Google Search Trivia
November 26, 2008
MarketWatch reported the Nielsen Online MegaView Search rankings for October 2008 on November 25, 2008. You can read the small print table here. (This is a wacky url, and the link may go dead at any moment.) One comment in the article caught my attention:
An estimated 4.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 61.2 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.
With our trusty pencil and paper, one of my colleagues created this table:
| 4,800,000,000 | queries in 31 days |
| 154,838,710 | per day |
| 6,451,613 | per hour |
| 107,527 | per minute |
| 1,792 | per second |
Google’s plumbing appears to operate at about 1,700 queries per second. Seems speedy to me. If my assistant’s math is wacky, let me know. My thought was that if you divide the number of queries per second per month into Google’s capital expenditures over the last decade, you get another big number. In fact, that big number is the one that companies competing with Google have to match or better yet beat either by dumping money on the problem or being smarter than Google. One challenge is that Google, despite its cut backs, is not slowing down in the infrastructure department so the gap between Google and its nearest competitor may be increasing. What’s your take on these numbers? Useful or baloney?
Stephen Arnold, November 26, 2008
Information Technology Cost In-Credibility
November 26, 2008
As the financial gloom deepens, cost controls become more important. But what about a financial manager who needs cost estimates from information technology professionals. In my experience, the financial manager may want to read tea leaves, not the spreadsheet pages information technology professionals create. Data about the imprecision–notice I did not use the word ineptitude–of information technology cost estimates are difficult to obtain. I was issuing happy quacks when I read “HMRC Estimates Its IT Costs” on Kablenet.com’s Web site here. Sadly this link is to the url that can disappear in a nonce. Click quick. For me the most important parts of the articles were the actual numbers submitted by the Revenues and Commons department in the UK. HMRC is sort of an IRS and GSA type outfit, so the estimates may shed light on the black arts practiced in these US agencies. Now the good parts of the article:
“Many of our IT projects are at an early stage in their development lifecycle, and detailed technical solutions and IT supplier costs are yet to be established,” said Timms, explaining the vagueness of the numbers. “The figures shown below are therefore estimates and remain subject to revision, finalisation and formal investment approval.”
What this means is that HMRC has allocated about 200 million pounds or about US$360 million but has zero notion of what these projects will end up costing. The 20 projects cost about 10 million pounds each, er, sort of, maybe. Now that’s how to create cost in-credibility for information technology. The assumptions are usually understated and then overruns allocated in another budget year. Pretty nifty cost estimating, and the approach surfaces in many types of organizations. Trouble is that a soft economy is going to surface these incredible estimates with not too surprising consequences.
Stephen Arnold, November 26, 2008
Business Intelligence: The Besieged CEO
November 26, 2008
Dave Rosenberg, a manager who works “for a stealth start up”, wrote “Business Intelligence and the Consumerization of Information” here. The story ran on CNet, but I can’t tell if it is a news story, an opinion piece, or an advertorial. I was going to delete the item from my newsreader, but the phrase “besieged CEO” caught my attention. I think this is a very nice phrase, and I will probably recycle it. My goose brain snags these bits of wordsmithing. For me, the second most important point in the article after the bon mot was this comment:
The consumerization of information is based on the very real workforce demographic shift under way: as the aging workforce in the largest economies continues to retire (in the U.S., it’s the baby boomer generation aka “The Olds”) and more young workers (aka “The Youngs”) enter and climb higher, we’ll see a widening gap between the expected behavior of enterprise applications and their actual behavior.
Mr. Rosenberg hits upon the demographic lift that is now taking place. Google is using this thermal lift to position its products and services in certain key markets. The one that comes to my mind is the enterprise. I don’t agree that business intelligence has been “consumerized”. I can’t buy business intelligence and use it like an iPod. In fact, easy to use business intelligence is like “easy” enterprise search. These are words chosen by individuals who want to sidestep the need to come to grips with complexity by saying, “It’s easy.” Baloney. I saw a reference to a new study about information access in which the word “easy” plays a prominent role. Double baloney. I heard about a sales pitch made by a scintillatingly brilliant Google marketer who said the Google search appliance is “easy to sue”. Triple baloney.
CEO’s are besieged. Neither business intelligence nor information access are easy to license, configure, customize, and optimize. Oh, there is one place for the word “easy” in the worlds of business intelligence and information access; that is, “easy to foul up.” Consumerization implies easy. I recall writing a bit of copy for a Booz, Allen & Hamilton ad in the mid 1970s. My line which made it to the final ad was, “Nothing worthwhile comes easy.” Business intelligence and information access are indeed worthwhile. In my goose world, that means these solutions are not easy. Avoid those who simplify to mask their ignorance–particularly faux consultants and their shallow “expert reports.” Help protect besieged CEOs, not bury them in more baloney.
Stephen Arnold, November 26, 2008
Enterprise 2.0 When Enterprise 1.0 Doesn’t Work
November 26, 2008
At lunch yesterday, two of my colleagues and I talked about the phrase “Enterprise 2.0”.
I admit that I named my second Google study Google Version 2.0, because I thought the “2.0” designation was a convenient way of numbering my Google monographs. The “2.0” label suggested to me that the GOOG had kicked up its efforts a notch between the time I finished The Google Legacy in early 2005 and the September 2007 date of my second Google monograph.
At lunch, I told Don (a Windows and database expert) and Stuart (a master programmer) that I didn’t know what Enterprise 2.0 meant. Furthermore, with Enterprise 1.0 companies in big trouble, I thought that we should be talking about “Enterprise 0.35” or “Enterprise 0.1”, not some fuzzy wuzzy notion of life after the financial crisis. The crisis is here, getting worse, and likely to persist for the foreseeable future. With a $65 billion in revenue company having a share price of $20, there are some problems in technology land. Beyond technology, there are some challenges for General Motors, Citcorp, and the US budget. The idea of an “Enterprise 2.0” struck me as interesting.
Different Views of Enterprise 2.0
Don said, “Enterprise 2.0 is a buzzword. We had Web 2.0, which was meaningless. We had Search 2.0 which was silly. Now we have Enterpriser 2.0. This is a marketing play and it suggests that the next version will be better than the present version. Too bad it takes some companies three versions to get something to work the way it is supposed to. I just ignore the term.”
Stuart said, “I think Enterprise 2.0 is shorthand for moving some of the high profile Web functions into a company. I think the young employees and contractors already use these, but now companies want to get control of instant messaging, services like LinkedIn and Facebook, and mashups. I don’t think most of the people using the phrase ‘Enterprise 2.0’ know what it means, but the implication is that the cool Web stuff can help an organization do some things easier is why the terms is being thrown around.”
So, I am uncertain. Don thinks it is marketing baloney. And Stu thinks it is old people trying to tap what young people do without giving the service much thought.
Defining Enterprise 2.0
After lunch, I kept thinking about the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” and decided to poke around for more information. I navigated to Google and entered the search string “define:”Enterprise 2.0”. Google promptly spit back to me one definition. It was succinct and from an outfit called PandoraSquared. The definition was, “The use of freeform social software within companies.” Well, that didn’t help me, since I don’t know what the heck social software is. It is possible to send messages via email, participate in chat, and offer Web pages that allow users to vote Digg style on certain stories. I guess that stuff is social software. I don’t think I need a buzzword to describe these functions, but I’m an old and addled goose, so what do I know?
To master the different facets of Enterprise 2.0 requires a genius of the caliber of Leonardo da Vinci, the last Renaissance man., Is there an MBA at work in a consulting firm who can carry Leonardo’s intellectual weight? Let me know if you have a candidate in mind.
Well, I probed more deeply and I found a conference focused exclusively on Enterprise 2.0. I want to submit a talk so I can explain that I know about uses of commercial off the shelf technology to help companies make more sales. I understand this approach, but I don’t need to say the words “Enterprise 2.0.”
Google: An Interview Primer
November 25, 2008
Peteris Krumins’ “My Job Interview at Google” is a useful summary of the interview procedure at the GOOG. You can find his narrative here. For me, the most useful portions of his experience with every-so-smart Googlers is the list of links to other potential hires’ narratives about the process. What emerges from Mr. Krumins’ narrative and several of the others is the free form approach the company takes to determining who is Googley and who is not. For me the most interesting comment in the narrative was:
I was asked to write an implementation of a very well known data structure. While coding I made a mistake and forgot to initialize part of a data structure that I had malloc()’ed! The program would have segfault’ed in real life and I would have noticed the error, but Google engineers are very serious about it! If you have an interview don’t ever make any mistakes!
The notion of not making errors is admirable. However, Mr. Krumins flew across a number of time zones, had a hectic schedule, and endured conversations with Googlers from different teams. I wonder what Google does to Googlers who make errors that cause Gmail to fail or Web sites to disappear from results lists. My hunch is that the notion of perfection has one meaning for a jet lagged outsider and another meaning for Googlers lucky enough to be on the inside. Contractors don’t count.
Stephen Arnold, November 25, 2008
More Google Cost Cutting
November 25, 2008
Oh, goodness, Google is taking more steps in brogues, not Earth Shoes. The change can be seen in two recent announcements.
First, MSNBC picked up a Reuters story about Google’s scaling back of its holiday festivities. You can read “Even Google Isn’t in the Holiday Party Mood” here. We geese get a gaggle together, but Google’s parties trigger Craigslist.org postings. One way to save money is to trim the guest list from 10,000 to a more interesting number, perhaps Plank’s constant?
The second item concerns Silicon Valley’s favorite way to hold down head count: rentals or contractors. According to CNet.com, the GOOG is cutting its rental workforce. You can read “Google Cutting Contractor Workforce” by Stephen Shankland here. (This is a wacky url, so if the link goes dead, you will have to use the interesting CNet.com search engine.)
In my opinion, these changes are window dressing. Far more stringent actions will be rolling from the maw of Googzilla, probably after 2009 rolls around. Based on the unofficial sources I tapped, here’s what’s happening:
- Some products will be killed. Those underperformers and their shepherds may be given an opportunity to leave the Googleplex. It’s not exactly “firing”. I hear it will be more like you should find your future elsewhere.
- More cost controls will be slapped on certain units. One expensive activity is the flying of wizards hither and yon. In 2009, the bits will do the moving. The wizards will stay in their cubes or in their bean bag chairs.
- More aggressive sales in ads and other product centric units. I expect to see the knob cranked hard in the enterprise and education sector.
Will these changes provide significant benefits to the Google? In my opinion, the cash “freed up” will be used to keep the plumbing in tip top shape. The super wizards are safe, but the lesser wizards will have to show their smarts and create products and services that deliver clicks, money, ads, or some combination thereof.
Oh, Google’s new brogues have steel toes. If you go barefoot or wear sandals, times are changing. Remember, dear PR Googlers, this is my opinion. I don’t need you to tell me that these actions are no big deal. I beg to differ. Big changes are afoot in those shoes with the funny punched designs on their toes and their think leather soles. Don’t forget those steel toes either.
Stephen Arnold, November 25, 2008
Search as You Type: Been There, Done That
November 25, 2008
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to this article about Keyboardr here. The idea is that you can get search results without having to launch a browser, navigate to the search engine of your choice, type a query, and review results. The service “executes and displays searches as you type.” I think this type of service may have some utility. My addled goose recollection is that Autonomy introduced a similar service in 2000, maybe earlier. You can read this interesting article about Autonomy’s system here. If the link is dead, you can locate 1,000 other stories about Autonomy’s innovation with this Google query “Autonomy kenjin”. I really am an old goose. I keep seeing more and more innovations that are not new. Young folks just rediscover something that has already been done. A me too product is fine. Product extensions are fine. What’s not so fine is the positioning of a product as a new new thing. Take this shortcut in the pharmaceutical industry, and the innovator could be giving a deposition. You can get more information about Keyboardr here.
Stephen Arnold, November 25, 2008
Google Chrome: Eyeballs, Data, and Money
November 25, 2008
More information about Google Chrome seems to be drizzling into my newsreader. You will want to read Matt Asay’s “Microsoft Meets Its Match in Google; Chrome to Go Retail.” You can read this CNet story here. What I liked about this story is that it used the word “retail” in the headline. Mr. Asay also includes a link to a good Ars Technica article as well. For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
Google is apparently preparing to compete with Microsoft at its own game (i.e., bundling its browser on new PCs). Once installed, there’s a very good chance that consumers will end up using Chrome. Once it’s there, all it takes is one article talking about Firefox or Chrome as being superior to IE in security or some other feature and consumers may well ditch the IE icon.
In my little goose pond, I think this “Google installed” angle is important for three reasons.
- Google wants eyeballs. Since most people buying a PC or mobile device use what’s installed, Google wants those eyeballs. I anticipate an arms race between Google and Microsoft. Yep, cash will change hands, and the stakes will be high.
- Google wants data. Clicks are it at the GOOG. Some of the uninformed fraternity officers who end up in Google PR might not know exactly what Google counts. Nevertheless, Google gobbles clicks, converts them to data, and then squeezes actionable information from those data. Google assumes that when Chrome is installed, eyeballs become clicks. Clicks are good.
- Google wants money. Chrome is a part of a larger Google money machine. Just as Henry Ford envisioned River Rouge as a big system. Put iron ore from Duluth in one end and Fords roll out the other. In my research, I think River Rouge is too small for Google’s ambitions.
I will keep watching the GOOG and its interesting Chrome technology. I wondered what that patent documents were talking about when the notion of virtualization, janitors, and tokenization kept popping up in odd place. Now I think I know a bit more. A digital River Rouge for the 21st century. What do you think?
Stephen Arnold, November 25, 2008
Perfect Search: New High-Speed Engine
November 25, 2008
Perfect Search (http://www.perfectsearchcorp.com) has developed a high speed search and content processing system. The demo I saw sizzled with speed. There was speedy content processing and near zero latency query processing and results display. I was impressed and wrangled a free meal with a couple of the company’s seasoned engineers. After lunch, I ordered a fresh bottle of Perrier and grilled one of the start up’s senior technologist. You can read the full text of my interview with Ken Ebert here. Let me highlight two interesting items from the interview:
With regard to speed, I wanted more detail. Mr. Ebert told me:
The key performance differentiators are our ability to handle massive data sets and our speed. We have a current customer that has over one billion records of both structured and unstructured content that we have been able to search on a single low end server. This single server replaced seven servers that they were previously using for query processing.
I probed about the company’s plans for 2009. Perfect Search, unlike some other vendors with whom I have spoken, has embraced the idea of “surfing on Google”, which is one of my standard catchphrases. Mr. Ebert said:
In 2009, we are focusing on those customers that have very large data sets and are unsatisfied with their current solutions. As mentioned before, our very first market niche will be GSA customers who need to index and query large databases. Later in 2009, we will launch a GSA add-on appliance that will enhance email search. This combination of the GSA with our appliance will allow those wanting to do eDiscovery a very competitive solution.
If you want to get more insight into the Perfect Search approach to findability and content processing, read the entire interview. I tested the firm’s system, and I am a believer. Speed thrills or at least speed thrills me when it comes to search.
Stephen Arnold, November 25, 2008
More on IBM’s Cloud Play
November 24, 2008
Larry Dignan’s article “IBM Launches Cloud Computing Services” provides more color for what I perceived as a gray and wispy initiative. You can read his story for ZDNet here. He also provides a link to other ZDNet articles about IBM’s new initiative to regain territory ceded to Salesforce.com and other early entrants in the cloud computing space. For me, the most interesting comment in his article was:
Of IBM’s services, its security efforts may be the most interesting. IBM said it has cooked up a company wide project to create a security architecture for cloud computing environments. The project pulls together IBM’s research and security arms with the rest of the business. The idea is that enterprises provide and get cloud services with security at least as good as what they get in traditional computing environments.
When I read this passage, I thought of Oracle’s attempt to sell enterprise search based on the Oracle security functions. I don’t think lead balloons flew too well when SES10g lifted off, and I don’t think security will work much better for IBM. Here’s my reasoning, and you can provide your facts about why I am wrong in the comments section to this Web log:
- IBM has not been able to stick with a network services business. The company dabbled in Internet services and dumped the business to AT&T where it ran aground a decade ago. Need to refresh your memory? Click here. Neither IBM nor AT&T have proven themselves able to do much more than stick with well worn grooves. If you have ever been to Pompeii, you will see the grooves that carts made in stone streets. Once these companies hit a groove, change becomes really difficult. I know about the elephants dancing stuff, but I think cloud computing is not likely to be the winner for IBM that IBM hopes it will be.
- Success in the cloud requires capital investment. I don’t think that most companies appreciate the cost of the moving applications to “out there” on the Internet. Microsoft’s massive investments, if they are really made and supported, could sink the $65 billion in revenue giant into a sea of debt. Building plumbing is one thing. The real cost comes from upgrading and enhancing the infrastructure. IBM has not demonstrated that it can pull off this type of operational plan. The company has shifted its chip business because of the cost issue. I don’t think the company will have the appetite for infrastructure because it tried that meal once before and exited the business.
- The technology challenges for cloud computing are significant. Security is one modest component, but there are larger, far more troublesome thorns to pick out of IBM’s blue sweater. For example, the need to create multi tenant operations that deliver satisfactory performance and stability. Also, the challenge of engineering around the bottlenecks that old software like IBM DB2 throws into the face of licensees with far less demanding data tasks. In short, IBM has legions of engineers, but moving IBM inventions from the lab and making money from them is not an assembly line process. IBM is primarily a consulting firm, and its operational competencies continue to raise questions in my mind.
You may have greater confidence in Big Blue than I do. That’s fine. I don’t plan on shifting my company’s future to IBM’s cloud. In fact, I don’t think IBM realizes that its pal Google is going to be a big player in cloud services, which calls into question how Google and IBM will interact in this important new computing environment. My hunch is that the GOOG will dine on some IBM body parts. IBM’s elephant may be too big to notice that its tail was gobbled by Googzilla. An elephant can dance, but I sure hope it can fight too, not just trumpet.
Stephen Arnold, November 24, 2008
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