Vodafone Light Bulb Goes On
February 17, 2010
I was quite amused to read the Guardian’s story “Vodafone Chief Warns Google’s Growing Power Could Harm Consumer Choice.” In the midst of the Barcelona mobile flamenco, Vodafone about Google’s “power”. The Vodafone senior manager making this statement is Vittorio Colao. I wonder if he realizes that his firm hooked up with Google as early as April 2001, long before the US telcos knew there was more to Google than Web search. I noticed that on the Vodafone site there is a Google Nexus One Phone FAQ. Not even the addled goose is sufficient crazed to poke too much fun at Google. I don’t have any relationship with the Mountain View crowd until I publish a Google study based on open source documents. Then a Google 20 something attorney writes me or my client to complain that the information in a BearStearns report was secret or that one of my studies includes diagrams not in a Google patent document. We fax the open source document to the eager lawyer and go on about our business. But the Vodafone outfit is a Google partner and has been since 2001. Now the Guardian is reporting that Vodafone understands Google’s partner. The hook for the story was a speech at the mobile flamenco. I was amused by the Vodafone poobah’s statement that, according to the Guardian, “warned mobile phone executives about Google’s growing power in the online advertising and search market, which he [poobah] claims could damage consumer choice.” I was also amused that the Guardian did not point out that Vodafone was going on dates with Google, presumably doing more than batting their eyes over a coffee and bizcocho.
I am in Harrod’s Creek, and there are some real stories at the mobile flamenco. A poobah criticizing a partner could have been a story; for example, answering this question would have caught my attention, “Why after a nine year relationship are you afraid, poobah?” Or, “Is your deal with Google putting your company in jeopardy and risking shareholder value?” Or, “Why are you partnering with an outfit and warning others in your industry to be wary?” Could be a signal, eh?
I am not a real journalist, so I suppose my questions are just silly addled goose thoughts.
Stephen E Arnold, February 17, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because the post pokes its beak toward telecommunications, this is a fact of important to the FCC to which I herewith report no dough.
List of Non Commercial Databases
February 16, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “25+ Alternative & Open Source Database Engines”. I just finished a write up for the Wilshire event in March 2010. Databases were on my mind. I continue to look each day for a Google announcement about its data management services for the enterprise. Each day I am disappointed. I read about Buzz (what’s that, tinnitus?), Books (who reads under the age of 21?), and Android (isn’t that a word coined by a sci-fi guy?). Obviously I am not in the mainstream, so the notion of “alternative and open source” appeals to me. All kidding aside, you will want to snag this list which includes several I have not look at for a while; for example:
I snagged this list for future reference. A flap of the wings to Web Resource Depot.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because I emitted a quack and did a flap, I will report non compensation to the Fish & Wildlife crowd, located near the GSA. Make life easy is my motto when in DC.
Search Engine Convera Drifts Off
February 16, 2010
The journey was a long one, beginning with scanning marketing brochures in the 1990s has filed for a certificate of dissolution. I think this means that Convera has moved from the search engine death watch to the list which contains Delphes, Entopia, and other firms.
Convera splash page on February 15, 2010
You can read the official statement for a few more days on the PRNewswire site. The title of the announcement is / was, “Convera Corporation Files Certificate of Dissolution, Trading of Common Stock to Cease after February 8, 2010 Payment Date Set.” I am no attorney so maybe my lay understanding of “dissolution” is flawed, and Convera under another name will come roaring back. For the purposes of this round up of my thoughts, I am going to assume that Convera is comatose. I hope it bounces back with one of those miracles of search science. I am crossing my wings, even thought each has a dusting of snow this morning. Harrod’s Creek has become a mid south version of Nord Kap.
For me, the key passage in the write up was:
Convera Corporation announced today that it filed its Certificate of Dissolution with the Delaware Secretary of State on February 8, 2010, in accordance with its previously announced plan of complete dissolution and liquidation. As a result of such filing, the company has closed its stock transfer books and will discontinue recording transfers of its common stock, except by will, intestate succession or operation of law. Accordingly, and as previously announced, trading of the company’s stock on the NASDAQ Stock Market will cease after the close of business on February 8, 2010.
My Overflight search archive suggested that Excalibur Technologies was around in the 1980s. The founder was Jim Dowe, who was interested in neural networks. The notion of pattern matching was a good one. The technology has been successfully exploited by a number of vendors ranging from Autonomy to Verity. Brainware’s approach to search owes a tip of its Prince Heinrich hat to the early content snow plowing at Excalibur. Excalibur used most of the buzzwords and catchphrases that bedevil me today, including “semantic technology.”
Sample of a category search on the Retrieval Ware system. The idea is that you would click a category.
One of my former Booz, Allen & Hamilton colleagues made some dough by selling his ConQuest Software search-related technology to Excalibur Technologies. The reason was that the original Excalibur search system did not work too well. Excalibur, according to my Overflight archive, described itself as “leading provider of knowledge and media asset management solutions.”
Online Pricing: App Store Wars
February 16, 2010
Apple has figured out online pricing for music. The digital chains are attached to the children of the people at the Barcelona mobile hoe down. I am not sure Apple’s model applies as well to audio books and videos, though. I will admit that the iPhone App Store has been a bit of a surprise to me and my goslings. The iPhone was good looking and easier to use than some of the mobile clunkers I had previously owned. But the different pieces worked reasonably well with iTunes, the iTouch, the iPhone, and the App Store snapping my wrists together quickly.
A few moments ago I popped open my newsreader and saw a headline that caught me by surprise, probably not the magnitude of the surprise that the Apple vertically integrated approach to gizmos evokes, but close enough for an addled goose in the snow.
The article was “Two Dozen Carriers Worldwide Unite against Apple’s App Store.” After a bit of clicking, I noticed that dozens of comments were flashing around the Internet. The basics, according to MocoNews.net, a publication “healthily obsessed with mobile content”, reported:
Two dozen of the world’s largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile and Vodafone, are teaming up to create an “open international applications platform,” which is obviously in direct response to Apple’s success with its own iPhone App Store. Release. The announcement was made this morning at Mobile World Congress. In addition to the 24 carriers, the GSMA and three device manufacturers—LG (SEO: 066570), Samsung and Sony, Ericsson—are also supporting the initiative. All combined, the group reaches 3 billion subscribers worldwide, making it easily the largest app-store initiative.
Several observations:
- In the online monetizing wars, victory goes to the outfit who figures out how to get money and keep others out. The reason that there are a couple of big companies controlling information in certain market sectors is not an accident. The market coalesces around services that amass high value content. Music is not a must have to me, but I think Apple has done a good job of turning information about which I care not a whit into a must-have information type for its customers.
- Developers go where the money is and keep poking their heads up and honking when a potential new source of money lands in their pond. Developers are paying attention to Android because it is Google, free, and gaining support. If anyone puts a dent in Apple’s shiny vertical consumer combine, it will be Google. Then guess what. Google will be the “new” Apple. It is not Google management acumen; it is the way online markets work for certain information types. I know you don’t believe me, so take a gander (no pun intended) at the online vendors of legal content.
- The Balkans approach to battling a service-device chain is going to be an interesting management problem. Sony, for example, should have been Apple. Apple grabbed a space Sony dominated and then went at the children of Sony executives. Keep in mind that the folks running these companies united against Apple can find the root cause of Apple’s success by talking to their children. If there are any young employees around, ask them.
Now is it fair, just, and right to join together to beat up on a company that was on death’s door with a boss who was on death’s door? In today’s world, I know two dozen companies who think that this type of behavior is just ducky (no pun intended).
My thought is that the telecommunications companies have problems beyond Apple. Maybe the Balkans’ method is the new management revolution? I will keep an open mind.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since the write up is about management strategy, I will report scribbling for no dollars to the Federal Consulting Group, a very strategic operation. Do you read its reports? I think the telecommunications companies do. Check ‘em out here.
Ask.com on the Google Aardvark Event
February 16, 2010
I had this article “Ask.com Comments on Google-Aardvark Proposition in Search” in my to-do pile for a week. The comment that jumped out at me – well, a modest jump – was a comment allegedly made by Doug Leeds, President, Ask.com-U.S.:
“Google’s purchase of Aardvark is simply an acknowledgement that Q&A is the future of search. As the #1 brand in Q&A, we’ve been passionate about investing in this next phase of search for a long time. Our current technology is unmatched at answering questions using content we’ve crawled and indexed from across the web. In Q2, we’ll also beta launch a Q+A community that will route the questions we receive to real people with relevant knowledge. This community will reach search engine scale – able to handle more than a million questions a day, faster than Google or any of our competitors. We’re singularly focused on Q+A because, in the end, we believe that consumers rather Ask a question, than Google one.” –
My question, “Why didn’t Google buy Ask.com?”
History maybe? also remember Ask.com because of its search journey: buying Direct Hit, selling the template system as an enterprise product for customer support, the Teoma.com technology, the wild and wooly architecture talk I heard from an Ask.com rocket scientist, the shifting to niche search, and the reintroduction of the butler in the UK.
In the late 1990s, AskJeeves.com entered the search market with its question-answering service. My recollection is that there were “templates” against which a user’s question was matched. Over time, AskJeeves.com morphed into Ask.com and the question-answering angle came and went and came again. Over the years, Ask.com’s Web traffic was stable and it was consistently lower than Google’s. Even Microsoft’s Web search has pulled more traffic than Ask.com. I recall one azure chip consultant telling me that Ask.com was the next big thing. I forget the person. I remember the comment because it underscores the failure of some so called search experts to know much about the world before these pundits discovered Google. Sigh.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2010
No one paid me to take this walk down memory lane. I suppose I must report having forgotten to charge someone to write this short opinion piece. Who’s in charge? Maybe the VA? I forget. But I still remember that azure chip consultant who told me Ask.com was the next big thing. Perhaps.
Google: A Pre Buzz Decline?
February 16, 2010
I have avoided writing about Google Buzz. I am going to push the Buzz information into our new blog Strategic Social Networking, and I will tackle the subject in one of my for-money columns. For this post, I want to point to “Google Loses 1% Share in Nielsen January 2010 Rankings.” My hunch is that this is a statistical plus or minus issue. What will be interesting will be to look at Google’s share of the Web search market in the context of these recent events:
- More hassles with the Google Books project, including the push back directly at the US Department of Justice
- The Buzz privacy flap and the subsequent Google galloping to “fix” the problems
- The decision to rebuff Australia’s request for filtering
- The waffling by Google’s senior management about the China problem
- The positive vibes for Windows back-form-the-dead mobile phone operating system.
If Google’s Web search share increases, I will know that the Google is alive and well. If the search share slides, I will know that the giddy days are over, and Google has to do some thinking about its next moves. I will grab an Odwalla and kick back to see what happens.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because data are involved, I will report writing for free to the census crowd. Stats City, for sure.
Quote to Note: Yahoo Search Speak
February 15, 2010
Yahoo is an enigma. One day it is embracing Bing, the next it is back in the search game. I find Yahoo a distant fifth when I run my queries. In fact, I have popped the little-known metasearch system Devilfinder.com ahead of Yahoo. I wanted to document a quote to note from Shashi Seth, senior vice president of search products, Yahoo. The quote is from a press conference held in February 2010 with a summary posted on February 12, 2010 in the write up “Highlights from Yahoo Search Speak”. The quote:
“Yahoo! has been in search, is in search, and will continue to be in search in the future,” Shashi said at SearchSpeak. “That is the stake we have put in the ground and we will continue to drive great features.”
Mr. Seth joined Yahoo from AOL, an outfit attracting Googlers. At AOL he was the officer in charge of Global Ad Products, which from the goose’s vantage point, is not search. Ads are one facet of search. HIs LinkedIn profile points out that he was the chief revenue officer at Cooliris and was the head of monetizaton at YouTube.com and was the product lead for Google search from May 2005 to January 2007. Prior to joining Google, he was in charge of product strategy at eBay.
Selling ads is not search to me. Selling ads is part of sales. I will stick with search in the archaic sense; that is, finding information that answers my questions which only sometimes involves purchasing a product or service. Too bad there was a power failure so that the entire Search Speak event was not captured on video. Ah, Yahooooooo!
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2010
No one paid me to snag this quote. Since a quote is semi-scholarly, I will report this lack of compensation to the fine folks at the Library of Congress.
Googler Alfred Spector Grants Interview
February 15, 2010
TechRadar ran “Google’s Alfred Spector on Voice Search, Hybrid Intelligence and Beyond”. If you are a Google watcher, you will want to read this write up. The “hook” for the story is voice search. Now before you get too excited, the Googler does not mention that the voice search interface for a search engine is the product of top Googlers Sergey Brin and Monika Henzinger. You know Mr. Brin, but Ms. Henzinger may be even more intellectually adept. You may want to snag a copy of US7366668 because it can provide some useful insight into the references that Mr. Spector makes in his comments.
Second, you need to know who Alfred Spector is. He’s been at Google a couple of years, joining in 2007. Prior to founding Transarc Corp., he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. Like most Googlers, he has a wheelbarrow full of awards, including his being inducted as a Fellow of the ACM in 2006.
For me, the key points in the write up were:
- Google’s voice search has come along rapidly.
- Voice search is important in mobile search.
- Machine translation is coming along.
Okay. I understand.
Was there a nugget that makes the goose’s feathers stand up?
Yep, and here’s the key comment in the article. Mr. Spector is quoted as saying:
“It’s very difficult to solve these technological problems without human input,” he says. “It’s hard to create a robot that’s as clever, smart and knowledgeable of the world as we humans are. But it’s not as tough to build a computational system like Google, which extends what we do greatly and gradually learns something about the world from us, but that requires our interpretation to make it really successful.
How are these human inputs integrated into voice and other tough information problems? That question is not answered. My new Google study on rich media does describe some of the systems and methods that Google uses. Surprising stuff and not in Mr. Spector’s comments.
When Mr. Brin or Mr. Page “invent” something. Do you think that invention is important? I do. That “hybrid intelligence” stuff is interesting as well.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since I mention a patent, I will report my hopeless state of poverty to the USPTO, an outfit with a surfeit of financial and intellectual riches.
Linguamatics Coming to Newton Mass?
February 15, 2010
Short honk: A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to a real estate hunt by Linguamatics, the specialized content processing firm in the UK. If the reader is on the money, Linguamatics (catchphrsase “Intelligent answers from text”) will be opening an office in lovely Newton, Massachusetts. By the time you read this, the office may be open. Word is that Pfizer is a good Linguamatics customer, so it makes sense for the UK-based firm to increase its presence in the US. We will keep pecking around this rumor. Updates when we get some more information.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2010
No one paid me to write this rumor in the short honk form. Since “honk” may be construed as a function of a vehicle equipped with an alerting device, I will report no fee work to the Department of Transportation. An outfit that sounds its horn – sooner or later — when a safety issue becomes known.
Hakia Changes Results Display
February 15, 2010
Short honk: I learned that Hakia has revamped its results display in a write up called “Hakia Servers Up Comprehensive Universal Search in a New Design.” My recollection is that Google also uses the phrase Universal Search, but I may be muddling which search vendor uses which buzzword.
Interface is getting quite a bit of attention. I think part of the push is a response to Microsoft Bing’s user experience push. The other motivating factor is that search results are not that much different to most searchers. With Google getting about 70 percent of the search traffic, the other Web search folks have to find an angle. Hakia, the semantic search company, displays text search results, images and videos. The company includes categories to allow filtering with a click. I find the new interface interesting. i ran a number of test queries and found the results useful. Now the task is marketing and building traffic. Give Hakia a spin.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2010
No one paid me to write this. A couple of years ago I got a bottle of water when I visited Hakia in Manhattan. I will report this to
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
