Google Snagged by Skyhook
September 21, 2010
We are not legal eagles, but the Skyhook matter is interesting.
Our question: Is Google entangled into legal issues because of its size; is it really intimidating others with its power; or is it just too big to manage? This giant Internet entity has been into a few controversies in recent times, and it is now again in the line of fire. “Skyhook Sues Google Over Patents, Interference,” reports the OSNews site, about the hook snagged in Googzilla’s carapace. Skyhook Wireless is a company providing device location determination technology services to mobile manufacturers, something that can ascertain the location of a cell phone within 20 to 30 meters accuracy.
This service is the bone of contention. Google has come up with a similar service integrated with its Android OS. Though both the companies use their own version of technologies; Skyhook relies on cell towers, WiFi access points and GPS, whereas Google does it through Google Maps and Google Latitude. Yet Skyhook claims:
Google violated four of its patents relating to location services.” But there’s more behind the curtain, as Skyhook blames Google of issuing, “a ‘stop-ship’ order for Motorola Android devices using Skyhook’s technologies,” claims the news report. The Motorola Android-based Smartphone were to use Skyhook’s XPS location technology starting April this year, reveals Skyhook, and directly accusing Google of interfering, which led to a loss of “millions of dollars in royalties provided under the Motorola Contract.
How much of this is really true will come into light only as the events unfold? Is Skyhook trying to tighten its grip on Motorola? Litigation is expensive and risky. Perhaps this is a misunderstanding or a a simple case of competition. Google, as always, has cash and is an big target.
Harleena Singh, September 21, 2010
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Will Google Catch Apple?
September 21, 2010
Apple is ready to face the music with confidence. Seven years of success with the iTunes Music Store would help any company’s self confidence. Can the giant Google sprint like ‘Usain’ and bolt Apple’s success door with its own planned music store? There’s wide speculation and some relief in the music industry, as reports Reuters article “Apple and Google to Clash in Music Space by Christmas.”
“The music industry hopes to benefit from a battle for control of the mobile phone and computer desktop between Apple and Google,” points out the article, and that this competition could help the digital music market to rise and expand. With the dismal example of Amazon’s music venture, the article says it is not going to be easy even for the giant, as there’s a long lead to ‘catch up’ for Google. We already see Google playing the same catch game with Facebook in social networking, and Microsoft with Google.
The consumer market is a tricky one. Apple may be the “new” Sony. Google may be the “new” Microsoft. The interactions will be fascinating.
Harleena Singh, September 21, 2010
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UX Debunked?
September 21, 2010
The consumerization of information technology focuses attention on what I call toaster attributes. The idea is that anyone with a piece of bread can usually figure out how to insert the bread and burn it to a greater or lesser degree. I have encountered toasters I couldn’t figure out. I ignored them and just ate the bread, usually with jam. Life requires adaptive behavior.
Source: http://masquerademasks.sultaninfo.com/fancyfeathermasquerademasks/ May be detected as malware.
“Can Experience Be Designed?” struck me as germane to search, content processing, and a number of information tasks. The write up contains some useful information and left me thinking that much of the content applies to search. Let me highlight a passage that resonated with me:
Everybody is a user, so is everybody a user experience designer? Since everybody is a user, everybody has an opinion on how his experience should be. And many are very eager to utter their opinions really strongly. But that doesn’t mean that every user is a designer. Asking for salt doesn’t make you a cook. The user has his own opinion, the user experience designer deals with different opinions and tries to find the best compromise. Good compromises are not in the middle, they are higher than the initial options: good compromises are synthetic (If your options are cowardly or foolhardy, the synthesis is courageous).
Taking complex functions and making them usable by lots of people is difficult. At lunch today (September 19, 2010), my son and I talked about the complexity lurking under the surface of our iPads. Most people can use the gizmos, but the innards are a mystery to many and almost unrepairable. The UX or user experience allows the iPad to be used to do “something”. Making access easy and keeping the ham handed user from killing the system with an inadvertent keystone or touch is a challenging task.
Casual engineering will not deliver sustainable user experience. Lousy quality won’t either. In fact the list of hurdles a product must get over or around is long and some items on the list are fuzzy. Other challenges may not be on the list at all.
What’s this have to do with search? The article identifies issues that permeate search and content processing marketing. The marketing is misleading if not a falsehood. My hunch is that the UX bandwagon seems easier to achieve than search systems that deliver what the user needs with a minimum of fuss and muss.
Recent search innovations like Google Instant or the hoo hah about predictive search are irrelevant to me. Some innovations are like the medieval masques. Hiding reality allows some folks to have a good time.
Reality, however, is more persistent than the UX whether placed on a mobile device or the pock marked face of an Elizabethan rake.
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2010
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Exclusive Interview with Steve Cohen, Basis Technology
September 21, 2010
The Lucene Revolution is a few weeks away. One of the featured speakers is Steve Cohen, the chief operating officer of Basis Technology. Long a leader in language technology, Basis Technology has ridden a rocket ship of growth in the last few years.
Steve Cohen, COO, Basis Technology
I spoke with Steve about his firm and its view of open source search technology on Monday, November 20, 2010. The full text of the interview appears below:
Why are you interested in open source search?
The open source search movement has brought great search technology to a much wider audience. The growing Lucene and Solr community provides us with a sophisticated set of potential customers, who understand the difference that high quality linguistics can make. Historically we have sold to commercial search engine customers, and now we’re able to connect with – and support – individual organizations who are implementing Solr for documents in many languages. This also provides us with the opportunity to get one step closer to the end user, which is where we get our best feedback.
What is your take on the community aspect of open source search?
Of course, open source only works if there is an active and diverse community. This is why the Apache Foundation has stringent rules regarding the community before they will accept a project. “Search” has migrated over the past 15 years from an adjunct capability plugged onto the side of database-based systems to a foundation around which high performance software can be created. This means that many products and organizations now depend on a great search core technology. Because they depend on it they need to support and improve it, which is what we see happening.
What’s your take on the commercial interest in open source?
Our take, as a mostly commercial software company, is that we absolutely want to embrace and support the open source community – we employ Apache committers and open source maintainers for non-Apache projects – while providing (selling) technology that enhances the open source products. We also plan to convert some of our core technology to open source projects over time.
What’s your view on the Oracle Google Java legal matter with regards to open source search?
The embedded Java situation is unique and I don’t think it applies to open source search technology. We’re not completely surprised, however, that Oracle would have a different opinion of how to manage an open source portfolio than Sun did. For the community at-large this is probably not a good thing.
What are the primary benefits of using open source search?
I’ll tell you what we hear from customers and users: the primary benefits are to avoid vendor lock-in and flexibility. There has been many changes in the commercial vendor landscape over the fifteen years we’ve been in this business, and customers feel like they’ve been hurt by changes in ownership and whole products and companies disappearing. Search, as we said earlier, is a core component that directly affects user experience, so customizing and tuning performance to their application is key. Customers want all of the other usual things as well: good price, high performance, support, etc.
When someone asks you why you don’t use a commercial search solution, what do you tell them?
We do partner with commercial search vendors as well, so we like to present the benefits of each approach and let the customer decide.
What about integration? That’s a killer for many vendors in my experience.
Our exposure to integration is on the “back end” of Lucene and Solr. Our technology plugs in to provide linguistic capabilities. Since we deliver a reliable connector between our technology and the search engine this hasn’t been much of a problem.
How does open source search fit into Basis’ product/service offerings?
Our product, Rosette, is a text analysis toolkit that plugs into search tools like Solr (or the Lucene index engine) to help make search work well in many languages. Rosette prepares tokens for the search index by segmenting the text (which is not easy in some languages, like Chinese and Japanese), using linguistic rules to normalize the terms to enhance recall, and also provide enhanced search and navigation capabilities like entity extraction and fuzzy name matching.
How do people reach you?
Our Web site, at www.basistech.com, contains details on our various products and services, or people can write to info@basistech.com or call +1-617-386-2090.
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2010
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IBM: Catching Up or Moving Ahead?
September 21, 2010
As IBM is inching towards complete automation in content classification and management, we noticed that the IBM InfoSphere Classification Module in now renamed as “Classification Module,” which “automates the organization of unstructured content by analyzing full text of documents and emails.” IBMs Enterprise Content Management (ECM) now uses context-sensitive and rules-based classification and categorization that not only saves time and money, but also “shifts the categorization burden away from your valuable staff resources and helps you make better informed data management decision.”
IBM also seems to be repositioning itself more towards the government, as seen from its “Advance Classification” experiences that pay heavy emphasis on its government applications. Displayed on its site are the case studies and white paper that deal with the army use, and the federal governments’ records management challenges. Among other podcasts and videos are details about Classification Module, automated document classification, content management software, and complaint information management. Check them out if you are into the Big Blue.
Is IBM ahead of curve, behind the curve, or confused by the curve. Clustering, categorization, and entity extraction have become standard features of most search systems and next generation enterprise content processing products from giants like Autonomy and Exalead to more specialized vendors such as Megaputer. The IBM open source initiative also is interesting and we think we see either competitive jiggling or catching up in action.
Harleena Singh, September 21, 2010
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Facebook: Makes Noise without Trying
September 20, 2010
Americans like to post photos, update status messages, and scroll through news from friends on Facebook, more than any other activity when online. This is concluded from a comScore research revealed in the USAToday.com article, “Facebook Inches Past Google for Web Users’ Minutes.” Moreover, what startles us more is the fact stated that, “U.S. Web surfers are spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google.”
My view is that Google wants to make sure usage for its service sticks in the 50 to 60 percent range. At these levels, Google is not really a monopoly in my view.
But this Facebook surge probably rings a bell for Google, as well as Yahoo, both of which were well ahead of Facebook ,in terms of percentage of Web surfers who spent time on their sites. In just a matter of three years, Facebook’s share of U.S. surfers’ total minutes per month has risen from 2 percent to 9.9 percent, whereas Google lags behind at 9.6 percent, even after including its sites like YouTube, Gmail and others. This could well be a wakeup call for the giant Google, with a challenge to regain the top spot.
But the real story is that a post in a popular Web log and the follow up story “Anatomy Of A PR Spin (AKA How To Lie Like A Pro)” has escalated into a major media incident in the blogosphere. The idea that Facebook, a mere social network, would create a mobile device is little more than one of those Silicon Valley rumors. What is important is that a Silicon Valley rumor like Oracle wanting to buy a search vendor (how boring) becomes when Facebook is involved. Not boring. A huge issue.
That’s the story for me.
Facebook right now is one of the outfits with the power to disrupt. Forget the Facebook phone or whatever the rumor says the device is.
Facebook has arrived and it will be no easy task to put a damper on the Facebook noise. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2010
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AOL and Its Google Tie Up
September 20, 2010
Remembering the heydays bring about feelings of gaiety, but would the same old associations be able to produce the extraordinary magic again? Well, at least AOL is trying to make it happen. We read about “AOL Renews Search Ad Deal With Google” on WebProNews, and the deal that “Google will provide search services to AOL’s content network and properties, in exchange for a revenue-sharing arrangement between the two companies.”
AOL is all-upbeat about this new development and plans to expand the deal in the coming future, with hopes that this alliance “will provide improved experiences to AOL’s world wide audience,” says the article. It adds further that both the companies will work together and cover mobile search, and bring AOL’s video content to YouTube. We think Google has nailed the former superstar’s business, but do you think that Google and its Xoogler can make AOL a powerhouse once again? We doubt it. Yahoo is trying to make its service grow, and both AOL and Yahoo seem to be competing in a very similar business manner. One is Googley. The other is Microsofty.
Harleena Singh, September 19, 2010
Fujitsu and Libraries: A Bit of a Surprise
September 20, 2010
Fujitsu has taken the charge on the cloud. It recently started its software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based solution for library administration for Japan’s municipal public libraries, as part of its global cloud strategy. The JapanToday’s article, “Fujitsu to Start Services for Libraries Using Cloud Computing,” further states that, “the services will enable libraries to manage information on lending books to users without their own computer systems.”
Fujitsu estimates that deploying the ICT system environment for the libraries, with the help of Fujitsu’s datacenters can save the libraries about 30 percent on their ICT costs over a period of five years. The article says that since the library employees are relieved from “the responsibilities for maintaining and operating the ICT system, the library can operate more efficiently.” As Fujitsu plans to create regional library centers, and its rival NEC Corp too plans to begin similar services, it appears to us as a different and potentially predatory move against the beleaguered library vendors.
Harleena Singh, September 20, 2010
Open Text Growth
September 20, 2010
It is growing time for Open Text. The undisputed largest stand-alone global ECM vendor, which though lacks an attractive organic growth, makes up with its cash flow through its revenue from partnership agreements, merger and acquisitions, besides new products. The Financial Post article “New M&A could help fuel growth at Open Text” exposes that the Waterloo-based tech company reported earnings last month, and the National Bank Financial too forecasts good growth for Open Text, as the demand for ECM solutions accelerates out of the downturn.
The company’s key to success has been the partnership with SAP, Microsoft, which now looks forward to a new partnership with Oracle, and all of these bring 40% of total license revenues for Open Text. Now Open Text is back in the hunt for acquisitions, tagged with an Outperform rating by National Bank Financial that supports the company’s policies and believes they will drive Open Text’s growth.
Harleena Singh, September 20, 2010
Cuil.com Gone Dark
September 20, 2010
I ran some queries on Cuil.com earlier this week. I tried to do a query on the Xoogler-built system. The 404 error told me there was a problem. PCMag.com reported in “From Cuil to Frozen” that the service is shut down. The search business is difficult, even for Xooglers. One could opine that Xooglers may struggle to manage with the exemplar AOL. Now one might hypothesize that Xooglers can’t make a Google killer. Has the magic evaporated?
Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2010
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