LucidWorks: Another $100 Million
August 14, 2019
LucidWorks is an open source “search” play built on Solr. The company is fighting a battle with Elastic. Both companies are likely to face increased pressure from newcomers like Algolia and from the relentless Amazon AWS search system.
According to Crunchbase:
AI-powered search venture Lucidworks has raised $100 million from Francisco Partners and TPG Sixth Street Partners, the company announced today (first reported by Fortune’s Term Sheet).
What’s interesting is that Crunchbase did some math and stated:
The funding amounts to nearly as much (a combined $109 million) as the twelve-year-old company has raised since it was founded in 2007, according to Crunchbase data. Its last raise took place in May 2018 – a $50 million Series E led by Top Tier Capital Partners. So this round is precisely double its last raise.
A free profile of the LucidWorks system is available at www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles.
How different is today’s Lucid from the system available seven or eight years ago? The publicity and marketing collateral generated by the company suggests that artificial intelligence is the core of the “new” LucidWorks.
The question is, “What type of financial payoff is necessary to deliver an upside for those investors who have provided money to the company?”
With investors expecting a dump truck of money, LucidWorks will have to:
- Grow its revenue well beyond “search successes” like Endeca to warrant a big buy out. But Endeca hit a wall at about $100 million in revenue before Oracle bought out the company for an alleged $1 billion. Where is Endeca now?
- Go an an acquisition spree to increase revenues and groom itself for an Autonomy type deal. Autonomy’s $700 million in revenue fetched $11 billion when the well managed Hewlett Packard snapped up the company.
- Revolutionize something, sign up partners, resellers, and licensees, and push for an initial public offering.
The odds are that LucidWorks, which was founded in 2007, has been laboring to achieve success for 12 years. That effort has now required $209 million.
Unlike Palantir, which is essentially a search and retrieval system, LucidWorks lacks the stealth, sparkle, and cachet of its Palo Alto neighbor. Search and retrieval remains a market niche with has a reputation for generating pivots, repositionings, and massive financial shocks. Will LucidWorks follow the Convera trajectory which carried Allen & Co. into a storm?
LucidWorks has to distinguish itself as more than a cash burning machine, and that is getting more difficult, not easier, carrying the color flag which says, “Artificial intelligence.” The AI parade is choked with similar banners. Maybe AI is the secret sauce that will jump start search vendors struggling for revenue and “smart money” investors?
Stephen E Arnold, August 14, 2019
Digital Shadows Raises $10 Million For New Security Platform
August 13, 2019
Digital Shadows is a well-known provider of solutions that identify and mitigate corporate digital risks. In other words, they protect companies from digital threats. VentureBeat shares that Digital Shadows received a fresh cash infusion for their newest security platform: “Digital Shadows Raises $10 Million For Its Business Risk Intelligence Platform.” The National Australia Bank led a series C funding venture for Digital Shadows and scored $10 million for them.
The funding capital will be invested in Digital Shadows’s newest risk intelligence platform as well as allow the company to expand its support team in the Asia Pacific to provide 24/7 threat coverage. Digital Shadows plans to expand its client base from hundreds to thousands of organizations.
Digital Shadows CEO Alastair Paterson said:
“‘Demand for digital risk protection continues to flourish with significant growth in the Asia Pacific market. It’s clear that partnership with a regional specialist in NAB Ventures is exactly what is needed to drive further growth in this massive market and to expand the delivery of our SearchLight service to customers around the world,’ said Paterson, a former Detica principal consultant who partnered with chief innovation officer James Chappell in 2011 to found Digital Shadows. ‘We’re very pleased that our existing investors feel the same and have joined us on this next stage of our journey.’”
Digital Shadows’ leading product is their SearchLight server that works by having their clients register their data: email headers, keywords, employees, document-marking systems, and intellectual property. SearchLight then monitors over 100 million web data sources in over twenty-seven languages for copies. When the copies are spotted, SearchLight alerts its clients with remediation suggestions.
Digital Shadows is in a profitable market. Digital security needs reputable and intelligent companies to protect their data, because the bad actors are getting smarter.
Whitney Grace, August 13, 2019
Embedded Search: A Baidu from ByteDance?
August 7, 2019
“Regular” search used to require four steps: [1] Navigate to Lycos.com or another Web search engine; [2] Enter query and review results; [3] Maybe enter another bunch of words and review results; [4] Snag some info. Done. Close enough for horse shoes.
“Modern” search presents an answer: Use phone and see information the system determines that which you want even if you don’t know you want that information. Pizza? Beer? KFC? React.
Is there a third way?
ByteDance thinks there is. According to India’s Economic Times:
ByteDance, an innovative Beijing startup that created the hit video app TikTok, is moving into search in a threat to the ad business that has fuelled Baidu’s profit. ByteDance, known for aggressively recruiting top tech talent, is turning its attention to one of the most lucrative businesses online. “From 0 to 1, we are building a general search engine for a more ideal user experience…”
What is the information retrieval method? DarkCyber noted this explanation:
ByteDance’s search will be embedded within its own apps, beginning with its Jinri Toutiao news service. That will allow users to quickly search for related news, information or products — and ByteDance will be able to profit from search and display advertising.
How is this different from “modern” search?
DarkCyber is not sure. What’s clear is that ByteDance knows how to attract users. Remember. This is the company with the TikTok video service. Users may not know or care about regular search. None of the Web search services do.
Users want convenience, quick jolts of data which the users perceive as “relevant”, and ease of use.
Will ByteDance become the service of choice when an aspiring scientist seeks information about a specific technical topic.
No, but search is convenient, experiential, and easy. The future of search?
There is no search. But there is a Baidu.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2019
Alphabet Google: Alleged Election Manipulation Goal
August 5, 2019
In the best tradition of 2019 news reporting, an opinion has become “real news.” I read “Google Wants Trump to Lose in 2020: Former Engineer for Tech Giant Says: That’s Their Agenda.” DarkCyber prefers watching Twitch’s live stream of the Hong Kong protests to the “experts” who appear on Fox News.
However, Fox issued an actual “real news” story with old school words. The write up reports the actual non real fake words of Kevin Cernekee, a former Google engineer, who allegedly departed Google in 2018. The reason? Rumors about misuse of equipment was one possible reason, which strikes DarkCyber as unsubstantiated.
We noted this statement in the write up:
“They have very biased people running every level of the company,” Cernekee continued. “They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about.”
The “they” appears to refer to individuals who work at Alphabet Google, although the floating in space pronouns create some ambiguity.
Here’s another sound bite, but in text on Web site form:
“They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That’s their agenda. They have very biased people running every level of the company.”
If you want more, please, navigate to the “real news” story.
A few observations:
- A single source, particularly a person who no longer works at Google and who may have an interesting historical interaction with the firm, may or may not be delivering actual factual information. A second or third source would be helpful.
- The likelihood of a Google conspiracy to alter an election exists, of course. But Google relies on smart software. The allegations in the write up suggest that actual factual humanoids interact with the smart software to fiddle search results. DarkCyber thinks some data, sample searches, and supporting testimony would be useful. Sure, the other sources might be biased, but more than one voice plus some data would be helpful.
- Why is this former Google engineer now actualized? Is it a book deal? A desire for revenge? A way to get hired by a company who wants someone with a sharp edge to write code? Context and motive would be interesting to DarkCyber.
To sum up: Without more than one person’s headline making statement, DarkCyber asks, “Is Google sufficiently organized to fiddle search results in a consistent sustained manner over time?”
Example: Google killed its Hangouts service and just added a new feature to the marginalized service.
Example: Google continues to push the amusing Loon balloon as more adventurous innovators are moving to satellites.
DarkCyber asks, “Is Google capable of a manipulation on this scale?”
We need more than one de-hired Xoogler’s statements.
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2019
Endgame Now Runs On Elastic
August 1, 2019
The Marvel Cinematic Universe “ended” a few weeks ago with Avengers: Endgame, so all and any news with the keyword “endgame” were overshadowed by Disney’s superhero franchise. It goes without saying that Elasticsearch’s acquisition of digital security company Endgame went unnoticed, but you can read about here at Computer Weekly: “Robust For Your Pleasure: Elastic Acquires Endgame.”
Elastic is a popular, open source text and analytics engine and its parent company also invented the Elastic Stack data analysis and visualization toolset. Purchasing Endgame was a practical decision for Elasticsearch, because moving into security technology is the next logical step for a company that specializes in data search, analytics, and visualization. Endgame specializes in endpoint prevention, detection, and response. Elastic wants its Stack Exchange to be more secure, particularly Security Information and Even Management (SIEM).
Elastic founder and CEO Shay Banon, Endgame CEO Nate Flick, and Endgame CTO Jamie Butler are excited about their team up. While it might not be as epic as a Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers mashup, Elastic and Endgame are committing to transparency, user enablement, and openness as well as gaining more customers.
Elastic and Endgame offer their customers some of the best technology for data analytics, management, and security:
“As the creators of the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash), Elastic builds self-managed and SaaS offerings that claim to make data usable in real time at scale for use cases like application search, site search, enterprise search, logging, APM, metrics, security and business analytics. Endgame makes endpoint protection using machine learning technology that is supposedly capable of stopping everything from ransomware, to phishing and targeted attacks. The company says its USP lies in its hybrid architecture that offers both cloud administration and data localization that meets industry, regulatory and global compliance requirements.”
Together Elastic and Endgame will combine their powers for their customers’ benefit that could possibly deliver technology to rival even Shield or something Tony Stark could invent.
Whitney Grace, July 1, 2019
Elastic App Search Ready for On-Premise Deployment
July 29, 2019
One of the most successful enterprise search companies, Elastic, is bringing its cloud-based App Search platform down to Earth. The company announces this development in its blog post, “Elastic App Search: Now Available as a Self-Managed Download.” Their director of product marketing, Diane Tetrault, writes:
“Empowered with valuable feedback from the community over the last few months’ beta program, the team has worked hard to bring the simplicity and power of the Elastic App Search Service to any infrastructure. It’s now available to download and deploy at scale, alongside the default distribution of Elastic Stack 7.2 (or later), anywhere.
We noted:
“While Elastic App Search has been around for over a year as a cloud-based solution, this release represents an important milestone. It highlights our commitment to offer the greatest flexibility in how and where developers deploy next-generation search experiences. Whether it be an online store, a geolocal directory, a vast music collection, or a SaaS application, Elastic App Search is the quickest way to build fluid and engaging search experiences. … “It is no secret that Elasticsearch is a powerhouse for search use cases of all kinds. That said, with great power comes great configurability. Our team worked relentlessly to channel the limitless potential of Elasticsearch into a streamlined package, purpose-built for application search use cases. In other words, you can now bring the relevance, scale, and speed of Elasticsearch to any application you’re building.”
App Search is free to use alongside the default distribution of the Elastic Stack. Naturally, the platform includes features Elastic users have come to rely on, like schema-free indexing, language-specific text analysis, pre-configured algorithms, relevance tuning, astute analytics, and impressive APIs and UI frameworks. In addition, they are introducing new user-management features that allow for easy-to-use role-based access controls or the built-in user management. Interested readers can check out the free trial.
Elastic began as Elasticsearch Inc. in 2012, simplified its name in 2015, and went public in 2018. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and maintains offices around the world. It also happens to hiring for quite a few positions at the time of this writing, in case any readers are interested.
Cynthia Murrell, July 29, 2019
Search Engine Optimization: Why Search Delivers Irrelevant Results and Ad Budgets Can Go Poof
July 23, 2019
DarkCyber noted “What Are Click Farms? A Shadowy Internet Industry Is Booming in China.” A diligent “real news” professional noted that one can buy clicks. DarkCyber spotted these services on gig economy sites like SEOExperts, Fiverr, and similar services some time ago. Think in terms of years.
The write up explains: Click farms
are plugged in and programmed to search, click, and download a certain app over and over again. The goal is to manipulate the system of app store rankings and search results.
The procedure is:
Click farms use an automated process hacks into the normal App Store Optimization (ASO) practice — which requires developers to use certain keywords in descriptions and attract users by being a useful product — and are programmed to promote apps by imitating a real user by searching for certain keywords, clicking on the app, downloading, and even writing positive reviews.
The write up focuses on apps and China.
DarkCyber wants to suggest that click farms are available to perform tasks like these:
- Target a company’s online ads, click on them, and burn through the budget for a keyword so a second place owner of a keyword pops up and presumably gets the “real” clicks from an actual interested person. (Keep in mind that a savvy competitor can have this technique used against his or her campaign.)
- Target a concept and click links. The result is what DarkCyber and its beloved leader calls “augmentext.” The idea is that a concept, not a site, can be converted into an attractor for a Google-type relevance system
- Click on an entity and cause that entity to have “magnetism.” With the loopholes and weaknesses inherent in the core algorithms, an entity can become “hot” or a “trend.”
The write up points out that click farms are illegal. Perhaps the estimable search engine optimization industry should police its behaviors? Perhaps online disinformation consultants should not use these services?
I am not sure that click farms are new, particularly shadowy, or going to go away. Spoofing relevance is too darned easy and there’s zero incentive for certain vendors selling ads or offering to manipulate opinion to change.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2019
Qwant Pitches Map Privacy
July 14, 2019
Digital maps are an indispensable tool, especially if you ceaselessly use a GPS. While digital maps are accurate, fast, and reliable, the also track and store user information. One semi-logical argument is that if you have nothing to hide, what is the big deal about information being stored. On the other hand, you should have the right to protect your privacy whether or not you have anything to hide. Qwant Maps believes in preserving user privacy, so it is an open source and privacy-preserving map tool. Qwant Maps was created so users have exclusive control over their geolocated data.
Qwant Maps built its tool on OpenStreetMap, a free and collaborative geographical database supported by more than one million voluntary contributors. OpenStreetMap is not an out-of-the box solution and requires some tech savviness to use it. Qwant Maps’s team developed a geoparsing engine to make OpenStreetMap more user friendly.
“To overcome these shortcomings and to meet the needs of most of people, Qwant Maps has developed — or participated to the development — its own software components. The will of Qwant Maps is to create a virtuous synergy between Qwant Maps and OpenStreetMap. Thus Qwant Maps uses OpenStreetMap data to generate its own vector tiles, its own base map, its own web APIs. Also Qwant Maps feeds its geoparsing web service as well as its online applications thanks to OpenStreetMap data.”
All of the code for both the Qwant Maps geosparsing tool and OpenStreetMap are open source. Qwant Maps also uses Mimirsbrunn as its search engine, Kartotherian as a visual rendering tool based on vector tiles, and Idunn is used to highlight all information on the tiles.
Whitney Grace, July 5, 2019
A Complete List of Google Alternatives: Not Just Incomplete but a Reflection of Misinformation
July 10, 2019
Let’s start with the title: “A Complete List of Alternatives To The Google Search Engine.” Why? Google is not a particularly useful system if I understand the argument in the Collective Evolution write up. DarkCyber believes that Google is useful, but it is one source of Web content pointers.
What is on the complete list? How about 10 search systems. Here they are:
- StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).
- Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.
- MetaGer – An open source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.
- SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.
- Qwant – A private search engine based in France.
- DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.
- Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).
- YaCy – A decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer search engine.
- Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.
- Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.
Several observations:
- StartPage (formerly IxQuick, created by a former Wall Street type) is a metasearch system. The company uses results from other sources, passes the query against these sources, and displays a single list of results. Like DuckDuckGo, MetaGer, and similar systems, one is getting spider output from third parties. Sources can range from Bing, Common Crawl, or other sources. DarkCyber is not enthusiastic about metasearch engines because it is very difficult to know what’s in and what’s out, if the de-duplication function actually works, and the rate of refresh for the system.
- Omissions include Bing.com, Yandex.com, plus Exalead. Despite the unusual marketing of the Exalead Web search system — that is to say, none — you can use it at this link. DarkCyber recommends running queries against Google as well as these systems for general search results.
- DarkCyber makes use of specialist search systems as well. Some of these are provided to us by the intelware companies with which we interact. Two sources worth mentioning are Talkwalker and Webhose. Neither is based in the US, but each provides affordable and useful content to those serious about information spidered from open sources.
- Those who want to access information may find the list of tools compiled by MK Bergman a helpful place to begin. Many are not specific to searching via an ad supported system, but there are some gems in the list. DarkCyber also consults sources like Swiss Leaks, which can be quite useful.
DarkCyber’s point is that calling the systems in the “complete” list “complete” is not helpful. In fact, it is filled with information that is unlikely to result in a thorough search.
Is DarkCyber surprised? Nah, par for the “experts” who are writing about search today.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2019
Enterprise Search: Decades of Disappointment? Yep, Yep
June 25, 2019
I stumble across allegedly accurate factoids about enterprise search once in a while. The coverage of the systems which can index and make findable data and information in an enterprise is a shadow of its former self. I noted the story in a blog which caters to the content management industry (no, I don’t know what that means). The write up was “9 Takeaways from the Digital Workplace Experience Conference 2019.” No, I don’t know what a “digital experience” is either. But hold on, there was a reference to a study by Simpler Media Group (no, I never had heard of this outfit before I read the article). That study included data. One factoid is allegedly accurate and it makes clear that the outfits selling enterprise search systems face a bit of a challenge. Here’s the passage I noted. Remember. This is an alleged factoid, not something I can verify because I no longer maintain my data and files about the fantastical world of enterprise search:
Enterprise search followed document management in the survey but, again, only 11% said it was effective. “This pattern repeated itself over and over across many tools and technologies,” Fagan [a person who is an expert in Simpler Media] said. “In each instance, the tool’s reported importance far exceeded the actual efficacy.”
Enterprise search has been around a long time. IBM STAIRS? InQuire? NetWeaver? Sophia? My all time fave Entopia. (Search apparently has some relationship to utopia I assume.) In its remarkable 40 or more year history, people cannot use a system to find the information they need within the organization for which they work.
As non text data, encrypted content, and intercepted information proliferates, finding is more difficult today than at any time in my professional career.
There’s a lot of wonky enterprise software floating around. Just read through some Capterra listings. But 11 percent. That’s special. Is the number “true”. Sure, who can doubt Simple Media and a blog about something I can’t define, content management.
After decades of disappointment, it seems that enterprise search has some opportunities for improvement. Simple? Right? Just manage the content? Make information findable? One size fits all? Sure.
Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2019
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