Category Archives: Google

Google’s Amoral Greatness?

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Update:  A Googley View of the matter:   Google speaketh o Copyrights

Often the weekend brings the best internet philosophy discussions and one is brewing today about whether Google is the good or bad guy in the content equation.    The answer in my opinion is that it is pretty nuanced and best seen as a series of  inevitabilities rather than points about fairness or best practices or who is doing what for whom.

Over at the Guardian the argument is that Google’s gotten out of hand and is running roughshod over anybody who stands in their profitable path:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/05/google-internet-piracy

…. one detects in Google something that is delinquent and sociopathic, perhaps the character of a nightmarish 11-year-old. This particular 11-year-old has known nothing but success and does not understand the risks, skill and failure involved in the creation of original content, nor the delicate relationships that exist outside its own desires and experience. There is a brattish, clever amorality about Google that allows it to censor the pages on its Chinese service without the slightest self doubt, store vast quantities of unnecessary information about every Google search, and menace the delicate instruments of democratic scrutiny. And, naturally, it did not exercise Google executives that Street View not only invaded the privacy of millions and made the job of burglars easier …

Meanwhile Mike Arrington disagrees – more accurately lashes out at the Google detractors,  suggesting:

Let’s all be clear here. What Porter and Bragg want is a subsidy from Google. A sort of welfare tax on a profitable company so that they can continue to draw the paychecks they’ve become accustomed to. That isn’t going to happen, and all this hand wringing isn’t helping to move their respective industries toward a successful business model. They either need to adapt or die. And they’re choosing a very noisy and annoying death.

Some truth to this but also pretty harsh given how disruptive Google’s been to the whole show.    Mike overlooks that the *single most disruptive act* in internet history was Google’s launch of Adsense, which monetizes content for all websites and more than any other single factor has led to an explosion of the spam, mediocre content, and some excellent content that has accelerated (though I think has not caused) the demise of legacy content providers like newspapers.

I said over at TechCrunch that:

Mike I’m not sure I agree with the analysis but here you’ve pulled together the “Google Goodness” argument about as cleverly and succinctly as it can be done.

I think a bigger perspective on this is far more nuanced.   The rise of Google search aggregation has in most cases diminished the average profitability of premium content.   It has slightly (but only ever so slightly) *raised* the tiny profitability of non-premium content such as the ocean of mediocre blog posts, stupid pet trick websites, and made for adsense efforts.    Something is gained as we move to a very democratic global publishing paradigm but also something significant is lost in this equation.   David Brooks of the NYT writes some brilliant stuff we need to hear in these challenged times.   He refuses to use Twitter.   Like hundreds of other bloggers  I write some political stuff too but few of my pieces are as informed as Brooks’ analyses.

However I’m happy to use Twitter and work for free.   I may win, but we all may lose something after the blogging and Twittering and Adsense dust settles.

Twitter’s Discovery Engine: The End of Civilization As We Know It.

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Sure it’s too early to know how the advent of “Social Media” will revolutionize the internet landscape but it will *certainly* revolutionize the online experience dramatically.     It’s been slowly happening for some time – perhaps 2 years or so – but I think we’re now at something of a tipping point where we’ll see widespread mainstream adoption of social media  – I predict Twitter will be the big winner in this space though there is plenty of room for Facebook to maintain the huge presence it now has online.

One of the most provocative upcoming items is the Twitter Discovery Engine, which will be Twitter’s attempt to allow users to  mine the information from the massive Twitter community.    They may not get it right at first but eventually we’ll see that unlike Google search – which is great for static information – Twitter will be able to connect you to a “human expert” about as  fast as you can Tweet out a 140 character note or click on their  “Follow” button.

This is very important because despite many foolish reports suggesting that Google has “solved” the problem of internet search they have done nothing of the kind.   Google’s very good at finding a lot of material about issues that stay the same over the years such as historical events.  Yet Google’s regular search generally fails – and miserably – when you are trying to find real time information on current events.    Their blog search and news search are better for information that changes regularly or has changed recently, but with a robust Twitter search you’ll soon be able to interact with newsmakers and news events in real time, asking questions and offering your own input.

The internet has always been about people much more than it is about technology.   Google is a brilliant company but I’d suggest that Google will be seen in the future as being the *last* of the major internet players to rely primarily on their technological prowess rather than their social architectures.     The new game will be the integration of human experience and expertise with the blossoming online information landscape, and this game will dominate until we have very powerful and direct integration of human brains with online information sources – probably in about 10 years.  This brain/machine integration has already begun at a rudimentary level with Braingate and mainstream devices like the Emotiv headsets coming soon.

This social media revolution  is not just a profound new development in the history of human communication, it is a social evolution of biblical proportions, and the beginning of a redefinition of social interaction that will both enhance and undermine our tribal history of human socializing that goes back tens of thousands of years and tended to favor smaller groups, less democratic social heirarchies, and simpler forms of “friend or foe” interactions.   These social mechanisms served our evolutionary needs at the time, but are becoming outmoded as the global population and global interests  come together, and fast.

Welcome to the new age new media revolution.    It’s going to be neat but be sure to fasten your mental seatbelts because there will be  some Twitter turbulence ahead.

Google & Facebook & Twitter, oh my!

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Silicon Alley Insider is discussing an interesting analysis suggesting that Facebook could be a “Google Killer” thanks to Facebook’s greater rate of growth and the suggestion that Facebook now accounts for 19% of incoming Google unique user traffic, up from 9% a year ago.

My intuitive take on this is that the analysis is misleading and seriously flawed for several reasons:

1) Rates of growth will tend to be vastly larger as sites approach the market saturation levels we have with Google and I think we may soon have with Facebook.      The new 800 pound Gorilla on the social scene is  Twitter which is growing at over 1000% last year.   You can’t 10x your current traffic for long without exhausting all people on earth, so all these rates must slow, and soon.     e.g. at 1000% annual growth with 5,000,000 unique users you’ll exhaust earth’s population in about 3 years, 2 months.

2) Twitter will chip away at Facebook user’s time online, and fast.    No major application has grown at the rate we see now at Twitter.    For many reasons we’ll see Twitter continue to grow explosively for at least a few years and I’ll be surprised if it does not rival Facebook within 3 years in terms of use.    Most high tech early adopters are tending to move away from time on Facebook and towards time on Twitter, and major media is showing a huge enthusiasm for promoting Twitter feedback on TV to mainstream America.   Twitter, not Facebook, is the application with the most disruptive potential.

3) Monetization of Social Media sucks, and will continue to suck.    Google can easily monetize searches for things where Facebook continues to struggle to find ways to turn the vast numbers of views into big money.   Although they are likely to make modest progress,  I do not see social networking as potentially all that lucrative where keyword search, almost by definition, remains the best high value internet monetizing framework.

4) The claim that 19% of Google uniques from Facebook  seems very, very dubious.    This number appears to be from Comscore and does not even make sense.   Facebook searches do not generally direct people to Google, so presumably this is suggesting that a staggering number of people leave Facebook to go do a  search at Google?    I’m trying to find more detail about this but it does not pass the sniff test even if they are simply stating that people tend to jump to Google after visiting Facebook, which is correlation and probably not causation.
This suggests that Facebook’s 236m uniques drive  (.19 x 772m) =     146m uniques to Google?         Something is  Facebook fishy here.

I am confident that all three of these applications will continue to thrive because each is filling a different online need and doing the job well.   There is no need to converge online activity more than has already been done.   For example it’s not inconvenient to switch to your banking or travel booking website for those tasks, and many probably prefer this to having a single “one stop shop” for all online activity.     Ironically Facebook’s attempts to imitate Twitter may actually accelerate the growth of Twitter which seems to be a better way to communicate quickly and effectively and superficially with many contacts.      Facebook, however, has been making good progress with their “open social” efforts that allow users to log in to other sites easily and then post blog comments and other activity to their Facebook account.     Facebook will thrive but as the recent revaluations / downward valuations suggest Facebook is no Google and will never be Google.    Search trumps social in terms of making money, and the mother’s milk of internet growth and to some extent  innovation is …. money   (though I’d say innovation is fueled by the lure of wealth as much as real wealth).

The Man Who Sued Google – and won $731

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The following fun item came up today from Aaron, who managed to sue Google in small claims court over a Google Adwords / Adsense dispute and actually ….. won the case.  Here’s the story.

Adsense expert Jennifer Slegg suggests Aaron may have been violating the terms and I think most advertisers would agree that we want Google to police Adsense very carefully to avoid the many problems that come when publishers’ material is unlikely to generate business for the advertiser.

However I’m also very sympathetic to Aaron’s criticisms of Google’s failure to bring enough transparency to the adsense and ranking processes despite very noble individual activity by guys like Matt Cutts, Adam Lasnick, Brian White, and pretty much all the engineers I’ve talked to in person. My beef is with Google’s company policy of sharing too little information and having “too weak” diagnostics that don’t allow webmasters to fix common problems or challenge fairly subjective ranking decisions, especially when what Google sees as questionable linking activity is involved.

Google suggests that ranking opacity prevents spam where I’d argue that on balance it would help avoid many common practices that now penalize people without them even knowing. Just last week, for example, Matt pointed to a very expensive Forrester business report on “legitimate” SEO approaches that suggested a “paid blog posting” tactic that could get both the blogger and the referenced site in ranking trouble with Google. Although Matt is one of the last people at Google I’d accuse of being “too secretive”, the overall policy is too opaque to reasonable let legitimate webmasters make the best decisions for their sites and clients. The Webmaster Console has helped but it’s too little too late in my view. Google owes every webmaster a clear answer to the simple question: Why is my site ranked below clearly inferior sites? Usually this answer would involve a downranking from link manipulations, selling links to other sites, or other things Google finds offensive and lists vaguely in the Webmaster Guidelines.

I do complement Google on the fairly new webmaster forums feature which can be very helpful in diagnosing problems with websites:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

Marissa Mayer on Charlie Rose

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Marissa Mayer on Charlie Rose. Two of my favorite people at the same time!

Mayer is one of a handful of people who drive many key online innovations as a result of her role at Google. Mayer’s background at Stanford is in AI, and it is very clear that she will remain a key player for many years in the technological changes now sweeping over the legacy industrial landscape.

Yahoo Buyout Rumor – this one is real

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The faulty Times of London rumor over the weekend about a pending major Yahoo search deal with Microsoft was likely spawned in part by what appear to be correct reports that Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL, has been working to pull together at deal that would value Yahoo in the $20-$22 per share range and lead to a takeover of the company, presumably the deal would put Miller in a key role.

Jessica V at Wall Street Journal Reports

Miller’s interesting history as an AOL innovator and corporate rescue man who was fired after what many think were successful actions suggests to me that he’s eyeing Yahoo as a way to get back in the internet saddle in a major way.    Yahoo’s internet footprint remains *larger than Google’s*, yet Yahoo’s legendarily inept monetization of this online traffic has let Google leave them in the revenue dust.    As a company Yahoo is a lean shadow of its former self, but as an internet empire they are still doing just fine.   One caveat is that Yahoo continues to lag Google big time in the most lucrative online activity of search.   However, as one of a handful of global website empires that can shape user behavior simply by adjusting their offerings, advertising, and navigation elements Yahoo optimists like me continue to think that Yahoo’s problems can be fixed, leaving them in a position to double revenues in short order.    They do not have to match Google’s revenues or monetization to be wildly successful – they just need to *do somewhat better than they do now*.   I’m betting they can.

Disclosure: Long on Yahoo (in fact I just bought more today)

Google Social Search Wiki Launches

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Today’s tech blogOsphere buzz is about Google’s new wiki search feature that allows users to rank their own results.     This appears to me to be a splendid idea although I agree with some who say it won’t get used much.

However, for those who use this it may eventually allow a kind of search ranking we have never seen, where user defined preferences trump the mysterious algorithmic magic mistakes, gradually giving the user a great set of results well optimized to their needs.

I’d suggest that “perfect individualized search” may only require two basic steps – the first is a *discovery* part where you surface content relevant to your particular query and then plow through that manually to determine which sites best fit your needs.   Google does a pretty good job of facilitating that right now. However a second piece would allow you to build on those “personally filtered” results in various ways – some as simple as just listing them in rough order of relevance to you as Google is now doing.

Is this a good Google idea?    Yes!     Will anybody much use this?   Nope, because our habits as humans don’t incline us to be this organized.     I had a great conversation a few days ago with the developer of Reuters Calais semantic search – a brilliant tool designed to surface relevancy and meaning from massive document archives.    We were noting how difficult is is to simply break the habit of using Google search, even when it’s not the most appropriate tool for the job at hand.

Funny primates we !

Google Blog reports on the new search wiki

Schmidt won’t become Obama’s CTO for the USA, so how about Craig Newmark?

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Eric Schmidt said on CNBC’s Jim Cramer show today that even if asked he will not accept a position in the Obama administration that is expected to be something of a chief technology officer for the USA.

Reuters reports on the statement

Technology remains a vital US concern in terms of economy, national security, and offers the potential to extricate us from at least some of the pressing problems of the day.

Who would be a great choice for this position?

Mr President Elect Obama, I’d like to nominate Craig Newmark.  Craig’s  technology credentials are superb, he’s got global vision, and … his website is so successful he’ll never be bothering you for a raise in pay.

Here’s a good discussion of the CTO issue and potential qualifications.    I hope Obama realizes how important it is that this person comes from Silicon Valley, deeply understands the internet from both a technical and business perspective, and has the ear and respect of many other major players.    Schmidt and Newmark meet this test.

Other good choices might be Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina.   Both which would help cross the party line and the conspiculous tech gender line as well.

Google Knol – very good but very failing?

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Google Knol, the Googley competition for Wikipedia, was announced with some fanfare and really seemed like a great idea.    The ‘knol’ stands for “Knowledge”, and articles are written by people who verify their identities and presumably have some knowledge of the topic.    Community ratings are used to filter good from bad knol posts, presumably leaving the best topical coverage at the top of the knol heap.

However as with many Google innovations outside of pure keyword search knol appears to be making gaining little traction with the internet community.     I say this because I rarely see the sited linked to or referenced by blogs or websites and also from my own knol page for “Beijing” which as the top “Beijing” and “Beijing China”  listing you’d think would have seen fairly big traffic over the past months which included the Beijing Olympics.   Yet in about six months that page has only seen 249 total views – that is less than many of my blog posts would see in just a few days here at Joe Duck.

So what’s up with the decisions people make about using one resource over another?    Like Wikipedia Google Knol is an excellent resource.   Reading my Beijing page, for example, would give you some quick and helpful insights into “must see” attractions there.   It’s no travel guide but it would prove a lot more helpful than many sites that outrank it at Google for the term “Beijing”.    Google appears to have relegated their own knol listings to obscure rankings – perhaps because linkage is very low given the low use of knol.    Like many Google search innovations knol appears bound to the dustbin of obscurity as Wikipedia continues to dominate the rankings for many terms (as they should – it’s generally the best coverage although generally very weak for travel because they fail to capture commercial info adequately).

My simple explanation would be that we are prisoners of habit and have trouble managing the plethora of information resources that lie – literally – at our fingertips.   We all have yet to understand much about how the internet works, and how inadequate a picture one gets if they simply stick to a keyword search and hope for the best.

Obama and McCain click ads throttled by Google?

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This just in from the Google click advertising confusion department.   It appears Google is severely throttling the number of clicks they allow to  publishers  for the key terms “Barack Obama” and “John McCain”.  I don’t understand why they’d do this unless perhaps it relates to election advertising laws?    That does not make sense to me because it seems we would have heard about this, so my second thought was that they might have agreements with the campaigns for exclusivity but … I’m not seeing Obama or McCain PPC ads on Google.
I was playing around with the costs to bid and run keyword campaigns for “Barack Obama” and “John McCain”, surprised to see that Google does not appear to be running those terms or terms like “vote”.
Using a cost per click maximum of $100.00 and a daily budget of $250,000.00 I should get a huge count for those terms, yet the Google predictor only shows I’d get about 102-128 clicks per day for Obama and 118-149 for McCain at an average costs just above a dollar per click.
Not that is not 118 *thousand* which might make sense, that is a paltry hundred and change clicks at a cost of about 100 per day.   Why wouldn’t Google allow a bigger campaign?