Google Is Proprietary
May 25, 2008
Computerworld has a story about Google called “Google Opens Up a Little on Its Search Algorithms”. The article by Linda Rosencrance has a summary of Udi Manber’s campaign for search quality. Navigate to the story. Some of the Computerworld articles can be tough to locate a day or two after these appear on the sprawling IDG Web sites. At the Gilbane Content Managment Conference, Mr. Manber will talk about search quality, and I look forward to additional information.
The key point in Ms. Rosencrance’s story is this quote from a Silicon Valley pundit, Rob Enderle, who is a “principal analyst” at the Enderle Group. He offers, according to Ms. Rosencrance:
I think the irony that what we’ve seen with Google is that as time goes on, even though it’s positioned itself as the anti- Microsoft, it’s kind of been reading out of Microsoft’s playbook … In many ways, Google is much more proprietary than Microsoft is, and they actually used open source software to get there. So unlike Microsoft, which started off proprietary and has gradually been opening its stuff up, Google starts off getting other people’s open stuff, turns it proprietary and then makes money off it. It kind of redefines ‘pirate.’ I think Google is feeling a little bit of the heat because people are starting to focus on that a bit.
I am delighted that three years after the Infonortics’ study The Google Legacy, Computerworld and its sources are now perceiving Google as more than great lunches and quirky computer scientists. One reason Microsoft struggles with Google is that the Googlers have learned from Microsoft but added that special Googley touch. Redmond, facing a mirror of the Bill Gates and Paul Allen model, struggles to find an answer with marketing specialists and bureaucracy. The mismatch doesn’t see fair. I await more insights from Computerworld and Mr. Enderle.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2008
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