Category Archives: Google

Powerset or Power Hype?

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Powerset is one of the few new search offerings that actually may threaten the status quo, where Google picks up the lion’s share of internet searches (and internet search revenues) simply because they are the best of the mediocre. I’m not knocking Google’s brilliance here, but people are not realizing how great search would be if you could, for example, carry on a conversation with the computer rather than try to constrain the dialog in ways that meet the needs of the search algorithms. Powerset probably won’t be a conversation with the machine, but if they can crack the nut of natural language search even Google may tremble, as they are currently weak in that regard and it appears they have not been spending the time and money in that direction.

TechCrunch and VentureBeat on Powerset potential.

Natural language search is basically the idea that you’ll tell the computer exactly what you need, and probably refine the query as you would if you were speaking to a person. This may not do much for advanced “power users” who know how to use boolean expressions and advanced query refinements to get at the info they want, but it could be a wondrous thing for the other 99% of searchers out there who struggle every day trying to get Google Yahoo, or MSN to deliver the great specific results they need.

I still predict that eventually it’ll be Artificial Intelligence applications that bring us “near perfect” results as they’ll be able to screen spam and process good stuff at light speed, but great AI search is probably at least a decade away.

The search game has just begun and it’ll be fun to see how Powerset fits in.

Kirkland’s Shareware Coffeehouse. Order what you want, pay whatever you like.

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This social and economic cafe experiment by a Seattle Googler is fascinating, especially because it’s actual appears to be working so far to generate enough to keep the business going.  There are no prices and people’s contributions are not monitored.   Thus even the normal social pressure you’d have with, for example, a church collection plate are largely absent here in the Kirkland Cafe.

I’m totally skeptical of this model as a scalable type of business, but it’s sure interesting.   Burning man sensibilities come to mind.

Putting my money where my Yahoo is?

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My post of about an hour ago, “Yahoo’s big day” convinced me I should put more money where my mouth is on Yahoo’s prospects so using the justifications below I just bought about $1000 in Yahoo March 30.00 calls. (in options “bought” is functionally equivalent to “bet”).

My kilobuck effectively gives me the right to sell 2000 shares of Yahoo anytime between now and March 17. For example if Yahoo falls after today it’s likely I’ll lose *all* of my bet. However if Yahoo rises to, say, $35.00 per share by March 16 I could “exersize” the options for a cool $10,000. Unlikely, but I think the market does not incorporate online advertising revenue and profit information very efficiently. In theory this means … opportunity!Today Yahoo fully launches the new ad matching routine, an artistic program formerly known by the name of “Panama”. My understanding is that if they can even come close to Google’s quality matching ads to searches Yahoo will make quite a bit more.

Yahoo’s a much higher traffic site than Google though Google still has the big search share.

Thus my bet is simple here – that people will realize this week that Yahoo has the *potential* for much higher revenues and profit, and his will bump them up 10+% by next week which would put these options in the money.

Options have “time value” which reflects the chance the stock will go up or down in value and they have “intrinsic”value which is the difference between the stock price and the option price. I paid .52 per share in the hopes the stock price will increase soon. Somewhat counter intuitive is the fact that even a modest increase, if it happens this week as I predict, could double my money without the stock ever reaching the strike price.

YHQCF
CALL YAHOO INC MAR 30
Quantity 20 Contracts $1054

Disclaimer: I also have Yahoo Stock. I could have bought about 40 more shares vs betting on these 2000 shares worth of options to rise quickly. But this’ll be more fun to watch for the next month.

Instant Update:
Wh00t Yah00000t! I’m up $120 after 15 minutes. So far this is fun.
Last Trade [tick] 0.58

Mark Cuban, the sage of internet video?

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I think Mark Cuban  has more valid points than Cory does on the controversies swirling around copyright and takedown notices delivered by Viacom.     Cory is right that it’s annoying and obnoxious to send takedowns to people who obviously are not infringing, but that’ll shake out soon enough.  What isn’t shaking out soon enough is what I’ve discussed at length before – YouTube and Myspace and other big players are making hundreds of millions by purposing user generated content to their commercial needs.   I’d even concede that commercialism is not the bottom line on these big player/user interactions, and also concede that users like me are agreeing to provide content that in turn gets searched at Google and generates money for them and *sometimes* for me.

However as Mark correctly notes it’s significant to ask within the copyright, content, and user community issue this question:  Who gets the lion’s share of the revenues created by copyright holders or community participants?    I’d like to see more of that cash flow to the community and less to the big players.   But maybe that’s just because I’m a community guy?

Go Mavs!

Google + Kiosks = Coolness!

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Wow, I sure hope the rumors about a Google Kiosk project are true. I like Google and I like Kiosks. Here in Oregon I was involved in computer kiosks for over ten years. Back in 1990 I managed one of the USA’s earliest multimedia projects using IBM Infowindow Touch monitors, computers, and laserdisc players. That was a US Forest Service partnership with my former employer the Southern Oregon Visitors Association, and we had 30 units in tourism places all over Southern Oregon.

This project led to a new project I designed and deployed as part of a SOVA, State, and National Scenic Byways partnership that put internet connected units in about 15 places. The internet solved many of the problems with the early kiosk project such as real time information availability, though it brought a host of new problems with rural connectivity issues and eventually a lack of enthusiasm for a complicated, grant driven project.

Could Google bring the necessary ingredients to make Kiosks commercially viable? I think they could by deploying broadly and with enough of an advertising footprint to interest national players who would appreciate being both in the programs and on the sides of the cabinets.

Good luck Google, I’ll always root for touch computer kiosks!

Related link – HUGE touchscreen with mapping demo – fantastic!

Technology failing? Hey, it’s time to SUE!

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I simply don’t know if this lawsuit against Google, SONY, and other big players suggesting a previous right to digital distrubition has merit or not because I don’t understand the legal issues well.

However it’s another good example of a tactic increasingly used by tech firms that are not doing very well with their technologies – work the legal angles hoping to hit a big payday via settlement with a deep pocket like Google or even hit a home run with a court decision in their favor.

I’m not objecting to these lawsuits though – I think the big players have tended to give great liberties with content distribution and have taken great liberties as well. Youtube’s empire was built largely via illegal content distribution. These complex deals with gigantic stakes probably should be settled by objective legal means.

When you are raking in billions it’s easy to be generous and I predict that the real “tipping point” for Google’s fall from grace will be the shift from them getting sued to them suing other firms, especially small ones. Maybe they won’t have to sue which would bode very well for Google’s long term prospects and claim to the high ground.

GoogleGuy and upcoming Google Rival WikiaSari

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A couple interesting TechMemes for today:

Matt’s got a great post noting how page view metrics are breaking down with AJAX implementations. Notable from his mini-rant is this:

* If you’re doing a start-up and want impressive page view metrics, stay the hell away from AJAX.
*If you would even *for one second* consider staying away from AJAX for the sake of impressive metrics, you’re running your start-up ass-backwards.

Next, in the “Could be Good as Google” department we have Jimmy Wales of Wikimedia and founder of the superbly excellent Wikipedia project announcing today that WikiaSaria WikiSaria Article from UK  will be a community based search engine to rival Google’s search. This is really provocative news as Google appears comitted to the mechanistic, machine driven approach to search, believing it’s the best and most scalable way to deal with spam and the growing complexity of organizing the world’s info. An alternative vision is Yahoo’s approach which includes more human interaction and editing than Yahoo but still relies heavily on the algorithm. It appears the new search will focus mostly on human input from the exploding community of onliners.

Wales: “Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results,” he said.

Spammers and commercial ventures are also learning how to manipulate Google’s computer-based search, he added.

Mr Wales believes that Google’s computer-based algorithmic search program is no match for the editorial judgment of humans.

Also note the many misquotes about Amazon as a participant.

Wales: Reporters and bloggers note: Amazon has nothing to do with this project. They are a valued investor in Wikia, but people are realllllly speculating beyond the facts. This has nothing to do with A9, Amazon, etc. Help me out, spread the word. I am looking for a community of people to continue the development of wikiasari and so on. Discuss here. Join the mailing list. —-Jimbo Wales 23:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

More on this huge story from these blogs:

Niall Kennedy: Wikiasari: Wikipedia success applied to social search?
Michael Arrington: Wikipedia to Launch Search Engine: Exclusive Screenshot

Adam Turner : Wikipedia founder plans search engine to rival Google

 

 

Pete Cashmore: Wikiasari – Wikipedia Founder Launching a Google Rival

Nasa Google Space Research Project

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Nasa and Google are embarking on a major space information project called the “Space Act Agreement”.

Details are HERE and this looks like annother innovation coup by the Big G:
Google and Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA’s information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.

“This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin

Thanks to Glenn for the tip!

More Tech Memes

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James Kim Search Discussion – Click here

Yikes – I leave town for a few days and can hardly keep up with all the interesting tech news items. In addition to the fun Jeremy v. Matt copycat debate we’ve got:

Jason on Digg Rigging This is just a tiny part of the HUGE number of upcoming stories which will showcase how complex the relationships are between SEO, social networking sites, and …. money.   I actually contacted the Digger Jason is effectively accusing of abuse and it does not appear to me he’s taken any money at any time.   Here’s a great summary of that “Digg Ban” case.   But his innocence does not suggest to me that there is not a huge and growing issue with Social media SEO uses and abuses.  At PubCon many were discussing how powerfully social networking can help with organic optimization as well as straight traffic generation to a site that gets “dugg” or creates a compelling (including stupid but popular) YouTube video.

Jim at Microsoft apologizing in a very web 2.0 way. Scoble would be proud of this “naked conversations” approach to corporate blogging. Too bad Microsoft didn’t see how making Robert the semi-official corporate blogmeister with the huge salary increase he deserved for “getting Web 2.0” before the suits did (most MS suits don’t even get it now) would have returned 100x on the investment.

… and speaking of “getting Web 2.0”. Yahoo does but can’t seem to get the mileage they deserve for retooling the corporation as a community internet extravaganza. This set of leaked Yahoo internal documents about the potential Facebook aquisition provides a fascinating glimpse into how big deals are analyzed. As a Yahoo shareholder I think they should save the billion and just get their stupid ass in gear with the excellent social network stuff they already own like Flickr (which should be the template for other social applications, Del.icio.us (OVERHAUL the INTERFACE and yes, you can rename this URL monstrosity! ), Yahoo Video, Yahoo 360, Answers, groups, etc, etc. As I’ve noted before Yahoo suffers from giving people so many options they tire of the decision making and go to Google’s simple interfaces, search, and simpler suite of choices. Google expects us to act like the sheep we are. Yahoo expects us to do too much mental work choosing how we relate to the internet.

Going Techno Postal?

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James Kim Search Discussion – Click here

OK, I’ve really missed ranting about technology things for the past few weeks so I’m going to take a look at what’s going on over at TechMeme.

Jeremy over at Yahoo is always very honest about Yahoo’s shortcomings so it’s good to see him get to take a shot at Google even though the transgression is not exactly earth-shaking, more just a funny oddness that gets internet people all worked up. Google copied Yahoo‘s IE7 pitch page. (It was changed to this today or last night). Here’s a great graphic which shows the smoking gun evidence: http://chir.ag/stuff/yahoo-to-google.gif

Matt Cutts is a totally stand up guy and this is not his department but he’s Google’s ambassador to the blogging masses so it fell to him to address this. Now, you don’t dis Google or Matt may go Inigo Montoya on you. Matt’s lackluster “apology” sounded more like an attack on Yahoo’s own copycat behavior even though he noted that it was Robert Scoble‘s excellent advice – which was totally not taken – that led him to post about this. Robert suggested the Google peeples take out the Yahoo peeple for a fancy lunch in a limo, which would have been a neat PR gimmick.

This is superficially trivial but actually has deeper significance as a measure of the overall online sentiment about Google. Google is still in the driver’s seat with respect to most things internet but I’d suggest that we are now seeing a tendency for the knowlegeable users to reevaluate their relationships with Google, Yahoo, and even Ask and MSN. This reminds me in some ways of the days when Yahoo was totally in the online driver’s seat and Google – with clearly superior search – started to eat Yahoo’s lunch but still had only a tiny market share. Had Yahoo bought Google back then, rather than just using their search algorithm and helping to make Google the online behemoth it is today, the online landscape would sure look different. I’m glad they didn’t though because Google’s new approaches and “techno centric” business models have arguably done more to change the way we all do business than any other recent global business developments.

Ironically in this little debate is the fact that when Yahoo FINALLY figures out how to effectively copy the gist of Google’s contextual ad matching systems (adwords and adsense) we could see a huge change in the online search game as publishers would have more choice in who they align with.

Disclaimer: I’ve got some Yahoo Stock so I root for them to succeed even though I try to post honest comments about what’s up.