Hot Take Resulting from Google Method
December 5, 2022
I read “Hot Take: Google Has a Company Strategy, Not a Product Strategy.” The write up explains that Google thinks like this:
Hire all the smart people and let them build. Hire all the smart people so they can’t work at a competitor. Hire all the smart people even if we don’t have something important for them to work on. Google acts like a venture capitalist, investing in promising people with the expectation that most will fail. They invest broadly in search of the idea that will deliver 100x. Let 1000 flowers bloom, and see which are the best.
You may agree or disagree with this statement. It is probably helpful if one has worked as an employee at Google or a consultant to the firm. But that does not stop Silicon Valley types from expressing their views of the world as information gleaned from an Egyptian ruler’s tomb.
I noted this statement in the comments to the article:
romwell said: Hot take: Google doesn’t have a strategy, period. Neither company, nor product.
In numerous articles and my monographs about Google, I have emphasized one point which, to me, encapsulates the company’s remarkable 25 year trajectory.
The firm made use of ideas developed at GoTo.com, Overture.com, and Yahoo.com. Those ideas converted Google from a mechanism for searching the content on the Web into a platform for advertising. By keeping one’s eye on the advertising ball, it’s clear that Alphabet YouTube Google DeepMind has been struggling to find a revenue winner.
Net net: As romwell said, “Google doesn’t have a strategy, period.” Had Yahoo not settled the court case for a $1 billion prior to the IPO, Google would have become another AllTheWeb.com, Lycos.com, or one of the many other outfits indexing problematic content.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2022
A Legal Information Truth Inconvenient, Expensive, and Dangerous
December 5, 2022
The Wall Street Journal published “Justice Department Prosecutors Swamped with Data As Cases Leave Long Digital Trails.” The write up addressed a problematic reality without craziness. The basic idea is that prosecutors struggle with digital information. The consequences are higher costs and in some cases allowing potentially problematic individuals to go to Burger King or corporate practices to chug along with felicity.
The article states:
Federal prosecutors are swamped by data, as the way people communicate and engage in behavior scrutinized by investigators often leaves long and complicated digital trails that can outpace the Justice Department’s technology.
What’s the fix? This is a remarkable paragraph:
The Justice Department has been working on ways to address the problem, including by seeking additional funding for electronic-evidence technology and staffing for US attorney’s offices. It is also providing guidance in an annual training for prosecutors to at times collect less data.
Okay, more money which may or may not be spent in a way to address the big data issues, more lawyers (hopefully skilled in manipulating content processing systems functions), annual training, and gather less information germane to a legal matter. I want to mention that misinformation, reformation of data, and weaponized data are apparently not present in prosecutors’ data sets or not yet recognized as a problem by the Justice Department.
My response to this interesting article includes:
- This is news? The issue has been problematic for many years. The vendors of specialized systems to manage evidence, index and make searchable content from disparate sources, and output systems which generate a record of what lawyer accessed what and when are asserting their systems can handle this problem. Obviously either licensees discover the systems don’t work like the demos or cannot handle large flows of disparate content.
- The legal industry is not associated with groundbreaking information innovation. I may be biased, but I think of lawyers knowing more about billing for their time than making use of appropriate, reliable technology for managing evidence. Excel timesheets are one thing. Dark Web forum content, telephone intercepts, and context free email and chat messages are quite different. Annual training won’t change the situation. The problem has to be addressed by law schools and lawyer certification systems. Licensing a super duper search system won’t deal with the problem no matter what consultants, vendors, and law professors say.
- The issue of “big data” is real, particularly when there are some many content objects available to a legal team, its consultants, and the government professionals working on a case or a particular matter. It is just easier to gather and then try to make sense of the data. When the necessary information is not available, time or money runs out and everyone moves on. Big data becomes a process that derails some legal proceedings.
My view is that similar examples of “data failure” will surface. The meltdown of crypto? Yes, too much data. The downstream consequences of certain medical products? Yes, too much data and possibly the subtle challenge of data shaping by certain commercial firms? The interlocks among suppliers of electrical components? Yes, too much data and possibly information weaponization by parties to a legal matter?
When online meant keyword indexing and search, old school research skills and traditional data collection were abundant. Today, short cuts and techno magic are daily fare.
It is time to face reality. Some technology is useful, but human expertise and judgment remain essential. Perhaps that will be handled in annual training, possibly on a cruise ship with colleagues? A vendor conference offering continuing education credits might be a more workable solution than smart software with built in workflow.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2022
Google and Crypto: Solana Should Anyone Ask
November 18, 2022
I read “Google Cloud Just Became a Solana Validator.” The article explains what Google has chosen to reveal to those who follow the company via “real” journalists; namely:
Google’s cloud computing division Google Cloud announced on Saturday that it’s now running a validator on the Solana blockchain, and will soon add features aimed at welcoming Solana developers and node runners.
No big deal. Amazon has blockchain-related services and a handful of patents pertaining to its digital currency inventions. No big deal either.
The write up says:
Google Cloud also announced it’s now indexing Solana data and adding it to its BigQuery data warehouse, a move that will “make it easier for the Solana developer ecosystem to access historical data.” The feature will launch in the first quarter of 2023, Mittal said. Mittal added that Google Cloud is bringing its credits program to “select startups in the Solana ecosystem” with up to $100,000 in Cloud Credits available for applicants.
Ah, more functionality.
What’s not in the write up? How about deanonymization functionality?
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2022
The Failure of Search: Let Many Flowers Bloom and… Die Alone and Sad
November 1, 2022
I read “Taxonomy is Hard.” No argument from me. Yesterday (October 31, 2022) I spoke with a long time colleague and friend. Our conversations usually include some discussion about the loss of the expertise embodied in the early commercial database firms. The old frameworks, work processes, and shared beliefs among the top 15 or 20 for fee online database companies seem to have scattered and recycled in a quantum crazy digital world. We did not mention Google once, but we could have. My colleague and I agreed on several points:
- Those who want to make digital information must have an informing editorial policy; that is, what’s the content space, what’s included, what’s excluded, and what problem does the commercial database solve
- Finding information today is more difficult than it has been our two professional lives. We don’t know if the data are current and accurate (online corrections when publications issue fixes), fit within the editorial policy if there is one or the lack of policy shaped by the invisible hand of politics, advertising, and indifference to intellectual nuances. In some services, “old” data are disappeared presumably due to the cost of maintaining, updating if that is actually done, and working out how to make in depth queries work within available time and budget constraints
- The steady erosion of precision and recall as reliable yardsticks for determining what a search system can find within a specific body of content
- Professional indexing and content curation is being compressed or ignored by many firms. The process is expensive, time consuming, and intellectually difficult.
The cited article reflects some of these issues. However, the mirror is shaped by the systems and methods in use today. The approaches pivot on metadata (index terms) and tagging (more indexing). The approach is understandable. The shift to technology which slash the needed for subject matter experts, manual methods, meetings about specific terms or categories, and the other impedimenta are the new normal.
A couple of observations:
- The problems of social media boil down to editorial policies. Without these guard rails and the specialists needed to maintain them, finding specific items of information on widely used platforms like Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter, among others is difficult
- The challenges of processing video are enormous. The obvious fix is to gate the volume and implement specific editorial guidelines before content is made available to a user. Skipping this basic work task leads to the craziness evident in many services today
- Indexing can be supplemented by smart software. However, that smart software can drift off course, so specialists have to intervene and recalibrate the system.
- Semantic, statistical, or behavior centric methods for identifying and suggesting possible relevant content require the same expert centric approach. There is no free lunch is automated indexing, even for narrow vocabulary technical fields like nuclear physics or engineered materials. What smart software knows how to deal with new breakthroughs in physics which emerge from the study of inter cell behavior among proteins in the human brain?
Net net: Is it time to re-evaluate some discarded systems and methods? Is it time to accept the fact that technology cannot solve in isolation certain problems? Is it time to recognize that close enough for horseshoes and good enough are not appropriate when it comes to knowledge centric activities? Search engines die when the information garden cannot support the buds and shoots of finding useful information the user seeks.
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2022
Waking Up to a Basic Fact of Online: Search and Retrieval Is Terrible
October 10, 2022
I read “Why Search Sucks.” The metadata for the article is, and I quote:
search-web-email-google-streaming-online-shopping-broken-2022-4
I spotted the article in a newsfeed, and I noticed it was published in April 2022 maybe? Who knows. Running a query on Bing, Google and Yandex for “Insider why search sucks” yielded links to the original paywalled story. The search worked. The reason has more to do with search engine optimization, Google prioritization of search-related information, and the Sillycon Valley source.
Why was there no “$” to indicate a paywall. Why was the data of publication not spelled out in the results? I have no idea. Why one result identified Savanna Durr as the author and the article itself said Adam Rogers was the author?
So for this one query and for billions of users of free, ad-supported Web search engines work so darned well? Free and good enough are the reasons I mention. (Would you believe that some Web search engines have a list of “popular” queries, bots that look at Google results, and workers who tweak the non Google systems to sort of like Google? No. Hey, that’s okay with me.)
The cited article “Why Search Sucks” takes the position that search and retrieval is terrible. Believe me. The idea is not a new one. I have been writing about information access for decades. You can check out some of this work on the Information Today Web site or in the assorted monographs about search that I have written. A good example is the three editions of the “Enterprise Search Report.” I have been consistent in my criticism of search. Frankly not much has changed since the days of STAIRS III and the Smart System. Over the decades, bells and whistles have been added, but to find what one wants online requires consistent indexing, individuals familiar with sources and their provenance, systems which allow the user to formulate a precise query, and online systems which do not fiddle the results. None of these characteristics is common today unless you delve into chemical structure search and even that is under siege.
The author of the “Why Search Sucks” article focuses on some use cases. These are:
- Email search
- Social media search (Yep, the Zuckbook properties and the soon to be a Tesla fail whale)
- Product search (Hello, Amazon, are you there?
- Streaming search.
The write up provides the author’s or authors’ musings about Google and those who search. The comments are interesting, but none moves the needle.
Stepping back from the write up, I formulated several observations about the write up and the handling of search and its suckiness.
First, search is not a single thing. Specific information retrieval systems and methods are needed for certain topics and specific types of content. I referenced chemical structures intentionally because the retrieval systems must accept visual input, numerical input, words, and controlled term names. A quite specific search architecture and user training are required to make certain queries return useful results. Give Inconel a whirl if you have access to a structured search system. The idea that there is a “universal search” is marketing and just simple minded. Believe it or not one of today’s Googlers complained vociferously on a conference call with a major investment bank about my characterization of Google and the then almost useless Yahoo search.
Second, the pursuit of “good enough” is endemic among researchers and engineers in academic institutions and search-centric vendors. Good enough means that the limits of user capability, system capacity, budget, and time are balanced. Why not fudge how many relevant results exist for a user looking for a way to convert a link into a dot point on a slide in a super smart and busy executive’s PowerPoint for a luncheon talk tomorrow? Trying to deliver something works and meets measurable standards of precision and recall is laughable to some in the information retrieval “space” today.
Third, the hope that “search startups” will deliver non-sucking search is amusing. Smart people have been trying to develop software which delivers on point results with near real time information for more than 50 years. The cost and engineering to implement this type of system is losing traction in the handful of organizations capable of putting up the money, assembling the technical team, and getting the plumbing working is shrinking. Start ups. Baloney.
Net net: I find it interesting that more articles express dismay and surprise that today’s search and retrieval systems suck. After more than half a century of effort, that’s where we are. Fascinating it is that so many self proclaimed search experts are realizing that their self positioning might be off by a country mile.
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2022
Libraries: A Target?
October 4, 2022
Reading is FUNdamental. I am not sure that’s an accurate slogan today. “Libraries Across The US Are Receiving Violent Threats” reports:
In the last two weeks, at least a dozen public libraries across the U.S. received threats that resulted in canceled events and system-wide closures. While bomb and active shooter threats to public library systems in Nashville, Fort Worth, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Boston and other cities across the country were ultimately deemed hoaxes, library workers and patrons say they are still reeling in the aftermath.
Nice.
I grew up with the following impressions of libraries:
- My mother took me to the library each week so she could return the books she read from the previous week. She checked out books. I am not sure how old I was when I became aware of this library routine. Didn’t everyone go to the library once a week? Not to protest or make threats, but to get books and introduce a child to the “routine”?
- My sixth grade teacher, Ms. Costello, awarded a paper “flag” for each book read by a student. On the wall was a list of her students. The flags were pinned after each student’s name. One book received one white flag. Five books were converted to a white flag with a blue border. Ten books received a white flag with a red border. Twenty books were represented by a white flag with a yellow border. Each school year ended with Ms. Costello recognizing the students who read the most books. (Guess who won?) I made many trips to the Prospect Branch Library because I nuked the grade school library of books which interested me quickly.
- In high school, wearing my worn out sneakers, my cool plaid shirt, and my blue jeans with cuffs no less, I went to the downtown library which I reached via the bus. In my high school, English teachers assigned essays which had to have footnotes. The reference desk librarians were helpful and showed me the ropes of microfilm newspapers (wow, that technology sucked. Wasn’t there a better way to search?), the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature (wow, that print index sucked. Wasn’t there a better way to search and get access to the full text of the article?), the mysteries of the books behind the reference desk. (Oh, Constance Winchell, I loved you!)
- In college, I made the library my home away from home between classes. I had favorite tables at which to work. I loved the Library of Congress cataloging system. I knew exactly where certain book topics were shelved. I worked in the library on and off for a couple of years until I landed a higher paying job, but I learned how to get first crack at books professors put on reserve. I also located the COBOL instruction manuals and used them to do my first computer based indexed project for a professor named William Gillis. Believe it or not, that project was my ticket to the world of commercial database indexing and my first real job at Halliburton Nuclear in Washington, DC. I indexed nuclear information using good old PDP computers. Exciting? You bet.
Why have I isolated four library experiences?
None require terror threats, political actions, or any behavior other than respect for the professionals who assisted me. My wife has told me that I could have gone to work right after high school and skipped college. She’s wrong. I am not sure I learned too much in my college courses. The bulk of the information was repetitive or something with which I was familiar based on my reading.
What was valuable to me was the opportunity to spend significant time in the university library. Here’s a fun fact: I was thrilled when a college event took place on Friday nights. I knew I would be one of a very few students in the library when the event was underway. Silence, no delays at the photocopy machine, no waiting for a specific card catalog drawer, and no one clogging the space between the shelves.
What’s my view of libraries? Can’t figure it out? Perhaps you should consider what one can achieve by doing the library thing. Online is okay, but it sure isn’t the library thing. I should know because I was involved and maybe instrumental in a number of very successful and widely used commercial databases. I knew paper indexes sucked, and I did something about it.
But libraries. The prime mover for me. Why be afraid of learning, knowledge, information, and different ideas? My answer is that those without a library “backbone” are lost in a digital world in which TikTok information imparts wisdom. Ho ho ho.
Stephen E Arnold, October 4, 2022
Adobe: Figma May Channel Framemaker. Yikes!
September 20, 2022
I read a number of the articles about Adobe (yep, the Photoshop outfit) and its purchase of Figma. Many dinobabies use Adobe products. The youngsters are into mobile apps or Web apps when crafting absolutely remarkable online products and services. Adobe is a dinobaby product. Do you use channels? Yeah, right. I gave a lecture at the University of Michigan about something in which no one was interested except me and one professor who knew about my indexing methods. I do recall, however, talking with students at a free lunch which attracted a couple of people from the art and design or design and architecture or some similarly mystical fields. I sat with two of these individuals and learned that Adobe software was taught in their design course. I asked, “Why?” The answer was, “To get a job you have to know Photoshop and Illustrator.” Okay, because these interesting people were not going to get involved in machine indexing or what whippersnappers and the smartest people in the world call “metadata.”
One of the write ups about Adobe, a software subscription company, was “Adobe’s Figma Acquisition Is a $20 Billion Bet to Control the Entire Creative Market.” The write up states with incredible insight, confidence, and design savoir faire:
Adobe says the current plan is essentially for nothing to change.
Okay, I believe this statement. I believe everything I read on Silicon Valley-type real news services.
I would point to Adobe’s masterful handling of Framemaker. You use that program, probably more often than you use Adobe’s Channels controls.
Framemaker is a desktop publishing tool purpose built decades ago to make it possible to produce long, technical documents easily and quickly. Many operations could be automated. But Framemaker was a killer to learn. How often do you Unix key combinations in your Windows applications? Framemaker did little to make certain things easy; for example, having a footnote that was longer than the hard coded limit in Framemaker or changing a color without navigating through absolutely crazy color libraries and clicking away like mad. A newcomer to Framemaker has zero clue about creating a new document and not having weird stuff happen with headers, footers, fonts, etc. Nevertheless, when one had to crank out documentation for a new tank or output the technical details of materials specifications, Framemaker was and in my office still is the go too software. FYI: We stopped buying Framemaker after Adobe foisted one upgrade on me. I won’t detail my problems with the weird changes which made the software more difficult to use and set up for a production job. I uninstalled the Adobe flavor and went back to Framemaker 7.2, which was released a decade ago and was a gentle bug fix. But after Framemaker 7.2, the software was lost in space. I called it “outer limits” code.
Adobe purchased Framemaker and the product has not made much progress, maybe zero progress. The cost is now about $360 per year. You can read about its Adobe magical features here. There’s only one problem: The software has lost its way. Adobe wants everyone to use InDesign, a software ill-suited to crank out documentation for a weapons system in my opinion.
What will happen to Figma once in the new evergreen revenue oriented Adobe? I fear that Figma, which is unsuited for the type of content I produce, will become:
- Adobe’s version of Google’s Dodgeball and get kicked into a corner
- A Framemaker destined to disappoint dinobabies like me
- The greatest thing since Photoshop was equipped with a feature to open Illustrator files and not immediately crash.
The future will be exciting. Goodness, channeling Framemaker. What a thought.
Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2022
Google: Redefines Quality. And What about Ads?
August 23, 2022
When I was working on The Google Legacy (Infonortics, 2004), I gathered information about Google’s method for determining quality. Prior to 2006, Google defined “quality” in a way different from the approach taken at professional indexing and commercial database companies. Professional organizations relied on subject matter experts’ views. Some firms — for example, the Courier Journal & Louisville Times, Predicasts, Engineering Index, the American Petroleum Institute, among others — were old fashioned. Commercial database firms with positive cash flows would hire specialists to provide ideas and suggestions for improving content selection and indexing. At the Courier Journal, we relied on Betty Eddison and a number of other professionals. We also hired honest-to-goodness people with advanced degrees to work on the content we produced.
Google pops up with jibber jabber about voting, a concept floated by an IBM Almaden researcher, and the notion of links and their value. As Google evolved, I collected a list of what amount4ed to 140 or so factors which were used by Google to determine the quality of content. At one time, Dr. Liz Liddy used my compilation as illustrative material for her classes in information science.
By 2006, Google shifted quality from its mysterious and somewhat orthogonal factors to what I call “ad quality.” The concept gained steam when Google acquired Applied Semantics and worked hard to relax a user’s query, match the query to a stack of ads to which the query would relate, and display these as “personalized” and targeted messages. Quality, therefore, became an automated process for working through ad revenue.
Since 2006, Google has been focused on ad revenue. My personal view is that Google has one stream of revenue: Ad revenue. Its other ventures have not demonstrated to me that the company can match its first “me too” innovation. If you don’t remember what that was, think about the Yahoo settlement related to the “inspiration” Google obtained from the GoTo.com and Overture “pay to play” system. The idea was that those with Web pages would pay to get their message in front of a service’s users.
Where is Google quality now? Is it anchored in editorial policies, old fashioned ideas like precision and recall? Is the Google using controlled vocabulary lists designed to allow precise queries? Is Google adding classification codes to disambiguate terms like terminal as in “computer terminal” or “airport terminal”?
“Google’s Planned Search Changes Could Upend the Internet” reveals:
Google is trying to improve the quality of search results and reduce the number of misleading sites, misinformation, and clickbait users are subjected to.
I want to point out that the lack of precision and recall in Google’s approach is the firm’s notion that new Web sites are more important than older Web sites, traffic is more important than factual accuracy, and ad revenue goals are the strong force in the Google datasphere.
Thus, after a certain outfit headed by a search engine optimization crazed advanced the SEO “revolution”, the Google is, according the article:
As part of the change, the company will roll out its “helpful content update” to identify content that is primarily written to rank well in search engines and lower its rank. Sullivan says the update seems to especially benefit searches related to tech, online education, shopping, arts, and entertainment. The company is also working to improve access to high-quality reviews, ones that provide helpful, in-depth information.
Does this suggest that Google will focus on high-value content, explicit editorial policies, and professional indexing by subject matter experts?
Nope.
It means quicker depletion of the ad inventory and an effort to cope with the fact that those in middle school and high school use TikTok for information.
Google is officially a dinobaby just one not very good at anything other than selling ads and steering its coal fired steam boat away from the rapids in today’s data flows. For serious information research Google is too consumer oriented. Search based applications are what some researchers prefer. The content in these systems comes from specialized crawls and collections.
The quality list? Old fashioned and antiquated. How much of Google fits in that category? SAIL on, steam boat. Chug chug chug. PR PR PR. Toot toot.
But what about traffic to sites affected by Google’s content rigor?
Just buy ads, of course.
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
YouTube: Some Proof about Unfindable Content
August 17, 2022
I read “5 Sites to Discover the Best YouTube Channels and Creators Recommended for You.” The write up presents five services which make YouTube content “findable.” What I learned from the article is that YouTube videos are, for the most part, unfindable. A YouTuber can stumble upon a particular video and rely on Google’s unusual recommendation system. In my experience, that system is hobbled by its assorted filters and ad-magnetic methods. If I want to locate a video by eSysman (a fellow who reports about big money yachts loved by some money launderers and oligarchs), Google refers me to NautiStyles, YachtsForSale (quite a sales person is visible on that channel), or the flavor of the day like Bering Yachts. eSysman is the inspiration for one former CIA professional, and her edging into the value of open source intelligence. Does Google’s algorithm “sense” this? Nah, not a clue. What if I want some downhome cookin’ with Cowboy Kent, the chuck wagon totin’, trail hand feedin’ Oklahoma chef. Sorry, promoting Italian chefs are not what I was looking for. Cowboy cookin’ is not Italian restaurateurs showing that their skills are sharper than fry cooks in French restaurants. But what about YouTube search? Yes, isn’t it fantastic? Enough said.
What about the services identified in the article? Each offers different ways to find a video or channel on a specific or semi-specific topic. You can navigate to the source document and work your way through the list of curated “finder” sites.
The write up points out:
YouTube has over 50 million channels, but as you might have guessed, most of them aren’t worth subscribing to.
That’s the type of “oh, well, don’t worry statement” that drives me bonkers. Just let someone tell you what’s good. Go with it. Hey, no problemo. Who wants to consider the implications of hours of video uploaded every minute or the fact that there are 50 million channels from the Googlers’ service.
Several observations:
- No one knows what is on YouTube. I have some doubts that filters designed to eliminate certain types of content work particularly well. The idea that the Google screens each and every uploaded video with tools constantly updated to keep track of possibly improper videos is interesting to contemplate. Since no one knows what videos contain, how can one know what’s filtered, allowed in mistakenly, blocked inadvertently, or processed using methods not revealed to the public. (Lists of user “handles” can be quite useful for some purposes.)
- Are the channels no one can find actually worthless? I am not too sure. There are channels which present information about how to game the Google algorithm posted by alleged Google “partners.” I engaged in a dialogue with this “professional” and found the exchange quite disturbing. I located the huckster by accident, and I can guarantee that keeping track of this individual is not an easy task. Is that a task a Googler will undertake? Yeah, sure.
- YouTube search is one of the many “flavors” of information location the company offers. In my experience, none of the Google search services works very well or delivers on point information without frustration. Does this comment apply to Google Patent search? Yep. What about Google News search? Yep yep. What about regular Google search for company using a common word for its name? Yep yep yep. (Google doesn’t have a clue about a company field code, but it sure pushes ads unrelated to anything I search. I love mindless ads for the non-US content surveillance products that help me express myself clearly. Hey, no I won’t buy.)
Net net: YouTube’s utility is designed for Google ads. The murky methods used to filter content and the poor search and recommender systems illustrate why professional libraries and specific indexing guidelines were developed. Google, of course, thinks that type of dinobaby thinking is not hip.
Yes, it is. Unless Google tames the YouTube, the edifice could fall down. TikTok (which has zero effective search) may just knock a wall or trellis in the YouTube garden over. Google wants to be an avant guard non text giant. Even giants have vulnerable points. The article makes clear that third parties cannot do much to make information findable in YouTube. But in a TikTok world, who cares? Advertisers? Google stakeholders? Those who believe Google’s smart software is alive? I go for the software is alive crowd.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2022
Palantir Technologies: Following a Well Worn Path
August 11, 2022
Most intelware vendors are pretty much search and retrieval with a layer of search based applications. I think of these specialized services like an over-priced foam dog bed. The foam is hidden beneath what looks like a rich, comfy, and pet friendly cover. The dog climbs on, sniffs the fumes and scratches the cover. A bite or two and the cover tears and foam shards litter the floor.
When I think of some intelware vendors’ solutions, I keep thinking about that Alibaba-type dog bed. Wow. Not good.
I read “Palantir Stock Skids As Exec Says Downbeat Forecast Is All the More Disappointing Given Opportunities Ahead”, and I saw that dog bed, the torn cover, and the weird pink and green foam chunks in our family room. I know this association is not one shared by those who cheerlead for Palantir or the stakeholders who must look at the value of their “stakes”.
The write up reports:
Government deals “at the billion-dollar range of the contracts that we are working on…have the bug of them taking too long and the feature of, in a highly difficult, tumultuous and politically uncertain world, that you actually get paid and you actually make free-cash flow,” Chief Executive Alex Karp said on the earnings call.
Yep, that’s true.
However, Palantir has been working hard to convince outfits like chocolate companies, big banks, and some pharma companies to rely on Palantir for their information plumbing and intelligence dashboard. (Dashboards are hot, even though many intelware vendors just recycle the components associated with Elasticsearch, a popular open source search and retrieval system, and other members of the species ELK.
If Palantir were closing deals with non governmental entities, wouldn’t that revenue make up for the historically slow and sketchy US government procurement process. For those in the know, FAR is a friend. For those who have racked up a track record of grousing about Federal procurement rules, FAR can be associated with the concept “far outside the circle of decision makers.”
If we accept my assertion of intelware as basic search, indexing and classifying content objects, and output nice looking reports. These reports, by the way, depend upon some widely used numerical recipes. The outputs of competitive intelware systems which use the same test set of content objects is often similar. In some cases, very similar. (In September at CyCon, we will show some screenshots and challenge the audience of law enforcement and intelligence professionals to identify the output with the system generating the diagrams, charts, graphs, and maps. In previous lectures this audience involvement ploy yielded one predictable result: No one could match outputs with the system producing it.
What are the paths available to a vendor of intelware chasing huge contracts for getting close to 20 years? That’s two decades, gentle reader.
Based on my observations and research for my books and monographs, here are the historical precedents I have noticed. Will Palantir follow any of these paths? Probably not, but I enjoy trotting them out in order to provide some color for the search and specialized software sector competitors. What each competitor lacked in applications, stable products and services, and informed and available customer support, the PP (Palantir predecessors) had outstanding marketing, nifty technical jargon, and a bit of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field magic.
- The vendor just gets acquired. Recorded Future is now Insight. Super secretive Detica is BAE Systems, etc. etc. The idea is that the buyer has the resources to make the software work and develop innovations that will keep ahead of open source offerings and pesky start ups. A variation is continuous resales as owners of intelware companies realize there are not enough customers to deliver the claims in PowerPoint decks’ revenue projections. Is one example this sequence? i2 Ltd (UK) —> venture firm –> IBM Corp. –> Harris?
- The vendor hooks up with the government and presents the face of a standalone, independent outfit when affiliated with a government entity. Example: Some intelware firms in China, Israel, and the UK.
- The vendor goes away or turns a few cartwheels and emerges as something else entirely. Example: Cobwebs Technologies doesn’t do intelware; it provides anti money laundering services. I still like LifeRaft’s positioning as a marketing intelligence company.
- Everybody involved with the company moves on, new executives arrive, and the firm emerges as a customer service outfit or a customer experience provider. Rightly or wrongly I think of LucidWorks as this type of outfit.
- A combo deal. The inner workings of this type of deal converts Excalibur into Convera which becomes Ntent and then becomes a property of Allen & Co. Where is Convera today? I heard that some of its DNA survives in Seekr, but I have not heard back from the company to verify this rumor. The firm’s PR professional is apparently busy doing more meaningful PR things.
- Creative accounting. Believe it or not, some senior executives are found guilty of financial fancy dancing. Example: The founder of a certain search vendor with government clients. I think a year in the slammer was talked about.
- The company just closes up. Example: Perhaps Delphis, Entopia, or Stull, among others.
Net net: Vendors selling to law enforcement, crime analysts, and intelligence agencies face formidable competition from incumbents; for example, big Beltway bandits like the one for which I used to work. Furthermore, when selling intelware (event with a name change and a flashy PowerPoint deck) corporate types are not comfortable buying from a company working closely with some of the badge-and-gun agencies. Intelware vendors can talk about big sales to commercial enterprises. True, the intelware vendor may land some deals. But the majority of leads just become money pits: Sales calls, presentations, meetings with shills for the firm’s lawyers, and similar human resources. Those foam chunks from the Alibaba dog bed are similar to some investors’ dreams of giant stakeholder paydays. Oh, well, there is recycling.
Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2022
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