Elastic Bounces and Rolls Away from Other Search Vendors
October 6, 2018
Please, do not confuse what Bing and Google deliver as “search” with the type of information access system which is available from Elastic. The founder of Compass Search (remember that?) has emerged as the big dog in the information access world. At a time when direct competitors like Attivio, Coveo, and Funnelback are working overtime to become something other than information access providers, Elastic and its Elasticsearch ecosystem have pulled off a digital kudzu play.
The evidence is not the raucous Elastic developer conferences. The proof is not the fact that most policeware vendors use Elastic as the plumbing for their systems. The hard facts are dollars.
I learned that Elastic pulled off its IPO and closed up 94.4 percent. Talk about happy investors. Those believers in the Shay Bannon approach must be turning cartwheels. For more financial insights, navigate to “Search Company Elastic Nearly Doubles on First Trading Day.” The write up states:
The debut rally is all the more pronounced because it comes on a down day for the broader market, particularly the tech sector.
Elastic, it seems, represents a bright spot.
Congrats to Mr. Bannon and the Elastic team.
There are some outfits likely to take a hard look at their “search” business. Among them will be the vendors of proprietary search systems like the companies I mentioned above. Most of these outfits continue to find a way to make their investors happy. Attivio bounces between business intelligence and search. Coveo roves from search to customer support. Funnelback, well, Funnelback chugs along because one of their management team told me that the company is not open source. I wonder if that wizard wishes it were playing open source canasta.
The more interesting company to consider in the context of the Elastic solid triple in the search big leagues is LucidWorks. This company played its open source card. The company flipped CEOs, changed its focus, and emulated the polymorphic approach to search that the proprietary vendors followed. LucidWorks then found itself facing the Amazon search system staffed helpfully with a LucidWorks’ veteran or two. LucidWorks has consumed more than $100 million in investment capital, pushed founder Marc Krellenstein down the memory hole, and watched as the Elastic outfit blasted past LucidWorks and into the lushness of the IPO. Both companies had similar business models. Both companies leveraged the open source development community. Both companies followed similar marketing scripts.
But there was a difference.
Shay Bannon provided vision and he figured out that he needed a strong supporting cast. The result is that Elastic moved forward, added capabilities, made prudent decisions about supplemental modules, and offered reasonable for fee option to those who tried out the open source version of the search system and then moved to pay for service and other goodies available from Elastic.
The result?
The future for LucidWorks now looks a bit different. The company has to find a way to pay back its investors. The firm’s Elastic like business model may have to be reevaluated. Heck, the product line up may be require a refurbishing comparable to those performed on automobile programs which take an interesting vehicle and turn it into a winner.
Unfortunately fixing up search vendors is not as easy to do in real life. A TV show has the benefit of post production and maybe some color and sound experts to spiff up the automobile.
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Competitors like LucidWorks will have to spiff up their 1956 automobiles in order to catch customers’ eyes as Elastic rolls rapidly into the future.
Search doesn’t work that way.
The question becomes, “What will LucidWorks do?”
Even those of us in Harrod’s Creek know what Elastic will do. The company will chug along and become the go to way to provide utility search, log analysis, and other basic functions to outfits which appear to be independent high tech search wizards.
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2018
Is Bing Stuck Like a 45 RPM Recording?
October 1, 2018
At least twice a year, Microsoft releases a press statement explaining how it has made Bing smarter. The questions are always,”how and in what way?” Bing pales in comparison to rivals DuckDuckGo and Google, but it also has its staunch supporters. Thurott has shared one of the prerequisite Bing cheerleading pieces, “Bing Just Got A Whole Lot Smarter.”
Bing has added a brand new list of features to enhance user experience. One of the new features is a hotel booking option that shows higher-ranked hotels with the same nightly rate to save you money, historical price trends, hotel comparisons, and other neat tools.
If you are frugal and/or always searching for a deal, Bing will now share information about details, such as if it is in stores or expiring soon. This augments Bing’s discount feature that displays different deals in search results.
“The last area where Bing is getting improved is an interesting one: home services. Bing is partnering with Porch, a service that helps you find professionals for home services, to help surface better results within search. It will now show you things like cost ranges, which are meant to help find a “fair” or the average cost for a certain service based on your location. It will also now let you get a quote for supported home service providers from within search.”
Word about whether advertisers will get priority in search results, but they are already labeled in search results. When it comes to making Bing smarter, this is not bad. Good job, Microsoft!
Whitney Grace, October 1, 2018
Search Revisionism: Alive and Well
September 27, 2018
I read “The Google Graveyard: Remembering Three Dead Search Engines.” I find it interesting how the reality perceived today seems to differ from the reality that existed in the 1990s. The write up answers the question, “Yo, dudes, what happened to three search engines?”
The three dead search engines explained or sort of described in the article are AskJeeves, Dogpile, and AltaVista.
The write up states:
Google is so ingrained in online culture that it feels as if it’s always been there.
I like feelings. Although after working at Halliburton Nuclear, I am not sure I am quite so warm and cuddly. Definitely Google was not “always” there.
And for those unfamiliar with the commercial databases like Chemical Abstracts and other commercial research services, I find this statement a bit disconcerting:
Google holds humanity’s knowledge in its search bar, and it has the ability to shape conversations on a massive scale. Imagine the internet as a million-volume collection of books, each one densely packed with essential information (and cat pictures).
Quite a statement. But people who use “always” often look for point and click solutions which require little or no attention.
You can skim the explanations of each the three search engines. I would like to offer additional information.
AskJeeves
This was a rule based system. Rules were written by humans. The AskJeeves’ system looked at a query, matched it to the rules, and offered an answer. Humans were and are expensive. Humans have to write and modify rules. AskJeeves’ death had little to do with Google and everything to do with the ineffectiveness of the system, its costs, and the resources required to come up with answers to those questions. A version of the service lives on and it is a “diller.” Sorry, dilly.
Dogpile
This services was a metasearch engine, and for a few years, a reasonable one. A user entered a query. Dogpile sent the query to other Web search engines and displayed results. The service ended up in the hands of InfoSpace, and the Dogpile engaged in some legal excitement and ended up the modern version of a one stop shop. In short, Dogpile is not yet dead.
AltaVista
Now that’s an interesting case. AltaVista was a demo of the DEC Alpha. Search was and is a complicated application. Compaq bought DEC. HP bought Compaq. HP, the management wizards, left AltaVista high and dry. Messrs. Brin and Page hired several interesting people from AltaVista; for example, Jeff Dean, Simon Tong, et al. AltaVista disappeared because HP was not exactly on the ball. Alums of AltaVista went on to set up Exalead, now a unit of Dassault Systèmes. The Exalead search system is still online at www.exalead.com/search.
NetNet
AskJeeves was not a Web search engine. Dogpile was a metasearch engine and did little original crawling and indexing. AltaVista is embedded in certain technological ways in the Google system. And, by the way, Google is not the place to go if your child has been poisoned and your doctor needs an antidote.
Even those who do not understand information can figure out the limits of ad supported, free information. At least I hope so.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2018
Rapprochement: Russia, a Copyright Defender
September 25, 2018
I know there are “exciting” search announcements from Bing and Google. Sigh. I don’t have the energy to tilt at the relevance windmill today. However, I noted an interesting search development regarding copyright protection in Russia. Yep, Russia, home of fancy bears and other digital creatures.
“Google, Yandex Discuss Creation of Anti-Piracy Database” explains the “real” news, which I assume is the truth:
Google, Yandex and other prominent Internet companies in Russia are discussing the creation of a database of infringing content including movies, TV shows, games, and software. The idea is that the companies will automatically query this database every five minutes with a view to removing such content from search results within six hours, no court order required.\
I learned:
Takedowns like this are common in the West, with Google removing billions of links upon request. In Russia, however, search engine Yandex found itself in hot water recently after refusing to remove links on the basis that the law does not require it to do so. This prompted the authorities to suggest that a compromise agreement needs to be made, backed up by possible changes in the law. It now appears that this event, which could’ ve led to Yandex being blocked by ISPs, has prompted both Internet companies and copyright holders to consider a voluntary agreement. Discussions currently underway suggest a unique and potentially ground-breaking plan.
I particularly enjoyed this explanation of the downside related to a failure to cooperate:
Talks appear to be fairly advanced, with agreements on the framework for the database potentially being reached by the middle of this week. If that’s the case, a lawsuit recently filed by Gazprom Media against Yandex could be settled amicably. It’s understood that Yandex wants all major Internet players to become involved, including social networks. With the carrot comes the possibility of the stick, of course. Gazprom Media indicates that if a voluntary agreement cannot be reached, it will seek amendments to copyright law that will achieve the same end results.
From my vantage point in bourbon saturated Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, I blurrily perceive several implications:
- Copyright compliance leadership appears to be centered in Russia. Yep, Russia. You know, the bear place.
- Yandex seems to be taking the lead, possibly because its management understands the downsides of Putin pushback.
- American companies are participating, but after decades of copyright hassles, I think I see a certain reluctance because an outfit like Google doesn’t want a reprise of its diplomatic performance with China. Ad dollars, perhaps?
Worth watching. Some queries on Yandex return some interesting copy protected content. If you have a moment, try this query at Yandex.ru:
(Sorry, but I can only show the Russian word for crack via screenshot without the text being corrupted when we disseminate this write up.) You can get the Russian version of crack using a translation service.)
Stephen E Arnold,
Can Algorithms Be Designed to Perform Like Trained Dogs?
September 11, 2018
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Trump thinks Google search results are rigged in the article, “Here’s What We Really Know About Google’s Mysterious Search Engine.” Trump claims that Google and other social media search results are rigged for their lack of conservative, right wing views on the networks. The president even warned Facebook, Google, and Twitter that they are treading on thin ice.
Mr. Trump, like some Web site operators receiving minimal traffic, has arrived at this conclusion because of the dominance these platforms have on people’s lives. However does it have any stock? Google claims that it does not pollute its search results, but the company has also shown it does not like the president. After a short explanation about how Google search works, the article moves into information about “Google News’ secret sauce.” Google News has an algorithm that personalizes news results for each user. People and companies can influence the search results with their content, but how much does Google intervene in the results?
We learned:
“Google’s algorithm, particularly for search, is a master algorithm that is applied in real time against each search query as it comes in, according to the company. Although the algorithm itself frequently changes as Google makes tweaks, it is applied identically to each search. If the results differ from person to person, that could be because they may be using a browser in incognito mode, which deletes the cookies and other third-party tracking software. Or they may be searching from a different location, triggering Google’s reflex to return local results. Or they may simply be performing a search slightly later in time than another, said Christo Wilson, a computer science professor at Northeastern University who has studied Google’s search practices for six years.”
We like the idea of a master algorithm? We also believe that filtering information can have interesting consequences.
How political are free systems which display answers to questions? Is it possible for a disgruntled person to tweak wrapper code to return certain results or to down check a certain concept?
Answers to these questions are difficult to evaluate. After two decades of providing ad supported information, why would anyone doubt the objectivity of mathematical recipes?
Woof, woof.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2018
Privacy and Search Take a New Turn
September 10, 2018
For far too long we have been living in the Wild West of search: there are too few rules and personal data has been far too fluid. While we wait for the Googles of the world to change their policies (fat chance!) the time has come to find alternatives for those of us who care about keeping their privacy a top priority. We learned more about this revolution from a Make Use Of story, “Avoid Google and Bing: 7 Alternative Search Engines That Value Privacy.”
According to the story:
“Functionally, SearX is a metasearch engine, meaning it aggregates data from a number of other search engines then provides you with the best mix available. Results from several of the other search engines on this list—including DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and StartPage—are available. You can customize the engines that SearX uses to find results in the Preferences menu.”
Is a new search engine the answer? Probably not likely. In another time, we might point to the idea that the world has room for more search engines, but with the rise of voice search and the amount of money needed to research this type of thing, the odds of a new search engine taking over for Google or the like is very much impossible.
Patrick Roland, September 4, 2018
Four Chrome Extensions for More Efficient Searches
September 7, 2018
Education resource site Educational Technology and Mobile Learning suggests four extensions for the (Google-owned) Chrome browser to better find relevant content in the brief write-up, “4 Tools to Effectively Search the Web.” The write-up specifies:
“In today’s post we are sharing with you four practical Chrome extensions that will enable you to search the web in more efficient and effective ways. More specifically, using these extensions you will be able to easily access and search for scholarly articles, find similar web pages to the page you are currently browsing, initiate a Google search using images, and many more.”
At the top of the list is the Google Scholar extension, which speeds up access to scholarly articles found through Google Scholar search. The next suggestion is TinEye Reverse Image Search, which returns not similar images, but exact matches (complete with potentially valuable context and metadata). Then there are Google Similar Pages and Google’s Search by Image, each of which does what one would imagine. These tools certainly could be helpful for those who use Chrome.
Cynthia Murrell, September 5, 2018
Semantic Video Search Engine
September 2, 2018
I saw a link to a Semantic Video Search Engine” with the logo of MediaMill attached. Curious I did a bit of exploring and noted a video at this link. I learned that MediaMill is the name of the multimedia search engine. The system “watches” or “processes” a video and then assigns an index term or category to the subject of the video scene; for example a scene with a boat is tagged “boat.”
The function is to identify specific video fragments. The system provides automatic content detection. The goal is to make huge amounts of video data accessible. The video i watched was dated 2009. I located the MediaMill Web site and learned:
MediaMill has its roots in the ICES-KIS Multimedia Information Analysis project (in conjunction with TNO) and the Innovative Research Program for Image processing (IOP). It blossomed in the BSIK program MultimediaN the EU FP-6 program VIDI-Video, the Dutch/Flemish IM-Pact BeeldCanon project, and the Dutch VENISEARCHER project. The MediaMill team is currently funded by the Dutch VIDI STORYproject, the Dutch FES COMMIT program, and the US IARPA SESAME project.
The project’s news ended in 2015. Bing and Google searches turn up a significant amount of academic-oriented information. TREC data, technical papers, and links to the MediaMill Web site abound.
The question becomes:
Why has video search remained a non starter?
Since we started our DarkCyber video series, available on YouTube and Vimeo, we have had an opportunity to monitor how these two services index videos. YouTube, for example, makes the video available in the YouTube index in about a day, sometimes more. Vimeo does not index DarkCyber on a regular schedule. We provide an explicit link to the Vimeo video in our Beyond Search announcement of each week’s video.
It is possible to get a listing of DarkCyber videos on the not-well-known Google Video search service. You can find this index at www.googlevideo.com. Run the query “arnold darkcyber” and you will see a list of DarkCyber videos. Note that these are not in chronological order. In fact, running the “arnold darkcyber” query at different times generates results lists with different items and a similarly jumbled or non chronological order. Why? Google search does not handle time in its public facing services. For high accuracy time based queries, you will have to use the commercial Google technology. Check out Recorded Future for some additional details.
Searching for video is a difficult task. YouTube search is quirky. For example, search for “hawaii volcano live shipley” and one does not get a link to the current live stream. YouTube provides links to old videos. To find the live stream, one has to click on the picture of Mr. Shipley and then select the live stream. Vimeo has its oddities as well. When I post a DarkCyber to Vimeo, I cannot search for it. The new video just sort of shows up on my Vimeo dashboard but I cannot locate the most recent video with a query. So much for real time.
Exalead tried its hand at video search, enlisting a partner for the effort. The test was interesting, but I heard chatter that the computational demand (think expense) made the project less than attractive.
My hunch is that video search is lousy because of the costs associated with processing video. Even basic rendering is a slog. Imagine the expense of grinding through a day’s worth of YouTube or Vimeo output?
To sum up, nifty video search ideas abound. Academics have a treasure trove of opportunity. But despite the talk about the cloud and the magic of modern technology. Video search remains difficult and mostly unsatisfying.
Maybe that’s why social media sites rely on those posting the video to tell friends where the content resides? Searching for a snippet of video is almost as difficult as wrestling with a Modern Talking Pictures catalog.
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2018
Phi Beta Iota Interviews Stephen E Arnold about Shaped Web Search Results
August 29, 2018
Robert David Steele, publisher of the Phi Beta Iota blog, interviewed Stephen E Arnold about allegations related to Google search results. The interview reveals that some Web search systems make it possible to modify search results to return specific information. The example Stephen gives comes from the FirstGov.gov US government search system powered in the early 2000s by Fast Search & Transfer.
Steele highlighted this statement from the interview:
“There is not enough money available to start over at Google. After two decades of fixing, tweaking, and enhancing, Google search is sort of chugging along. I think it is complex and swathed like a digital mummy in layers of code.”
You can read the full text of the interview titled “Robert Steele: An Interview with Stephen E. Arnold on Google and Google Search — How the Digital Mummy Might Manipulate Search.”
The three monographs Stephen wrote about Google are no longer in print. However, he does have fair copies (pre publication drafts) of the manuscripts. If you are interested in these reports, write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com.
Kenny Toth, August 29, 2018
Finding Information Is Difficult: How about Books to Read?
August 29, 2018
For a long time, search has been dominated by the big names in the business and when anyone claims they might be a threat to Google or Bing it’s usually laughable. However, niche engines are beginning to really fill a void that the big dogs can’t. We discovered more from a recent Make Use Of story, “The 11 Best Sites for Finding What Books to Read Next.”
The most interesting was about Gnooks, which said:
“Gnooks is probably the simplest of these sites to use. You can enter up to three author’s names, and Gnooks will recommend another author you might like.
We noted:
“The interface is clean and distraction-free, but if you want to find out more about the recommended authors, you’ll have to take your search elsewhere.”
It’s a weird reversal to how the Internet originally felt. Everything was pigeonholed just like this back then and maybe we had something right. Aside from books, there are also niche engines for travel and, our personal favorite, to see what movies are streaming on what sites. This is a welcome service. Niche finding sites remain useful and underscore the limitations of the search superstore approach.
Patrick Roland, August 29, 2018
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