Voice Search: Bing vs Google
November 3, 2017
We all know that Microsoft’s Bing has struggled to compete with Google Search. Will voice search level the field? Search Engine Watch ponders, “How Does Bing’s Voice Search Compare to Google’s?” Writer Clark Boyd acknowledges it does not seem Bing will eclipse Google as a whole anytime soon, but points to Microsoft’s new partnership with Amazon’s Alexa as evidence of change. The article delves into specifics about Microsoft’s voice-search technology, mostly with details on Cortana but also citing the voice search now found in their Edge browser. It also examines the company’s apparent strategy, which involves that partnership with Amazon and integration into popular platforms like Spotify.
Boyd next examines specific differences between the companies’ voice searches. For example, he states Cortana is better at understanding his Irish accent, and Cortana’s tie-in with Windows lends efficiency to task management. It is Boyd’s analysis of context, though, that I found most interesting. He writes:
When a user is logged in across Windows products, Cortana can serve accurate contextual results. See below for an example of the same phrase [“who are Leeds playing today?”] searched by voice on a Windows laptop using Cortana and Google. The differences are slight but telling. Cortana knows that I am currently in Spain (I am using a Windows laptop), and therefore provides the kick-off in my local time. Google is not privy to this information and serves the result in Eastern Time, as my account is based in the US. When results default to Bing, it all gets a little hairier. I follow up by asking who will be in the starting lineup and receive a bizarre result about the USA soccer team, a news story about a Leeds starting lineup from three years ago, and some news about the Leeds music festival. Google does a better job of this, but both lack the immediacy that integration with a social media feed would provide.
This same pattern plays out across a wide range of travel, weather, and commercial queries. When Cortana can pull an immediate answer, it does so very capable; when it resorts to providing a list of search results from Bing, the quality varies. Google, therefore, represents a much more consistent, reliable option.
Those last two sentences serve the differences in a nutshell. The article concludes with a handy graphic that compares and contrasts Microsoft’s and Google’s voice search pros, cons, and other differences. Will an alliance with Amazon help Bing narrow the distance between it and Google Search? Stay tuned.
Cynthia Murrell, November 3, 2017
Report Assesses Todays Voice Assistant Landscape
November 2, 2017
Having observed the recent boom in AI-powered voice-assistant products, Business Insider’s research service, BI Intelligence, has conducted a study on the issue. The site promotes their findings in their preview, “The Voice Assistant Landscape Report.” Writer Jessica Smith begins with an overview of recent developments: AI has become more accurate; mobile networks are more powerful; and smart appliances (aka the “internet of things”) supply more opportunities for voice-command control. By 2015, she reports, 65% of those with smartphones in the U.S. used voice assistants with those devices. Also, sales of Google Home and Amazon Echo are expected to triple this year, to 24.5 million units. Still, we’re told there remain significant obstacles, both social and technical, to widespread adoption just yet.
Smith shares some findings from the report. Among them:
Technological advances are making voice assistants more capable. These improvements fall into two categories: improvements in AI, specifically natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning; and gains in computing and telecommunications infrastructure, like more powerful smartphones, better cellular networks, and faster cloud computing.
Changes in consumer behavior and habits are also leading to greater adoption. Chief among these are increased overall awareness and a higher level of comfort demonstrated by younger consumers.
The voice assistant landscape is divided between smartphone- and speaker-based assistants. These distinctions, while important now, will lose relevance in the long run as more assistants can be used on both kinds of devices. The primary players in the space are Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Samsung’s Viv.
Stakes in the competition for dominance in the voice assistant market are high. As each assistant becomes more interconnected with an ecosystem of devices that it can control, more popular platforms will have a sizable advantage.
Naturally, the article concludes by telling us how to get our hands on the full report. You could invest in the BI Intelligence “All-Access” pass if you are really, really into research reports. Or, you could just purchase and download this particular report here for $495.
Cynthia Murrell, November 2, 2017
Google Home: A Content Vacuum?
October 12, 2017
i read “Google Is Nerfing All Home Minis Because Mine Spied on Everything I Said.” The write up is interesting because it documents a Google product which has a flaw; that is, the Google Home device in question acts like a content vacuum cleaner. The device allegedly copies what it hears without the user’s permission. Google continues to assume me that it wants to do “better”. I think that doing better is a great idea, particularly when a smart assistant functions as a listening and recording device in a way that surprises a user. The original post cited above contains some nice words for Google, screenshots, and a gentle presentation of the alleged spy function. The European Union may find this device an interesting one to evaluate for privacy regulation compliance. I think “nerf” as a verb means “kill” or more colloquially “brick”; that is, the digital equivalent of shooting a horse. Alexa, what does nerfing mean? I think it means that Google is killing this “great idea”.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2017
Amazon Factoids: Match Game for Google, IBM, and MSFT?
September 18, 2017
I am not sure if the data in this Amazon write up are accurate. Navigate to “Prime Day 2017 – Powered by AWS” and make your own decision. I noted these “factoids” about Amazon’s cloud Olympic winning dead lift:
Block Storage – Use of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) grew by 40% year-over-year, with aggregate data transfer jumping to 52 petabytes (a 50% increase) for the day and total I/O requests rising to 835 million (a 30% increase). The team told me that they loved the elasticity of EBS, and that they were able to ramp down on capacity after Prime Day concluded instead of being stuck with it.
NoSQL Database – Amazon DynamoDB requests from Alexa, the Amazon.com sites, and the Amazon fulfillment centers totaled 3.34 trillion, peaking at 12.9 million per second. According to the team, the extreme scale, consistent performance, and high availability of DynamoDB let them meet needs of Prime Day without breaking a sweat.
Stack Creation – Nearly 31,000 AWS CloudFormation stacks were created for Prime Day in order to bring additional AWS resources on line.
API Usage – AWS CloudTrail processed over 50 billion events and tracked more than 419 billion calls to various AWS APIs, all in support of Prime Day.
Configuration Tracking – AWS Config generated over 14 million Configuration items for AWS resources.
Is Amazon reminding customers or competitors that it does more than sell books and buy grocery stores? Is Amazon doing PR?
Stephen E Arnold, September 18, 2017
An Algorithm with Unintended Consequences
September 12, 2017
Some of us who follow developments in AI wondered about this: apparently, the algorithm YouTube tasked with eliminating “extremist content” on its platform goes too far. Business Insider reports, “YouTube’s Crackdown on Extremist Content and ISIS Is Also Hurting Researchers and Journalists.” It is a good thing there now exist commercial services that can meet the needs of analysts, researchers, and government officials; many of these services are listed in Stephen E Arnold’s Dark Web Notebook.
In this case, the problem is an algorithm that cannot always distinguish between terrorist propaganda and terrorist coverage. Since the site implemented its new steps to combat terrorist content, several legitimate researchers and journalists have protested that their content was caught in the algorithm’s proverbial net and summarily removed; some of it had been available on the site for years. Reporter Rob Price writes
Open-source researcher Eliot Higgins says he has had his old videos about Syria deleted and his account was suspended as the Google-owned video platform attempts to tackle material that supports terrorism. Middle East Eye reports that Syrian opposition news site Orient News was also deleted, as was a video uploaded by one of the publication’s own journalists. ‘YouTube has now suspended my account because of videos of Syria I uploaded 2-3 years ago. Nice anti-ISIS AI you’ve got there, YouTube,’ Higgins tweeted on Saturday. ‘Ironically, by deleting years-old opposition channels YouTube is doing more damage to Syrian history than ISIS could ever hope to achieve.’ In another incident, a video from American journalist Alexa O’Brien’s video that was used in Chelsea Manning’s trial was deleted, according to Middle East Eye.
Higgins, whose account has since been reinstated, has an excellent point—ultimately, tools that destroy important documentation along with propaganda are counter-productive. Yes, algorithms are faster (and cheaper) than human workers. But do we really want to sacrifice first-hand footage of crucial events for the sake of speedy sanitization? There must be a better way.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2017
Is China the New Los Angeles Trend Machine?
August 28, 2017
I was last in China in 2007 and then in Hong Kong in 2010. My information is, therefore, out of date. That’s no big whoop for me, since I am ready to tally 74 years in our thrilling world.
I read “In China You Now Have to Provide Your Real Identity If You Want to Comment Online.” The main point of the write up is that the free and open Internet is going the way of the dodo. The goal of “real name registration” is to make it easy for certain official to track down individuals without the expensive, time consuming, and sometimes messy “traditional” identity investigations.
I noted this passage:
So what exactly constitutes forbidden topics on the Chinese internet? An unnamed CAC official told a journalist the following when asked about the new rules (first translated by The Diplomat):
- opposing the principles of the constitution of China
- endangering national security, revealing state secrets, subverting state power, and undermining national reunification
- damaging national honor and interests
- inciting national hatred, ethnic discrimination, and undermining national unity
- undermining the state’s policies on religion or promoting cults and feudal superstitions
- spreading rumors or disrupting social order
- spreading obscenity, pornography, violence, or terror, or abetting a crime
- insulting or slandering others and infringing upon the lawful rights and interests of others
- violating any other laws and regulations
My reaction to the write up is that censorship, China-style, may be the latest trend to emerge from the Middle Kingdom. Once Los Angeles on the left coast generated the “in” fads which would then roll toward Harrod’s Creek.
My thought is that censorship may be the new black or whatever the hot color is for fall fashion. I am not particularly surprised because similar governmental actions seem to have emerged from the deliberative bodies in Russia, Turkey, and other countries. One African nation state just turned off the Internet, an Iran-style touch.
One idea struck me. Is now the time for individuals to generate an alternative or optional Internet identity. Creating a “legend” or an alternate Internet identity is important. Just ask the person who ran the illegal Dark Web site AlphaBay. The mistake that individual made was to use an identity which was not “clean.”
The procedure for setting up a legend or clean Internet identity is not easy. There are a number of steps. Human mistakes can render a clean identity traceable; that is, dirty. If you are able to verify that you are working for a recognized law enforcement or intelligence entity, you can obtain a legend from the Beyond Search Overflight team. This is our WITSEC Light bundle. More comprehensive legends are also available to qualified LE and intel professionals.
To explore this package which contains an alias, matching email address, and other necessary elements like a Walmart pay as you go phone, just write darkwebnotebook at yandex dot com. Remember. We verify that you have a legitimate LE or intel role prior to providing the legend, a workable biography, and summary of what one has to do to build out the legend.
Those who do not qualify will have to look elsewhere for a way to deal with censorship constraints in countries other than the US. If the China censorship trend moves outward from that country, more than one online identity may be needed for some operations.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2017
Russia Argues with Encrypted Telegram
August 23, 2017
One reason that the Dark Web flourishes are that if offers people an anonymous, encrypted way to communicate. Governments dislike encrypted services, especially when they are trying to keep an eye on their citizens. The Register explains how Russia is unhappy with encrypted messenger service Telegram: “Encrypted Chat App Telegram Warned By Russian Regulator: ‘Comply Or Goodbye.”
One hot argument between governments and their citizens is how much leeway the former has to monitor the latter’s communication. Russia is one country with a poor history of respecting its people’s privacy. It currently is very angry with encrypted chat app Telegram. Communications regulator Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov stated that Telegram is violating Russian legislation because it is not providing any information about its parent company.
Telegram’s parent company only has to complete a questionnaire with information that will be published in the country’s register of service providers. It is not an attack on encrypted communication. If the questionnaire remains unanswered, then Telegram will be banned.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov told newswire Reuters a ban would mean Russian government officials will be entrusting their communications to messenger apps written in other countries.
In playing the nationalism card, Durov cited WhatsApp, Viber, Apple and Google as companies who might carry messages from Russian officials and their friends.
He is skeptical that the regulator is mostly cranky about corporate structure.
The communication bureau and Telegram should stop fighting over the petty red tape. Playing the nationalist card is a good move on Telegram’s part, but why is it so hard to answer a standard questionnaire? If Russia’s security and government officials lose their home brewed encryption app, would they turn to something not from Mother Russia? This is yet another example of why people use the Dark Web over regular Web services.
Whitney Grace, August 23, 2017
Take a Hint Amazon, Bing Is Not That Great
August 22, 2017
It recently hit the new stands that Google Home was six times more likely than Amazon Alexa to answer questions. The Inquirer shares more about this development in the article, “Google Hoe Is Six Times Smarter Than Amazon’s Echo.”
360i conducted a test using their proprietary software that asked Amazon Alexa and Google Home 3,000 questions. We don’t know what the 3,000 questions were, but some of them did involve retail information. Google pulled on its Knowledge Graph to answer questions, while Amazon used Bing for its search. Amazon currently controls 70% of the voice assistant market and has many skills from other manufacturers. Google, however, is limited in comparison:
By comparison, Google Home has relatively few smart home control chops, relying primarily on IFTTT, which is limited in what it can achieve and often takes a long time between request and execution.
Alexa, on the other hand, can carry out native skill commands in a second or two.
The downside of the two, however, is that Google is Google and Amazon is just not as good. If Echo was able to access the Knowledge Graph, Google Music, and control Chromecasts, then it would be unassailable.
Amazon Alexa and Google Home are a set of rivals and the facts are is that one is a better shopper and the other better at search. While 360i has revealed their results, we need to see the test questions to fully understand how they arrived at the “six times smarter” statement?
Whitney Grace, August 22, 2017
Google Home Still Knows More
August 21, 2017
Amazon has infiltrated our lives as our main shopping destination. Amazon is also trying to become our best friend, information source, and digital assistant via Alexa. Alexa provides a wealth of services, such as scheduling appointments, filling shopping orders, playing music, answering questions, and more. While Amazon Alexa has a steady stream of users, Ad Week says, “Google Home Is 6 Times More Likely To Answer Your Questions Than Amazon Alexa.”
The company 360i developed software that would determine which digital assistant was more accurate: Google Home or Amazon Alexa. Apparently Google Home is six times more likely to answer a question than Amazon Alexa. 360i arrived at this conclusion by using their software to ask both devices 3,000 questions. Alexa won when it came to questions related to retail information, but Google Home won over all with its search algorithms.
It’s relatively surprising, considering that RBC Capital Markets projects Alexa will drive $10 billion of revenue to Amazon by 2020—not to mention the artificial intelligence-based system currently owns 70 percent of the voice market.
Amazon might be the world’s largest market place, so Alexa would, of course, be the world’s best shopping assistant. The Internet is much larger than shopping and Google scours the entire Web. What does Amazon use to power Alexa’s searches?
Whitney Grace, August 21, 2017
Analytics for the Non-Tech Savvy
August 18, 2017
I regularly encounter people who say they are too dumb to understand technology. When people tell themselves this, they are hindering their learning ability and are unable to adapt to a society that growing more dependent on mobile devices, the Internet, and instantaneous information. This is especially harmful for business entrepreneurs. The Next Web explains, “How Business Intelligence Can Help Non-Techies Use Data Analytics.”
The article starts with the statement that business intelligence is changing in a manner equivalent to how Windows 95 made computers more accessible to ordinary people. The technology gatekeeper is being removed. Proprietary software and licenses are expensive, but cloud computing and other endeavors are driving the costs down.
Voice interaction is another way BI is coming to the masses:
Semantic intelligence-powered voice recognition is simply the next logical step in how we interact with technology. Already, interfaces like Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are letting us query and interact with vast amounts of information simply by talking. Although these consumer-level tools aren’t designed for BI, there are plenty of new voice interfaces on the way that are radically simplifying how we query, analyze, process, and understand complex data.
One important component here is the idea of the “chatbot,” a software agent that acts as an automated guide and interface between your voice and your data. Chatbots are being engineered to help users identify data and guide them into getting the analysis and insight they need.
I see this as the smart people are making their technology available to the rest of us and it could augment or even improve businesses. We are on the threshold of this technology becoming commonplace, but does it have practicality attached to it? Many products and services are common place, but it they only have flashing lights and whistles what good are they?
Whitney Grace, August 18, 2017
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
