Google Confuses Forests and Trees According to an Informed Authority
December 29, 2017
I read an article which would have been unthinkable in 2004 when Google was the Hollywood of online companies. The write up appeared in Gizmodo and has a title guaranteed to annoy those in senior management who actually care about the company’s reputation; to wit:
Google’s Whole Hardware Thing Is Confusing the Hell Out of Me.
The link to the original is here.
The main point of the write up strikes me as:
In its second year thoroughly devoted to the hardware game, Google managed to create ear buds so bad that storing them in their charging case requires a video explanation, and a laptop so fantastic I spend a lot of time on forums plotting ways to load a more useful operating system onto it. In the wide chasm between these two gadgets lies everything else Google announced this year, and together, the hardware paints a confusing picture. Google what the hell are you doing?
My answer to the question is, “Google is looking for sustainable revenues in a way that pumps up or at least props up its online advertising schticht.
The Google can get its act together. But in the present economic climate the Google is not kicking Excite and Lycos or even Yahoo to the curb.
The online search giant has to find relevant results for Amazon, Facebook, and, yes, even Microsoft.
No wonder senior management is either changing roles, flying to hearings in Europe, working to be semi pals with China, or trying to solve death. Even the Loon balloon came back to earth as Google used lesser technology to help out Puerto Rico.
Gizmodo, it seems, is catching on to the whole Googzilla thing. Remember that the dinosaurs died.
Could it be happening again? Instead of a meteor, it may be write ups which document the weakness of the feathered predators. But not here in Harrod’s Creek. We love, absolutely love, the Google.
Stephen E Arnold, December 29, 2017
Amazon Sends a Happy New Year Greeting to Google
December 28, 2017
I read “Amazon Is Planning a Push into Digital Advertising in 2018, Challenging Google and Facebook.” Let’s assume that this is “real” news, just for kicks.
The write up asserts:
The company [the Bezos machine called Amazon] is also looking to sell advertising beyond Amazon sites and products. For example, a source with knowledge about the situation says it is working with third-party mobile advertising companies such as Kargo to pair advertising on television and on mobile screens.
That seems clear.
Who cares?
I would suggest that Google may notice this New Year’s greeting.
I learned:
Although Amazon doesn’t break out revenues from its advertising business, eMarketer estimates Amazon was the fifth-largest digital advertiser in the U.S. in terms of revenue this year. Still, it makes up a little more than 2 percent of the market. It’s leagues below industry leaders Google and Facebook, which take home more than 70 percent combined, according to a recent estimate from analysts at Pivotal.
Because Amazon is a small advertising fish compared to the Facebook and Google whales, ramping up its ad sales will generate some cash for the Bezos machine.
Facebook will be on the watch, but my view is that the Google will be riveted to Amazon’s progress.
Why?
Google is largely dependent on online advertising. As Steve Ballmer observed before buying the thrills of a pro basketball team, “Google is a one trick pony.”
Mobile is not Google’s best trick. With desktop search declining, those ad revenues require Herculean strength to keep hoisted high. If the Amazon play is successful, Google may develop a Greek god scale headache from:
- Loss of ad revenue to Amazon with no easy way to pump up the volume if Facebook stays the course while Amazon does some price cutting
- The shift to the mobile search model makes it more difficult for Googzilla to burn off the fat in excess ad inventory
- The Google search machine has lost product search to Amazon. Although the specific impact is tough to determine, catching up to the juggernaut in Seattle adds to the burden of the Internet’s go to search engine. Alphabet Google has to outperform and out maneuver Facebook and Amazon.
Life for the GOOG in 2018 will be tough enough because of anti monopoly hassles in Europe, struggles with wonky hardware trying to leapfrog Amazon’s home devices, and user grunts and snorts about search results relevance deteriorating.
Not even Google’s slick PR team can make Amazon’s New Year’s greeting into good news. The new year will be, as Google once said, “interesting.”
Yes, interesting if the story is almost like “real” news.
Stephen E Arnold, December 28, 2018
Silicon Valley Has the Secret to Eternal Life
December 27, 2017
Walt Disney envisioned his namesake park, Walt Disney World, to be a blueprint for the city of the future. Disney was a keen futurist and was interested in new technology that could improve his studios and theme parks. His futuristic tendencies led to the urban legend that he was cryogenically frozen and will one day be revived. Disney wasn’t put on the ice, but his futuristic visions are carried out by Silicon Valley technologists seeking immortality. Quartz reports on the key to eternal life in the article, “Seeking Eternal Life, Silicon Valley Is Solving For Death.”
Death is the ultimate problem that has yet to be solved. Many in Silicon Valley, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, are searching for a solution to prolong life with anti-aging research. Bill Maris convinced Alphabet’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start Calico, Google’s billion-dollar effort to cure aging. Also, cryogenics remains popular:
Other denizens of the valley pursue cryogenics or cryonics, which is the process of freezing oneself in a vat of liquid nitrogen soon after death. They do this in the hope that it will suspend them in time, preserving them for a future when science can bring them back to life. There are about 350 people already frozen worldwide with another 2,000 signed up—but yet to die.
Medical breakthroughs have already extended the US lifespan and that of other developed nations. Developing nations still have short lifespans and it draws the conclusion that wealthier people will live forever, while the poor ie quicker. It is questionable that the extra years tacked onto people’s lives are really worth it because many people spend them unable to care for themselves or in pain.
The article spins into current anti-aging research, then into philosophy about humans vs. machines and what makes a person a person. Throw in some science-fiction and that is the article in short.
Whitney Grace, December 27, 2017
Google Getting into More Trouble Because of Ads
December 26, 2017
It feels like Google is in the news every day lately. Usually, it’s not for anything good. Take, for instance, the recent Register piece about some fishy ad policies, in the article “Google Lies About Click-Fraud Refunds and Tried to Destroy Us –Ad Biz.”
In a complaint filed in a US district court in San Jose, California, on Wednesday, the ad biz claimed Google failed to refund almost $500,000 paid to place ads on websites that drove invalid traffic, in violation of Google rules
Claiming that this is a pattern of behavior, the complaint seeks recognition as a class action for Google’s alleged false promises to refund advertisers for ad impressions placed through Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange deemed to be invalid.
The lawsuit contends that a Google employee had warned the ad biz privately that Google’s Network Partner Managers like AdTrader ‘would mysteriously start getting into trouble with Google once they reached an annual revenue run rate of $4-5 million.’
It should be pointed out that Google has not been convicted of any of these claims, but they are troubling. It is easy to say that it is a busy time to be a member of the search giant’s legal team. Recently, the city of Seattle sent Google a letter stating that it is considered a commercial advertiser, like a radio or television station, and therefore had to turn over any information about political ads sold regarding city elections. We have no doubt Google will weather these storms, but they are concerning.
Patrick Roland, December 26, 2017
Google Search: More Digital Gutenberg Action
December 24, 2017
Years ago I wrote “Google: The Digital Gutenberg.” The point of the monograph was to call attention to the sheer volume of content which Google generates. Few people outside of my circle of clients who paid for the analysis took much notice.
I spotted this article in my stream of online content. “Google Search Updates Take a Personalized Turn” explains that a Google search for oneself – what some folks call an egosearch – returns a list of results with a bubblegum card about the person. (A bubblegum card is intel jargon for a short snapshot of a person of interest.)
The publishing angle – hence the connection to Gutenberg – is that the write up reports the person who does an egosearch can update the information about oneself.
A number of interesting angles sparkle from this gem of converting search into someone more “personal.” What’s interesting is that the functionality reaches back to the illustration of a bubblegum card about Michael Jackson which appears in US20070198481. Here’s an annotated patent document snippet from one of my for-fee Google lectures which I was giving in the 2006 to 2009 time period:
Some information professionals will recognize this as an automated bubble-gum card complete with aliases, personal details, last known location, etc. If you have money to spend, there are a number of observations my research team formulated about this “personalization” capability.
I liked this phrase in the Scalzi write up: “pretty deep into the Google ecosystem.” Nope, there is much more within the Google content parsing and fusion system. Lots, lots more for “Automatic Object Reference Identification and Linking in a Browseable Fact Repository.”
Keep in mind that this is just one output from the digital Gutenberg which sells ads, delivers free to you and me online search, and tries to solve death and other interesting genetic issues.
Stephen E Arnold, December 24, 2017
There Is on Obscure Search Engine Beating Google (a Little)
December 22, 2017
Is there life out there beyond Google? Sure, there’s Bing and Yahoo, but are there any people could actually fall into a routine of using? If that’s your question, things could be looking up for your search, according to a recent Search Engine Watch story, “6 Innovative New Search Engines To Keep an Eye On.”
According to the story,
Believe it or not, there are a number of other search engines out there, still crawling the web and making their mark. Since Google has so completely dominated the “all-purpose” search engine space, many of them have moved to occupy more niche areas, like academia, or sought to distinguish themselves in other ways.
As technology continues to have a hand in most everything that we do, it’s important to be aware of the other contenders in the industry. While they aren’t likely to revolutionize SEO overnight, they’re indicative of the trends and technology currently making their way through search, which could show up on a much larger scale later on.
To those on the list, we wish you good luck. You’re gonna need it. Google has had a stranglehold on the search world for longer than anyone can remember. The only one of the engines recommended here that even stand a chance is Semantic Scholar. As Wired pointed out, this scholarly engine actually stands a great chance of succeeding somewhere Google can’t because it helps users bypass pesky paywalls for scientific journals. Wow. Keep an eye on this.
Patrick Roland, December 22, 2017
Google and Microsoft: Swords Are Brandished
December 21, 2017
Google seems to be making some big companies nervous. Amazon and Google have a video disagreement. Now Google and Microsoft are at odds over the Chrome browser. “Microsoft Foils Google’s Bid to Smuggle Chrome onto Windows Store” explains:
Google has tried something of a cheeky ‘workaround’, if you like, for getting its Chrome browser onto the Windows Store – it put an installer for the app on the store, rather than the app itself, although Microsoft has now removed it.
What’s interesting to me is:
- Google is presented as “cheeky”
- Microsoft perceives Chrome as posing a “security” issue
- Google is worried about “fake” or “lookalike” Chrome apps
- Google uses “shenanigans”.
In short, the article seems a bit negative to the GOOG. Interesting Google tactics and an even more interesting description of this tug of war between two fair minded, trustworthy, helpful companies.
Microsoft “foils”; Google “smuggles.” Love it!
Stephen E Arnold, December 21, 2017
Is the End of Google Web Search Coming?
December 20, 2017
I read “Google to Use Mobile Version of a Site to Determine Mobile Rankings.” The info, if on the money, makes clear that the Google cares about mobile, not desktop anchor Web search. No surprise. The article reported:
[The write up quoted a Googler as stating:] “Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for.” These changes probably won’t affect end users too much, but it does highlight how Google’s efforts are starting to focus more on mobile.
I think the word for this modest step is “deprecate.” Flash forward a year or so and what have we got? Less “deep” Google indexing of non mobile Web sites. Fewer PowerPoints indexed. Fewer PDFs indexed. In short, the lack of rigor in indexing the Railway Retirement Board comes to boat anchor Web sites.
Web indexing is expensive and likely to be facing “friction” from the net neutrality change. This means mobile is money for the GOOG.
Just a thought from Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2017
Plan for 100,000 Examples When Training an AI
December 19, 2017
Just what is the magic number when it comes to the amount of data needed to train an AI? See VentureBeat’s article, “Google Brain Chief: Deep Learning Takes at Least 100,000 Examples” for an answer. Reporter Blair Hanley Frank cites Jeff Dean, a Google senior fellow, who spoke at this year’s VB Summit. Dean figures that supplying 100,000 examples gives deep learning systems enough examples of most types of data. Frank writes:
Dean knows a thing or two about deep learning — he’s head of the Google Brain team, a group of researchers focused on a wide-ranging set of problems in computer science and artificial intelligence. He’s been working with neural networks since the 1990s, when he wrote his undergraduate thesis on artificial neural networks. In his view, machine learning techniques have an opportunity to impact virtually every industry, though the rate at which that happens will depend on the specific industry. There are still plenty of hurdles that humans need to tackle before they can take the data they have and turn it into machine intelligence. In order to be useful for machine learning, data needs to be processed, which can take time and require (at least at first) significant human intervention. ‘There’s a lot of work in machine learning systems that is not actually machine learning,’ Dean said.
Perhaps poetically, Google is using machine learning to explore how best to perform this non-machine-learning work. The article points to a couple of encouraging projects, including Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo, which seems to have mastered the ancient game of Go simply by playing against itself.
Cynthia Murrell, December 19, 2017
Google Privacy Violation Round Up
December 18, 2017
Concerned about Google’s devil-may-care approach to some privacy issues? I am not. I love the Google. I was dismayed when I read the critical “real” news story “ “Google’s Privacy Practices Are A Matter Of Public Concern.” Read the article and see if you agree that Google really wandered off the privacy reservation with these alleged actions:
- Using the Safari workaround to suck data from Apple iPhones in the UK
- The allegations by the Spanish Data Protection Commission that Google “illegally” used data gathered by its street view service
- The allegation that Google tracked user locations even if the feature had been disabled by the owner of the phone.
Here in Harrod’s Creek we want the Internet to be more Googley. The article appears to take a different view.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2017
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