German Publishers Are Not Thrilled with Google
November 2, 2008
News and commentary about Google is everywhere I look in central Europe. I can’t reveal my location because I can’t spell the name of the city I’m in. Too many consonants. The buzz at dinner this evening (I am writing this at about midnight on what I think is October 30, 2008) was about German publishers and Google. In the US, Google has entered into a truce with publishers about book scanning. I have been critical of the “dead tree crowd” for many years, and now Google has new diners in the Google cafeteria.
According to Deutsche Welle here, “German publishers [are] accusing Google of controlling culture.” That’s a broad claim, but the new story makes this point, which I found interesting:
“This accord is like a Trojan Horse,” Alexander Skipis, chief executive of the Boersenverein, said in a statement on Thursday, Oct. 30. “Google aims to achieve worldwide control of knowledge and culture. “In the name of cultural diversity, this American model is out of the question for Europe,” he said, adding that it contradicted “the European ideal of diversity through competition.”
Deutsche Welle’s news story is quoting a highly regarded publishing professional, and I think Mr. Skipis is beginning to understand what it means to organize the world’s information. On one hand, I understand the feeling embedded in Mr. Skipis’ comment. On the other hand, the GOOG has been doing its thing for 10 years. The GOOG is a publicly traded company. The GOOG has been using its business model and plumbing like giant earth movers to shift the boundaries of business sectors.
My net net: you haven’t seen anything yet. You will be able to read about it in my new Google and Publishing monograph in December, however. If you want to reserve a copy, navigate to the www.infonortics.com Web site. Contact information is there but a separate order form is not yet online due my heel dragging and the clean up for Martin White’s and my new study Successful Enterprise Search Management due out in November 2008 unless a glitch occurs.
Stephen Arnold, November 1, 2008
Microsoft BrowseRank Round Up
August 8, 2008
Looking to compete with Google’s PageRank program, BrowseRank is a Microsoft-developed method of computing page importance for use in Internet search browsers.
The computations are based upon user behavior data and algorithms to “leverage hundreds of millions of users’ implicit voting on page importance.” (So says a Microsoft explanatory paper [http://research.microsoft.com/users/tyliu/files/fp032-Liu.pdf]). The whole point is to add “the human factor” to search to bring up more results people actually want to see.
On July 27 SEO Book posted a review/opinion [http://www.seobook.com/microsoft-search-browserank-research-reviewed] since Steve posted about BrowseRank here [http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/07/26/microsofts-browser-rank/].Summary: While it’s a good idea, there are drawbacks like false returns because of heavy social media traffic, link sites, etc. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube are popping up high on the list – not because they have good, solid, popular information, but just because they’re high traffic. Microsoft will have to combine its BrowseRank user feedback information with other data to be really useful. On the other hand, if Microsoft can collect this user data over a longer term, the info would more likely pan out. For example, BrowseRank will measure time spent on a site to help determine importance and relevance.
A blog post on WebProNews [http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/07/28/browserank-the-next-pagerank-says-microsoft] on July 28 said flat out: “It shouldn’t be the links that come in, but the time spent browsing a relevant page, that should help determine where a page ranks for a given query.” So that idea lends some credence to BrowseRank’s plan. The next step is how Microsoft will acquire all that information – obviously through things like their Toolbar, but what else? (Let’s ignore, for now, screams about Internet browsing privacy.) If MSN’s counting on active participation from users, it won’t work. This blog post points out that “Google’s PageRank succeeds partially due to its invisibility.” And that’s what users expect.
Graphic from Microsoft Research Asia
For now, and granted there’s only this small bit of info out there, SEO Book says, in their opinion, PageRank (Google’s product) has the one up on Microsoft because it sorts informational links higher, connects them to Google’s advertising, and because Google has the ability to manipulate the information.
You can read this for more info on Microsoft vs. Google: CNET put out a pretty substantial article [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9999038-93.html] on July 25 talking about PageRank vs. BrowseRank and what Microsoft hopes to accomplish.
Telco Think: Nah, Google Does Not Matter
August 2, 2008
Telephony Online ran an interesting article by Alex Liu “Does Google Matter?” You can read Mr. Liu’s analysis here. The point of the article is a variant of Microsoft’s “one-trick pony” description of Google. Google sells ads. Its other initiatives have gone nowhere. Therefore, Google does not matter. The statement in Mr. Liu’s analysis that I found most interesting was:
Basically, Google has a materiality problem. Consider this: if the global advertising market is $600B, the online piece of that is $60B and the mobile portion of that is expected to be $6B (tops), that’s a lot of industry crowding out that Google has to win, even assuming differential segment growth—much less venturing into wireless communications services, another inevitable march. This journey into wireless will surely unfold, but it will take longer than most expect.
The author–a partner at prestigious A.T. Kearney and Alexander to the army in Kearney’s Communications, Media and High Technology practice in North America–has lost me. I don’t have a clue what “materiality” means. I’m not sure what “industry crowding out” means. I think I agree with the point that Google’s “journey into wireless” will take some time.
Stepping back from the glittering brilliance of this article, my view of Google and telecommunications is that it is one of five or six sectors that Google is probing. Unlike a telco, Google is not a one-trick pony when it comes to technology. Google has a business model that works just as well as Ma Bell’s coin operated telephones did for decades. I recall sitting in a meeting before the break up listening to chuckles about the shortage of rail cars in upstate New York to move nickels, dimes, and quarters to Manhattan. Google’s business model is not much more sophisticated than Ma Bell’s monopoly over pay phones. In fact, today’s telcos face a digital monopoly that shares some DNA with the old, beloved Ma Bell.
Will Google succeed in the telco sector? What about banking, back office services, entertainment, publishing, or enterprise software? Google’s “goal” of becoming a $100 billion company does not require success in its various initiatives. Google only has to make a reasonable showing in a couple of these sectors and work to keep its business model working.
My research suggests that Google could walk away from telco entirely and experience no material change in its financial performance. Telco, like Google’s financial services or publishing probes, are nothing more than applications running on Google’s infrastructure. I wish to remind Mr. Liu that Google has an infrastructure in place, working, and purpose built for massively parallel applications. Telcos don’t. Furthermore, telcos lack the vision, the money, and the time to duplicate the Google “as is” infrastructure.
Google enjoys more degrees of freedom than telcos. Google is largely unregulated. Telcos are regulated. Google is applications centric. Telcos are earnings centric. Google is experiencing a nice lift across its operations. Telcos are struggling to keep the blimps airborne. Google has nothing to lose probing telco land. Telcos have a great deal to lose whether the companies ignore Google or challenge Google. Google is a master of what I call Goo-jitsu; that is, minimum effort and cost yields maximum reaction and cost for its opponents.
I am delighted that I am no longer in the consulting game. My blood pressure is rising just thinking about the argument Mr. Liu has advanced. I think its lacks “materiality”, but that’s just an addled goose’s opinion.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2008
The Duh Factor: Email, Distractions, and Workers
June 15, 2008
When I awakened at 6 30 am, I took a look at what my crawlers snagged as I slept. Email stories. Hundreds of email stories. You can sample the floods on Techmeme.com, Megite.com, and other aggregation services. The catalyst for this blog-astrophy appears to be this essay by Matt Richtel of the New York Times. I’m not sure you need a link in this Web log because this story has gone viral. Email, distraction, and digital addiction are, in my view, part of the furniture of living. These behaviors will be with us for some time.
Now, let me summarize “Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast.” Email is a problem. Workers, companies, and any one else in the message flow spends time fiddling around. Wasted time means an expensive, often futile, experience.
Some of the pundits commenting on this essay by Mr. Richtel has made the leap to distractions of which email is one in the modern work space. You can sample this line of thought in the Business Week article “May We Have Your Attention, Please?” by Maggie Jackson.
More, Not Fewer, Messages
I have a different view of the email problem, and I am not sure what to make of the furor over any digital messaging.
First, we have more types of electronic messaging that are exponentiating the cost and attention problems and their costs in money and time. SMS, for example, adds to the message traffic. When BearStearns used to be in business, my client sent me SMS messages, and these to him were must-answer communications. Email was too slow. SMS traffic I learned in one of my studies is larger than email traffic. I don’t have the motivation to dig out the 2007 data I have but I recall being flabbergasted at the number of SMS fired off and the revenue these generate for telcos.
Second, we now must deal with micro blogging. Twitter.com, the Silicon Valley in crowd communication medium, allows one to broadcast information of great import to anyone interested in receiving a friend’s postings. Here’s “tweet” I cadged from Popurls.com, a service which presents random tweets:
YoungnRich Apparel california. @holli I nap every Saturday there [sic] so rejuvenating
Very helpful this post, Holli.
Third, the notion of “soft interruptions” just adds to the flow of message traffic. Toss in instant messaging–a form of information that pops up–that runs across networks. I dislike instant anything, but that’s my 64-year-old biases coming to the fore.
Stepping Back
Distraction is a fact of life. When I leave my log cabin in rural Kentucky and venture to the big city, I find myself in meetings. One experience I had in Seattle in the last month is illustrative of the situations I encounter.
I am giving a talk about a company’s technology. I don’t work for the company whose technology I am describing. I don’t even care if it works or not. I’m describing what this company says its technology will do. There are five people in the room. Each has a laptop with a wireless connection, a smartphone, and a beverage. A person rushes into the room with a laptop, smartphone, and dog. The late comer is the “boss” and he says, “That diagram is wrong. That technology will never work.” He then sits down, attends to his laptop, and sends one message on his smartphone. He then interrupts and asserts, “That device can’t perform that function. It doesn’t have two radios. Quit telling us about that function. It won’t work.”
I’ m not sure what to do, so I say, “No problem. I go on to another slide.” A short time later the “boss” leaves. After the presentation, the other attendees wander off.
This situation is representative of what I find in my work.
- Many employees who are bright and confident in their ability to multi task. I find that humans who multi task may be operating at less than 100 percent efficiency, not the 100 percent plus that these folks think their doing two tasks at a time delivers. This old human does not multi task. I do one thing at a time. In fact, I have to work to keep my mind from wandering. Many of the people I encounter actively embrace wandering thoughts.
- Over the years, I have found that people in knowledge jobs go to great lengths to appear busy, engaged, and in demand. At Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the late 1970s, the fellow who trained me–Dr. William P. Sommers–appeared calm and unhurried. It was a false front. He was busy, but he managed his time effectively and separated himself from the lesser beings at Booz, Allen because he was under control. Today, the appearance of busy-ness is highly valued. Intrusive crap is embraced because it connotes success.
- The devices are fun for many people. I find small gadgets, including mini-notebook computers, maddening. I can’t see the screen. The keyboard is too small for my large, increasingly clumsy fingers. The gizmos are fragile, and I drop small slippery gadgets with great frequency. Younger folks enjoy the complexity and some watch videos on screens the size of match books. My hunch is that these professionals are playing with toys. Instead of Lego blocks, professionals today keep their childhood habits alive with digital play things.
- Most professionals I encounter don’t know what the heck they are doing. Their expertise often lacks a broader business context. Reinventing the wheel is a popular pass time in many of the high-tech environments in which I find myself. The interest in mobile search is somehow new. Nope, like metatagging, it is the same old stuff gussied up with a new name. If you don’t know what to do to make a direct and immediate contribution in your work, humans generate fake smoke. The blue flickers on digital gizmos are the equivalent of laser light shows for a touring rock band’s stage dressing. Distraction is a bit of fakery.
You probably disagree with my take on this email discussion. My reaction is like the Cheers’ character who says, “Duh.” As professionals more cut off from meaningful work, distractions become more attractive. I can gauge the focus of a meeting by counting the number of laptops and smartphones in the room. When there are more gizmos than people, I know the company is in a management whirlpool. In one meeting, I had an audiences of 62 people. There were 109 devices. This company, if I were to name it, is one the media, investors, and customers believes is in a death spiral.
So, as the economy falters, the pressure on employees goes up. If the employee doesn’t have a clue about managing time and setting priorities, the distractions flow. Forget how many emails pile up. When I return from a trip out side the US, I winnow emails ruthlessly. I don’t waste time on email. If a person wants me to do something, there are ways to get my attention. One young consultant at an Internet research firm wrote me to participate in a survey. I wrote back, “No. I will now delete email from you and your company automatically.” End of problem from my point of view.
Distractions, therefore, provide a way to measure the intellectual and managerial skill of a worker. The best employees and colleagues know how to manage distractions. I like to think about Alexander, sitting in a stinking tent, somewhere east of modern Afghanistan and his ability to manage distractions. I can imagine his hearing, “The troops don’t have water” and “We don’t know where the enemy is” and “We don’t have enough fodder for the pack animals”. A New York Times writer observing this situation could easily report that Alexander is overwhelmed by yammering requires from his lieutenants, too many parchment or wax messages, and intrusions such as a raiding party intent on killing him. Alexander dealt reasonably well with distractions.
Is it possible that these squawks, cheeps, howls, and tweets about “the email problem” reveal the flaws of the individuals, not the problems of the messaging environment. Agree? Disagree? Let me know if you are not too distracted.
Update. Times of London introduces the notion of a “pond-skater mind” here. The fix may be to use other tools.
Stephen Arnold, June 15, 2008
Update 1: June 23, 2008 You may find “The Myth of Multitasking” by Christine Rosen germane. Writing in The New Atlantis, she summarizes the challenges of mutli tasking. I particularly liked her use of the phrase “acquired inattention”. You can read the full essay here. Highly recommended.
Update 2; June 24, 2008 Ars Technica has a useful essay about multi tasking. J.M. Gitlin’s “The Boss Made Me Do It” is here.
Linguistic Agents: Smart Software from Israel
April 16, 2008
In my new study “Beyond Search”, I profile a number of non-US content processing companies. Several years ago I learned about Jerusalem-based Linguistic Agents. The company uses an interesting technique for its natural language processing system. I found Linguistics Agents’ approach interesting.
The firm’s founder is Sasson Margaliot. In 1999, Mr. Margaliot wanted to convert linguistic theories
into practical technologies. The goal was to enable computers to understand human language and context. Like other innovators in content processing, Mr. Margaliot had expertise in theoretical linguistics and application software development. He studied Linguistics at UCLA and Computer Science at Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
The company’s chief scientist is Alexander Demidov. Mr. Demidov was responsible for the development of Linguistic Grammars for the Company’s NanoSyntactic Parser, the precursor of today’s Streaming Logic engine. Previously, he worked for the Moscow Institute of Applied Mathematics and at Zehut, a company that developed advanced compression and protection algorithms for digital imaging.
Computerworld identified the company in the summer of 2007 as having one of the “cool cutting-edge technologies on the horizon”. Since that burst of publicity in the US, not much has been done to keep the company’s profile above the water line.
The company uses “nano syntax” to extract meaning from documents. On the surface, the approach seems to share some features with Attensity, the “deep extraction company” and the firm that I included in my new study as an exemplar of recursive analysis and linguistic processing for meaning.
The idea is that a series of parallelized processes converts a sentence into a representation that preserves its syntactical meaning. The technology can be applied to search as well as context-based advertising. The company asserts, “The technology can revolutionize how computers and people interact –computers will learn our language instead of vice versa.”
Digital Dodos: Fed Web Site Archives
April 13, 2008
Computerworld‘s Heather Havenstein wrote a story on April 11, 2008 “Agency Under Fire for Decision Not to Save Federal Web Content”. Please, read it before it goes into the digital never-never land of Computerworld stories, thus becoming almost impossible to find without real sleuthing.
The key point in the story was for me:
NARA, which until this year had collected a “harvests” of federal Web sites at the end of presidential and congressional terms, said in a recent memo that it would discontinue the practice at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency.
NARA for the acronym-challenged is the National Archives and Records Administration. This Federal entity is supposed to keep a copy of government information. Now, government information is slippery, and it is very difficult to put it in one location.
In year 2000, I was one of the lucky dweebs involved in the US Federal government’s citizen-facing portal, now called USA.gov. As part of that project, Inktomi indexed more than 20,000 public facing Web servers and made the information searchable. I thought indexing Federal Web sites would be a piece of cake. Boy, was I wrong.
A Search Puzzle with Hundreds of Pieces
Just take a gander at the Government Printing Office catalog and then do a bit of poking into the Web sites of the Department of Energy, and you won’t find much overlap for big printed reports and studies. For even more government fun, run a query on DEO for “ECCS”. You will get zero results. Now run the query on www.usa.gov, and you get hits to a nuclear power plant’s “nuclear core cooling system”. Related information is not in a single place, and there are different filters in place on different agencies’ Web sites. In short, the job of NARA is gather the information in one place for research or crazed attorneys. There are overlapping jurisdictions, of course. It’s murky water. Few know who is responsible for what information at what point in time.
The same wacky situation plagues the Library of Congress, the library in the US Senate, and the two dozen executive branch agencies. I don’t even want to think about figuring out the information on the public and not-so-public Web sites operated by various intelligence, military, and quasi-government entities. (Remember, I struggled with this information landscape until I threw in the digital towel in 2006.)
You will have to form your own opinion about what information should be gathered by whom. I only know that trying to figure out which agency has what information is no trivial job. With NARA seemingly giving up and other Federal entities grabbing different parts of the information elephants, there may be no solution. Alexa and the Internet Archive have tried / are trying to do the work, but over the years, I’m less and less confident with those efforts.
Microsoft indexes some Federal content as part of its contract for USA.gov with Vivisimo, but that’s a hit and miss index based on my tests. Microsoft asserts that it has more than 30 billion Web pages in its index, but my tests don’t back up that claim. Microsoft is struggling to make resources available for its various initiatives, and I think the index of Federal government content is not at the top of that list. Google indexes a cart load of government information, including a decent job of a number of states’ content.
Let Google Do It
I’m all for letting the GOOG index the Federal govrenment, store the data in the Googleplex, and call it a day. At least I would know where to look for my “emergency core cooling system” documents and the report I did in 1991 about Japan’s investments in high-speed network technology. Under the present system, the information is essentially unfindable with public-facing systems.
If you know a specific item exists, it can be almost impossible to find it on any public index. In my experience, you have to able to log in to the agency’s network and go data spelunking, find a version of the document, and then gather up the different instances of the document to figure out which is the “official” one. Just when you think you have what you need, someone asks, “Did you check the Lotus Notes’ repository? I think there are some modifications in those files too.” So, it’s back to the old data cave for more exploration in the dark. My miner’s light burned out, and I won’t go into the dark any more.
Stephen Arnold, April 13, 2008
Googzilla’s Assault and Old Media’s Nuclear Winter
March 15, 2008
Last summer, I gave a short talk to the Board of Directors of one of the US’s major news gathering organizations. I knew what to expect. I had worked for Barry Bingham Jr., owner of the once-prestigious Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. After I left the Courier Journal a year or so after Gannett bought the Louisville mini-conglomerate, I worked for Ziff Communications. Bill Ziff was a media sensation. He created niche magazines, building properties to a peak, and then — almost without fail — selling them at a premium price. Mr. Ziff was not “old media”; he was among the first to be a “new media” innovator. Health forced changes at Ziff, and his empire was sold. His leaving the New York publishing sector was, I believe, a respite for news and publishing companies against which he and his staff waged commercial warfare.
Old Media Wants to Understand “the Google”
Last year, I was entering the sacred confines of “old media” in the Big Apple. My task was to participate in one of those interview-style presentations so much in vogue. A polished “old media” journalist was going to pepper me with questions. To make the interview more spontaneous, I was not given the questions in advance. Goodness, I had to match wits with an “old media” alchemist. I knew only that the subject was Google, an annoyance that continued to challenge the hegemony of “old media”. Even though I was tainted by my association with Mr. Ziff, I assumed that this tweedy group perceived me as sufficiently tame to “explain” what Google was doing to “old media’s” revenues.
Google — then as now — won’t answer my questions. I’m a lone goose consultant who his wings reading Google technical papers, watching dull Google videos by Googlers explaining another technical facet of Google, and reading patent applications filed by Google’s equally quotodian attorneys. But to the dewans (an Indian prince) in the audience, I was marginally less annoying than real Googlers.
The “interview” clanked over well-worn cobble stones. The leitmotif was advertising, specifically money that Google was “taking” from old media. Each question fired at me, meant, “How can these guys make so much money doing online things?” Pretty sophisticated questions, right?
The Business Model Problem
Newspapers and magazines sell advertising. Subscriptions contribute a modest amount to the bottom line. Historically, each “new medium” allows ad revenue to flow from “old media” (Point A) to “new media” (Point B). Radio sucked money, so newspapers like the Courier Journal got into the radio business. When I joined the Courier Journal, the newspaper owned AM and FM radio stations. When TV came along, more ad “blood” flowed. The Courier Journal bought a television station. When databases came along, the Courier Journal entered the database business. Most “old media” watched the Courier Journal’s online antics from the sidelines. Google has figured out the shortest distance from Point A to Point B.
Revenue from commercial online in the 1980s did not come from advertising. Customers paid for access, dealing with specialized timesharing companies. Ziff entered the online business in three ways. We offered electronic products tailored to information technology professionals. Our sales force called on companies and sought licensing deals. Ziff also entered the commercial database business, quickly becoming by the late 1980s one of the dominant players in full text and reference databases for libraries. And, we also struck a deal with CompuServer and created a Ziff branded online service called ZDNet. Both the Courier Journal and Ziff worked long and hard to make money from online. It’s a tribute to the professionals in the Courier Journal’s online business and to Ziff’s various electronic publishing units that both organizations generated positive cash flow.
Google’s Secret
Google, on the other hand, had something that my colleagues at the Courier Journal and Ziff Communications lacked. No, it wasn’t smart people. No, it wasn’t better programmers. Google had a business model “borrowed” from Yahoo – Overture and the burgeoning online “environment” generally described as the Internet. By 2004, when Google went public, Google’s business model and the exploding user base of “the Internet” ignited Google’s online advertising business.
In less than three years, Google had poked its business model into numerous nooks and crannies of “old media”. Unlike the tame online services of the 1980s, Google’s approach was operating “off the radar” of “old media”. Old media used traditional ad sales mechanisms. Old media thrived on an inner circle of competitors who behaved in a polite, club-like environment. Old media called the shots for advertisers, who by and large, had no choice but to deal with “old media” on “old media’s” terms.
Not Google. Google allowed anyone to buy an ad online. Anyone could sidestep “old media” and traditional advertising rules of engagement. More disturbing, other companies were looking at Google’s business model and trying to squeeze money from electronic ads. None of these competitors played by the rules crafted over decades of “old media” fraternizing. Disintermediation, the Internet, and a better business model — these are the problems “old media” has to resolve and quickly.
So, there I was. I answered questions about Google’s ad business. I answered questions about Google’s technical approach to online. I answered questions about Google’s arrogance. I don’t think the interviewer or the audience found my answers to their liking. I can say in retrospect that nothing I said about Google made any sense to these “old media” types. I could have been speaking Thagojian, and the effect would have been the same. “Old media” didn’t understand what the Courier Journal did in 1980, what Ziff did in 1990, or what Google was doing in the early years of the 21st century.
Watching the Money Disappear
Why am I dragging you through history and this sordid tale of my sitting under hot lights answering questions about a company that won’t answer my email? This post caught my attention this morning (6 am, March 15, 2008) in the Charlotte Airport: Google Sucks Life Out of Old Media: Check Out The 2007 Share Shift by Henry Blodgett.
The gist of Mr. Blodgett’s Web log post is: “The year-over-year growth of revenue on Google.com (US)–approximately $2 billion–was more than twice as much the growth of ad revenue in all of the offline media companies in this sample combined. This is such an amazing fact that it bears repeating: A single media property, Google.com (US), grew by $2 billion. All the offline media properties owned by the 13 offline media companies above, meanwhile–all of them–grew by about $1 billion.”
What this means is that “old media” are going the way of the dodo unless the “old media” club gets its act together. One of the more controversial statements I made to the dewans in their posh NY digs was, “Surf on Google.” The idea is simple. Google is the big dog in the advertising kennel. Instead of watching Googzilla eat your lunch, find a way to harness Google. I use the phrase Surf on Google to connote sitting down and figuring out how to create new revenue using Googzilla as an engine, not an enemy.
Problems with Newspapers
I was speaking some unintelligible language to these “old media” dewans. Even old dinosaurs like me listen to an iPods, read news on my mobile device, and often throw out unopened the print newspapers I receive each day. Why don’t I look at these traditional news injection devices? Let me count the ways:
- Courier Journal. It just sucks. The recycled news is two or three days “old” when it hits print. I get current information via RSS, Google News, Yahoo News, and the BBC Web site, among others.
- Financial Times. I get a paper three days out of six. This outfit can’t work out delivery to Harrods Creek despite its meaty price tag.
- New York Times. I look at the Monday business section and maybe flip through the paper. I no longer spend an hour with the Sunday New York Times.
- USA Today. I look at McPaper’s weather map and scan its TV grid to see if the History Channel is running the “Naked Archaeologist,” my current must-see program.
- Wall Street Journal. I scan the headlines and check out the tech information. The banks for which I work expect me to know what the Journal says but I’m not sure my clients read the paper very thoroughly any more. Online is easier and quicker.
People in my son’s cohort spend less time with “old media” than I do. When I sit in airports, I watch what college students do. My sample is small, but I don’t see many 20-somethings immersed in “old media”. If you want to understand what young people do for news, embrace ClickZ stats. It’s free and useful.
I find encouraging that the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Financial Times “reinvent” their Web sites — again and again. But the engine of “old media” is advertising, and no spiffy Web site is going to make up for lost ad revenue.
Did my statement in June 2007 “Surf on Google” have an impact? Not that I can see. “Old media” are building a fort out of dead trees, traditional technology, and battle tactics used by cities besieged by Alexander the Great. The combatant — Google — is armed with nuclear weapons and is not afraid to use them.
For “old media” Mr. Blodgett’s summary of the financial devastation is confirmation that “old media” now finds itself suffering nuclear winter. There are some fixes, but these are not easy, not comfortable, not traditional, and not cheap. I’m glad I’m in the sunset of my career and no longer sitting in meetings trying to figure out how to out-Google Google. Innovation not contravallation is needed. Can “old media” respond? I’m betting on Google and its progeny.
Stephen Arnold, March 15, 2008
Google Sites: A Significant Information Mutation
February 28, 2008
Last year about this time (February 2007), I wrote a 20-page white paper about Google’s publishing inventions for a consulting firm providing advisory services to the “traditional” publishing industry. You can get read my full analysis of Google’s publishing inventions in my Google Version 2.0 study.
I’m inclined — perhaps incorrectly — to think of traditional publishing as a business sector that emphasizes school ties, connections, and a business model that would be recognizable to Gutenberg.
After writing the white paper, part of the deal was that I would give a short talk at an invitation-only, super-exclusive publishing industry enclave at an exotic resort. Before I gave my talk, the sleek, smooth-talking facilitators guided about two dozen publishing moguls through an agenda shot through with management buzz words I hadn’t heard since my days at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. I thought, “People still pay money to hear this baloney, I guess.”
My Remarks: The Three-Minute Version
In my brief talk, I reviewed five points about Google and publishing; to wit:
- Technology. Google has actively invested in systems, methods, and companies that allow a Google user to create, edit, format, share, and distribute content for more than eight years. Based on my analyses of Google’s patent applications and engineering documents, Google’s content creation components are one of a half dozen sub systems designed to allow the Google application platform to function as an integrated content system. Think of Google as building a system that performs search and online ads plus the “value adding” functions of a traditional publisher. JotSpot, acquired in 2006.
- “Fabric” tactics. Instead of creating a single publication to compete, Google is building out a fabric of functions. In traditional publishing, competition was gentlemanly and involved identifying a niche, running some tests, and launching a new magazine, publishing a book, or creating an information service. The approach has been unchanged since broadsheets competed for readers for hundreds of years. Publishers were polite, observed certain rules of engagement, and attacked aggressively while following a “code of conduct”. The approach is similar to that used by Alexander the Great or Caesar. The competitive battles are one-to-one fights between armies using well-known, obvious tactics. Google operates in a different way, poking and probing niches. Instead of bull dozing forward, Google lets beta tests pull the company where there’s an opportunity.
- Real real time data and real time adaptation. Traditional publishers are not real-time operations. Even the wonderful Wall Street Journal has characteristics of a peer-reviewed journal. Stories, particularly the feature-like analyses, can be in process for as much as six months. A math journal review process can take a year or more. Daily newspapers chatter about real-time, but the publications close at a specific time, and if something important happens after that time, editors cover the news in another edition, maybe a day or more later. Google, on the other hand, pays attention to traffic and user behavior, and it can adjust quickly. To see this in action, navigate to Google News and hit the refresh button every few minutes. You may see the changes take place as the Google system adapts to users, information, and system functions.
- Polymorphism. A traditional publisher often keeps a low profile; for example, like a Thomson, Reed Elsevier, or the New York Times Co. The idea is that a particular “property” will manifest the image of the organization. Thomson is better known by “information products” such as West Publishing. The New York Times has many interests, but unless there’s some upheaval like the executive ouster at About.com, most people perceive this outfit as a “gray lady”, the New York Times newspaper. Google, on the other hand, is perceived in terms of search and advertising. With Type A, Wall Street wizards counting ad revenues, there’s no reason to worry about any Google activity that doesn’t generate billions of dollars every 90 days. A traditional publisher trying to figure out Google has to cut through a lot of static to get to the Google base station. When a person does get closer to Google’s non-search and ad interests, the flashy Google Maps, Google Books, or Google Docs seem suggestive to me. Once again, perception can be off kilter. Information, Napoleon is alleged to have said, “is nine-tenths of any battle.” I think publishers have pegged Google incorrectly. As I said in my February 2007 discussion, “Google poses a different problem… asymmetric threats in multiple sectors simultaneously.”
- Cost advantages. Traditional publishers face cost challenges. Whether the challenge is rebellious writers, inflexible union contracts, or raw material scarcity — publishers struggle to generate a profit. Organic growth is an ever tougher problem even for blue-chips like Dow Jones & Co. Few outside of the closed book publishing insiders know that a block buster keeps some publishing companies in business. A company with a hot college textbook can plunge into red ink with the loss of a text book adoption in college psychology or economics courses. A newspaper can take a painful financial karate chop when one local auto dealer cancels her full page, full color ads in next Sunday’s newspaper. The Google infrastructure operates on a different costbasis, and Google has different business model options to exercise.
Not surprisingly, my remarks met with a less-then-enthusiastic reception. There was push back that I heard as ineffectual. This particular group of publishing giants argued without knowing much about Google. The themes of Google’s naiveté, its failure to respect copyright, its track record of failure outside of search, the dependence on online advertising, and the other arguments were those I had heard before. Instead of arguing, I let these superstars convince themselves that Google was an anomaly. I talked with a couple of people and left. I was surprised when I was paid by the meeting organizer I concluded that I would be stiffed since I upset the blue-bloods, and these folks did not want their world view challenged by someone who lived in Kentucky where literacy ranked in the lower quartile in the United States.
Google Sites — Should Publishers Care?
Here’s a screen shot from JotSpot before Google acquired it. Take a look, and scan my observations about Joe Kraus’s company.
Copyright Google 2006
JotSpot is a content creation tool, a content management system, and a dissemination system that supports collaboration. It is a next-generation, social publishing system that allows a user to select a template, enter content directly or via a script, and take content far beyond the confines of ink on paper. JotSpot is a component that complements other publishing-related functions in the Google system; for example, the little-known invention at Google that assembles custom content pages with ads automatically in response to Google actions. See, for example, patent application US20050096979. Screen shots for the Google Sites’ version of JotSpot are here, but you may need to scroll down to see the thumbnails. I fancy the one that looks like a magazine.
Any content entered in this system is structured; that is, tagged. The information is, therefore, indexable and contains metatags about the meaning and context of the information. As a result, the content can be sliced and diced, what traditional publishers call “repurposed”. The difference is that traditional publishers store content in XML data structured and rely mostly on human editors to “add value” with some automatic processes. At Google, software systems and methods perform most of the repurposing, and humans can be involved if deemed necessary. The processed content can be manipulated by Google’s library of processes, procedures, and functions, guided by Google’s smart software. (I’m working on a report about Google’s use of computational intelligence at this time (February 2008).
The Google Sites’s service gives Google a wiki capability. However, that’s just one use of the system. JotSpot embedded in Google Apps allows organizations to take a baby step away from the expensive, overly complex, and poorly engineered content management systems that plague users. In addition, the JotSpot function makes it easy for Google to approach a well-known expert, ask her to input information on a specialty, and make that knowledge available as part of a beta service such as Google Health.
I know it’s difficult to conceptualize Google as a digital version of Henry Ford’s River Rouge facility. Raw iron ore goes in one end, and a Ford automobile comes out the other end, gets put on a Ford truck, and is delivered to a Ford dealership. This type of integration is out of favor in our era of outsourcing. Google is breaking with the received wisdom and using its application platform to marry its systems and methods with certain integrated manufacturing business practices. Google has taken the extreme integration of Henry Ford’s vision and implemented it in digital form. This marriage of an old idea with Google’s platform is remarkable for its scope, efficiency, and scalability. Publishers don’t “think” like Google. It’s hard, then, for publishers to get their arms around Google.
What makes Google interesting to me is its application platform. Publishing is just one of the business sectors that the company can probe. Keep in mind that these initiatives are tests, conducted in plain sight, and available for anyone to analyze.
Navigate to Techmeme.com or Megite.com. Scan the postings about. You will find brilliant commentaries, insightful analyses, and great writing about Google Sites and its features.
What’s missing is the connection between the functionality of Google Sites and these particular functions and the broader implications for content acquisition, processing, distribution, repackaging, and vending. The particular use of JotSpot is indeed interesting, but the more important way to think about Google Sites is in a broader context.
Traditional publishers will point out that Google Sites is basic, lacks features, and can’t deliver the “value adds” that define the high-value products produced by the Financial Times, McGraw-Hill, Elsevier Science, Wolters-Kluwer, and others in “real” publishing, not the fuzzy world of Google “publishing”.
I’m thinking that Google may have a significant impact on publishing with comparatively little investment, effort, saber rattling, or ramp up. Cost, distribution, real-time response, personalization, search, online ads, and interesting systems and methods could trigger an earthquake in the insular world of print-on-paper publishing. What do you think?
Stephen Arnold, February 28, 2008
Google: Googzilla or Senile Chameleon?
February 27, 2008
In both The Google Legacy and Google Version 2.0, I include a recital of the flaws that could cripple or kill Google. Most of these are now routine furniture in the warehouse of articles, books, and reports about the company.
In light of the data from comScore, summarized at MarketWatch Google’s magnetism for Wall Street accolades has been reduced? The larger question is, “Will Google rebound, or will it be forced to limp forward? Wall Street wants its champions to be like a youthful Alexander — a vanquisher, not just a winner.
I want to revisit the weaknesses I began cataloging in 2002 when I started paying attention to Google.
Technology. My position has been and remains that Google has engineered a technical competitive advantage. As the company becomes larger and places more demands on its plumbing, a risk exists and becomes greater moving forward. In some ways, Google is a more innovative technical platform than Microsoft or Yahoo. Amazon, which has been working overtime to out-Google Google in cloud-based services, watched as its S3, EC2, and SimpleDB platform choked, then survived on life support. Google has not faced this problem, but the company has as recently as February 26, 2007, experienced slow downs in Google image search, some glitches with Gmail, and similar hiccups.
Management. My view is that the troika of Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page has been one important ingredient in Google’s success. Now that some Googlers can cash in their Google options to become Xooglers (ex-Googlers), there may be some gaps for the company to fill. There’s a serious, global shortage of Google-grade mathematician – computer scientists who can manage. There’s also a shallower pool of 20-something whiz kids, but that’s a secondary issue. Management may well be the more critical challenge at Google. As recently as Monday, February 25, 2008, I heard from a person interacting with Google, “These guys don’t follow through.” Maybe this is one person’s opinion, but its a datum.
Competitors. Most organizations face competition. The Sears – KMart operation has to deal with Target. Google has no comparable direct nemesis. In fact, since the morphing of Backrub into Google in 1997, Google has had a free run. Competitors either fell short (Yahoo) or retired from the field of battle (Lycos). For the foreseeable future, Google is operating in an arena where the opponents are still in their locker rooms.
Lawyers. The legal process is always a great way to hobble an organization. Look at Microsoft’s squabbles with the European Union. Microsoft’s kinder, gentler ways have done little to get the EU’s regulators to look at European monopolies such as professional publishing, weapons, and pharmaceuticals. Google has parked most of its attorneys about a mile from the senior manager’s offices. Despite the reams of legal papers dropped on Google’s feet, the company has not been seriously encumbered. Regulators, as I have asserted in my talks and writings for various firms, don’t know what to make of Google. If you don’t understand a company’s business, it’s tough for a specific regulatory group to craft an action. Google is search and ads to most politicos.
Revenue. Google remains a one-trick pony when it comes to cash. Logically a report that suggests the Google’s core business is slowing becomes the indicator of the Google’s future. In the Google Legacy and Google Version 2.0, Google has been working hard to diversify its revenue. The problem the company faces is that new revenue streams are small when compared to revenue from online ads. The Google Enterprise unit is doing well, according to my sources. The Google Search Appliance, I have heard for those close to the company, has more than 8,,500 licensees. The Google geospatial products are hot, hot, hot, opening doors for the new Google Apps Software as a Service business. At the end of calendar 2007, the Enterprise unit was generating revenue in the $350 million range. In 36 months, the company is larger than other vendors in the behind-the-firewall search sector, but in comparison with ad revenue, Google’s 36-month-old enterprise unit is loose change.
The media reaction to Google’s sub-$500 share price, the downturn in Google growth, and the comScore report leaves me with the impression that the honey moon with Google is drawing to a close. For the first time since the company emerged from Stanford University, you can see the Wall Street leopards spots. Criticism of Google’s tag line “Do no evil” is ratcheting upwards. Privacy wonks are salivating over Google’s alleged warehouse of user data. For a positive view of Google — before the Google stock price rebounded — navigate to A VC: The Musings of a VC in New York. Is it the beginning of the end for Google? I don’t think so. Let me foreshadow my speech at AIIM in Boston, Massachusetts, next week:
- Google has an application platform. The company has not leveraged that platform as effectively or as rapidly as it could have. Going forward, I believe Google will become increasingly aggressive in multiple business sectors. Mobile is one sector, and Google has probes into health, publishing, back office services, and others.
- Google has been playing coy with integrators and resellers. Google won’t accept companies on sometimes fuzzy logic. Google’s impact in the large enterprise market can be increased with tweaking of its partner – reseller – integrator strategy.
- Enterprises have data management problems. Google is a reasonably competent data management company. With some rifle shot marketing, Google is in a position to approach certain large firms and land business because many organizations are unable to get their IBM DB2, Oracle, and SQLServer database systems to handle “big data”.
- Monetization options. Google’s patent applications reveal a wide range of monetization options. But I want to ask a question, “Would you pay to access the Google search system?” I would, and I would pay for premium access. Let my father who is in his mid-80s surf for weather in Brazil and news. I would pay for the types of Google features I find most useful; for example, personalization, redundant data storage, and Google Trends, to name three.
I am not ready to pooh – pooh the comScore numbers. I am not ready to ignore the substantial body of research I have amassed about Google’s technology. I think the Google has some staying power. It will take a lot more than some Web traffic and click analysis before I see Googzilla as a five – inch chameleon basking in the sun.
Stephen Arnold, February 27, 2008
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