Google Korea Gets Spicy
April 24, 2009
Asia Media here ran an interesting story. The title was “Google Korea Head Blasts Real-Name Requirement”. The publication reported:
The country has obliged Internet users to make verifiable real-name registrations to post comments on Web sites with more than 100,000 daily visitors since April. Google, which is reluctant to bend its principles only for Korea and set a precedent that might affect its business in other countries, chose to avoid the requirements by disabling users from uploading videos and comments on the Korean language site of YouTube (kr.youtube.com), its online video service. However, since the changes are only applied to YouTube’s Korean sites, users could easily upload content by setting their country preference to other countries. This has clearly miffed the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, with KCC chairman Choi See-joong threatening a review of whether Google is violating the local law with its YouTube decision.
Is Google getting annoyed that mere governments are putting Googzilla traps in the company’s path? My view is that this incident may indicate an increase in the temperature within the Google pressure cooker. What will happen when the torrents issue pops up in Europe? I think there will be more activity as Google’s desires bump into nation states’ desires.
Jean de la Fontaine allegedly said, ““Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.” I think beliefs are colliding, not technology.
Stephen Arnold, April 25, 2009
Microsoft and Alleged Anti Competitive Actions
April 23, 2009
Slashdot pointed to this European Commission document that contains some interesting information about Microsoft’s alleged anti competitive behavior. You can download the PDF file here. The Slashdot item is here. I don’t know much about anti competitive behavior, but I do know about anti goose behavior. Download the document. Read it. Make up your own mind. A group invested significant time to assemble this 33 page document with some blistering prose.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Google and Media: iBreakfast Synopsis
April 23, 2009
Editor’s Note: I gave a short talk at the iBreakfast meeting on April 23, 2009. The organizer—Alan Brody—asked me to prepare a short write up for the audience. I did not have much time, so I pulled together some text from my new book, Google: The Digital Gutenberg plus some information I had in my files. Here is the rough draft of the write up I provided Mr. Brody. Keep in mind that I will be making changes to this text and may be changing some of the examples and wording. Constructive criticism is invited.
“Google is best known as a Web search vendor and an online advertising system. Google as a publisher is a new concept. How many of you know about the financial problems facing newspapers?
It may surprise you to know that Google offers a number of revenue generating opportunities to publishers. These can be as simple as the AdSense program. A publisher displays Google-provided advertisements on a publisher’s Web site. When a visitor clicks on an ad, the publisher receives a share of the revenue. A rough rule of thumb is that every 250,000 unique visitor clicks per months translates into about $200,000 in revenue. Over the course of a year, the Web site yields as much or more than $2.0 million in revenue to the Web site owner. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Another opportunity is for a partner to organize video content, take responsibility for selling the ads, and using the Google system to make the content findable. Google also handles the delivery of the content and the monetizing. The partner who uses Google as a back office can negotiate revenue splits with Google. This is a relatively new initiative at Google and disclosed in a Google patent document. (US2008/0275763 “Monetization of Digital Content Contributions”.)
But there’s more to Google than AdSense and ways for innovative content providers to make money. Much more.
I want to run through some public facing content services and provide a somewhat different observation platform for you to look at Google and the opportunities it offers those who see a potential pot of gold in Mountain View.
First, Web logs. There are more than 100 million of these “diary” or “blog” publications. Some are commercial grade; for example, TechMeme. Others are ephemera and rarely updated. Google publishes more than 70 Web logs about itself. Google owns Blogger.com. Google operates a blog search service. Google has made it possible to hook blogs into Google’s Web page service Google Sites, which is a commercial grade online publishing system.
Second, Knols. A Knol is a unit of knowledge. More practically, Knol is an encyclopedia. Articles are contributed by people with knowledge about a subject. The Knol publishing system borrows from the JotSpot engine purchased by Google from Joe Kraus, the founder of the old Excite.com service. Knols can hook into other Google services such as YouTube.com and Google’s applications.
Third, Google Books. Books is the focus of considerable controversy. What I want to point out is that if you navigate to the Books site and click on a magazine cover, Google has created a very useful reference service. You can browse the table of contents for a magazine and see the locations on a map when a story identifies a place.
Finally, directories. Google operates a robust directory service. It has a content intake system which makes it easy for a person to create a company listing, add rich media, and generate a coupon. If you are in the Yellow Pages business, the Google Local service seems to be encroaching. In today’s wireless world, Google Local could become the next Yellow Pages 21st century style. Here’s a representative input form. Clean, simple, easy. Are you listed?
The White House has gone Googley as well. Recovery.gov makes use of Google’s search and other technology to some degree. The White House uses Google Apps to accept questions and comments for the president. Google’s communications tools appear to be playing an important role in the Obama White House.
What’s been happening since the Google initial public offering in 2004 has been a systematic build out of functions. The core of Google is search and advertising. But the company has been adding industrial-strength functions at a rapid clip. The pace has put increasing pressure on the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, not just in search but in mindshare.
The challenge Google represents to newspapers in particular and to traditional media in general is an old story. When Gutenberg “invented” printing (at least in the eyes of my Euro-centric history teachers), scribes were put out of work. New jobs were created but the dislocation for those skilled with hand copying was severe. Then the Industrial Revolution changed cottage industries because economies of scale relegate handwork to specialists who served the luxury market. Another dislocation. Google is a type of large scale disruptor. Google, however, is not the cause of the disruption. Google is the poster child of larger changes made possible by technology, infrastructure, and user demands.
Here’s a representation of how one created a newspaper from the early 17th century to roughly 1993, when the Web gained traction. Notice that there are nine steps. Time, cost, and inefficiency are evident. Now here’s a depiction of the Google Local or the Google Blogger.com service. Two steps. Disruption is inevitable, and it will be painful for those unable to adapt. For some, yesterday’s jobs and income levels are no longer possible. This is a serious problem, but Google did not cause it. Google, as I said in my 2005 monograph The Google Legacy, is a company skilled at applying technology in clever ways. Google doesn’t invent in the Eureka! myth. Google is more like Thomas Edison, an inspired tinkerer, a person who combines ideas until one clicks. That’s the reason for Google’s beta tests and stream of test products and services.
Google applies its technology to work around the inefficiency of humans. When I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, then at 245 Park Avenue in the old American Brands Building, I spent my days, nights, and weekends preparing reports. Here’s a figure from Google patent document US: 2007/0198481.
Google continues to push products and services into different business sectors. These waves can be disruptive and often the cause of surprising reactions. A good example is the Associated Press’s view that Google is the cause of problems in daily newspapers. The AP overlooks Craigslist.org, questionable management practices, the rising cost of traditional printing and distribution. Google is successful; therefore, Google is the cause. Its technology is the root of the present financial evil at the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Detroit News.
What Google represents is a platform. For those who choose to ignore Google, the risk is similar to that of the people under this rock. If the rock moves, the people will have little time to move to safety.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Google Base Tip
April 23, 2009
Google Base is not widely known among the suits who prowl up and down Madison Avenue. For those who are familiar with Google Base, the system is a portent of Googzilla’s data management capabilities. You can explore the system here. Ryan Frank’s “Optimizing Your Google Base Feeds” here provides some some useful information for those who have discovered that Google Base is a tool for Google employment ads, real estate, and other types of structured information. Mr. Frank wrote:
It is also important to note that Google Base uses the information from Base listings for more than just Google OneBox results. This data may also be displayed in Google Product Search (previously Froogle), organic search results, Google Maps, Google Image Search and more. That adds up to a variety of exposure your site could potentially receive from a single Google Base listing.
Interesting, right? Read the rest of his post for some useful information about this Google service.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Media Brands as Cesspools
April 23, 2009
I found Michael Gray’s “Why Big Brand Media Sites Are The Real Cesspool of the Internet” here a good read. I agree with most of Mr. Gray’s points. The idea is that
not only are big brands just as responsible for the pollution of the internet, but Google is an enabler.
Strong stuff, and it makes clear the paradoxical nature of Google. The company needs the media companies and the media companies need Google. Neither side is in a position to assert “game over”. Mr. Gray made a good point when he wrote:
So how bout it Google are you really prepared to deal with duplicate content like you say you are, or are you like Mr. Schmidt going to keep paying it lip service.
Digital information is rife with paradoxes. Mr. Gray has identified a big one.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Pay As You Go Stymies Online Bad Guys
April 23, 2009
I was surprised to learn from PCWorld that “pay as you go” is a method for thwarting online pirates. You must read the story “Pay-As-You-Go a Way around Piracy, Microsoft Says” here. Owen Fletcher reported:
Microsoft could reduce losses from software piracy by expanding pay-as-you-go plans like those it has tested in developing countries, a company executive said today. Charging users as they access services, rather than in one up-front purchase fee, could “take some of the pressure off of the purely licensed model of software,” Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s research head, said in an interview.
The idea is interesting. If you don’t pay, the computer fails to run the application. To make this work, the user will need a persistent Internet connection. The hitch is that my Internet connections (two high speed broadband hook ups) are not very reliable. Even when these are working, we experience issues with Windows Genuine Advantage even thought we pay the MSDN fees, Apple iTunes which thinks I have five authorized computers not two, and various Adobe products that generate such messages as “updated failed to launch” every time I launch Adobe CS2 on a machine with Adobe CS3 installed.
Great in theory. Practice, at least in the near future, is not likely to work in my office. I am even more skeptical about getting this notion working in some of the exciting countries I have had the pleasure of visiting. Moving this notion to enterprise applications like search raises even more questions for me. Microsoft is anchored in on premises technology, so the company has some engineering hurdles to get over as well.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Personalized Network Searching: Google after People Search
April 22, 2009
The hounds of the Internet are chasing Google’s “Search for Me on Google”. I can’t add to that outpouring of insight about technology that is exciting today but dated by Google time standards. I can, however, direct your attention to US 7,523,096, “Methods and Systems for Personalized Network Searching.” You can download this patent from the USPTO. The document was published on April 21, 2009, and was filed on December 3, 2003. You may want to read the background of the invention and scan the claims. The diagrams are standard Google fare, leaving much to the reader who must bring an understanding of other Google subsystems to the analysis. To put the Search on Me discussion into context, here’s the abstract for the granted patent, now almost six years old:
Systems and methods for personalized network searching are described. A search engine implements a method comprising receiving a search query, determining a personalized result by searching a personalized search object using the search query, determining a general result by searching a general search object using the search query, and providing a search result for the search query based at least in part on the personalized result and the general result. The search engine may utilize ratings or annotations associated with the previously identified uniform resource locator to locate and sort results.
This is an important invention attributed to Stephen Lawrence and Greg Badros. Both have made substantive contributions to Google in the past. You may want to examine the current people search and then check out the dossier invention that I have written about elsewhere. There are some interesting enhancements to the core dossier technology in the future. My assertion is that Google moves slowly. When these “innovations” roll out, some are surprised. The GOOG leaves big footprints in my experience. Where’s Pathfinder when one needs him?
Stephen Arnold, April 22, 2009
Consultant Tells Vendors Not to Push Unneeded Products
April 22, 2009
Now that’s quite a statement from a consulting professional. Many consultants make a living selling and upselling services that clients don’t need, don’t want, and didn’t know existed. Once I fought past the irony of the advice giver, I concluded that a mini trend is building. You will want to navigate to ZDNet here and read “Enterprise Software: Are Customers Being Pressured So Vendors Can Make Their Numbers? here. At this point, you may want to answer, “Yes.” I did. Well, that’s the story. For me the most interesting comment was:
Governor says enterprise customers should get aggressive as well. They can pay more attention what their developers are says, to avoid buying software that will end up as shelfware. Also, many open source solutions may be just as good as their commercial counterparts. And take advantage of the cloud. “Focus more on work and less on dog and pony shows. If its going to take 18 months to decide what platform to adopt you’re doing it wrong.”
I have highlighted the operative phrase “open source”. The financial crisis is going to force organizations to rethink certain technical decisions taken in the past. The trend is open source. The expert delivering this message got the main part buried but at least the idea is there. Oh, put your valuables in a locked drawer when meeting with azure chip consultants. Come to think of it, the suggestion may have applicability in other software related situations, particularly search, content processing, and data management.
Stephen Arnold, April 22, 2009
A Microsoft MOSS Search Fix
April 22, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Fixing MOSS Search”. You can read the article in the SharePoint Farmer’s Almanac here. You probably think that SharePoint is easy to learn, easy to deploy, and just plain comfy as a findability partner. If you have these thoughts in mind, scurry over to one of the azure chip consultants who are SharePoint cheerleaders. You don’t want to read the Farmer’s Almanac article and you won’t find much utility in this Web log item.
The “fix” is singular, but you will learn when you download, print out, and read the article that you are dealing with multiple “fixes” and there a lots of steps. I mean lots and lots of steps.
I can’t summarize the method. You will find dozens of steps with explanations like this:
If that checked out ok then the next thing I would check is to make sure your web application is set to integrated authentication and not basic authentication. MOSS will not pass basic authentication by default. So if you changed your web application from integrated to basic, so people users don’t have to enter their domain for example, then you need to setup a custom crawl rule to pass basic authentication.
I read the procedure twice and even then I am not sure I was able to keep the dependencies straight. The most interesting comment in the write up was this statement:
I am guessing since I didn’t realize this is an option (or more probably I knew and forgot) you probably didn’t either. So run stsadm –o help like below and take a look at the output.
Note this is from the last three or four sentences of the method.
Let’s step back. The method is not complex. The method is series of hacks. Enterprise search is complex. The MOSS implementation takes complexity into hyperspace. Keep that in mind when you estimate on going maintenance fees.
Stephen Arnold, April 22, 2009
Lawson: Enterprise Search, Apps, and CRM
April 22, 2009
The consensus this morning is that software and systems companies want to own digital versions of Henry Ford’s white elephant, the River Rouge facility. The idea was to ingest coal and iron ore at one end and eject Ford motor cars at the other. Like a medieval tailor, the River Rouge notion was to put everything under one roof. Today the MBAs compress this idea of total integration into the breezy “one stop shop”.
Lawson, according to the company’s Web site here,
Lawson provides enterprise software and service solutions in the manufacturing, distribution, maintenance, and service industries. Over 4,500 customers use our software throughout the world.
Our mission is simple: to make you stronger. We start by comparing your performance to industry benchmarks. We help you identify your weaknesses, bottlenecks and pain points. Then we help you implement our integrated enterprise software to alleviate – or even eliminate – those weaknesses. We measure your progress and identify the next set of improvements. Many of our customers say we help them continuously improve their operations. We make them stronger. Lawson Software used its 2009 Lawson Conference and User Exchange the CUE to make enterprise search one of the focal points of this program.
I saw a number of news items about Lawson’s enterprise search solution. The Gilbane Group reported here:
Lawson Enterprise Search is a new product to search both structured and unstructured data across the Lawson S3 enterprise system, Lawson Business Intelligence, the user’s desktop, and even their personal history such as comments entered in Microsoft Office applications.
My recollection of Lawson is that the company offers enterprise resource planning solutions. The company’s software can handle finance, manufacturing, distribution, maintenance, and supply chain functions for an organization. The on premises software has picked up additional functions over the years. Lawson can be deployed for personnel, customer support, and business intelligence applications, among others.
After reading the Gilbane Group’s news story, I navigated to the Lawson site and ran a query “enterprise search” to see how the search system performed. The Gilbane story ran down a checklist of functions that triggered in my mind a dashboard type of system. A user could run a query and then perform various tasks on the result or results. The Gilbane Group’s summary leaned heavily on search functions associated with structured data retrieval or the new “data spaces” technology I report on in Google: The Digital Gutenberg. I was also intrigued by the notion of searching “indexed data”, not the “live transaction database”. Latency becomes a key question for me in this era of real time search. After all, looking for a part that is no longer in inventory to meet the needs of a big customer means that the search must return fresh results. Getting the index our of sync with what’s in the warehouse can be a very big deal in some situations.
Web Site Search
The results of my query on the Lawson’s Web site search function were:
© 2009 Lawson Software
The first hit was a link to the Business Wire news release which I was able to determine was the source of most of the news stories about the roll out of Lawson Enterprise Search. The lingo “search keys” reminded me of my mainframe days. A “freeform” search suggested to me that I could enter a free text query. I was baffled by this statement, however: “Perform directed searches via an interest center”. I am not sufficiently familiar with Lawson to know if an “interest center” is a function in a Lawson installation or if it is a buzzword.
I clicked on the “show marked button” and the system displayed each of the terms in my query “enterprise search” highlighted as shown below:
© 2009 Lawson Software
The system did not limit the query to the bound phrase “enterprise software”. The system also defaulted to a Boolean AND, which I prefer to indiscriminate Boolean ORs favored by some search systems. I manually scanned the first 1,720 results in the list and found that two were relevant to my query “enterprise search”. The other 1,728 did not contain the terms. You can see this for yourself. Run the query “enterprise search” without quotes and click to result number 1,710 here. Neither term appears. I assume that the Lawson engine includes a term injection method that inserts the terms “enterprise” and “search” regardless of the content of the document. I would have looked at more results, but after 1,700 items, I cut off my scan. Based on this, I have questions about the relevance method used in the Lawson Web search system. The misindexed item invited me to write to Lawson at opinionizer@lawson.com. I was not sure what an “opinionizer” record accomplished.
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