract for the document filed on April 9, 2009, complements other Google text processing patent documents. (You can explore these via the Perfect Search / ArnoldIT.com service at http://arnoldit.perfectsearchcorp.com/.)
A system receives a search query, determines whether the received search query includes an entity name, and determines whether the entity name is associated with a common word or phrase. When the entity name is associated with a common word or phrase, the system generates a link to a rewritten query, performs a search based on the received search query to obtain first search results, and provides the first search results and the link to the rewritten query. When the entity name is not associated with a common word or phrase, the system rewrites the received search query to include a restrict identifier associated with the entity name, generates a link to the received search query, performs a search based on the rewritten search query to obtain second search results, and provides the second search results and the link to the received search query.
Yahoo waffles (thrashes in confusion?) and the Google discloses an entity function. I noted with interest that one of the Google entity extraction inventors was Marissa Mayer along with several colleagues. Tell me. Which company seems to be on the upswing? Which company is pointed toward the sunset?
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2009
Bing Cherries Ripen Slowly
August 18, 2009
Short honk: Dan Frommer (Silicon Valley Insider) reported that “Bing Search Share Rises Modestly in July”. He said, “Bing’s share was 8.9 percent, up from 8.4 percent in June”. Because online is seasonal, any growth in the summer months, is a positive. Mr. Frommer points out that Yahoo’s search share is heading south. He points out that Yahoo has to grow its search share because “Yahoo will only get revenue from Bing searches performed on Yahoo.” Three quick observations: [a] Yahoo continues to struggle to make its services visible. I have to do a lot of clicking to see current email messages. [b] Yahoo’s search technologies may have been also rans to Google’s but I find the different search interfaces and the unpredictable results when searching for computer gear annoying. I had to write one SSD vendor to locate the product on the vendor’s Yahoo store. The outfit was Memory Suppliers. When I located the product on Yahoo, it was priced at more than $1,000. Error or a merchant trying to skim the unknowing? [c] I ran the query “iss weather photos” for an article I had to write yesterday for the International Online Show’s Web log. I did not get “International space station” snaps of weather systems. I got hits to backyard weather stations. Google delivered what I needed. I settled on using images from USA.gov, which uses the Bing.com system. Yahoo’s image search was less useful than Bing’s and Google’s. I have made this statement before: Yahoo is a floundering AOL. Instead of Yahoo buying AOL, maybe AOL should buy Yahoo. AOL is trying to become a content generation company. I still am not sure what the Yahooligans are doing. I don’t think it is search and that is going to prove to be a misstep.
Stephen Arnold, August 18, 2009
Shocking Search News
August 11, 2009
The Washington Post dropped a bomb shell next to the mine run off pond here in Harrod’s Creek a day ago. The Washington Post reprinted a TechCrunch write up that had been timing out for us. The headline? “Which Search Engine Do You Choose In The Blind Test?”
This search tool strips out all the branding, so you’re forced to really think about which results you like better. And early results showed a much more even distribution than Google’s 70% market share would suggest: Google: 44%, Bing: 33%, Yahoo: 23%. The score keeping feature was removed when people found a way to game it, but you can still run the test against yourself and see which search engine you really like the best. Too bad the one I seem to like will shortly be mothballed. The tool was created by Michael Kordahi, a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft.
I am nervous about quoting this much text from a newspaper, but I thought it was important to remind myself that Yahoo will become Bing.com and that the person creating the test works / worked at Microsoft.
I am still surprised by the fact that when Bing and Yahoo are added together, the combined score is bigger than Google’s miserable 44 percent. I had been drinking the Kool-Aid from various consulting firms that Google’s market share was more than 70 percent in Web search. Maybe these are two different scores? Heck. What difference does that make. For this golden moment in research, Bing and Yahoo have more moxie than the Google.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Yahoo and Reality
August 8, 2009
I scanned the SEO crowds’ view on the top Yahooliganette’s view that Yahoo is not a search engine company. You can read Search Engine Land’s view with a video link in its story “Revisionist History: Bartz Claims Yahoo Was Never A Search Engine.” The journalist who gave the story prominence was Ashlee Vance, writing for the venerable but struggling New York Times. That article “Yahoo Chief: We Have Never Been a Search Company” reported:
The company’s strength has been in collecting information, not producing it.
The write up contains some memorable quotations, and I urge you to read these first hand, not from the webbed feet of the addled goose.
Now the view from Harrod’s Creek:
Yahoo Chose a Path of Knee Jerk Adaptation
Yahoo lacked a vision. The company had money and it had quite a few individuals who operated as each was running a separate company. The result was that by 2004, Yahoo was a crazy quite patchwork of unrelated businesses. Often each had a separate technical infrastructure and not much enthusiasm for playing well with other units of the Yahoo empire. This became and remains a huge drag on Yahoo’s businesses. Reaction time is slow and costs are high and tough to control. In these knee jerks, Yahoo created great public relations but lacked a strategy. By 2005, advertisers could not buy ads that would be in front of a demographic across the range of Yahoo properties; for example, 18 to 24 year old males across Flicker, Sports, Groups, and other Yahoo properties. Knee jerk reactions are land mines for online information companies.
Yahoo’s View of Search Was Different from Google’s View of Search
I have had run ins with the wizards from Google and Yahoo. Believe me, the squabbles I have had with Google have been about search. Larry Page snapped at me when I chided him about his refusal in Year 2000 to support truncation. But that disagreement was 100 percent about search. I did not agree with Mr. Page, but we both knew we were talking about what was the defining application for the Internet in the post Year 2000 period. My squabbles with Yahoo were never about search. I would point out a search issue, and I would be met with a haughty, uninformed response in most cases. One example concerned the implementation of semantic functions via smart software. Yahoo’s super wizards insisted that Yahoo’s approach was better and smarter than Google’s. I didn’t think so because Google was ** using ** semantics as an embedded function, and Yahoo was trying to convince me that its engineers were smarter than Google’s. Yahooligans, it is not about IQ and college connections. The subject is the implementation of core technology about search in a cohesive manner. Yahoo’s view of search was not in line with my view of search.
Yahoo Had Many Search Systems, Not One Search System
In one briefing I did when I was a rental for an outfit called Gerson Lehrman, I recall talking with a couple of superstars from a New York big name investment banking firm. This outfit somehow ended up with me in a conference room talking about my cost analysis of Yahoo’s many search systems. I had a PowerPoint slide in 2007 that listed these search systems: [a] a license for InQuira natural language processing system for customer support, [b] Flickr search which ran on the tough-to-scale home brew system that Yahoo purchased, [c] the Stata Labs’s email search system, [d] the Delicious.com search system, [e] whatever was left of the Inktomi search system which I used for the original FirstGov.gov search system in September 2000, [f] the search system for Yahoo News, [g] the Yahoo shopping search systems (note the plural), and a couple of others. The point on the slide is that it is really expensive to maintain, scale, and innovate across different and complex search systems. I recall vividly that these 25-year-old MBAs from colleges with great PR programs told me that the costs of search were irrelevant. Wow! That was stupid then and it is stupid now. Yahoo’s promiscuity in search doomed it to be a loser in findability. Forget the customers. Think about the expense and opportunity cost the Yahoo view of search created. Microsoft has “inherited” this problem, and it has left Yahoo the company it is today—a portal.
Wrap Up
I can understand why the Yahooligan top management team does not see Yahoo as a search company. Yahoo was a human-built directory. A directory is about “findability”. Search is one component in findability. Most people—including the management of Yahoo—don’t understand what Google has done in the last 11 years. As a result, the Yahoo logic is to say, “We don’t do what Google does.”
Since Google is essentially a search company, the Yahoo logic makes it clear to them I suppose that Yahoo has never been a Google. That is a valid observation.
In short, I care about search. I don’t care about Yahoo’s version of the portal approach to information. I think the Yahoo presentation of its new positioning is quite significant:
- Yahoo has essentially conceded vast amounts of conceptual territory to Google. Google is search and it is now Microsoft’s problem to figure out how to deal with Googzilla
- Yahoo may be able to develop a sustainable business for the consumer user of the Internet who wants to navigate to one place and get information about television, sports, the weather, and finance. AOL could pose a threat to Yahoo and I ask myself, “Why do we need both AOL and Yahoo?”
- Yahoo’s cost problem is going to have lasting repercussions. Stepping away from some engineering costs, operational costs, R&D investments in search, and the administrative and management drag of search will help some. But the expense of the search system legacy at Yahoo will hamper the company going forward unless more stringent steps are taken and taken quickly.
In Harrod’s Creek, we see the new Yahoo as the same old Yahoo with a management team that has to control costs while keeping pace with the changes perturbing the datasphere. Was passing on that Microsoft buy out offer evidence of how Yahoo’s interprets its world?
Stephen Arnold, August 8, 2009
Yahoo IBM Tie May Be Warped by Microsoft
August 6, 2009
Computer World’s “Yahoo Deal Puts IBM, Microsoft in Enterprise Search Pickle” seems to a bit of a stretch. The idea is that the tie up between Microsoft and Yahoo will create a problem for IBM’s enterprise search promotion. Computer World argues that IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition will be a victim of Microsoft’s control of Yahoo search. Microsoft has Bing and its Microsoft Fast ESP (soon to be released we hear). Therefore, the IBM deal with Yahoo is a goner. We’re not too concerned. The IBM Yahoo OmniFind search system is Lucene. If that were not sufficient reason to kill the deal, Yahoo’s partner is IBM. IBM probably would want to bow out of the tie up. It remembers its first deal with Mr. Gates and company and probably OS/2 Warp. IBM’s previous dealings with Microsoft were interesting. Furthermore, we don’t think that there has been much traction for OmniFind with or without Yahoo.
Jessica Bratcher, August 6, 2009
Flickr Thunderstorms
August 6, 2009
Right after inking a yet-to-be-approved deal with Microsoft, Yahoo rolled out enhancements to Flickr’s image search. If you have not tried the new-and-improved Flickr, click here and give the system a whirl. My test queries were modest. I need pictures of train wrecks, collapsed houses, and skiers who are doing headers into snow drifts. These illustrations amuse me and I find them useful in illustrating the business methods of some dinosaur-like organizations. The search “train wreck” worked. I received image results that were on a par with Google’s. Yahoo’s Flickr did not allow me to NOT out jpgs or narrow the query to line art. The system was fine. My query for “house collapse” was less satisfying, but the results were usable. I had to click and browse before I found a suitable image for a company that is shaken by financial upheavals and management decisions.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbruce/193295658/
What surprised me about Flickr was the story “Cloud Storage Nightmare with Flickr.” Hubert Nguyen reported:
A Flickr user learned the hard way when his account got hacked and 3000 of his photos were deleted by the hacker, who also closed his account. The account owner is now campaigning against Flickr’s support. You can imagine how mad that person was, but it gets worse: Flickr cannot retrieve his data and we guess that this is because they were deleted in a seemingly “legitimate” manner (from Flickr’s point of view). We think that Flickr is built to survive some catastrophic hardware failure, but if an account is closed, the data is immediately deleted – permanently.
This strikes me as a policy issue, but it underscores the types of challenges that Microsoft may find itself trying to free itself from the thorn bush. If the revenue from the yet-to-be-approved tie up does not produce a truck load of dough, the situation could become even thornier for Microsoft.
Stephen Arnold, August 6, 2009
Bing Rings Up Some US Search Share Gains
August 4, 2009
Dong Ngo’s “Bing Sees Slight Uptick in July” reported that Microsoft’s Google killer is making headway. Mr. Ngo wrote:
The combined market share of both Microsoft and Yahoo in July was 20.36 percent, up slightly from 19.27 percent in June. The commanding lead Google currently has on the market shrank slightly to 77.54 percent in July from 78.48 percent in June.
Microsoft and Yahoo combined for a less robust share of the global market. My question is, “Who will be the new number three?” A US company? Another country’s system?
Stephen Arnold, August 4, 2009
Microsoft Yahoo Search Staff Shake Up
August 2, 2009
SFGate’s “Yahoo Searches for a New Start” contained an comment about the pending tie up of Microsoft and Yahoo in Web search. I found this comment insightful:
Many Yahoo employees will lose their jobs or have to move over to Microsoft. In a conference call this week, Bartz acknowledged the impact: “Yes, there are certainly many Yahoo search employees that will be asked to take jobs at Microsoft as they integrate the technology. … And then unfortunately there will be some redundancies in Yahoo. … There will be redundancies; it just is in the future.” She added that nothing will change until the two companies get regulatory approval for the partnership, which won’t happen until 2010 at the earliest. Then there’s a “transition” period, which will last for two years after that. But if we were Yahoo search employees, we’d start polishing those resumes now.
SFGate then added, without much factual underpinning in my opinion:
There should still be a place for them in Silicon Valley. Yahoo’s always had a fraught relationship with search – even in the early days, company founders Jerry Yang and David Filo never wanted to spend too much of Yahoo’s money building infrastructure – but it was healthy for Silicon Valley to have the two major search companies in competition right here. What would be healthiest would be for someone – perhaps one of those spurned Yahoo search employees – to launch a new company, perhaps to compete with Google. There should be room for all.
Search is on its way to becoming what the US government calls a donut hole. There is some action at both ends of the search spectrum, but in the middle you are without much coverage. On the consumer side, Google has sewed up search and is well on its way to make more headway in online advertising. The YouTube.com monetization is beginning to roll. DoubleClick holds promise. The Google is not sitting on its tail waiting to see what Microsoft and Yahoo will be doing if their deal is approved.
On the other end of the search spectrum are the specialized search vendors. You can say what you want about the 350 companies in this space. Right now, the giants are Autonomy, Coveo, Endeca, Exalead, Fast Search (installed base), and maybe a couple of others. Hugely influential are open source distributions and IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle who just bundle search in with other software to make big sales. Search is a commodity or give away. Google is a growing presence in this sector. If Google can gain share with some Fortune 50 companies, the enterprise search landscape will be realigned.
The Google has an on going need for wizards. Start ups need technical talent as well. But if Yahoo dumps lots of engineers in search and content processing, I am not so sure that these folks will find jobs right away. More likely is that the Google will snag the gems and the others will have to fight tooth and nail to find work in a Silicon Valley that is sitting in a physician’s waiting room. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2009
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