In his keynote on April 15, 2008, Stephen Arnold revealed three key developments that pose opportunities and challenges for publishers hoping to generate money from their information. He identified the new enterprise publishing system initiatives mounted by IBM and Hewlett Packard. Next he commented on the increasingly robust Microsoft SharePoint server and the new Silverlight technology. Users of EPS or the Microsoft technologies can become publishers without the baggage of traditional work processes and costs. He concluded with a screen shot from an open source Google document showing the Google search result as a dossier or report. Predictably, the audience had few questions and no push back on Mr. Arnold’s assertions that traditional publishers must adapt or face increasing economic pressure. His talk began with a question, “Would Julius Caesar use Twitter to accomplish his goals, or would he ignore the innovation and pretend that it could not revolutionize real time information?” You can read the redacted transcript of his keynote here. No permission for reuse is required for academic or library use. Any other use? Write him at seaky2000 [at] yahoo.com.
Stephen E. Arnold’s newest search and content processing study is now available for purchase. The study – Beyond Search: What to Do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn’t Work – is available from The Gilbane Group. He says, "Key word retrieval is no longer enough for today’s increasingly savvy and demanding users. Few people want to guess what magic sequence of key words unlocks the information in an enterprise search system. Users want to go "beyond search" with the system providing suggestions, delivering answers, and providing actionable information. Laundry lists just aren’t what users want today." Click to see a table of contents...
The 270-page study represents more than one year of research into the field of enterprise search, a term that Beyond Search says is misleading, out-of-date, and a cause of the on-going confusion about information access. He says, "Who wants a system that could expose confidential employee health data or salary information? No one. There’s no such thing as enterprise search because there’s no one-size-fits-all system.
The trigger for the study was a research project Mr. Arnold conducted in 2007. That work provided solid evidence that two-thirds of the users of an enterprise search system are dissatisfied with its ease of use and its ability to find what the user needs. He says, "Vendors don’t talk about what percentage of their search systems are not in the hands of unhappy licensees. My research shows that user dissatisfaction is increasing, and that’s the reason some vendors run into financial and legal problems."
Mr. Arnold’s previous studies – The Google Legacy (2005) and Google Version 2.0 (2007) provided a foundation for Beyond Search’s most remarkable revelation about Google. Shifting from the standard Google Search Appliance and Google Apps coverage, Beyond Search reveals new information about Google’s dataspace initiatives. This technology – if commercialized by Google – has the potential to transform search and retrieval, adding greater potency to the "beyond search" idea. In 2006, Google bought Transformic, Inc. With this technology, Google could trigger a major upheaval in information access, metadata manipulation, and the way in which queries themselves are framed. This new approach allows a user to see results ranked by certainty and lineage. In effect, Beyond Search argues, "The dataspace technology allows a user to see information in new ways." Continue reading...
On Thursday, March 6, 2008, a program change at the AIIM conference created an opportunity for Stephen Arnold to provide an audience of attendees interested in eDiscovery and legal document management to hear about one of my techniques Mr. Arnold described his use of ISYS Search Software for specific text analysis tasks. Mr. Arnold uses this technique when analyzing patent applications, patent, and technical document analysis. You can download selected slides from the PowerPoint deck that illustrated this talk.
At the AIIM conference in Boston, on March 4, Stephen E. Arnold gave a brief talk about Google’s enterprise inititatives. Instead of recycling the Google Apps - Google Search Appliance information, he took a new tact. You can download the PowerPoint deck (PDF format, 2.4 MB) for this talk and see two little-known enterprise opportunties.
Arnoldit.com will host interviews with well-known experts in search and retrieval, content processing, and knowledge management. Interviews with Blossom Software’s founder Dr. Alan Feuer and with Exalead’s François Bourdoncle are now available. When a new search interview becomes available, the announcement will appear in Stephen Arnold’s Web log, Beyond Search. The next interview will be with Ian Davies, the developer of the ISYS Search Software.
The first of a series of columns about knowledge management, content processing, and information retrieval appeared in the February 2008, KMWorld. The topic of the first essay is Google’s tentative probe into publishing. Other topics include Google’s glue strategy and the difficulty of determining which enterprise search – what I call behind-the-firewall search – system is the best. Google’s Search Appliance is often criticized for being too little, too late. I don’t agree, and you can read more about this misperception of what Google has developed. If anything, the GSA is one cog in a far larger, more robust enterprise machine. I will post a snippet from each essay on my Weblog Beyond Search. To see the full text of my columns, please navigate to the KMWorld Web site. When the series finishes its run, I may post sections or early drafts of each column in the archive section of ArnoldIT.com. I did this with my Information World Review columns which I stopped writing several years ago. Unlike Technology from Harrod’s Creek (the title of the IWR series), I will be focusing on Google’s effect on the knowledge management market sector. Most people don’t see Google as much more than a Web indexing and advertising company. That’s a very narrow perception, and I want to expand my readers’ understanding of Google an a knowledge management platform. KMWorld is published by Information Today, Inc. I will be doing the endnote at the Enterprise Search Conference held in New York by Information Today. I’m also doing a keynote at the company’s Buying and Selling eContent conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, in April. Information about these events is here.
Stephen E. Arnold has posted the PDFs of the Google patents referenced in Google Version 2.0, published by Infonortics, Ltd. in September 2007. Readers of the study are now able to navigate to ArnoldIT and access selected Google patents without having to run searches on commercial services or the USPTO’s Web site. The patents and patent applications themselves are not searchable, but any one can browse these remarkable milestones in Google’s research and development investments.
Information Today ran Paula Hane’s interview with Stephen E. Arnold in its January 2008 issue. Ms. Hane did a very good job of capturing my ideas about Google. Her write up also provides some information about how a reader can buy a copy of “Google Version 2.0”, my most recent study of Google. If you like reading about patent applications and patents, you will find “Google Version 2.0” a scintillating experience. If you prefer The Simpsons, I think my new study will fail to meet your expectations. The Information Today Web site is a deep, wide resource; for this article, go here: Google 2.0 as ‘Calculating Predator’.
If you have difficulty locating the article, here is a 700 KB PDF copy: Google 2.0 as ‘Calculating Predator’ (PDF).
Note that you will need the hard copy to see the examples of Google’s enhanced functionality.
A health care related Google service is coming sometime early this year, but we have no hard information about timing. Here’s a tip: if you do a query in a Google service and get a disproportionate number of hits for a particular concept (try Google Images for “stress fractures”), you may be seeing the Googlers working hard to build out a particular content domain.
Excerpts from Martin White at The Intranet Focus Blog:
For me there is no doubt that the only person who gets close to being able to understand Google and to suggest the way in which the company will develop is Steve Arnold...
Google - the calculating predator is not one of the many conventional accounts of the birth and rapid growth of Google that you might find on the shelves of Borders. Instead Steve Arnold looks in great detail at some of the fundamental technical innovations that Google uses to maintain its position in the search industry... The list is so long that trying to summarise it is not sensible in a blog posting, but you will find detailed contents on the book’s web site. By the time you have finished reading it I am sure you will be astounded by the vision, scale and focus of the R&D effort at Google, and also by the level of insight that Steve Arnold provides.
I can recommend Steve’s book without reservation to anyone with an interest in how Google not only works but thinks. Read more...
Stephen Arnold addressed the attendees of the International Chemical Information Conference in Stiges, Spain, on October 22, 2007. The talk asserted that traditional data and text mining companies may find themselves under increased pressure. Google’s interest in dataspaces, its collection of US patents, and its burgeoning analytics and visualization capabilities may point to Google’s disruption of yet another market. Click here to read the full text of his remarks (PDF format, 800 MB).
Thomas Edison, Bell Labs, and Xerox, move over and make way for Google as America’s premier R&D company.
“Google is an applied engineering company, maybe the most skilled applied engineering company since Thomas Edison cranked out inventions more than a century ago,” says Stephen E. Arnold, president of Arnold Information Technology, in his recently issued Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator, a patent-centric study of the company. Adds Arnold, “Google’s database inventions by themselves make it clear that Google’s research unit has superseded Bell Labs and Xerox PARC as the place for technical innovation in the U.S., if not the world.”
Arnold, whose earlier book The Google Legacy changed how many investors and technology experts view the Mountain View, Calif., company, bases his assertion on a detailed review of patents and patent applications filed by Google employees since mid 2005. The new study’s index lists 90 patents and applications of the more than 200 that Arnold has identified and analyzed.
Continue reading: (1) HTML version, or (2) in original .doc format
British-based Infonortics has released its next in-depth study, investigating the topic of Google’s business growth and its patents. The new study, entitled, Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator, examines many of the principal patents held by Google and explains its steps to influence key industries, telecommunications, ecommerce, publishing and back-office applications. The comprehensive analysis is now available via www.infonortics.com on a fee basis to interested corporations and organizations. Continue reading full release.
Stephen E. Arnold, world-renowned online systems expert, revealed that Google’s technology assets are undervalued. In a conference call to analysts on September 20, 2007, he said, “Google poised to make ‘big plays’ that could help the company reach $100 billion in revenue. Most companies neither understand Google’s capabilities nor grasp the significance of the nine-year-old company’s technology.”
Full release available at PRWeb
Stephen E. Arnold comments on the challenges unusual company names such as Sumerset Houseboats pose to Web indexing services. Some basic tips are provided if your company has this type of issue.
Siderean caught ArnoldIT.com’s attention with its discovery interface for Oracle Corporation: otnsemanticweb.oracle.com
We prepared this description and analysis of the Siderean semantic technology. The key difference between Siderean’s approach and that of such companies as Autonomy, Endeca and Fast Search & Transfer is the speed with which the system can be deployed, tuned, and made operational. At this time, Siderean is one of the semantic engines that can be deployed in days, not weeks or months. Click here for the analysis. (PDF 350 KB)
Stephen E. Arnold prepared this white paper analyzing SAS’s enterprise text mining system. It is in PDF format, and the 3.8 MB report may be downloaded from our site by following this link.
Following the NYC iBreakfast, Red Herring’s Ken Schachter interviews Stephen E. Arnold about Google’s “double lucky” patent application and what it means for Google’s telephone plans, including speculation on a Google phone: Google to Go. (Archived copy in PDF format.)
Stephen E. Arnold address the New York City iBreakfast on July 26, 2007. In his talk, he urges organizations to figure out how to “surf on Google,” not fight the company in markets Google is determined to dominate. (See News Release, also noted in this I-Newswire release.)
Stephen E. Arnold was interviewed by MSN Money regarding the upcoming conflict between Google and eBay. (Archive available as PDF)
Stephen E. Arnold comments on the high stakes involved between the traditional telephone platforms and Google’s modern platform – the Googleplex – in this article by InformationWeek’s W. David Gardner: Google, Skype Could Benefit If FCC Backs “Openness” For 700 MHz Auction. (Archived copy in PDF format.)
Project Gutenberg has a new search engine and you can read about it here. Tesuji joins Mondosoft, Copper Eye, and SAP in the search sweepstakes.
Stephen Arnold tells CNET’s Elinor Mills how Google Gears and the company’s other innovations affect Microsoft: “Gears ratchets the collar Google has around Microsoft’s throat.”
The Gilbane Group’s Lynda Moulton states that Stephen Arnold “struck twice in a big way last week” and wonders if it will finally make IT people pay close attention to how they manage searchable enterprise content.
[ Hat tip: Gilbane Group Blog ]
Stephen Arnold delivered the endnote at the Enterprise Search Summit in New York City on May 16, 2007. His remarks were rebutted by Robert Peck (Bear Stearns) and Sue Feldman (IDC). A copy of his original manuscript has been made available.
Louisville, KY (PRWEB) May 14, 2007 – Noted search expert Stephen E. Arnold will address Google’s broad enterprise push and its potential future role, disclosed in two separate Google patent applications at the NYC Enterprise Search Summit this week. The Google Appliance is sending shock waves through the enterprise search market, and Google’s “search appliance” is poised to impact the traditional enterprise software market in a surprising way. Arnold is giving the endnote speech at the NYC Enterprise Search Summit to be held on May 15-16, Hilton New York.
Google’s search appliance remains the centerpiece of Google’s entry point into the enterprise. It allows an organization to use Google’s search technology to index and find intranet documents.
“On the surface, this is a straightforward product. But, Google’s patent applications reveal a significantly broader strategy,” says Stephen E. Arnold, author of The Google Legacy and the forthcoming Google Version 2.0: The Subtle Predator, available this summer from Infonortics Ltd.
The full press release is continued at the Press Release Newswire web site, in an HTML version as well as in PDF format.
Elinor Mills, in her article at CNET, writes about Stephen E. Arnold’s analysis of Google patents and what they tell him about Google’s big plans for corporate services, particularly regarding their Google Search Appliance product.
Stephen E. Arnold voices his complaints about the progress of search tools over the decades in this Government Computer News article by Joab Jackson: Search and enjoy
Stephen E. Arnold offers his thoughts on one particular Google patent — a voice interface for a search engine — in this article by InformationWeek’s W. David Gardner: Google Tips Its Hand On Voice Search With Speech Interface Patent (Hat tip: John Battelle’s Searchblog)
Stephen E. Arnold offers his thoughts on Google’s opportunities in the federal government space in a Washington Post article from 28 February 2007: Google Searches for Government Work.
(Louisville, KY.)–Feb. 5, 2007–Stephen Arnold, noted enterprise search and Google expert, will speak in Estonia at the 4th Annual Information Policy Forum on Feb. 15th in the conference centre of the National Library of Estonia in Tallinn.
He will be the principal keynote speaker, addressing the changing landscape of enterprise search arena with the topic, “Rethinking Relevance: Tactics to Fix Search and Retrieval.” Arnold believes that, “The search systems for 2007 will look more like Yahoo’s crowded and colorful interface rather than Google’s lean and spare look. Vendors are turning to narrow domains of content, which makes it difficult for the user to generate a search with no results. We have therefore entered a period where search is managed and controlled.”
Arnold’s groundbreaking book, The Google Legacy, nailed the situation in which Microsoft finds itself, and this view is repeated in the Mercury News article:
“Google is the next Microsoft because Microsoft is the next IBM,” said Stephen Arnold, a technology consultant and author of The Google Legacy. “Just as Microsoft superseded IBM, Google is superseding Microsoft. ”
The January 2007 issue of Government Computer News ran an interview with Stephen E. Arnold on the topic of enterprise search. The original article can be read online: The Search Continues.
Also available is a PDF version of the interview.
Steve Arnold’s analysis of Amazon’s and Yahoo’s cost challenges distributed via Google Alerts. View the article here
This is a downloadable version of the cover story in Online Magazine, November 2006. (4 MB, PDF format) The key point is that a company with cost advantages in core online functions has a competitive advantages. This argument will be applied to Google in my forthcoming monograph about Google. It’s scheduled for release in early 2007 by Infornortics Ltd.
ArnoldIT.com is delighted to report that Good Doggie Gifts is now online. We provided early coaching to this very useful Web site for dog lovers. Check it out. www.gooddoggiegifts.com.
Arnold IT’s list of Google-related patents has been updated with a patent from earlier in August, US 7,089,237 : Interface and system for providing persistent contextual relevance for commerce activities in a networked environment.
In November 2006, Stephen Arnold’s discussion of online costs will be a feature in Online Magazine, published by Information Today, Inc. Now available is a brief essay about online costs that touches on one of the key themes in the full-length article. Mr. Arnold’s new study of Google expands on Google’s cost advantage.
This essay, the Online Magazine article, and the chapter in Mr. Arnold’s new Google monograph provides insight in how Google’s business advantage stems from its technical foundation.
On May 24, 2006, Stephen Arnold delivered the “endnote” talk to the Enterprise Search Conference.
The program, sponsored by Information Today, focused on systems, procedures, and technologies for enterprise search in organizations.
A copy of the presentation is located here: Enterprise Search Trends.
The Google patent collection is now available online at the following link.
(Louisville Kentucky USA April 25, 2006) – The winner of the First Evvie Award was given to one of the world’s leading experts in search and retrieval, Dr. Stavros Macrackis for his “automatically generated summaries of Web content.” The Evvie Award, created by Stephen E. Arnold to honor the memory of Ev Brenner, a leading figure in the information retrieval industry, was presented at the 11th Annual Search Engine Meeting on April 25, 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts (USA).
The selection committee included Sue Feldman, IDC; Dr. David Evans,Clairvoyant; Dr. Elizabeth Liddy, Syracuse University, Harry Collier, Infonortics Ltd., and Mr. Arnold.Dr. Macrakis received a cash prize and a sterling silver julep cup engraved “Evvie 2006”.
The Evvie Award is to be given each year at this key industry event, which features technical presentations from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and search experts from other organizations and university information retrieval research laboratories worldwide. Everett Brenner Port Washington, New York, was a pioneer in indexing, search and retrieval and considered a leader in the industry. He was the former director of online services at the American Petroleum Institute and was one of the founding fathers of modern search and retrieval. Brenner was 80 years old and recently died on January 26, 2006. He innovated for decades and set high standards for those in the information retrieval sector.
Mr. Arnold said, “Ev was truly the guiding force for all of us in the industry. His visionary achievements led the information age into becoming the power it has turned out to be.”
Further information on Mr. Brenner can be found at: http://www.infonortics.com/ev_brenner.html.OneBox is a game changer because it makes search the enterprise application interface. With OneBox, Google has forged ahead of everyone else spinning search as the next killer enterprise application. Microsoft can respond and will have to answer this challenge. A fast start would be for Microsoft to acquire Vivisimo, a Carnegie-Mellon spin out that also federates and performs other useful search tricks.
For now, Google can argue that it has an appliance solution that saves both time and money, is easy to deploy, removes bottlenecks preventing many employees from accessing enterprise information without having to wait for an engineer to code a report, and providing an intuitive way to ferret out information on an Exchange server, the Internet, and other content repositories.
OneBox accomplishes this by changing the way in which enterprise applications from Cognos and SAS, for example, are accessed.
Like PageRank, OneBox is a game changer, not a collection of random features.
OneBox is a junction box for enterprise content. If someone wants an agile corporation, OneBox is a different and innovative approach. This approach will sell, if Google can explain adequately what it does. Google, once again, may be leading the market and the potential buyers. For more information, see Byte and Switch and Google itself.
A version of this story was originally written for the Gerson Lehrman Group’s private client newsfeed.
On January 19, OSS, Inc., headed by Robert David Steele, the “father of the open source intelligence movement” and consultant to numerous U.S. government entitites and allies, awarded Stephen E. Arnold the OSS Platinum Lifetime Award for open source intelligence.
In the presentation ceremony Mr. Steele said, “Mr. Arnold is recognized for his constant demonstration of the utility of Open Source Intelligence in the understanding of social networks, emerging technologies, and cultural realities. As a world-renowned authority on information and communications, with a deep understanding of the public policy value of open source information, he has made himself available around the world and has had much more influence than most realize. His publication of the study, The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search Is Transfoming Application Software, is a mere milestone in one of the most distinguished information careers in the world.”
OSS, Inc. is one of the leading organization promulgating the open source intelligence revolution as a “bottom up” revolution, and an international revolution. It turns out — no one could have predicted this — that it was also the first necessary step in bringing the seven tribes of intelligence (national, military, business, law enforcement, academia, media, and religious) “in from the cold” to talk openly with one another about the need for dramatic changes in sources, methods, and the culture of intelligence. From this, aided by the Internet technical revolution has emerged “the new craft of intelligence.” The recipients of the OSS Platinum Award are individuals and organizations are the heroes, and to them go the honors. Previous recipients include Vint Cerf; Sir Steve Edward (United Kingdom’s High Technology Crime Unit); MajGen Patrick Cammaert, Royal Marines, The Netherlands; William Shawcross, Author, United Kingdom; Dr. Mark Maybury, MITRE; Col James “Snake” Clark, USAF; Alvin & Heidi Toffler, Authors; and Dr. Joseph Markowitz, Defense Science Board, among others.
Additional information and a complete list of the previous award recipients is located on OSS’s web site.
In response to requests from purchasers of The Google Legacy, a CD-ROM containing patents believed to be assigned to Google is now available.
The CD-ROM contains a series of links to each of the more than 120 PDF documents. In addition to the patents, the CD-ROM contains an index to each patent. The index provides the patent number, the title of the patent, and the first sentence from each patent’s abstract.
Please visit the Google Patent Collection page for ordering information, to view the patent list on-line and other details.