Google Makes Search, Mmmmm, Better
June 7, 2019
“First AR Objects Launch in Google Search with 3D Animals” reports that Google makes search better again. Search for an animal on a supported device while you are doing the Google Lens thing and you will see a three dimensional animal. I would be thrilled if a query returned relevant results. Plus, I am okay with relevant links directing me to a relevant document which may or may not contain an illustration. Ah, progress. What happens if Google reconnects with a robot company so that as one looks at an AR rendering of a tiger, a robot tiger comes to the user’s location and snarls. Relevant? Heck, yes.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2019
Microsoft and Oracle: Fear Helps Make New Friends
June 6, 2019
I found “Microsoft, Oracle Team Up on Cloud Services in Jab at Amazon” amusing. The real news outfit Thomson Reuters reported this unusual big company relationship when I was making my way through torrential rain in lovely West Virginia coal country. The mist did disguise the land renewal, but this Microsoft Oracle relationship is going to make for a nifty road trip video.
Imagine. The elegant Larry Ellison and the sleek Satya Nadella explaining how old school databases are the pajamas made for the cool cats. Amazon and Google will pay attention to this odd couple because it makes very visible the fear which both companies have for their database futures. Forget the cloud. We’re talking databases anywhere: On premises, hybrid, in the cloud, or residing in some wonky quantum storage thing yet to be made stable, affordable, and usable by a normal rocket scientist.
The news report does not wax poetic, nor does it offer much in the way of addressing the fear thing. I did note this statement:
The two companies said the high-speed link between their data centers would start with facilities in the eastern United States and spread to other regions. They will also work together to let joint users log into to services from either company with a single user name and get tech support from either company. The move comes as both Oracle and Microsoft are courting large businesses and government customers considering moving computing tasks currently handled in their own data centers to cloud providers.
I would point out that Oracle has chosen to add its legal pointy stick to its approach to database efficacy. Microsoft, on the other hand, is working overtime to explain that it is the solution to a range of data management issues. If one does not think about Microsoft’s struggles to update its Windows operating system, the PR sounds darned convincing.
I wish to offer a couple of observations:
First, Amazon and Google continue to capture the attention of the next generation of innovators. Oh, I know that there are clever Microsoft and Oracle wizards inventing the future at this very moment. But let’s be real: Amazon has an innovation ecosystem. Google may not have the perseverance to make its products work and then “put wood behind” some to make them competitive, but the Google does have a low cost phone and the ability to go off line because of configuration errors. Amazon, on the other hand, is evolving into an innovation platform. I am not sure the database technologies are what makes Amazon attractive to smaller firms and specialists, but Amazon is revving the bulldozer’s engine.
Second, Microsoft and Oracle are “look back” technology providers. I think both companies share many of the adorable traits of Hewlett Packard (any flavor) and IBM. In today’s business environment, which is similar to the weather around Oklahoma City, being old is not what I interpret as a plus.
Third, the two besties have somewhat different personalities. Microsoft wants to be a do gooder. Oracle wants to fly its fighter jet over the San Jose suburbs. Microsoft wants to be the big dog in Seattle. Oracle wants to be relevant. Microsoft wants to avoid the fate of Vista. Oracle wants to keep the myth of the structured query language alive. Amazon and Google, on the other hand, just want to avoid regulation and emulate the business success of pleasant people like JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and a couple of other “good business men.”
To sum up, fear is tough to explain away. The exchange of fraternity rings and an appearance at the fraternity party or the high school reunion is in the future. Town & Country material I believe. Will the two parties dance each dance together at these shindigs?
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2019
Are There Technical Headaches in Google Rivet Setup?
June 6, 2019
An app that helps kids learn to read sounds like a great Googley idea. And (concerns about potential advertising to or tracking of minors aside) it would be—if only it were easy to access. One frustrated father at Ausdroid reports, “Google’s New Kid-Focused Reading App Revit is Incompatible with Their Kid-Focused Family Link Accounts.” After checking out the app for himself, writer Duncan Jaffrey decided it was worthy of setting up for his daughter. He had no problems using the parent-side setup from his Google account. But when he got to the tablet’s Family Link account, things went awry. He writes:
“Surely this app – an educational app for kids – should be able to work nicely with Family Link. Well, no, it doesn’t. It appears there’s no way for me to sign into Rivet using my Google account, using its authorisation process on an Android device running a kids Family Link profile, unless I happen to have a Google for Education account myself. Which I don’t.
We noted:
“So, I figure it’s a reading app, it’s not that bad if I just allow complete access for this app, so I try to sign into Rivet with my daughter’s Google Family Link account … you guessed it a child’s Family Link account is not allowed to be used to sign into Rivet. Agrahhhhhhh.
And this statement:
“So, what was I left with? I had to run the app not signed in, which means you’re not getting the progress and usage tracking, it also means that when your child accidentally hits the persistent LOG IN button that’s always on screen it pulls them out of the story their reading with the resulting tech-inspired outrage you’d expect from a child.”
Oh dear. Jaffrey does note that Rivet was created by one of Google’s labs, Area 120, which operates more or less independently. Perhaps, he grants, that is why the apps do not play well together? Whatever the reason, the author has asked Google about a work-around; there are no updates, though, as of this writing.
Cynthia Murrell, June 6, 2019
Googley Things
June 5, 2019
I wanted to write about Google’s recent outage. But the explanations were not exciting. That’s too bad. Configuration problems are what bedevil careless or inexperienced technicians. The fact that Google went down speaks volumes about what happens when the whizzy cloud technology is disrupted by the climate change Google faces. Are there storms gestating in Washington, DC?
The more interesting news, if it is indeed accurate in a boom time for the faux, appeared in “YouTube Says Homophobic Abuse Does Not Violate Harassment Rules.” The write up states:
In a compilation video Maza created of some of his mentions on Crowder’s show, the host attacks Maza as a “gay Mexican”, “lispy queer” and a “token Vox gay atheist sprite”.
DarkCyber assumes that Google has “data” to back up its decision. The company’s smart software and exceptional engineers do not make judgment calls without considering statistical analyses of clicks, word counts, and similar “hard” facts.
With these data, it seems to me that Google has put to rest any mewing and whimpering about the reason it was able to differentiate between abuse and debate.
This is the Google, not some liberal arts magnet. Logic is logic. Oh, about that outage and the quality of the Google technical talent? Well, that is just an outlier.
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2019
Google Management: Moving Forward One Promise at a Time
June 5, 2019
It looks like Google has made good on one of the promises it made after last year’s outcry from employees—“Google Updates Misconduct Reporting Amid Employee Discontent,” reports Phys.org. The company had already heeded calls to end mandatory arbitration and to modify benefit rules for some workers. Still, this is too little too late for some. Reporter Rachel Lerman writes:
“Google said Thursday it has updated the way it investigates misconduct claims—changes the company pledged to make after employees called for action last year. The company is simultaneously facing backlash from two employees who say they faced corporate retaliation after helping to organizing the November walkout protests.
We noted:
“Thursday’s changes are designed to make it simpler for employees to file complaints about sexual misconduct or other issues. Google also issued guidelines to tell employees what to expect during an investigation, and added a policy that allows workers to bring along a colleague for support during the reporting process. Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised to make these changes last fall after thousands of Google employees at company offices around the world briefly walked out to protest the company’s handling of sexual misconduct investigations and payouts to executives facing misconduct allegations.”
The charges of retaliation for spearheading last autumn’s walkout reached some employees via an email from those two organizers. One said she was commanded to stop her outside research into AI ethics, while the other says she was effectively demoted (until she brought in her own lawyer. Now she simply faces a “hostile” work environment, she says.) For its part, Google claims those actions had nothing to do with the protests. Naturally.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2019
Google Aspires to Read Like a Human
June 4, 2019
We know Google’s search algorithm comprehends text, at least enough to produce relevant search results (though, alas, apparently not enough to detect improper comments in kiddie videos on YouTube). The mechanisms, though, remain murky. Yoast ponders, “How Does Google Understand Text?” Writer Jesse van de Hulsbeek observes Google keeps the particulars close to the vest, but points to some clues, like patents Google has filed. “Word embeddings,” or assessing closely related words, and related entities are two examples. Writing for his SEO audience, van de Hulsbeek advises:
“1. If Google understands context in some way or another, it’s likely to assess and judge context as well. The better your copy matches Google’s notion of the context, the better its chances. So thin copy with limited scope is going to be at a disadvantage. You’ll need to cover your topics exhaustively. And on a larger scale, covering related concepts and presenting a full body of work on your site will reinforce your authority on the topic you specialize in.
2. Easier texts which clearly reflect relationships between concepts don’t just benefit your readers, they help Google as well. Difficult, inconsistent and poorly structured writing is more difficult to understand for both humans and machines. You can help the search engine understand your texts by focusing on:
*Good readability (that is to say, making your text as easy-to-read as possible without compromising your message).
*Good structure (that is to say, adding clear subheadings and transitions).
*Good context (that is to say, adding clear explanations that show how what you’re saying relates to what is already known about a topic).”
We can’t disagree with this advice—we’ve always said producing quality content is the best way to go (and for more than SEO reasons.) The piece does note that including key phrases is still important. Google is trying to be more like a human reader, we’re reminded, so text that is good for the humans is good for the SEO ranking. Simple, right?
Cynthia Murrell, June 4, 2019
Google: Cracks in the Facade of Smart
June 2, 2019
I find it amusing that a company with the smartest people in the world cannot fail gracefully. When the GOOG goes down hard. I discovered this chugging along from rural Kentucky to a rural location in South Carolina. Google did not deliver. Once I was able to fire up a connection which actually worked, I read “Google Outage Takes Down YouTube, Gmail, and Snapchat in Parts of US.” I learned:
Discord, Snapchat, and Vimeo users are also experiencing issues logging into the apps, and these all use Google Cloud on the backend. “We are experiencing high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple services in Google Cloud, GSuite and YouTube,” says a Google spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors. We believe we have identified the root cause of the congestion and expect to return to normal service shortly.”
Now about those smart people. Are too many trying to abandon assignments which have zero future for the zippier work? Of course not. Google does not have Android fragmentation or other technical weaknesses. I would suggest that some work needs to be done on foundational services.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2019
Alphabet: Make It Separate Letters, Toss a Few
June 1, 2019
“What Rupert Murdoch Really Wants from Google and Facebook,” published by The Sydney Morning Herald, points out that political opposites Rupert Murdoch and Elizabeth Warren agree on one thing—Google has too much power. While Warren vows to promote tech competition by breaking up Google (along with Amazon and Facebook), should she become US president, Murdoch’s company News Corp has petitioned its country’s regulatory agency to do the same. Writer John McDuling observes that it is unlikely, for several reasons, that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will take such an action. He writes:
“So, what are Murdoch and News Corp really up to then? Playing hardball, as usual. The call to break up Google kept the pressure on the search giant, and made the ACCC’s existing proposals to regulate it (and Facebook) seem tame by comparison. Back in December, the ACCC proposed a new body to scrutinize the opaque algorithms that power Google searches and Facebook’s news feed, and their conduct in the ad market. The tech giants and their supporters have dismissed the proposal as a weird, intrusive overreach. But now, all of a sudden, with the global media talking about a Google split, it seems relatively uncontroversial.
We noted this statement too:
“[News Corp] also proposed a system where Google (and presumably Facebook) could pay ‘license fees’ to publishers to compensate them for the benefit they derived from their content. … The new proposal sounds more like the systems used around the world to decide royalties paid by streaming services and radio stations to songwriters and record labels. It would involve a new statutory framework, and independent economic analysis of the benefits of news to the platforms to help determine payments to publishers.”
As for Warren, the article notes voters across the US political spectrum are nervous about the power wielded by tech giants, implying she is after political points. (Whether the famously divided US Congress can or will actually do anything about the issue remains to be seen, we’re reminded.) Another wrinkle, McDuling observes, is the growing “tech-driven cold war” between the US and China. Anything that disempowers the companies in question could help China—a talking point they are likely to wield in their defense. Apparently, the conversation around the power of tech giants is just getting started.
Cynthia Murrell, June 1, 2019
Google and UX: Ads Like It or Not
May 30, 2019
I love it when a large company become desperate. A bit of history is in order. In the pre-monopoly days, Google survived the Yahoo allegation that the then-Web search company was influenced to an unusual degree by the ad system developed by GoTo.com. That system morphed into Overture, and then disappeared into the purple morass. After some early influencers of the GOOG suggested that revenue was a good idea, Google rolled out its ad platform. To my untrained eye and to those in other organizations, the influence was more than coincidence. After a bit of legal wrangling before the Google IPO and a bit of “real” money, the allegations went away. Google, between 2003 and 2006 enjoyed the glory days of online advertising. No one paid any attention. The access was via desktop computers (often described as boat anchors by the mobile believers), and there was zero friction between an advertiser and Google selling access to its traffic.
Ah, the good old days.
As the mobile revolution managed traction from some flawed limited slip differentials, the diffusion of tiny screens began. A trickle at first soon grew into a flood. Today, more than two thirds of online activity takes place on mobile devices; that is, tiny screens.
So here’s the problem. Google’s infrastructure is a money eating machine. To make matters worse, former Googlers working at Facebook have tweaked that wild and crazy social service to sell ads too. The Bezos bulldozer has pulled its left tractor control and is guiding the big orange machine into the lucrative world of selling product ads with more types soon to follow. Just check out what Amazon is doing and ask, “What will advertisers pay to reach profiled, data mapped, verified users who are interested in these services?”
Against this background I read “Google to Restrict Modern Ad Blocking Chrome Extensions to Enterprise Users” and chuckled. The write up states:
Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the capability to block unwanted content, but this will be restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome. This is likely to allow enterprise customers to develop in-house Chrome extensions, not for ad blocking usage. For the rest of us, Google hasn’t budged on their changes to content blockers, meaning that ad blockers will need to switch to a less effective, rules-based system. This system is how blockers like AdBlock Plus currently work.
Okay, now back to the historical information provided above. Google is trimming certain functionality; for example, depth of spidering, more aggressive implementation of the bluebirds, canaries, and sparrows approach, and killing off services which do not produce revenue or which impose money chewing functions. Where’s that enterprise search thing? Google Plus? WebAccelerator?
In the ethos of the Google, ad blocking is not going to be part of the game plan. I have no doubt that in a slide deck is information about making darned sure ads appear everywhere most of the time. Enjoying that free YouTube video about how to make a 3D shape in Adobe Illustrator. You will enjoy the ads stuck in the middle of the stream as you are watching even more. You will like it! Got that?
The Google ads-everywhere policy is okay with me. I have considerable enthusiasm for searches in quotes which return results not related to my query. I like looking for US government data which are not in the index any more. I find the complaints of bloggers who find their backfiles disappeared.
That’s life in the access road leading to the Google information highway. Ads are the toll, and payment is necessary. Google blocks YouTubers, is blocking individual users who access Google content with a browser that blocks ads be a thing?
Worth thinking about. Well, actually maybe not. Google’s data reveals that there are lots of Google service users who accept an ad filled walled garden. The messages are personalized and something relevant, just like Google search results.
Google needs every penny of advertising money it can get; otherwise, the cracks in Googzilla will bring down the system.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2019
Google: AMPs Up One Doubter of the One True Way, an Old Way at That
May 29, 2019
If you want the North American and Western European Internet on your mobile phone, you may have to deal with AMP. “Cake or Death: Amp and the Worrying Power Dynamics of the Web” is one more person who has figured out how online coalesces into a monopoly or two. Is this news? No, but it sure is for some people.
The write up explains that there are three issues with Google’s unification of what one obtains when querying the “Internet”. These are technical, user experience, and commercial.
Technical. We noted the explanation of Google’s portal state. Not new. The idea is that one never leaves the Google walled garden.
User experience. Our reaction is that it is too late. With more than 60 percent of Google’s queries coming from mobile. One’s experience is what Google wants to deliver. Example: I disabled the Play store on my Android device. Google sends messages when I listen to voice mail. As a result, voice mail is broken. Does Google care about this experience? Nope. Amp experiences? Nope.
Commercial. The write up dances around the obvious. Google has to generate revenue from sources other than giant Web pages with ads. Now the Amp pages are tiny and the old school revenue is shrinking. Yikes. Solution? Sell anything and everything to whoever will pay. The user experience on most Google services delivered on a mobile device are terrible. Can you use a Google Map? Can you figure out how to get rid of messages that cover up the map?
To sum up, this is an interesting article, but it is coming about a decade after the plumbing was explained in excruciating detail in Google technical papers (no longer online by the way) and Google patents from a decade ago. I explain some of these “inventions” in my decade old monograph “Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator.” If you want a copy, let me know. Write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2019
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