Ask and Yahoo Allegedly Gain Share
April 11, 2010
I delight in the league tables for the Web search championship. The data are made particularly compelling because little information about methodology, margin of error, and numerical recipes are provided. Anything goes for the azure chip crowd. Consider “Yahoo Searches Gain 3% of Market Share.” I am not sure what a “search” is nor am I able to explain “market” but never mind.
Yahoo grew, according to Hitwise, one of the PR centric online analytics companies. But even more surprising to me was the factoid that Ask.com grew by 21 percent, from 2.84% of the “market” to 3.44%”. The losers were Google and Microsoft Bing.
Several thoughts:
- With Ask.com on an apparent roll, why don’t I use the service? The results don’t allow me to do my work more quickly or easily. Ask.com strikes me as a service that may be helpful to a small number of folks looking for information but I think these folks are a distinct and interesting segment of the market. Ask.com I have learned by listening at parties where school teachers are in the mix is a hit with the middle school crowd. Some teachers find the results either “safe” or “more understandable” to this age group. I need more data, of course.
- What are Google and Microsoft Bing doing wrong? Once this question is considered, the answer is, “Not much that is within their control?” Both companies are on a marketing and PR blitz. Both companies are working overtime to improve their search offerings. Both companies are high profile brands. Maybe there is a “fatigue” factor? Maybe the Hitwise data need that “margin of error” thing that bedevils some first year statistics students in colleague?
- What are Ask and Yahoo doing right? I don’t have Ask on my radar because once the company became the search engine of NASCAR I dismissed it. Yahoo is retrenching and doing lots of MBA tricks to revivify an aging, unexciting brand. I don’t think Ask or Yahoo has made a substantive change that caught my attention, but I may be guilty of inattention.
- Is Ask getting some link love from IAC Web properties CollegeHumor.com, Reference.com, Vimeo.com, Chemistry.com, TheDailyBeast.com, InsiderPages.com, and other IAC sites? Backlinks are often helpful in making those traffic stats perk up.
To sum up, Web search is no longer the main event. The users who matter are shifting to services like Facebook to find information. Another segment of users who matter are going the mobile route. Despite the fancy mapping methods, once a person has a mobile device, the search experience becomes different from what one can do sitting at a notebook with a fast, stable network connection.
My thought is that these league tables are becoming less relevant to what I am tracking. Your mileage may vary but the era of the text search is ending. The winner of a somewhat unexciting way to get information has as much importance to me as the name of the gladiator scratched on the wall at Pompeii.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2010
A freebie.
Google Snags Programmable Search Engine Patent
April 11, 2010
Short honk: The programmable search engine invention has been granted a US patent. Filed in august 2005 and published in February 2007, the PSE provides a glimpse of the Google’s systems and methods for performing sophisticated content processing. Dr. Ramanathan Guha, inventor of the PSE, has a deep interest in data management, the semantic Web and context tagging. You can download a copy of US7693830 from the USPTO. There were four other PSE patent applications published on the same day in February 2007, which is a testament to Dr. Guha’s ability to invent and write complex patent applications in a remarkable period of time. The PSE is quite important with elements of the invention visible in today’s Google shopping service, among others.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2010
Unsponsored post.
Quote to Note: Google on Buzz and People
April 11, 2010
I was sifting through the flotsam and jetsam that accumulates in the Overflight system this morning (April 8, 2010) and read the GigaOM “free” write up “Google’s Horowitz on What Buzz Ultimately Aims To Do.” In my experience, Googlers know their core competence, math, and their projects quite well. Shift them to other topics like Google’s patent filings or the behind the scenes activities regarding acquisitions in Google’s urgent rich media initiative, and the Googlers are pretty much like the lady across the aisle from me—struggling to open her tinfoil pack of dry roasted peanuts.
The GigaOM write up presents information gleaned in one of those exclusive Silicon Valley dinners. You must read the original article for the flavor of the information.
Here’s the quote to note in my opinion from Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of product management for Apps:
We build apps for people, not markets… We can’t care about Google’s goal of organizing the world’s information without talking about people.
Two “peoples” mean that people are important to Google, right? What happens if a Google action puts one or more people at risk in another country? I don’t have a quantifiable answer to that question, but I have been in one country where that sort of collateral impact is quite real on people who have worked or do work for certain entities. I will stick to analyzing Google patent documents and published technical papers and leave the Googlers’ public statements to other types of researchers.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2010
A freebie.
Google and a Flurry of Excitement from 2006
April 10, 2010
Excitement in Harrod’s Creek. Honk.
I got a couple of pings today about a story circulating based on a talk I gave in 2006. I am not going to give credence to the comments. I want to point out that since I wrote The Google Legacy, my research has turned up nothing particularly significant about Google’s work with various governmental agencies. In 2007, I published Google Version 2.0 and focused on the company’s new data management methods known as the Programmable Search Engine. I have mentioned in numerous talks about the usefulness of this type of “fill in the blanks” system to law enforcement professionals worldwide.
I have heard zip about Google’s use of this system outside of some demonstration projects related to a trial real estate service and the function in Google Products. In 2009, I published Google: The Digital Gutenberg. In the course of that study I reviewed the comments I collected and the open source information I process and found nothing of interest related to government or law enforcement activities by Google for the handful of entities for whom I have worked. That study focused on Google’s publishing potential, but I did describe a particularly fascinating technology called “dataspaces.” I have written about this innovation for IDG in an IDC report #213562, my Beyond Search study for the Gilbane Group, and a chapter in Google: The Digital Gutenberg. I think this technology has significant value for law enforcement professionals, but I came across zero information that Google has made this technology available to government agencies. A baby version of dataspace functionality seems to be embedded in Google Wave, but it is not the full scale system of the data manifold that I describe. In my forthcoming study, I worked through my notes and research for Google’s rich media innovations. I found no information germane to the use of these technologies and law enforcement. I see how some of them could be of great value.
I appreciate the interest in my public work but it is important to recognize that if I had substantive information about Google’s technology applied to law enforcement, I would include it in my for fee studies. At the very least, I would mention it in my talks and I would try to get a rise out of the audience. I don’t have any information that suggests that Google is doing much more than complying with routine, legal requests for information just as any other civic minded organization does.
My suggestion is to read my Google trilogy and learn what my research does say about Google’s capabilities. Chasing me down for a talk given three or four years ago is probably useful in graduate school but it does not keep you current with my research into Google’s technical activities and services.
Great to know that someone knows I give public talks, use pictures of Godzilla for laughs, and draw attention to the need for each online user to be aware of log files.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I don’t even get royalties from my publishers anymore.
Prison Blogging — Have We Crossed A Line?
April 10, 2010
Celebrities have been blogging and tweeting forever. It is old news. But what happens when they start blogging from prison? Mashable.com recently reported “Lil Wayne Blogs… From Prison” and guess what? He is even still working for ESPN doing sports reviews – while in prison. Where does that paycheck go? Shouldn’t it go to the state to cover his living expenses? I am totally an advocate for social media and champion the changes it can bring about. However, it seems that this is kind of like sending your child to their room as punishment. This is the same place where the computer, television, DVD player, and stereo are available. Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now.
Melody K. Smith, April 10, 2010
Note: Post was not sponsored.
Glitch at Google Check Out
April 10, 2010
Short honk: Google may have some unhappy Check Out customers. The Register’s “Google Checkout Checks Out” reports some alleged issues. Yet another Google glitch? Not sure. For me the key passage in the article was:
“As far as I know unlike PayPal they have no technical support via the phone and we just have to hope someone is doing something. If it carries on today I shall remove Google Checkout as an option for payment until it’s fixed.”
I thought Google addressed some of its customer support issues after the Nexus One flap. Maybe not.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2010
A freebie.
The Biggest Names in Enterprise Search!
April 10, 2010
I received a link to a “National Press Release.” When I click the link here, I saw this title: “BA-Insight’s SharePoint Search and FAST Search 2010 Webinar Series Features the Biggest Names in Enterprise Search.” I don’t have too much of a problem with hyperbole. I find it amusing that the “biggest names in enterprise search” did not include individuals from:
- Autonomy and its chief wizard, Mike Lynch
- Exalead and the prescient François Bourdonclek
- Google and co founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page
- Lucid Imagination and Eric Gries and Marc Krellenstein.
I could ennumerate this list but I am not sure I would feel comfortable using the bold phrase “biggest names in enterprise search” even if those in my bulleted list were on the program.
Enterprise search is a flawed phrase, but it is one that seems to resonate. The reality is that there are many different types of search, and I am not sure that two firms, despite their stellar reputations, can deliver across the spectrum of chemical structure search in enterprises engaged in drug research, search for specific legal information related to a matter, search for rich media in an enterprise engaged in broadcast television news, etc.
I think the headline would have made me more comfortable if it has said, “A Webinar Focused on Improving Information Access in SharePoint Using Technology Certified by Microsoft.” No superlatives are needed in my opinion. If the “biggest names” can’t make the basic product work, is there not a logical thread to tug?
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2010
A freebie.
InfoDome: Cloud Database for Almost Everyone
April 9, 2010
Databases can be made to look really easy to use. I remember a Filemaker demo from several years ago. I was amazed, but when we tried to create some custom forms. We got Filemaker working but the ease of use was narrowly defined. InfoDome has taken up the challenge of creating an easy-to-use, cloud-based database. You can watch a video of the system in action on the InfoDome Web site. The link is easy to spot and the video shows off the system’s features. The service offers a REST API to add application business logic. Pricing ranges from free for 1,000 or fewer records to $175 a month for 100,000 records, 30 gigabytes of storage, and unlimited users. Looks interesting. I was surprised to learn that the company has been in business since 2007. The clouds are arriving.
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2010
A freebie.
Not-So-Secret Cell Phone Numbers
April 9, 2010
Tired of unwanted phone calls that show up on caller id only as “unknown name”? Even if the caller is using a cell phone, which many solicitors and crank calls do, you can learn who’s calling you, says private investigator George Martin in “How to look up Unlisted & Unregistered Phone Numbers — Online” on People Records Zone. “Telemarketers, stalkers, prank callers, creditors, and many others could be harassing you under the false assumption that you cannot track them, writes Martin. “Their assumption is false because, thanks to the internet, you can now discover precisely who owns the particular cell phone number that has been calling you. All the recipient has to do is enter the complete phone number into one of many free unlisted-number search directory services, and the caller’s name will be revealed, says Martin. Knowing who is making the calls may not stop all unwanted calls, but if anonymity is important to the caller — especially those with ill intent — it should help.
John Sniffen, April 9, 2010
Post not sponsored.
MarkLogic and the American Institute of Physics
April 9, 2010
MarkLogic, fresh from nailing the University of Virginia account, reported that “American Institute of Physics Utilizes Mark Logic to Launch Publishing Platform.” MarkLogic Server is a software system that can give information-centric organizations a versatile tool for accessing, processing, and repurposing content. According to the write up:
the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a non-profit scholarly publisher, used MarkLogic Server to build its next-generation platform for hosting online publications, Scitation C3. AIP has moved its 12 archival journals to the MarkLogic-based Scitation C3 platform, which hosts 2,000,000 articles from more than 200 science-related publications.
The article continued:
… Scitation C3 features include full-article HTML rendering, improved visual presentation of inline math, and in-context links to references, figures, and tables. AIP now offers “Smart ToCs” that allow users to further customize listings with abstract previews and the ability to hide non-relevant content. AIP has also added more search options and controls to explore content based on article type, topic, author, keyword, PACS, journal, and publication year. In addition, researchers can find information faster by highlighting a term within an article to produce a list of related content.
For more information about Mark Logic, navigate to www.marklogic.com. I will be one of the participants in the upcoming Mark Logic User Conference. Information about that event is available at http://www.marklogic.com/UserConference2010/.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2010
A freebie publicizing my participation in a user conference.
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