ABC.xyz: Just Big Enough
August 15, 2015
I read a remarkable write up called “Week in Tech: Google Was Only the Beginning for Larry and Sergey.” The write up asserts:
Google simply wasn’t big enough to house Alphabet’s ambition.
Shouldn’t that be Messrs. Brin’s and Page’s ambition?
Nevertheless, the article bubbles with enthusiasm; for example:
And that’s just how low on the list of priorities the little subsidiary company by the name of Google had become in the eyes of its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It’s almost as if they now see their parenting job complete and they’re happy to wave Google off to lead its own life. Now tech’s most terrific twosome have a new litter of offspring, which have even bigger potential to change the world.
I talked for about 40 minutes with a bright reporter from a major Canadian publication. The topic was Alphabet. My view was slightly different from the one in this evanescent Trusted Review write up.
My comments to the journalist focused on these points:
- After the Backrub years and the Google years (think in terms of two decades), Alphabet and Google have one revenue stream: Online advertising. Google has tried with math club sticktoativity. But the efforts have come to naught. Nothing makes money like the modified GoTo.com/Overture.com/Yahoo.com online advertising method.In short, Google remains the one trick revenue pony as Steve Ballmer, MBA, said.
- The management expertise at Google is not up to Jack Welch-type standards. With lots of “presidents” possible, the burden of figuring out how to diversify revenue shifts from Messrs. Brin and Page to others.
- Google faces a person (Margrethe Vestager) in the European Commission who is not too happy with Google’s approach to search results. Whom will this person and her stalwart team sue? Alphabet or the old fashioned Google? Perhaps this shift in company structure is a fairly clumsy move to get ready for the down checks which seem to be rolling down the information highway.
- Search is no longer interesting. The notion of the “all the world’s information” may be more difficult than solving the problem of life extension, generating revenue from the China and Russian markets, and dealing with the natterings of mere elected officials.
I am not anti Google. Hey, that outfit paid for Tyson’s dog food for several years. I am just not star struck because so much of Google’s early success resulted from three historical events which the cheerleaders don’t know. I think these folks cut history class when the information was presented.
First, Alta Vista tanked, and Messrs. Brin and Page scooped up some talent who possessed the raw engineering experience and expertise to build a variant of the Kleinberg CLEVER system, mix in the Alta Vista memory stuff, and cook up some useful search outputs until the IPO.
Second, Yahoo was unable to do much with its online ad business. The Googlers, like Raphael, entered the Domus Aurea and received inspiration. Prior to the IPO, the inspiration had a price tag, but the revenue free Google suddenly had a business model, not objective search results.
Third, the competition in the period from 1996 (early Backrub) to 2002 (functioning Google search) was clueless. There was the waffling of Fast Search & Transfer, the cluelessness of Yahoo’s management, and the portal mania which swept through Web search. Good systems like Muscat and Hotbot never had a chance. The Google emerged as the victor after the opposing armies went to Shake Shack to ponder their future.
Now the Alphabet Google reorganization makes official the end of a search era. Like enterprise search, some useful functions emerged. But the precision, recall, and relevance has morphed into something less useful to me but not to the author of “Google Was Only the Beginning.” I like the past tense too.
What’s next?
Cognitive computing and Watson? Smart software which understands Farsi slang? Humans who know how to locate, vet, and process information? Big Data and Hadoop plus open source wrappers? Videos on a smartphone? Predictive methods which deliver information before I know I need that information. An Uber like service for high value competitive intelligence?
Oh, right. We have the mobile Google methods. And they are about ads. Boring. Why not go to the moon, invent nano methods to address genetic disorders, and use balloons to deliver Internet access to Sri Lanka?
Which Alphabet letters will spell $60 billion a year in the original Google’s ramp time?
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2015
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