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Posts related to search and search technologies.
Twitter launched a killer new feature last week, the very aptly named "Track." Sometimes when I am thinking about something, I wonder how many other people are thinking about that something at the same time. With Twitter and the new Track feature, there's a way to find out:
You can follow friends on your phone through Twitter, but what about concepts? What if you wanted an update anytime anyone mentioned your name, your favorite band, "NYC," "earthquake," or "Steve Jobs?" In real-time? What if you were attending an event and wanted to know who else was there?
That's what Track lets you do. It's dead simple to setup - just send "track mastermaq" to Twitter, and you'll start receiving all messages that mention my nickname. This is really powerful stuff. In addition to the usual ego-tracking, I am also tracking edmonton and podcasting. It's like a whole new world has opened up!
If you've been holding off on trying Twitter, I strongly encourage you to do so now. Especially if you're in the marketing industry. Where else can you get notifications every time someone mentions your product or service? This is the future, today.
Now if only Twitter was more reliable...
It's no secret that an incredibly large number of web developers build sites only for Internet Explorer, ignoring standards and other browsers. It drives me nuts. Unless instructed by the client to focus on a particular browser, I build sites that work on as many different browsers and platforms as possible. Take Podcast Spot, for instance. We want it to work anywhere, no matter what technology the user happens to have installed. So far, I think we've done a good job. There's always room for improvement however.
Since we're a "Microsoft shop" we don't have any Macs in the office. For testing, we've relied on friends and the incredible BrowserCam service. It would be nice to just have a Mac though. Or, you know, Safari on Windows:
Apple® today introduced Safari™ 3, the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for Windows PCs and Macs. Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, based on the industry standard iBench tests, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.
Let me first say that I think this is absolutely fantastic news! The more standards-adhering browsers available the better. That said - what about Opera?! Dammit why does everyone ignore the best cross-platform browser. Argh!
You can download Safari here. It's just over 8 MB. I just installed it and already found a bug. I have three monitors, and dragging Safari to a different screen than the one it launched in and maximizing causes the application to disappear. Oh well, it's beta. Looks exactly like Safari on the Mac to me though (and that kind of sucks, I hate how Apple completely ignores the Windows look and feel).
There's lots more discussion from around the blogosphere here.
Lots of talk today about Google's $100 million acquisition of RSS management company FeedBurner. Congrats to the FeedBurner guys! I do have to admit though that I am bit sad that FeedBurner is now a Google property. I guess they were too valuable to remain independent forever though. From TechCrunch:
Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.
The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point.
Must be pretty sweet to get an all cash deal. TechCrunch confirmed it today, but it looks like Valleywag had the story right last week.
Not everyone is happy about the deal. Todd Cochrane does a good job of spreading FUD in his post. Todd, you need to worry less!
I came across a really interesting post yesterday at Mashable! entitled Why Google Is Making Us Dumber. Eye-catching title is it not? Stan, the author, argues that our growing reliance on Google might cause problems when Google isn't around:
I used to be able to quickly convert pounds to kilograms. Currently, I lack this knowledge, because I know that Google has built-in unit conversion capabilities. Simply type X pounds to kilograms into Google and you get the answer.
What happens if I’m abroad and need to quickly convert between pounds and kilograms? Problem.
As for being abroad: the Internet is almost everywhere! Soon it will be, so I am not sure we should be so concerned with that. It's true, Google knows all kinds of great information: math, conversions, capital cities, currency conversions, etc. I relied very heavily on the conversion capabilities while doing my astronomy homework this past year. Does that make me dumber? No.
I think Stan is wrong to suggest that Google is making us dumber. Instead, Google allows us to put our energy towards more important thought activities. Generally speaking, math or unit conversions are just small pieces in a larger puzzle. If we don't have to worry about these smaller pieces, we can put more effort into solving the puzzle.
I think Google is just one piece in a "thought stack" - roughly analogous to a web server in a technology solution stack. Imagine if you had to build a web server every time you wanted to create a website...you'd never get the website built! It wouldn't be worth the effort. So instead we have a general purpose web server that we build on top of. Google is like that general purpose web server, but for basic kinds of thought activities. Instead of doing a conversion everytime you are designing a widget, Google does the conversion and you focus on the widget.
(It should be noted that Google could be replaced with something else, just like Apache and IIS do the same job and are replacements for one another.)
If you like the idea of the technological singularity, this "thought stack" should make a lot of sense. Perhaps one day the Google-like module will be embedded directly into our brains.
Everyone is buzzing about the New York Post story that Microsoft is very seriously trying to hook up with Yahoo!. You can read lots of opinion over at TechMeme. The idea is not new - rumors surfaced back in January 2006, and probably existed before that too.
I am excited about the possibility of a combined Microsoft-Yahoo! organization. However, it seems the reason behind such a deal would be to better compete with Google. I don't think that's a good enough reason for MSFT and YHOO to tie the knot. Why not? For the same reason this person thinks Google should buy Starbucks (what a stupid idea):
Google was listed as the 17th largest US company in market value, $143 billion at the time of publication in the Forbes 500. Google sprang to that size faster than any company in history. It remains the only company that is not diversified, at that scale or anywhere close to that scale. And when you check on its standing according to revenue (10.6B), it drops from #17 to #241.
Google has one source of revenue: AdSense. What if something happened to AdSense? Nothing is bulletproof. Without AdSense, Google would die. Period. I'm not saying that Microsoft and/or Yahoo! should try to disrupt the AdSense machine. All I am saying is that it's far easier for Google to make a mistake and pay the price than it is for Microsoft or Yahoo!.
Do it like they do in F1
In Formula 1 racing, one strategy for passing a competitor who is in front of you is to wait, especially if there are a lot of laps left in the race. The reason behind this is simple. If you get too impatient and a take a big risk to go for it, you could very well crash. In general, you're far better off staying close behind your competitor, putting immense pressure on them. Most of the time, they'll make a mistake, and you'll have a chance to capitalize on it with a clean pass. Michael Schumacher was incredibly good at this.
Perhaps Microsoft should take a page out of Schumacher's playbook? Microsoft can afford to be patient, and the race is far from over.
If Microsoft and Yahoo! want to join up to share technology and build better products, that's one thing. If it's just about beating Google, there's better ways of doing it.
Yesterday Google announced that they have renamed Froogle to Google Product Search. The change is explained on the official Google Blog:
Froogle offers a lot of great functionality and has helped many users find things to buy over the years, but the name caused confusion for some because it doesn't clearly describe what the product does.
I don't think that's why they renamed it. I think Owen Thomas is right to point out that Google's marketing is run by engineers. Froogle was/is simply a subset of search in general, so why not name it as such?
Think about it. They have Google, Google Image Search, Google Book Search, and Google Blog Search, so why not Google Product Search?
You could almost use the following rule for the way Google names products:
Is search the core feature of this product?
If yes then call it Google _____ Search
If no then call it Google _____
Obviously not all Google products fit into this rule, but most do.
A few hours ago I was reading some of the stuff on TechMeme, when I came across this article about Google. I thought Dickson might find it interesting, so I fired it off to him in an IM. He replied a few moments later with this quote from the article:
Google wants companies that can build revenue streams from their users, instead of buying firms with a lot of users that don't bring in much in sales, Ullah said.
"We don't do traffic for traffic's sake,'' he said. "It has to be highly monetizable.''
And then followed that up with this message:
Uhhh...YouTube?! lol
Haha so true! Ullah, who is Google's director of corporate development, basically just described the very company they purchased last year for $1.65 billion. Which begs the question...what kind of companies do they really want?
There's a new report out from research firm IDC that attempts to count up all the zeroes and ones that fly around our digital world. I remember reading about the last such report, from the University of California, Berkeley. That report found that 5 exabytes of data were created in 2003. The new IDC report says the number for 2006 is 161 exabytes! Why the difference?
[The Berkeley researchers] also counted non-electronic information, such as analog radio broadcasts or printed office memos, and tallied how much space that would consume if digitized. And they examined original data only, not all the times things got copied.
In comparison, the IDC numbers ballooned with the inclusion of content as it was created and as it was reproduced - for example, as a digital TV file was made and every time it landed on a screen. If IDC tracked original data only, its result would have been 40 exabytes.
Even still, that's an incredible increase in just three years. Apparently we don't even have enough space to store all that data:
IDC estimates that the world had 185 exabytes of storage available last year and will have 601 exabytes in 2010. But the amount of stuff generated is expected to jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes (closing in on 1 zettabyte) in 2010.
Pretty hardcore, huh? You can read about zettabytes at Wikipedia. I'm not too worried about not having enough space though, even if we were attempting to store all that data (which we aren't). Hard drives are already approaching the terabyte mark, so who knows how big they'll be in 2010. Then of course there's also the ever falling costs of DVD-like media.
More importantly, I bet a lot of the storage we "have available" right now is totally underutilized. You'd be hard pressed to find a computer that comes with less than 80 GB of storage these days, and I can assure you there are plenty of users who never even come close to filling it up. Heck, even I am only using about 75% of the storage I have available on my computer (420 GB out of 570 GB) and I bet a lot of it could be deleted (I'm a digital pack rat).
Powerset is back in the news again (you may recall they were 'discovered' back in October), this time for winning the exclusive rights to search technology developed at the famed Palo Alto Research Center in Silicon Valley. The technology essentially allows Powerset to understand the meaning of your search query (you know, "natural language" as they call it). Apparently Google is developing something similar. Here's what VentureBeat says:
Clearly, Powerset faces challenges. Even if its technology does prove to be useful, it isn’t clear how long it will keep any lead (in natural language) in the face of an onslaught from Google. Another challenge is changing peoples’ search behavior, which is used to keyword searches.
Maybe I am being naïve, but I don't think changing peoples' search behavior will be all that hard. We still think in natural language before deciding what keywords to enter into the box. And some people don't even bother to pick out keywords, they just type a sentence or question.
I think their biggest problem will be proving that their technology works and is useful. For now I've got Powerset filed under the "believe it when I see it" category. And assuming they really can do natural language search, will it be that useful? The keyword based search we use today works fairly well for general queries. I think natural language search definitely has value, but I don't think it will replace Google overnight, if ever. There are certain types of queries that are probably better suited to keyword-based search.
And let's not forget that millions of people (myself included) use Google and other search engines as navigational tools almost as much as information-finding tools. A quick glance at the 2006 year end Google Zeitgeist will show you that - half of the top ten queries were the names of websites.
Michael Arrington wrote about a new startup called Midomi today over at TechCrunch, and he reported that he couldn't get it to work. Midomi is a voice-based music search engine, which means you can sing or hum part of a tune and it will tell you the artist and name of the song.
I first saw a service like this back in 2003 at the Imagine Cup finals in Spain. I forget where they were from, but there was a team with precisely this kind of search engine. It worked pretty good too, if I remember correctly.
I just tried Midomi out for myself, and it worked great! I hummed the chorus of Madonna's "Like a Virgin", and it came back as the first result (the reason I chose this song is that I had to hum it on New Years Eve during a game of Cranium...and I did very well that time). Pretty impressive. Give it a shot, see if it works for you!
The only thing I don't like about Midomi so far is the social networking features they evidently felt compelled to add. I think it is largely unnecessary for the site, even if it is the feature du jour.
Wikipedia is a superb resource for general information, but I think there's room (and demand) for topical "wikipedias" too. Such as a wikipedia for product information. Which is exactly what Amazon.com recently launched:
Amazon has just released a new Wikipedia clone, called Amapedia. It's described as "a community for sharing information about the products you like the most."
I took a quick look at the site, and so far it's not very impressive. It has potential though. I have to agree with Richard:
The site looks pretty raw currently and has little info in it - it is after all brand new. But a wikipedia for products makes perfect sense for Amazon. Who better to spotlight products and gather product information from the community, than Amazon?
With enough contributions, Amapedia could become the site to check before you purchase something. Good idea Amazon!
Google announced today that it has integrated YouTube results into Google Video. This is the beginning of a transition for Google Video from hosting provider to search. Liz over at NewTeeVee wonders if this is necessary:
In thinking about video search, we’ve been concerned that with the huge number of videos coming into and and video streams coming out of YouTube, there would be little need for — well — video search.
I think there's a huge need for video search. Just because most of the videos are in one place doesn't make the search good or effective. There's lots of things Google can do with it's video search product to make it the destination. I'm thinking about speech and visual recognition to improve accuracy, and other really complex things.
When it acquired YouTube, Google got more than just a video hosting site. It got unfettered access to one of the largest test beds for video search around. That's a big asset to have when you're trying to build an excellent search engine.
You may have heard that Wikipedia recently decided that all outbound links would be coded with the "nofollow" tag, meaning that search engines do not give the links any weight in their algorithms. The idea is that it will make it much less desirable for spammers to add their links to the thousands of pages at Wikipedia. Sounds good right? Well so far, the reaction has been pretty negative:
Although the no-follow move is certainly understandable from a spam-fighting perspective, it turns Wikipedia into something of a black hole on the Net. It sucks up vast quantities of link energy but never releases any.
Lots of bloggers are worried that the new scheme does not properly recognize the original sources of information. A blog or other site will still be cited on the Wikipedia page, but that citation no longer carries any weight with the search engines.
I think that argument is fairly weak. If you are really deserving of some major "link energy" then you'll get it, because chances are, Wikipedia won't be the only site linking to you. So worries about not getting "credit" in the form of Google-juice are pretty unfounded, I think.
I suppose it comes down to the "perfect world" scenario. In a perfect world, there would be no spam, and everyone would benefit maximally from linking to one another. Thing is, we don't live in a perfect world - thus we have to attempt to reduce the imperfections. This policy is an attempt to do that with spam.
I see the nofollow policy as serving the greater good. Is an individual's link juice more important than everyone's access to a reliable, spam-free Wikipedia? The answer is no, and that's why I think the nofollow policy is good.
The Times of London is reporting that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is planning to launch a search engine next year in collaboration with Amazon.com. Dubbed Wikiasari, the search engine will allow users to rank web pages in an effort to create more accurate results (via Techmeme):
"Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: 'this page is good, this page sucks'," Mr Wales said. "Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way.
It appears the big selling point of the search engine will be that it harnesses the wisdom of crowds. Google already does this, with PageRank, but in a less direct way. I am not sure if the new idea is going to fly - how many people really want to rank pages when they search? Usually you just want the results immediately. I'd bet most people won't want to invest an extra few minutes to visit and rank the results.
I really have no idea what Amazon.com has to do with this project, but recall they too have their own search engine, A9.
Google started testing their radio advertising service, dubbed Google Audio Ads, today. It's one of the hottest topics in the blogosphere right now. We have known about it for a long time, and it sounds really great (in terms of the technology), but I still don't get it. Let me explain.
Given this:
The radio industry won't want to hear this. Advertising dollars are shifting online faster than analysts anticipated. In fact, advertisers will soon spend as much money on the Internet as they do on the airwaves, according to a newly released eMarketer study.
Why this?
Google Inc. has started testing a long-awaited radio advertising service...[that] will help sell advertising on more than 700 radio stations in more than 200 U.S. metropolitan markets. Google hopes to eventually sign up more than 5,000 stations, according to documents shown potential advertisers.
I can think of two potential reasons:
- Google wants to ease the transition for traditional advertisers looking to move online.
I don't know how good an argument this is, given that so many companies are already advertising online. It does make a certain amount of sense though.
- It's not about radio at all. This is really Google' first baby step towards rich media advertising on the web.
Obviously, this is the reasoning that I prefer. Bring on audio ads for podcasting!
I suppose another alternative would be that Google feels there is still enough money to be made in radio advertising that it's worth trying. My gut feeling though is that Google Audio Ads are destined for something far beyond just radio.
Exaggerations make for good headlines, but often are less than accurate. VentureBeat ran a post last night about audio and video search startup Pluggd, announcing that the company has raised $1.65 million in funding. The post also says that Pluggd declared it has "perfected the user experience" for audio and visual search. This morning, I came across this NewTeeVee post that sets the record straight:
While we like what Pluggd is doing, that's a bit of an overstatement.
Video search is often attempted by analysis of the soundtrack, rather than the picture, and we expect that’s what’s going on here. But mainly, we take issue with the claim that anyone has “perfected the user experience” in this area, because a big part of user experience is having a product that works.
Writer Liz Gannes goes on to explain the obvious - that speech recognition technology is far from perfect (though it is getting better). I'm fairly certain that audio and video search will be perfected eventually, but not we're not there yet.
To their credit, Pluggd commented on the NewTeeVee post:
Matt’s coverage of our technology on venturebeat.com is one of the most thoughtful and complete descriptions of our technology that I’ve seen, but I was also a little startled when I saw the word “perfected”.
While they have lots of work ahead of them, I am sure the new funding will help Pluggd improve their offering! I am looking forward to their technology going live.
You may recall that when Google launched their Checkout service back in June, I posted about how Canadian merchants were left out in the cold. I went back to the site every couple weeks hoping to see that Canada had been added as a valid merchant country, but it never happened. I gave up around late August and haven't been back to the site since, until today.
John Battelle posted this morning about a promotion Google Checkout is running for the holidays. I figured, what the heck, might as well check. Nope, still only American merchants allowed. Then I stumbled on the page titled: Google Checkout is available to buyers with billing addresses in...
I was shocked that Canada wasn't on the list. Then I figured that maybe they left countries like Canada and the US off the list because it was assumed that they were valid countries. Nope. As you can see, the US as well as The United Kingdom are both on the list. The Vatican, Kazakhstan, and Namibia all made the list, yet Canada didn't.
Either they screwed up and forgot to put Canada on that page, or they screwed up because they don't allow Canadians to use the service. Unacceptable either way.
UPDATE (12/8/2006): I just checked the page again, and Canada now appears on the list. I wonder if my post had anything to do with it?
Almost every day now I read something about Yahoo! and its "problems" and/or "options". Those are in quotes because it seems people are very divided on Yahoo! - some think it's in trouble, others don't. I've been a Yahoo! user since the days of the grey page-background, and if you count sites like Flickr and del.icio.us, I'm still a pretty active user. Allow me to put on my Yahoo! pundit hat for a moment.
I guess Yahoo!'s main problem is Google. Now that there's a search-media company consistently outperforming Yahoo!, it makes them look old and stagnant. It's actually pretty unfair, because let's be honest, no one has the kind of growth that Google does. Yahoo! actually does pretty well in terms of search traffic, advertising dollars, and all that other stuff, but where they seem to be lacking is in respect.
So what's a Yahoo! to do? Here are the most commonly suggested strategies I have come across:
Replace CEO Terry Semel
This suggestion is actually fairly new, and if you read Eric Jackson's open letter to Yahoo!'s founders, it starts to make sense. Seems to me this is a relatively short-term fix though.
Buy AOL
Apparently Yahoo! has approached Time Warner about purchasing AOL. I think this would be a good deal for Time Warner, and a not so good one for Yahoo!. It would bring the failed AOL Time Warner merger to a complete end, but it would only provide a minor increase in Yahoo's traffic and advertising, all things considered.
Buy Facebook
This rumor has been floating around for months actually. It might bring some more eyeballs to Yahoo!, but it would do nothing to help transform or improve the company. And besides, from everything I've read, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) is no Caterina Fake (Flickr founder).
Merge with eBay
The two companies might seem complimentary because of their completely different focuses, but that might present a problem rather than a solution. I agree with Fortune: I think this one is unlikely, because I think integrating eBay and Yahoo! would prove extremely difficult.
Sell to Microsoft
This one is my favorite, and it has a long history too, first appearing in June. Microsoft certainly has the cash, and it turns out that the two companies are fairly well-aligned - Yahoo! has made heavy investments into IE7, is a PlaysForSure supporter, and has hooked up with Microsoft on a number of initiatives ranging from Sitemaps to Instant Messaging. According to the latest comScore data (released today), a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have around 40% of the search market compared with Google's 45%. Of course, there are some easy to spot problems with this deal - mainly that Microsoft has invested heavily in Live Search and adCenter already. That's not a total deal-breaker though.
Stay the course
The people that don't view Yahoo! as floundering like this suggestion. Sure Google is #1 for now, but it can't stay that way forever, right? Seems like this is Yahoo!'s currently preferred course of action. If they could somehow turn around their disappointing sales and profit numbers, this one might be the best option after all.
The Microsoft option is especially appealing to me, because it would have extremely broad ramifications for the industry. It also seems somewhat unlikely, given Microsoft's huge investments in their online properties (MSN, Live.com, etc). That said, purchasing Yahoo! would instantly make them the leader on the web, a position they have long sought after. I wouldn't be surprised if Yahoo! ended up staying the course though, and in the end, maybe that's better for everyone - Yahoo! included.
Update: Here is more excellent commentary on Yahoo's current situation.
As much as I enjoy reading about how Microsoft plans to defeat Google and how Google has trumped Yahoo and started on their way to ruling the world, it always gives me a good feeling when I read about the three giants working together. Sitemaps are the latest technology that Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have come together to support:
The goal of this effort is to improve search results for customers around the world. This protocol enables site owners everywhere to tell search engines about the content on their site instead of having to rely solely on crawl algorithms to find it.
Interested in the gritty details? Read more about the Sitemaps protocol at the official website: http://www.sitemaps.org.
As I understand it, Sitemaps do not replace they very common crawling algorithms, but instead augment that data and help improve the crawlers. Seems like something that should have been developed a long time ago! It's amazing what can happen when you work together isn't it?
Oh, and the coolest part of all - Sitemap 0.90 has been released under a Creative Commons license.
Google made an interesting post to their official blog yesterday, titled Do you "Google?" which aside from being extremely calculated and condescending, slightly mocks Yahoo (you know, do you Yahoo?). The post explains that you can't use "google" and "search" interchangeably, because they don't want to become genericized like so many other names have (elevator, zipper, etc).
Needless to say, the post sucks. I can't say it any better than Ben Metcalfe:
But in the end, regardless of whether it's positive, harmful or somewhat in between for Google, I for one don't like to be told how to use the English language.
We own our language. So Google, you can go shove your lexicographical 'advice' up your ass.
Seriously, go read Ben's entire post. He does an awesome job of deconstructing the Google post. The Yahoo search team have posted their own comments too.
I understand the need to try and protect your trademarks and other intellectual property, but I am not sure going after the public like this is a good idea. Google should stick to going after organizations and publications which abuse their trademarks. You need to prove that you've made every effort to protect your trademark, but going after individuals is never a good idea. Just ask the RIAA.
If "google" turns out to be a generic term in the end, so be it.
Robert Scoble posted today that he thinks Microsoft's Live Search has really improved and has closed the gap with Google. Despite that, he doesn't think anyone is going to switch away from Google. He says he won't because of the trust he's built over the years using Google. I think he'll revisit that strategy at some point.
Over the last couple weeks, I have been using both Google and Live Search. More and more frequently, I have found that the Live Search results are better than Google's search results. Most of the time they are almost identical. This is really important. The quality of results has to be on par with Google before people will consider switching. Now that the quality is there, here are the main reasons I am switching:
- Switching is easy - there's really nothing keeping you at Google except habit.
- Live.com is shorter than Google.com - sounds dumb, but it makes a difference! I've never been a big user of the search boxes in the browser.
- Live Search looks so much nicer than Google! Both are simple, but the extra color that Live Search does have makes it look better.
- The speed difference is no longer noticable. The main thing I liked about Google was its speed. Live Search is just as fast now though.
I am not saying Live Search is perfect, but neither is Google. Both have their quirks and both have room for improvement. For example, Google's results seem to be extremely out of date at times, but their image search is far better than Live.com's. Both Google and Live suck at feed searches - Ask seems to have the lead there.
I think most people will agree with Robert on the trust thing though. When I first started using both engines, I would always do a search with Live Search first, and then do the search in Google. The reason was basically to make sure Live Search wasn't giving me crap. I trusted Google more. I probably still trust Google more, simply because I've been using it for so long. But that doesn't mean I am not willing to give Live Search a chance.
Are you going to switch?
I think it's funny when companies say they are operating in stealth mode, because it is really hard to do. Before this morning I had never heard of Powerset, so I guess they were in stealth mode, but the cat is out of the bag now. Here's what they say about themselves:
Powerset is leading the next generation of internet search. Powerset is a Silicon Valley startup currently operating in stealth mode. Please check back in the near future for more information about the company and its products.
There are so many blogs covering this company today, it's ridiculous (and I guess I'm included in that now too). Most of the coverage contains things like "so much better than Google" or similar comments. Is that really such a good idea? I wonder if the company is happy about all the attention or not. They say there's no such thing as bad press, but when you are getting setup like that? It's going to be hard to meet expectations.
After less than a year in beta, Microsoft is set to release the final version of Windows Live Search tonight (actually it's no longer marked beta for me). The search engine will now power MSN Search too. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to compare Live Search and Google (currently my default search engine). How does it stack up? Could it possibly be my new default search engine? Let's find out.
First off, please note I am focusing only on the basic search functionality - load up the site, type something in the box, and press enter. Both Live Search and Google have a bunch of other options (and Live Search's macros and other things are especially neat) but right now I am just interested in the search results I get. I will say however that I really like the look of Live Search. And that it loads just as fast as Google does.
1. hello world
First search is for what else but hello world (Live, Google)! This is a hard one. While the results are similar, I like Google's better. Why? The top result is for a .edu site, talking about "hello world" program examples. The second result is for the Wikipedia entry on "hello world" programs. Live on the other hand, returns HelloWorld.com (which appears to be a streaming video site) for the top two results. Google has this one too, but at #3.
# of identical results in top 10: 5
winner: Google
2. mastermaq
Next up is a little vanity search, for mastermaq (Live, Google). I keep track of this search at Google fairly often, and it usually alternates between some Brazilian company and my blog as #1 (oddly enough my blog is down at #6 today). There's a clear winner here, and it's Live Search. Why? Well because all of the results but two are created by me. Google lists my profiles at other sites far higher than it does my own sites. Something created by me is far more important don't you think?
# of identical results in top 10: 4
winner: Live
3. podcast spot
How about a search for Podcast Spot, since we'll be releasing it soon enough (Live, Google). So these results suck on both sites, but that's probably because you can't actually get to Podcast Spot right now without a password. Despite that, Google delivers much better results. I don't know how the first two results in Live even matched (some random color video and an article on GM podcasting). Google is at least smart enough to put our login page at #1. The category for Podcast Spot at the Paramagnus blog is #3 on both sites.
# of identical results in top 10: 2
winner: Google
4. britney spears
She used to be one of the most frequently searched for celebrities (Live, Google). The results start out almost identical on both sites, then Google goes downhill. "The Mystery of Britney's Breats", some crappy fan sites, and a Google page at #10 pretty give Live the win. With the exception of only the #9 result, everything Live returns is appropriate.
# of identical results in top 10: 6
winner: Live
And now for a tie-break!
5. ventureprize
Let's see what turns up for the business plan competiton we competed in this year (Live, Google). What a terrible query for the tie-break! Anyway, it seems that Live is really showing Paramagnus the love, with five of the top ten results from sites belonging to us (I include my Flickr page here). Google seems to prefer the University of Alberta and City of Edmonton sites. While I love being higher in the search engines, I have to give this one to Google, for having the most relevant first result.
# of identical results in top 10: 4
winner: Google
So there you go, a very unscientific comparison of Google and Live. I am impressed enough by Windows Live that I'm going to try and use it for a week or so, to see if I feel anything is missing. The thought of not using Google does seem strange though! I am really happy with the speed of Live, because one of the main reasons I started using Google was that it is damn fast. The Live Search team was wise not to ignore this.
What has your experience been with these two search engines?
Well this news sucks. The WinFS team at Microsoft has posted a new blog entry that sounds so positive, but really can't hide the fact that WinFS is basically dead. Too bad they felt the need to spin this. For those of you that don't know, WinFS was technology meant to bring the advantages of a database to your desktop.
Today I have an update about how we are delivering some of the WinFS technologies. It represents a change to our original delivery strategy, but it's a change that we think that you'll like based on the feedback that we've received.
With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering.
As one commenter noted:
It sounds so positive. But it's like giving a speech in front of the coffin. You just keep remembering the guy inside, and the more you do, the more you remember he's dead.
What does this mean? Well, SQL Server will get some cool new technology built into it. Which is fine, except that the original promise of WinFS was to bring a database layer between your file system and you (basically a relational file system), meaning you could do cool things when looking for pictures or contacts or any file for that matter. It looks as though that kind of functionality will now remain a dream.
So WinFS is dead - for now. Similar technology was originally planned for the version of Windows code-named "Cairo", which eventually became Windows NT 4.0. That operating system was released about ten years ago. It was in 2003 that plans for WinFS really started to heat up. Maybe they'll try again in another seven years?
I am also wondering how much Windows Live factored into this decision. If Microsoft has decided that people are going to use services on the web to organize and store their data instead of their desktops, then it would make sense to focus on SQL Server and not bringing a database to Windows. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would so completely abandon the idea of the computer being the central hub for you data, however. I guess time will tell.
In a deal announced earlier today, Yahoo and eBay are teaming up around advertising, e-commerce, and search. Yahoo becomes the exclusive provider of graphical ads on eBay, and will also provide some text ads. They are going to make a co-branded toolbar, and they'll work to make their respective VoIP apps work together (Yahoo Messenger and Skype). The biggest thing of all though, at least as far as I am concerned, is Yahoo's adoption of PayPal:
Yahoo will make eBay's PayPal service the exclusive third-party provider of its online wallet, allowing customers to pay for Yahoo services from bank accounts, credit cards or balances associated with their PayPal accounts. PayPal will also be integrated into product offerings for Yahoo merchants and publishers, including the Yahoo Publisher Network, Yahoo Search Marketing and Yahoo Merchant Solutions.
Yahoo using PayPal essentially removes any doubt that PayPal is the de facto payment service on the Internet. It will be very hard for Google to successfully introduce a competitor now. Two of the largest sites on the net in Yahoo and eBay, plus the millions of other smaller e-commerce sites all using PayPal is an enormous hurdle for any rival payment service. PayPal is the closest thing we have to a truly digital wallet. Incredibly smart move by Yahoo, and excellent outcome for eBay.
It turns out that I'm not the only one who though Google's whining about Internet Explorer 7 was dumb. The Justice Department has reviewed many parts of Windows Vista, including the new search box, and has found no problems:
While criticizing Microsoft for its implementation of its existing antitrust accord, regulators appear satisfied with the software maker's plans for Windows Vista, including a new search box that is part of Internet Explorer 7.
As part of its status report on Microsoft's antitrust compliance, the Justice Department said that it had reviewed the search box and concluded that Microsoft's implementation "respects users' and (computer makers') default choices and is easily changed."
Thank goodness the government has gotten something correct for once! Apparently they have also approved the "first-boot" experience for Windows Vista, after having reached an agreement with Microsoft that gives flexibility to computer makers.
So what does it all mean? Essentially, it means the only thing holding Windows Vista back now is Microsoft itself.
Sometimes companies do things that just leave you baffled. There's lots of commentary out there that suggests Google is taking the evil away from Microsoft, and the latest bit of news seems to support that. Apparently Google is not happy with Microsoft's new browser and the way it features MSN Search:
"The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on the quality of their search services," said Marissa Mayer, the vice president for search products at Google. "We don't think it's right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose."
So now they are lobbying the government, expressing concern about competition in the search business. Are you kidding me? First of all, it's dead easy to change the default search provider in IE7 to Google (or anything else for that matter). Secondly, are they totally forgetting that they made a deal with Firefox to be the default seach provider (and start page too) in that browser? Or that they pay a lot of Mozilla's employees? I mean seriously.
If you're going to complain about something, at least make sure you're not doing the very thing you're complaining about. All too often Microsoft's competitors run to the government. It's kind of sad, really.
UPDATE: As this post explains, MSN Search is not the default search provider after all!
Have you ever used a news aggregator like Google News? My guess is that you have, at least once. While these aggregators drive traffic to newspapers, magazines, and other content websites, they also cause problems with the headlines authors choose for a particular story:
Journalist over the years have assumed they were writing their headlines and articles for two audiences--fickle readers and nitpicking editors. Today, there is a third important arbiter of their work: the software programs that scour the Web, analyzing and ranking online news articles on behalf of Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
"The search engine has to get a straightforward, factual headline, so it can understand it," Nic Newman, head of product development and technology at BBC News Interactive, said.
Seems that these headline aggregators don't like wit or humor. Is that a problem with the current crop of readers? Yes. Is it something that presents an opportunity? Again, yes. All you have to do, news media people, is ask for it:
"Google, oh great one...with your vast resources and large repositories of data, surely you can present to us an algorithm that is able to craft funny headlines, complete with all the inside jokes your spiders can discover...bestow upon us mere mortals such an algorithm, and call it Google Headlines (beta, naturally)...and we shall be forever grateful."
They can't deny a request like that! Or can they?
I just went to Google to search for something (an activity we all do dozens of times each day) and the first thing I noticed was that something had changed. I wasn't immediately sure what it was, so I did another search. I see now what is different.
They changed the interface, and I don't like it. In searches that don't have ads associated with them, for "mastermaq" say, the results page is even more sparse than in the past. The familiar Google graphic for going from page 1 to page 2 and so on is now gone, leaving only text. In searches with ads however, they no longer appear on the side, but in a huge box at the top and another box at the bottom. I am also noticing that the number of results being returned is very small, and the processing time for each search is taking longer than normal (though still really quick).
Anyone know what's going on? Is this an experiment or something? I only took a cursory glance at the feeds I subscribe to, but I haven't been able to find anything yet.
[Just in case this is an experiment that only reaches limited numbers of users, here's a screenshot.]
The conference ended almost six hours ago now, but we just got back from dinner. We went to Moxies with Robert Scoble, Maryam, Rob Greenlee, Eric Rice, Alex Williams, and a bunch of other really cool people. Dinners are always interesting, because things are a little more casual than at the conference, so you get a better chance to chat. Eric told us all about Second Life, so I am going to have to check that out. Robert commented that everyone is playing either World of Warcraft or Second Life!
I think the conference itself went very well. It had the same feel as last year's, which is much less tech oriented and more social-impact oriented. Still lots of great people, with great ideas and some very interesting presentations, which is what makes Northern Voice great. There was a similar mix of males and females as last year, though I get the feeling that there were far more Americans this year.
I wasn't surprised to see so many Apple laptops in the crowd (there usually are at tech events) but I was surprised to see so many people using Microsoft Word for taking notes. That just demonstrates to me that not enough people know about OneNote. And of course, there were still lots of pen and paper people.
I'm not sure I learned anything really new at the conference, but I definitely gathered a good list of things to think about and consider, and that's probably more important anyway. I'm already looking forward to next year's! If you'd like to check out my pictures from the conference, I've created a photoset at Flickr.
Thanks to Darren, Boris, Roland and all the other organizers and volunteers for a great conference!
We're into the last session of the day now, this one on the five ways your blog can change the world. Here are some notes:
- Sounds like we've gone from four presenters down to one due to some family issues that have come up. I didn't catch his name though.
- Yes! He asked what kind of change we want to see in the world, so I stuck up my hand and proclaimed my well-worn mantra, wireless everywhere! Seems as though people agree.
- There are lots of ways you can take part in some effort to change the world, using things like badges (graphics) or common tags.
- Seems if you really want something spread quickly, get it on Boing Boing! That's not the point of the example he is currently sharing, but it is remarkable how that blog can spread information.
- This is kind of funny, he's got one of the other presenters on the cell phone with the device held up to the microphone! This is because she didn't have a microphone to use Skype. Sounds like a telephone interview or something you might see on CNN, kinda neat, and yet pretty low tech!
Lot's of examples of different projects, like that We Are Sorry campaign after Bush was re-elected, etc. I haven't been paying that much attention, so I am sure I missed a few things here and there - be sure to check out some other posts on the aggregation servies. I think the links mentioned will be posted on Northern Voice too.
Here are some notes from the Geek Out session administered by Robert Scoble, Will Pate and Kevin Marks:
- Sounds like they have some topics to discuss at first, followed by some good questions at the end.
- Kevin is talking about microformats, specifically tagging. We're also getting a demo of the Blog Finder and Explore features on Technorati. Microformats can be used for tags, events, names, addresses, etc.
- Kevin just entered "canada" into the Explore feature, and every post on the page was from my blog. Something cool about seeing your blog appear on the big screen in a presentation :)
- Scoble is talking now, about sharing information through del.icio.us and using other Firefox extensions.
- We're going around the room sharing favorite Firefox extensions, some of which include: Session Saver, Fangs, PDF Download, Download Status, Signatures, Fasterfox, Web Developer, Firebug, etc.
- Will Pate is talking now about his blog, and how he uses Drupal for customization. Specifically he is focusing on the aggregation of content capabilities.
- Kevin just showed an awesome animated graph of the long tail of posts in response to a question about the A list and how to break in. Basically if you get a single inbound link, you're above average!
- Scoble reiterates that he's interested in mapping, and thinks that within a year someone will have "put this room up on a map". He's talking about taking the basic mapping capabilities and making them extremely relevant and useful.
- Will wants better tools for "normal" people, things like posting from within Microsoft Word, etc. He also says user interface is very important!
- Scoble is interested in the photo sites like Riya and Bubbleshare.
- Someone asked about Web 2.0 and all of the new products we're seeing, and both Scoble and Will seem to think we won't really see a slowdown of new ideas, even though the big three pick up companies along the way.
- Scoble says the new advertising based business model will allow a lot of new companies to grow. Sounds a lot like the idea behind Live.com if you ask me!
Back from lunch (we went to Quizno's in a nearby mall) and I am in Eric Rice's session titled Everything Casting. Here are some notes:
- "everything"casting: doing whatever you want, for whatever reason, in whatever medium.
- your thing, your product, your "it", your epsilon
- Four primary elements or categories: content/concept/purpose, medium/materials, audience/behavior, sustain/making money.
- Content: personal/intimate, art, informational, performance/rock star. You need to have at least one, sometimes you can do all four!
- Medium: text, audio, video, photos. For all the religious opinions on the medium, it doesn't matter. Some are better than others, depending on the context, sometimes you can mix them together!
- Audience: passive, active passive, participatory, active participatory. You can be in any of these moods, and it depends on where you are, the type of medium available, etc.
- Sustain: zero, fame, barter, cash. It's perfectly okay to not make money, and in fact, it's usually hard to make money from things you love doing - think of sports, or playing video games, etc.
More good discussion! Eric will be posting the audio of this session, as well as the slides. Everything is licensed under Creative Commons, so you're encouraged to use it!
Staying in the same room, where Mike Tippet, Mark Schneider, and Robert Ouimet are talking about the changing face of journalism. This probably going to be similar to what was talked about yesterday during Moosecamp. Here are some notes:
- We are experiencing an existential moment in the news.
- Readers can now make their own news, and they are going online to consume news.
- Michael Tippet essentially gave an overview of NowPublic and the circumstances that allowed it to exist.
- Robert Ouimet is from CBC, and is talking about how news is changing.
- He asked how many people in the room watch the 6 oclock news - very few hands went up!
- Mark Schneider is now sharing his journalistic background. He says the truth of the matter is, the news is really sick. There's a toxic quality about what we are consuming. The news organizations themselves have been tainted.
- Now we're on to discussion. Not many notes on this session - it was very interesting, but much harder to write stuff down. I am getting hungry for lunch too, maybe that has something to do with it!
- Mark says there is something called NewsML (markup language) in the works.
- Robert: focus is important, and is taught to journalism students and employees, but is an exercise in rejecting everything else.
Really great discussion in this session!
I decided to switch rooms to check out Nancy White's session on Snow White and the Seven Competencies of Online Interaction. Some notes:
- I'm also chatting live in the NV Back Channel. You can join if you want! Dickson just commented that he hates IRC...I guess he's run into too many viruses!
- Our world is far more unbounded - we're creating our own reality.
- Nancy is kind of telling a story like Julie, using images on the screen as she goes.
- We have the ability to let this magic happen by changing our organizations.
- Communications Skills - scan, see patterns, write, image-inate, vocalize, intuit; write blog daily, test, draw, record, summarize, listen
- Learning with others - learning as a practice, gift economy, collaborate, open hand...
- Ramlinger - 6 Network Functions: filters, amplifyers, convenors, facilitators, investors, community builders
- Nancy: note, make a competency about tools!
- Facilitation for: relationship, identity/reputation, presence, flow
- Shouting creates quite a different environment online than in meatspace. Learn about improvisation and creatively abrasive!
- Convening Conversations - invite, name the question, initiate, design for local choice, nurture
- Intercultural antennae: broadly defined, heart variations, "default" culture - look, read, live/work/play, bridge!
- Tolerance for Ambiguity - OK with not in control, not knowing, move forward without certainty
- Ability to switch contexts - connectors, networkers, multiple perspectives, outsiderness
- Self-Awareness!
- So what? Undeterred by failure, care for the whole, willing to be vulnerable, value the human system first
- The struggle is the solution. Grieve for the cost of what exists now. Treat the conversation as action. See the reality in the current situation.
- Edith Wharton - There are two ways of spreading the light: To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Dave Sifry and Tim Bray are on stage now, getting ready to do their presentation, apparently with no visuals! Sounds like they will be accepting questions from the crowd as well.
- Kind of a cool interview setup, Dave and Tim sitting on stage.
- How many people are bloggers? Everyone raises their hand. How many people don't have a Technorati ego feed? No one raises their hand!
I'm going to try and capture some of the Q and A here but don't expect exact quotes - I'll be summarizing essentially.
T: Why do we need blogs?
D: [Explains why he started Technorati.] Mailing lists suck! Started looking around to see if there might be a better way and came across a dynamic web publishing system, a blog. I immediately became a stats whore, I wanted to know what people were saying about me! The problem was fundamentally the way search engines are built - in essence built on the model that the web is the world's biggest library. Even today we talk about the web as if it were a library - web pages, documents, indexes, etc. What I wanted was the immediacy of conversation. Traditional search engines don't really understand the concept of time. This doesn't mean that the web as a library metaphor isn't a good one. What I realized was, pages are created by people. Authority does not denote veracity! I built Technorati because I wanted to know who was talking about me.
T: What leaps out at you from your state of the blogosphere series?
D: We don't pretend to say we're tracking every blog that exists, but we're working hard to get all of the public ones. Korea for example, we don't track quite as well. There's about 27.6 million blogs, and that grows by 75,000 every day (about one new weblog per second). How many blog after three months? Just over 50%, about 13.7 million. About 2.8 million post once a week or more, and just under a million post once a day or more. There are about 15 new posts per second. The blogosphere is incredibly many-to-many. People like Instapundit or BoingBoing are starting to look a lot like the mainstream media, where they get a lot of links and just can't respond to every comment, etc. It's the people after these top ones that are much more interesting; their traffic is still manageable enough to carry on a conversation, yet they are still authoritative. The idea behind Technorati's Blog Finder feature is to try and help these people get discovered.
Audience Member: How can we deal with the fact that the world of tagging is messy and there's multiple languages, etc?
D: When you setup the system so that it's easy to do, an emergent system starts to occur. As long as tagging is easy, emergent thinking will occur.
T: I think we can agree that's the only hope too, no one can create a big dictionary.
T: Blogging is changing so much, what can go wrong?
D: Wow! The growth cannot continue forever, because there's only so many humans in the world! We're still very much at the beginning though, and there are some enormous challenges like spam, splogs, spings, etc. As Cory Doctorow said, all healthy ecosystems have parasites! Net neutrality, is one of the most dangerous threats to the net. This is the idea where telecom providers try to do preferrential pricing.
Audience Member: How many spam blogs are being created by robots?
D: About July of 2004 is when they really started to appear, and there's two kinds; the ones that do SEO type blogs, and those that are scraping content to try and make money. The way to solve this is to get down to the economics of why people do this. And it has to be an ecosystem approach, different companies have to work together.
T: I think it is hitting the long tail less hard than the head of the tail.
T: [Asked something about RSS and advertising I think.]
D: Your RSS aggregator is not "push"...it goes off at some regular interval to pull down information. And they all understand when something is "read" differently.
Audience Member: What about federated networks?
D: It's a shift in the economics of publishing. We're starting to see, in effect, a guild system. It comes down to, can you write with quality and can you work effectively with advertisers to make money?
Scoble made a comment about advertising at this point.
D: I think advertising sucks, but imagine you could see ads you actually want to?
Okay I am back to just some notes:
- Google Bowling - people will create spam sites that point to competitors so that they get kicked out of the index.
- Tim says he observed bored children in the audience, and reminds everyone of the kids room.
One interesting item floating around the blogosphere today is that Yahoo has decided to give up in the search industry, essentially conceding defeat to Google. Yes, you read that correctly - sickening isn't it?
"We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google," Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share."
I think it's incredibly sad and disappointing that they have made such a decision. And I really have to disagree with Henry Blodget:
Yahoo! has finally read the writing on the wall that everyone else (except Microsoft) has been reading for three years: The search game is over and Google has won.
If there is anything Google has taught us, it's that search is important! While Yahoo and Excite and everyone was ignoring search, Google improved it, and look where they are now (definitely read John Battelle's book The Search, it covers this in great detail). Search is not even close to perfect - there is so much left to be done! I think it's a mistake to give up, and I don't think there's any "writing on the wall" either.
Thank goodness we have Microsoft! Instead of giving up, they've decided to pour oodles of money into search to try and improve the experience far beyond Google. Of course we won't know how successful they are for a while, but that's not the point. The point is that they did not give up, they continue to try and innovate, and in the end, it will result in better search for all of us (as Google is forced to further innovate as well).
Yahoo was looking really good lately, with their string of strategic "Web 2.0" acquisitions, then they go and make a statement like this. I'm kind of baffled, really. Certainly Yahoo's business is not entirely search, but if they don't think that search is and will continue to be a big part of their business, even indirectly, then I think they're making a big mistake.
As John Battelle and others have noted, Google News is now officially out of beta. I guess it's not the most important news item of the day, but it's not often you see a product that has no way to make money and has been in "beta testing" for over four years "go gold". From the creator of Google News, Krishna Bharat:
Google News has matured a great deal, and we're proud to see it graduate from its beta status. Much remains to be done, and as always, we have many exciting ideas that we intend to take forward. Meanwhile, as the saying goes, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. Or just keep reading Google News.
As Larry noted, there doesn't seem to be much new with the service, aside from integrating search history. Has anyone starting betting on which product will move out of beta next? If not, we should! I'd put my money on Froogle.
The infamous Henry Blodget took up blogging last year, and regardless of your opinions about him or your memories of the dotcom bubble and subsequent bust, he has some interesting thoughts. His latest focus on Google, which has been enjoying quite a steady ride north on the stock market lately. Here's what Mr. Blodget has to say:
No one else is writing this piece, so it will have to be me. I should say upfront that I'm not predicting that this will happen (yet), and I'm certainly not making a recommendation. I'm just laying out a scenario that could kick Google in the kneecaps and take its stock back to, say, $100 a share.
Google's major weakness is that it is almost entirely dependent on one, high-margin revenue stream. The company has dozens of cool products, but with the exception of AdWords, none of them generate meaningful revenue. From an intermediate-term financial perspective, therefore, they are irrelevant.
So, the question is, what could happen to AdWords, and what will happen to the company (and stock) if it does?
It's a very interesting read, definitely worth it. One of the bigger problems he mentions is click fraud, but Google's rapidly growing fixed costs are also a big factor. And he nails the biggest problem of all - they need some other revenue generating products! You can't run a sustainable business when you only release beta products (I recently posted about betas on the Paramagnus Blog).
I know it's silly to compare Google with Microsoft and Yahoo and any other company, but if Google "loses", it will be because the other companies all have numerous revenue streams.
Every once in a while a rumor comes along that is so outlandish, so crazy, so never-gonna-happen, that it makes you really hope it does happen! The latest such rumor is that Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo, a rumor that has sent investors into a craze:
Analysts said reasons for the heightened interest in Yahoo call options ranged from recent rumors that software company Microsoft Corp. might be seeking to partner or merge with the Internet company, to bullish expectations for the company's upcoming fourth quarter earnings report.
"The speculative activity in short-term calls might reflect the recent talk about an alliance with Microsoft," Ruffy said.
Such rumors have been rampant since Google Inc. recently fortified its lead in the Web search market by taking a 5 percent stake in Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit.
On Sunday the Los Angeles Times cited what it called speculation that Yahoo had rebuffed an $80 billion bid from Microsoft as too low.
Did you see that? Eighty billion dollars! I can't quite wrap my head around that amount! According to Microsoft Watch, the software giant currently has about $40 billion in cash.
There's too much to consider if such a merger were to take place that I won't even bother unless it actually happens.
Google launched a new music search service today, very cleverly called Google Music. From the Google Blog:
A few of us decided to try to make the information you get for these searches even better, so we created a music search feature. Now you can search for a popular artist name, like the Beatles or the Pixies, and often Google will show some information about that artist, like cover art, reviews, and links to stores where you can download the track or buy a CD via a link at the top of your web search results page.
I just gave it a quick try, and I rather like it! I have long wanted to find a service like IMDB but for music, and I have never come across it. Google Music is most definitely not that service, but it is a step in the right direction. Usually I end up trying to find track listings for albums, and unfortunately Amazon doesn't always have the track listing. I'll have to play with Google Music a little more to see if it is any more reliable.
I really like that Google Music will show lyrics for a song, other versions of the song, and the authors too (whoever wrote the song). You can also buy songs directly, currently there are links to iTunes and Real Rhapsody. Would be cool to have a "similar artists" feature or even just "similar albums" so you could discover new music using the search too.
Wikipedia is without a doubt one of my favorite websites. Even though I have only ever made one or two contributions to Wikipedia, I find the site invaluable for research. The vast amount of information immediately available is hard to overlook for research of any sort (there are 848,598 English language articles as of this post). If you have a question about something, you can probably find the answer at Wikipedia.
Called "the self-organizing, self-repairing, hyperaddictive library of the future" by Wired Magazine in March of 2005, Wikipedia has enjoyed much success. The Wired article is just one of many mainstream media articles praising the site, and there are many thousands if not millions of bloggers and others who use and recommend Wikipedia each and every day. The New York Times offers some numbers describing Wikipedia's success:
The whole nonprofit enterprise began in January 2001, the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, 39, a former futures and options trader who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla. He said he had hoped to advance the promise of the Internet as a place for sharing information.
It has, by most measures, been a spectacular success. Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales said that traffic doubles every four months.
Lately though, despite all of the success and impressive usage numbers, cracks have started to appear. Two questions, both of which have been asked before, have once again been brought into the spotlight - just how reliable is the information found on Wikipedia, and where is the accountability?
Consider what happened to John Seigenthaler Sr.:
ACCORDING to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, John Seigenthaler Sr. is 78 years old and the former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. But is that information, or anything else in Mr. Seigenthaler's biography, true?
The question arises because Mr. Seigenthaler recently read about himself on Wikipedia and was shocked to learn that he "was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby."
If any assassination was going on, Mr. Seigenthaler (who is 78 and did edit The Tennessean) wrote last week in an op-ed article in USA Today, it was of his character.
Whoever added that false information to the article did so anonymously, so beyond publicly stating the truth, Mr. Seigenthaler really had no recourse. So there's the issue of false information, and how to stop people from entering it. Wikipedia works on the premise that mistakes are caught by later contributors, and regular users who monitor changes. Clearly, that doesn't always work.
If reliability and accountability weren't enough, how about ethics? Should you edit the entry for something you were involved in? The question was raised earlier this week when Adam Curry attempted to make some changes to the entry for Podcasting. Dave Winer explains:
Now after reading about the Seigenthaler affair, and revelations about Adam Curry's rewriting of the podcasting history -- the bigger problem is that Wikipedia is so often considered authoritative. That must stop now, surely. Every fact in there must be considered partisan, written by someone with a confict of interest. Further, we need to determine what authority means in the age of Internet scholarship. And we need to take a step back and ask if we really want the participants in history to write and rewrite the history. Isn't there a place in this century for historians, non-participants who observe and report on the events?
Dave makes some very good points. Upon first reading his entry, I though the question of historians and third-party observers was very obvious and a simple way to resolve these kinds of issues. The more I thought about it though, the less sure I felt. Requiring historians and non-participants to write the entries simply because that's the way we've always done it may not be the best way to move forward. Thanks to Wikipedia and the web in general, we have the ability to turn the conventional wisdom "the winners write the history books" completely upside down. By editing websites like Wikipedia as events are taking place (such as the creation of podcasting) do we not have a better chance of capturing a more realistic view of history? If all sides of an issue can enter their views, do we not have a more accurate and complete entry? Of course, we unfortunately need to deal with flame wars in many of these cases, but maybe that will change as the process matures.
The issues I mentioned above are currently getting a lot of attention, and are pretty natural in the evolution of a system like Wikipedia. I don't think anyone should be surprised that questions of reliability, accountability and ethics are being asked. And if you really stop and think, you'll probably realize that the solution to all of these problems has been around for a very long time. As with all websites on the Internet, it is up to the reader to use his or her best judgement in evaluating the accuracy and relevancy of the informaton on a web page. Searching the information available at Wikipedia should be no different than searching the information available in Google - reader/searcher/user beware.
I have received quite a bit of feedback on my last post on social bookmarking. That tells me a couple things - first, that this blogging thing really works, and second that people are into
social bookmarking. If people didn't care, my post would have gone
unnoticed. That bodes well for the future of social bookmarking!
One of the responses I received was from Djoeke van de Klomp, who is the User Community Manager for Blinklist, another social bookmarking site that I admit I have not tried. She passed along a link to The Great Social Bookmarking Survey,
which I of course filled out. You can fill it out too and in return
you'll get a copy of the results (if you submit your email address).
Here's what I had to say in response to the main question of the survey:
One of the features that I think would take social bookmarking to the
next level is greater awareness of content types (and context). Am I
bookmarking a web page? A flash presentation? An mp3 file? A video? An
image? I don't think the interface, the metadata, and the other
supporting features are truly consistent for each of these content
types. The interface and metadata for an image should be different than
for a web page. Maybe this is like a mashup of Flickr and a social
bookmarking service, who knows! The way these services behave now
though isn't THAT much different from the bookmarks we have in
browsers, except that they are available online. There needs to be
something more to take it to the next level. The value proposition has
to be more than just, "share your bookmarks online"!
Yes there are other things like tags, and services like Shadows
add discussions into the mix and while those features are great, I
don't think they are enough to make the average user jump into social
bookmarking. They see it as more work! And it's a tricky balancing act,
make no mistake about it.
How do we add enough interesting features that savvy users can run with
it and make it their own, while continuing to make it simple enough for
the average user to understand and use?
Tricky indeed. Another thing I'd like to see is an API that all
social bookmarking sites agree upon so that we can integrate them into
browsers and other applications! Or does this already exist? As far as
I know, Flock is the only project working towards integrating social bookmarking into the browser.
If you're interested in taking a look at the various social bookmarking services, there is a pretty big list at Wikipedia. And roxomatic has a PDF which compares 19 different services (last updated on August 11th, 2005).
Lots of stuff out there on Google again lately, as is usual now I guess. John introduced us this morning to Google Base, and the Google Print debate has been roaring for weeks now. My favorite comments on the subject come from Dare Obasanjo though:
By any measure, Google is multi-billion dollar, multinational corporation. However whenever its executives speak, they do an excellent job of portraying the company as if it is the altruistic side project of a bunch of geeky college kids. I don't just mean their corporate slogan of "Do No Evil" although it is one manifestation of this strategy.
More and more the opinion pieces compare Google to the Microsoft of old - the company that everyone in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) loves to hate.
Did you know that Google is now seven years old? Yep, their birthday was yesterday I believe, and the front page is still sporting the birthday logo. Here's what the official Google blog has to say:
Google opened its doors in September 1998, and we’ve been pursuing one mission ever since: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. For our seventh birthday, we are giving you a newly expanded web search index that is 1,000 times the size of our original index.
Google also no longer displays the number of documents in their index on the front page. John Battelle explains:
I asked Marissa [Mayer at Google] that since Yahoo claims 20+ billion documents, and Google claims to be three times larger, might not folks simply presume that Google has 60 billion documents in its index? The answer goes to the heart of the index debate in the first place: Google does not count the way Yahoo seems to, so the comparison is apples to oranges. Google is counting one way, Yahoo another. So the numbers don't add up.
...Google is forcing the debate back to relevance, where, honestly, it really belongs.
Well said. We need more relevant search results! Who cares if there are 22 million matching documents. What matters is showing me the ten or twenty most relevant right away.