Dead Tree Publishers, Dead
January 29, 2009
PaidContent.org ran David Kaplan’s “General Print Mags Are Dead” here. I had to shorten the article title because it was tough for me to figure out the “@”, the “Wolff”, and the “Best Advice”. On re reading the article, an information trade association called SIIA (the 2009 version of the Information Industry Association) sponsored a panel. On that panel various wizards, mavens, and pundits discussed print magazines. One speaker–Michael Wolff, an author–alleged said, “General print is dead.” Tough for me to disagree with that statement. You can read observations made by other traditional media flag carriers. What surprised me is that it has taken until January 2009 to figure this out. I don’t agree with the notion that magazine publishers should stop “letting Google win.” Exactly what is a magazine publisher going to do. When you fire staff writers and squeeze what one pays stringers (which happened to me today), what are these companies going to do about Google? Build their own Googleplex. Sue Google some more. Strong arm advertisers to buy a full page ad in magazine with several dozen pages? Pout? Leap frog Google technically? I bailed out of traditional publishing in the early 1990s when Bill Ziff began selling the Ziff Communications’ properties. Google is the new digital Gutenberg and has been for many years. Waking up to today’s economic reality is a useful step forward, just a decade too late. I am willing to wager $1.00 that the Washington Post does not believe that Google is a new medium. What do you think? Check out Google Channels before responding, however.
Stephen Arnold, January 29, 2009
Amazon and A9’s Limitations
January 28, 2009
I don’t think too much about Amazon. It’s A9 search engine remains an okay system, but it has morphed into an ecommerce search system. Search innovation seemed to stop when Udi Manber headed to the GOOG. Amazon took A9 down a very different path that includes stop overs in Clickriver and Open Search (yep, that iVillage and About.com content is exactly what I need). You can even find out about job openings at A9.com, which surprised me. Check out the jobs. One is for someone to tackle relevance. Good idea. Those Yahooligans are available. Some defecting Xooglers are available. Amazon could even tap the Powerset wizards. With companies nuking nerds, it’s a buyer’s market. I use structured information if I know the name of the author or a book. If I want books “about something”, the system is not too helpful in my opinion. In fact, the interface fights with the search box. For example, I wanted to look at Kindle titles which were new releases in a specific category–Greek history. No luck. The interface on the Kindle, as miserable as it is, is more informative than the one on the Amazon Web site. Let’s hope that the Kindle Web page gets some attention when version 2 of the Kindle becomes available. (Fewer weird buttons would help too.)
Amazon blipped my radar today when I read Eric Savitz’ “Amazon: The World’s Most Expensive Internet Stock?” here. The point of the article is that Amazon has a high price earnings ratio. Skipping the MBA double talk, this means that you pay a lot and may not get much back in the way of dividends.
When I scanned Mr. Savitz’s Wall Street story, I seemed to recall seeing references to investments by Bezos Expeditions. What’s interesting is that twice in the few days, I saw references to this investment outfit having taken stakes in search vendors: Mahalo.com and ChaCha.com. If my recollection is correct, this is suggestive that A9 can’t deliver the type of “social” search that seems to be some pundits’ entrant in the Google tug of war.
Forget these alleged investments. Let’s focus on A9:
- When will the system permit winnowing to be released new titles from real new titles on Kindle?
- How can I find bargains without recourse to a third party tool?
- When will the system support concept metadata so I can locate books “about” a topic without the trial and error fiddling I have to do now?
- Why not fix up A9 with some social features?
Maybe A9 is a bit of money pit? If anyone has information about the new features of A9 that I have overlooked, let me know.
Stephen Arnold, January 28, 2009
Google Web Drive Silliness
January 27, 2009
What’s the big deal about the Google Web Drive. A couple of years ago a programmer developed the Gmail drive shell. The unauthorized application converted Gmail to a drive letter. I could drag a file to the GMail Drive shell icon and plonk my file as a message in my Gmail account. Google would break GMail Drive shell. The developer would fix GMail Drive shell. You can still find this unauthorized Google service here. I just got tired of this.
At the time in 2005 or 2006, it was quite clear to me that Google had storage plans. Otherwise, why hassle a person adding a useful function to Gmail? Google’s too busy to fiddle with this level of programming granularity. As you know, regular Gmail runs on top of other, far more sophisticated Google plumbing. Based on my research, the GOOG can deploy a number of nifty functions, applications, and services without much effort. I recall that it released Recommendations within 48 hours of the StumbleUpon.com change in ownership.
Rumors of a Google Web Drive have been appearing in my newsreader and I have ignored them. Old news. In fact, the rumor was not even in the category of “sort of interesting” until I read Scott Gilbertson’s “Why a Google Web Drive Won’t Kill Windows, the PC or Anything Else” here. Like much of the info in Wired’s publications, there’s some good information and some commentary with which I don’t agree. The point of the story is to use the term “GDrive” to refer to the service. Obviously the original GMail Drive shell developer has dropped off the radar at least for Wired. The person behind Viksoe.dk probably would prefer to be on Wired’s radar. But the Wired writers are indeed busy working in the midst of cutbacks and budget machinations.
In my opinion, the argument of the article is that I will have quite a few options for saving data to the cloud. Mr. Gilbertson reminded me that trust is one concern and
The other big issue with online storage is that, for most of us, documents like spreadsheets, word processor files and the other formats that Google Docs understands are not what’s taking up the majority of space on our drives.
My thought is that the significance of a GDrive is that it is one more service that makes life easy for the Google centric. Google doesn’t have to do much work to provide a GDrive. It is timing. I think Google has decided that it is tactically advisable to add another convenience to the Google service. Whether this GDrive becomes part of Google Apps or finds its way into any function is not clear. What is clear is that incremental step by incremental step, Google is put honey in the pot. With Google’s market share and viral marketing expertise, those wanting this convenience will find their way to Google. Once at Google, it’s one more hook to keep the customer in the Google fold. For competitors, Google’s incremental approach to capturing markets is a pain in the backside. Google doesn’t give competitors a big target at which to shoot. Google doesn’t really move very quickly. Google is a pretty savvy outfit.
For me, the big question is when, not if. Then I want to know, “What will the competitors do to keep Google from poaching their customers?” My first reaction is, “Not much.” It takes money and technology to ace the GOOG. Technology may not be the problem. Money may be the “great decider”.
Stephen Arnold, January 27, 2009
Knol: One More Thing
January 26, 2009
The GOOG’s Matt Cutts, writing on his personal Web log, offers up a parental “Four Things You Need to Know about Knol.” Gentle reader, the story is here. I assume the use of “you” by Mr. Cutts meant me. I looked at his points from my goose-like perspective.
I liked the idea that Google doesn’t favor its own products and services. The assertion may be accurate in terms of Knol but if you search for “enterprise search” you get some results that place Google as the seventh hit in the results list this morning. There’s an ad for a Google Webinar. This supports the assertion that Google is not favoring Google services.
Second, he points out that Knol is “doing fine”. This is a bit like Amazon talking about “objects” in its cloud services. The problem is what’s an object and what’s “fine” mean. Knol has about 100,000 articles. I assume that 100,000 is fine. If so, then why is there a Knol for Dummies campaign underway here?
Third, the Knol team is moving. I agree. Subtle changes creep into Knol; for example, the notion of “authoritative” has obviously been tweaked by the Knol team. Mr. Cutts enjoins me to “write a quick article or put some information on the Web.” My question is, “What’s authoritative mean?’
In short, the “four things” are interesting. The one thing that my research Knol is / was supposed to do was provide inputs to the Google knowledge bases. “Some information” does not match up with the disclosures in Google’s public documents–for example, US20070038600–about its knowledge bases.
Knol certainly warrants observation. More on Knol appears in my forthcoming Google study, The Digital Gutenberg.
Stephen Arnold, January 26, 2009
Web Ownership: You Know the Answer
January 25, 2009
I get a kick out of articles with titles like “Will Google and Microsoft Own the Web?” You can read an exemplary version of this question in PCWorld here. The article is a bit different from the question in my opinion. The core of the story is a view expressed by Sun Microsystems’ Jonathan Schwartz that the Web is drifting away from the openness of bygone days. Keep in mind that Sun has fallen from grace in the eyes of Wall Street, and the company has begun hooking Microsoft’s technology into Java. What’s bubbling under the veneer of this article is the dominance of Google. Forget Microsoft, Facebook, and MySpace. (If you want to believe that Facebook is the real Google killer, read this story. I just don’t buy the argument, however.) None of those companies is in a position to become the Internet in North America, big chunks of Europe, and a number of other countries as well. Instead of coming right out and saying, “Google is in a position to become the Internet, we get the tap dancing around the elephant in search. For me the most interesting comment in the write up was:
Schwartz argues that developers should avoid the “hostile territory” altogether. Instead of the browser, he says, developers should build applications using Sun’s new JavaFX technology. But this seems somewhat disingenuous, considering that JavaFX is so far almost entirely the brainchild of Sun, and is therefore less open than any browser. But there are other reasons to be concerned about Google’s stake in Firefox and Chrome, too. Some privacy advocates worry that Google’s influence over the browser market gives it access to too much user data, which the company collects for the purposes of its massively lucrative online advertising business.
Good point. Just about seven or eight years too late based on my research.
Stephen Arnold, January 24, 2009
Microsoft Cedes Data Center Leadership to Google
January 24, 2009
I was surprised that there was not more coverage of Microsoft’s cut backs in its data center plans. Microsoft has been building data centers like the $650 million facility in San Antonia. I had heard about engineering innovations that would make these new data centers economical to build, maintain, and operate. I poked around a few technical papers and concluded that Microsoft was still saddled with the legacy of decisions made as long ago as 1999. I will put links to my writes about Microsoft’s data center writes up at the foot of this news item. Frankly I didn’t buy what I was hearing and reading about these leapfrog data centers but I am keeping an open mind. However, the financial reports from Microsoft have not been what Wall Street wanted to hear. Accordingly, this story “Microsoft Postpones Iowa Data Center” here, in my opinion, cedes leadership in data centers to Google. Microsoft is like a runner who drops out of a 5,000 meter race. The Google wins. If you think I am off base, make sure you check out these previous articles before you tell me that I am even more addled than I admit:
- Architecture in 1999 here
- Architecture in 2006 here
- Microsoft capital expenditures here
- Architecture in early 2008 here
What my research revealed is that in 1998 Google was behind Microsoft. Microsoft hired some AltaVista.com engineers but went a different direction. Google hired some AltaVista.com engineers and choose a different path. I document this in detail in my 2005 The Google Legacy. That decision allowed Google to pull ahead and eventually create the gap that exists today. Now Microsoft is taking a breather allowing Google to widen its lead. Google wins the data center race in my opinion. Microsoft now must win in software.
Stephen Arnold, January 24, 2009
Telegraph: Google Not Screwing the Music Industry
January 21, 2009
Upscale UK newspapers are better with words than the addled geese at Beyond Search. Here’s an example. The headline appeared on January 20, 2009, in my newsreader. The Telegraph.co.uk wrote: “Google Boss Denies Screwing Music Industry and Defends YouTube in Warner Row” here. A long time ago I wrote about Napster, pointing out that the peer to peer mechanism required change in traditional music distribution. I am proud to point out that no one paid any attention to my article in Online Magazine. When I write about something, I expect to be asked “What’s a Napster?” or “Where did you get that? I never heard about that before.” When I saw the news of the dust up between YouTube.com and Warner Music, I heard Yogi Berra (maybe Yogi Bear) say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
Big surprise that Google is a threat to the music industry. Apple’s a threat. Most music industry managers’ kids are a threat to the music industry. Urmee Khan’s story is pretty interesting. Urmee Kahn wrote, allegedly quoting the Google executive, David Eun:
We don’t make money unless our partners make money, so the idea that we would screw a partner on whom we depend is not rational or logical. We’re not screwing the labels, and if anything, we need to partner more closely with them.
I love it when Google uses the words rational and logical. Mathematicians define tidy little worlds. In those worlds, the math just works. Pull the math out of a tidy little world (Newtonian physics) and drop it into the messy world of the nuclear weapons lab and the Newtonian math doesn’t work. Google likes to explain to people that their behavior or their understanding is not logical or rational.
In fact, the music industry is acting in a rational manner in its tidy little frame. Google, however, does not understand that frame and therefore whips reporters into a frenzy when the company’s wizards point out that entire business models are collapsing. Such collapses are logical.
And Google doesn’t understand why the music industry is upset.
The only problem is that it is now too late for the music industry. It’s too late for dead tree publishing companies. It’s too late for most organizations who have failed for the last decade to take the time to understand that Google’s power comes from consumers and advertisers. Oh, I almost forget the children of the publishing, movie, and music industries are helping Google.
Here’s how this works?
Music executive to his 12 year old child (female): What are you doing, Anna?
Anna, the 12 year old child to her father, the music executive: Nothing. Just getting some song links from Kaylee. You know her, dad.
Music executive to his 12 year old child: What music?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive: I’m into The Fray now.
Music executive to his 12 year old child: Are you using iTunes again?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive: No.
Music executive to his 12 year old child: Are you using YouTube then?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive: No.
Music executive to his 12 year old child: Where are you getting the music, Anna?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive: What.cd.
Music executive to his 12 year old child: What?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive. Evident exasperation: What.cd
Music executive to his 12 year old child: Who? What.tv?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive: No, what.cd?
Music executive to his 12 year old child:Â See the what?
Anna, the 12 year old child (female) to her father, the music executive: I really have to do homework now.
Google’s perception is closer to Anna’s in this humorous dialog. The gulf is wide. There are more young people than old music people.
The music industry has to do more than hitch a ride on its legal eagles. Innovation, new business models, and tech savvy are important first steps. Anna is growing up and will probably bring significant changes to her dad’s world, the formerly employed music industry executive.
Stephen Arnold, January 21, 2009
Google: Betting on Demographics
January 21, 2009
A reader groused about my poking fun at the British Library research reports. You can read these Swiftian essays here and here. Libraries are in a tough spot. With the financial crisis expanding, libraries are now the go to place to get warm and look for a job. Most libraries depend on a funding authority for money. As those authorities find themselves short of cash, libraries find themselves fighting for enough dough to keep staff and pay the heating and electricity bills. Book and journal acquisitions are lower on the list. Therefore, libraries have to justify the monetary needs. The British Library and the other national libraries are leading a charge for the relevance and importance of buildings stuffed with people looking for work. Oh, yes, these libraries want to collect dead tree outputs of publishers, pictures so these can be placed on Yahoo’s Flickr service, and electronic information so a user can access these data. The problem with this picture is that the Google has become the global library. National libraries are becoming more like branch offices of Google. Now librarians get annoyed when I point out that:
- Google is indexing books, magazines, Web sites, and Web logs
- Google is indexing government information
- Google is offering a job service that few know anything about but you can read about this in my forthcoming study of Google due in April 2009 from Infonortics (I’m sure an entitlement generation blogger will jump on this item and write about it before my study comes out. Imitation is a form of flattery I suppose, but it is more of a character trait of the trophy children in my opinion)
- Google is gathering videos.
What are libraries doing? Well, I don’t think libraries are in step with what users’ information needs are. I think college professors, mayors, and government officials have their views of libraries. Street people hanging out in the Louisville Free Public Library probably have a different view, however.
I thought of this problem when I read the ZDNet article by Zack Whittaker, “Can We Rely Entirely on Google and Wikipedia?” here. The core of the write up is that Mr. Whittaker doesn’t need the library. He’s of the opinion that Google and Wikipedia provide enough information to write “essays and research”. He does a very good job of comparing what’s available fro free and what’s available from a library. To be fair, he does point out that his university library has some utility. But the online services are able to deliver “more than the full library”. The best combination is Internet access and access to a university library.
Now what’s this mean? Mr. Whittaker looks to be about 22 or 23 years old. But what about the kids who are 11 or 12 years old. I think the individuals in this younger demographic chunk will be more comfortable with iPhone and netbook form factors. Libraries may be a very foreign experience. But libraries have to shift into gear or their budgets will continue to shrink. That solves the problem for the 11 to 12 year old. The library will be like a lounge no fungible information artifacts required. A connection to the network and access are sufficient.
Stephen Arnold, January 21, 2009
More on Search and Multicore Processors
January 20, 2009
I poked around my collection of open source Google papers. I wanted to see if there were more information about bottlenecks in multicore CPUs but from the Google side of the street. As it happens, Mark D. Hill and Michael R. Marty wrote “Amdahl’s Law in the Multicore Era.” You can find a copy of this document from the Google Labs’s papers site or by clicking here. Mr. Hill is a professor at a Big 10 university; Mr. Marty is an engineer at Google. Like many of Google’s technical papers, the authors assume a working knowledge of certain computer processed. The paper makes clear that stuffing lots of cores on a piece of silicon does not translate to faster performance. For example, today’s chips are symmetric. The Googlers suggest asymmetric cores might be more useful. But–and there always is a “but”–the software must be adapted to the needs of the more efficient multicore design. If you use symmetric cores and traditional methods of pushing data around, bottlenecks choke performance. There are other issues identified in the paper as well. I will leave it to you to work through the analsyis and the list of other problems that require more engineering attention. After working through this paper, I had a question: “If Google is thinking about asymmetric multicore processors, will Google edge into the CPU business?”
The company does motherboards, routers, and cooling devices now. Note: Amdahl’s Law means that one fast gizmo won’t deal with bottlenecks created by other gizmos in the system. More information about Amdahl’s Law is here.
Stephen Arnold, January 19, 2009
IBM Lotus Notes: In the Cloud but Can I Find Emails
January 20, 2009
IBM’s Lotus Notes has been splashed across my trusty feedreader today (January 19, 2009). IBM is either kicking its Lotus Notes’s sales activity up a notch or the original Ray Ozzie program is undergoing a rebirth. The search function for Lotus Notes has been interesting. At Ziff Communications, we were early adopters of Lotus Notes. In the 1980s it was tough for me to locate a specific email. Last time I tried to locate emails and attachments in a Notes repository, the job was still tough two decades later. There were some specialized searching tools such as Grapevine. I am not sure if this system from Grapevine Technologies is still in business. Today, I can fire index Notes repositories with third party tools. These work pretty well until I have to dig out a Notes archive, figure out what is what, and then go through the indexing and searching fire drill.
Now Lotus Notes is going to the cloud. You can read the story in the Industry Standard here. According to Lincoln Spector, LotusLive provides a signal for the future of this “platform”. Mr. Spector writes in “IBM Shoots for the Cloud with LotusLive but Notes Pricing Is a Mystery”:
After a year of public beta under the name BlueHouse, LotusLive was officially announced Monday at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando. Users can sign up and start using two LotusLive services, Meetings and Events. Meetings integrates audio and video conferencing and costs $48 to $99 per month depending on the number of participants, or 25 cents per minute. Events is intended to help users manage and host an online conference. In addition to the actual conferencing, it also handles registration and other chores. Meetings costs $99 per month or 30 cents per minute per guest.
Like an infomercial, I am going to say, “Wait. There’s more.” IBM and SAP have teamed to make a “smarter workforce”, according to eWeek. Clint Boulton’s “IBM, SAP Ally on Alloy for Enterprise Collaboration here.” The new Alloy product combines Lotus Notes and SAP’s Business Suite. Now when two elephants with appetites for seven figure license deals team up, the result is going to be fascinating to watch.
The question that I had after reading these announcements was, “Okay, will I be able to search for a particular email and attachment in a way that is a marked improvement over the default string matching?” As the volume of email goes up, finding and managing email is particularly important.
There are third party tools from Wave Software here and Coveo who provide solutions. I can turn to Exalead, ISYS Search Software, and several other vendors for solutions as well.
But IBM is moving to the cloud with Lotus Notes, and I am not convinced that either IBM’s or SAP’s search and retrieval system is there yet. Announcements are fine, but when I need to locate an email, I want a low latency system that works. I don’t want to pay more money.
If anyone knows what I am missing with regard to findability, please, contribute a comment in the appropriate section of this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, January 20, 2009
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