In Defense of the Google: Spray and Pray Is Run and Gun
June 28, 2011
I liked “Google’s SOE (Strategy of Everything).” The write up rather gently explains that Google is doing too much, has limited management expertise, and has managed to make its online ad business support everything from wind farms to algorithms. I did quite like this statement too:
In practice, “all things to all people” invariably becomes too many different services in too many market segments. “We don’t know what will work or for whom, so we’ll spray and pray. We’ll shoot arrows in the dark and when the sun rises, we’ll paint a target around the one that lands in a good spot. We’ll declare victory and raise a second round while claiming that this had been our strategy all along.”
I have shifted my research efforts in the last 18 months, so I am not immersing myself in Google’s goodness as I did in the period between 2003 to 2009. I grew impatient waiting for the Googzilla to give birth to the nifty products and services described in Google’s technical papers and patent applications. Google was in a position to bring more order to real estate, online video, professional directories, and many other content niches that were under served or ill served. I even spent some time courtesy of a client writing about Google’s video technology. I thought Google was going to be able to build connections across a fragmented, craft business because—gosh darn it—the technology was visible when I ran certain queries on Google’s public Web site. I loved demoing the recipe service, the Baltimore real estate service, the flight options service, the medical information service, and many more. But nothing ever happened. I grew bored and moved on to more interesting research areas. Sure, I bumped into the Google, but I don’t focus on Google. In fact, I don’t too much about the company any more.
Source of a Milton Paradise Lost illustration: http://www.inspirationalposter.org/poster-6635-6093242/paradise-lost-john-milton-satan-beelzebub-are-abyss-raging-fire-giclee-print/
From this uninformed and reasonably objective position, let me offer a partial response to the most accurate observations of Jean-Louis Gassée.
Focus and Competition
Google’s success in search had less to do with Google and more to do with the magnificent ineptitude of Hewlett Packard, the company that ended up owning AltaVista.com and some pretty smart folks and a ton of technology. But portal fever was upon the land in 1996. Google was able to get some loving insight from the Clever system, from the void created as Yahoo and others chased the portal rainbow, and from inattentive HP which provided disgruntled employees with a chance to do some search work for the Backrub/Google crowd.
Because Google had essentially zero competition, the company’s founders and some of the engineers rightly concluded the company was invincible. I am reminded of the John Milton line, “ Execute their airy purposes.” Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 430.
From the git go, Google saw its rush forward as evidence of the company’s essential rightness. Google concluded, “Organize the world’s information.” The “do no evil” angle was part of the hubris which Milton described rather well. Without competition, why not focus on using technology to herd the digital doggies into the Google Bar None corral?
Once the twig is bent and the tree grows, changing that tree is time consuming and may be impossible. That’s where Google is today: a big oak planted in the soil of today’s business climate. The focus remains like a forgiving 18 millimeter Olympus Zuiko lens. But` in today’s environment the competition is attentive, and Google is not mentally set up to accept that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and some other outfits are just better at marketing, technology, and innovation. I am confident Google can adapt. After all, managing a company is not much more that tweaking a numerical recipe. That’s just logical.
Quality and User Experience
One of the interesting findings from my research for my three Google studies was that Googlers do not understand why regular people have so much trouble performing “trivial tasks.” I quite like the phrase “a certain blindness,” and it does apply to Google. The SOE strategy uses the word “quality”, but that is a buzzword that has different meanings in different contexts.
For example, quality at Google is algorithmic. Let me give an example. If there are lots of users of Gmail and the usage is growing, the volume of data is growing, and the clicks on ads are growing, we have metrics. When quality is defined in terms of actions like clicks and data, more is better. Therefore, as the metrics rise, the quality is evident from the data. The fact that the interface is a mess does not correlate with the usage; therefore, the subjective comments about Gmail user controls are at odds with the metrics which define quality. So Google grades Web content via algorithm. If humans fiddle, then the unpredictability of Panda roils the search landscape. Google sticks by its view that its method is right. Tautological? Sure, but that’s how metrics Math Club members work.
My research surfaced a number of examples of the confusion Googlers experienced when the algorithms were not perceived as logical. I imagined hearing Spock on Star Trek remind humans that Captain Kirk or the good doctor was not logical. If a Googler can understand it, then the approach is “correct.” Disagree without data. The Google logic does not accept illogic. So if humans can’t figure out the interface, just use predictive search to give the non Googler what he or she really wants. Logical and not likely to change any time soon.
In Google’s defense, how can Math Club members relate to Facebook type services. These, as noted in the section above, are not logical. Google had a head start with social services. Remember Orkut? I do and so do some Brazilian law enforcement professionals. Google stumbled out of the gate. Buzz was supposed to be a fresh start. The Math Club muffed that service and then Wave. Google did not find a way to catch Facebook. Googlers began to jump ship, so now Google is “faced” (yes, bad pun) with having to compete with former Googlers who are helping Mr. Zuckerberg build a giant walled garden of members. There are many implications of the walled garden model, but Google does not have either the time nor the social touch to close the gap between it and Facebook quickly. The Math Club president may not have a date for the prom this year or next I fear. Google is trying, however. Effort, as in my grade school, deserves a grade too. Let’s give Google credit for trying. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can” is echoing in my mind.
Fear Unfounded
People fear what they don’t understand. I am comfortable with Google. I know how to search without having my results filtered. I know how to enable the Firefox add in for anonymity. I know how to log out of my Google account no matter how many windows keep displaying my alleged user name. The backlash against Google is part of the rite of passage. ATT went through it. IBM went through it. Now Google will go through it. No one needs to fear Google. The company, MOMA, the Googlers, the need for so much brevity that Googlers cannot communicate effectively with one another—these are reasons to feel comfortable with Googzilla.
Google is now its own worst enemy. I think that as the hiring process continues, the legacy of the original Google will be diluted. As a result, the pride that Milton described as one facet of Satan’s character will diminish. The new Google will be a different company. Regulators have not much to regulate because Google will change more quickly than governmental inquiries can react. No worries..
Wrap Up
The SOE analysis is filled with provocative ideas. I think Google is home free, clean as a whistle, and just misunderstood. Maybe a Math Club member for president?
Stephen E Arnold, June 28, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
Polyspot Connectors
June 21, 2011
PolySpot asserts that it has become the “go to” company for information retrieval solutions for companies.
According to the PolySpot Web Site, the company offers:
a modular solution for designing all types of applications research and implement a true transverse research infrastructure, meeting the needs of all company’s business. “PolySpot depends on a number of connectors for “interfacing solutions with a large number of applications.”
The Web Page “List of Connectors PolySpot” located on the PolySpot Web Site provides a detailed list of connectors they utilize to access comprehensive data as well as the metadata of various applications.
What is interesting is that Polyspot is embracing social media. The social content connectors play a role in the firm’s product development since the management reshuffle.
Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and MediaWiki are popping up everywhere and their influence continues to grow. Polyspot wants to make these sites’ content available to its licensees.
The fact that PolySpot uses information from these sites to design research and search solutions for businesses demonstrates how powerful and important social sites have become. Who knew simple terms such as “like or dislike” could pack such a punch.
April Holmes, June 21, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Facebook Face Play No Big Surprise
June 14, 2011
You might be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about Facebook’s newest addition to its social network–facial recognition software. That’s right – the beloved social network is building a database of their user’s faces and telling us it’s all to make our lives easier. As discussed in “Facebook Quietly Switches on Facial Recognition Tech by Default” the controversial feature allows users “to automatically provide tags for the photos uploaded” by recognizing facial features of your friends from previously uploaded photos. Yet again, Facebook finds themselves under fire their laissez-faire attitude towards privacy.
This latest Facebook technology is being vilified. It has been called “creepy,” “disheartening,” and even “terrifying.” These are words that would usually be reserved for the likes of Charles Manson or Darth Vader, not an online social network. The biggest backlash seems to come from the fact that the didn’t “alert its international stalkerbase that its facial recognition software had been switched on by default within the social network.” This opt-out, instead of opt-in, attitude is what is upsetting the masses. Graham Cluely, a UK-based security expert says that “[y]et again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth.”
To be fair, Facebook released a notice on The Facebook Blog in December 2010that the company was unleashing its “tag suggestions” to United States users and when you hear them describe the technology it seems to be anything, but Manson-esque. In fact, it invokes thoughts of Happy Days. They say that since people upload 100 million tagged photos everyday, that they simply are helping “you and your friends relive everything from that life-altering skydiving trip to a birthday dinner where the laughter never stopped.” They go as far as to say that photo tags are an “essential tool for sharing important moments” and facial recognition just makes that easier.
Google has also been working on facial recognition technology in the form of a smartphone app known as Google Googles and celebrity recognition. However, now Google is claiming to have halted the project because, as Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said “[p]eople could use this stuff in a very, very bad way as well as in a good way.” See “Facebooks’s Again in Spotlight on Privacy”.
So who’s right? Facebook by moving forward or Google by holding up its facial recognition technology?
It seems to me that Google is just delaying the inevitable. Let’s face it. As a Facebook user my right to my privacy may be compromised the second I sign up in exchange for what Facebook offers.
Technology, like the facial recognition software, is changing the social media landscape, and I suppose I should not be surprised when the company implements its newest creation even when it puts my privacy at risk.
Is it creepy?
Probably and users should be given an opportunity to opt-in, not out. Is it deplorable. No. It’s our option to join and Facebook is taking full advantage of it.
Jennifer Wensink, June 14, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Change for Sure. Scale? Nope. Facebook? Yep.
June 12, 2011
Quote to note: I was clicking around and came across a four page encomium to Google. You will want to read “Google: Scale Changes Everything” and try to identify the puffery from the facts. I am too tired after a tough day of paddling in the goose pond to do much of the Google thing. However, three was a juicy quote I want to note in the text of this source document from the business cat’s paw Forbes Magazine blogs:
Google is very secretive about how it does search — it has developed specialized chips it won’t patent, because it doesn’t want to show design ideas — but Coughran says they system is completely overhauled every couple of years. “You can tweak a system to handle data two or 10 times faster, but with this growth we have to do it 1000 times faster.”
Great stuff. Secret chips. Astounding performance.
Just one thing. I think the story should have been “Facebook: Competition Changes Everything.” Now that’s news, not secret chips and the wonders of 24,000 smart folks who are lagging Amazon, Apple, and Facebook.
Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Slapping Facebook and Muting At Work Users
June 9, 2011
Have workplace bans on technology ever been effective? In “Half of UK Businesses Ban Social Media at Work,” The Next Women business magazine examines the issue.
A study of 2,500 UK businesses found that “48% ban their workers from posting updates on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.” While employers may claim they are worried about protecting sensitive information or employees writing detrimental things about the company, “it’s the seamless integration between work and social media that is really concerning companies.”
How do you craft a policy that allows employees to use their smart phones for calls and e-mails but bans social networking? And who’s going to enforce it? This kind of negative management is never going to be considered a best practice.
Our view is that when 20 somethings join a “real” organization, the organization is going to have to work overtime to curtail what the 20 somethings perceive as normal behavior. Can organizations slap Facebook and mute its users at work? Good luck with that.
What happens if the hot new hire who cost a bonus, a new auto as an inducement, and a big salary takes a hike over a muting policy? Expensive for sure.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Microsoft and Facebook: More Pain for the Google
June 3, 2011
In the latest shot across the bow in the war between Microsoft and Google, Wired is reporting that “Bing Bumps Facebook Options to Outsocial Google.”
Now, “when you search Bing after associating your Bing account and Facebook accounts, you’ll see more faces of your friends.” “Microsoft, a minority shareholder in Facebook, is betting that data from Facebook will make its search superior to Google’s dominant search engine.”
ZDNet’s “Bing Adds More Facebook Features to Social Search” details five Facebook-related Bing updates, which include shared shopping lists and expanded Facebook profile searching. The write up asserts:
“Microsoft data shows that nearly half of people say seeing their friend’s Likes within search results could help them make better decisions.”
It’s interesting to consider all this information sharing in the context of crowd wisdom. In our opinion, the real point of these innovations is to keep Google looking at tail lights in the race to social content’s 24 hour hamburger joint.
Rita Safranek, June 3, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Censorship: The New “Like”
May 26, 2011
We find the machinations of US companies and China’s bureaucracy fascinating. Google stubbed its toe on the Great Wall. Yahoo found itself wading in the goo on the marge of the Bund. Has Facebook found a way to avoid missteps and tap into the money flow of one of the world’s largest economies?
“Durban Writes China’s Largest Search Engine about Web Censorship, Possible Facebook Deal,” declares a press release from the office of Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL). Regarding the rumored deal with Facebook. We learned:
Durbin expressed particular concern about recent reports that Baidu may enter into a partnership with Facebook to launch a social-networking site in China. Durbin has previously written to Facebook regarding his concern that the company does not have adequate safeguards in place to prevent repressive governments from monitoring activists who use Facebook. In his letter, Durbin asked Baidu whether it plans to partner with Facebook, and, if so, what steps the companies will take to protect human rights.
It’s interesting that a politician is weighing in on the matter. It remains to be seen whether he’ll get anywhere with his protestations.
It’s also interesting, to us at least, that in this instance Google is on the outside looking in. As if that rivalry needed more fodder!
We also want to note that, if the rumor is true, this is a potentially huge windfall for Facebook. Now that US politicians are voicing their views, will that put a stick in the Facebook bicycle spokes?
Cynthia Murrell May 26, 2011
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Holy *$@#, Facebook
May 25, 2011
Short honk: I am not a Facebookoid. I am neither surprised nor disappointed. Navigate to “47% of Facebook Walls Contain Profanity.” Here’s the factoid I found interesting:
Users are twice as likely to use profanity in a post on their Facebook Wall, versus a comment. Whereas friends are twice as likely to use profanity in a comment on a user’s Facebook Wall, versus a post.
What are friends for? Parse that.
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2011
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Google and Search
May 11, 2011
Over the last five days, I have been immersed in conversations about Google and its public Web search system. I am not able to disclose the people with whom I have spoken. However, I want to isolate the issues that surfaced and offer some observations about the role of traditional Web sites. I want to capture the thoughts that surfaced after I thought about what I learned in my face to face and telephone conversations. In fact, one of the participants in this conversation directed my attention to this post, “Google Panda=Disaster.” I don’t think the problem is Panda. I think a more fundamental change has taken place and Google’s methods are just out of sync with the post shift environment. But hope is not lost. At the end of this write up, I provide a way for you to learn about a different approach. Sales pitch? Sure but a gentle one.
Relevance versus Selling Advertising
The main thrust of the conversations was that Google’s Web search is degrading. I have not experienced this problem, but the three groups with whom I spoke have. Each had different data to show that Google’s method of handling their publicly accessible Web site has changed.
First, one vendor reported that traffic to the firm’s Web site had dropped from 2,000 uniques per month to 100. The Web site is informational. There is a widget that displays headlines from the firm’s Web log. The code is clean and the site is not complex.
Second, another vendor reported that content from the firm’s news page was appearing on competitors’ Web sites. More troubling, the content was appearing high in a Google results list. However, the creator of the content found that the stories from the originating Web site were buried deep in the Google results list. The point is that others were recycling original content and receiving a higher ranking than the source of the original content.
Traditional Web advertising depicted brilliantly by Ken Rockwell. See his work at http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/compacts/sd880/gallery-10.htm
Third, the third company found that its core business was no longer appearing in a Google results list for a query about the type of service the firm offered. However, the company was turning up in an unrelated or, at best, secondary results list.
I had no answer to the question each firm asked me, “What’s going on?”
Through various contacts, I pieced together a picture that suggests Google itself may not know what is happening. One source indicated that the core search team responsible for the PageRank output is doing its work much as it has for the last 12 years. Googlers responsible for selling advertising were not sure what changes were going on in the core search team’s algorithm tweaks. Not surprisingly, most people are scrutinizing search results, fiddling with metatags and other aspects of a Web site, and then checking to see what happened. The approach is time consuming and, in my opinion, very much like the person who plugs a token into a slot machine and hits the jack pot. There is great excitement at the payoff, but the process is not likely to work on the next go round.
Net net: I think there is a communications filter (intentional or unintentional) between the group at Google working to improve relevance and the sales professionals at Google who need to sell advertising. On one hand, this is probably healthy because many organizations put a wall between certain company functions. On the other hand, if Adwords and Adsense are linked to traffic and that traffic is highly variable, some advertisers may look to other alternatives. Facebook’s alleged 30 percent share of the banner advertising market may grow if the efficacy of Google’s advertising programs drops.
Facebook Remains a Threat to the Google
April 18, 2011
Does Facebook’s reach know no bounds? ABC’s Good Morning America reports, “Michigan Man Finds Kidney on Facebook.”
You may be familiar with the glacial pace of organ donation waiting lists. Patient Jeff Kurze of Warren, Michigan, achieved a way around that arduous process. His wife Roxy found a kidney through Facebook. Yep, just like the Egyptian dust up, the method relied upon Facebook. Even a Googler involved in some aspect of the Egyptian protest used the “F” word on a TV news program I watched. Google is search. Facebook is something else.
In the ABC article, I noted this passage:
After Jeff suffered a mini stroke last fall, doctors said it could take five years for him to climb the kidney waiting list and get the type O match he needed. That’s when a desperate Roxy took to Facebook. Wishing a kidney would fall out of the sky so my husband can stop suffering,’ Roxy Kurze, a 30-year-old web designer, wrote on her Facebook wall. ’So if anyone knows of a live donor with type O blood, PLEASE let me know.’
Facebook friend Ricky Cisco responded, and to make a long story short, the transfer was arranged. Fabulous human interest story, but the part that intrigues us at Beyond Search is this: as people turn to the Facebook community more and more to find everything from a book recommendation to an organ donation, how will Google and its ilk adapt? Will hooking a bonus to social innovation deliver a kidney to the faltering Google?
Cynthia Murrell April 18, 2011
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