Wolfram Alpha: Google in No Danger
April 26, 2009
ReadWriteWeb.com’s review of the Wolfram Alpha search system is here. The name Wolfram Alpha includes a pipe symbol, which I am not going to include in this write up. Indexing systems have enough trouble with words. Including a vertical bar is one of those marketing things that annoy me. Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the 1970s replaced the comma between “Booz” and “Allen” with a dot. What a headache. No vertical bar for me, thanks.
The headline on the write up was “Our First Impressions.” In sales and search, first impressions matter. The problem is that each search engine is different, and the methods required to get the results a user wants takes time, experimentation, and often industrial strength testing.
ReadWriteWeb.com’s Frederic Lardinois participated in a Web demo and concluded:
It will definitely not be a Google killer.
He continued:
Alpha is built around a vast repository of curated data from public and licensed sources. Alpha then organizes and computes this knowledge with the help of sophisticated Natural Language Processing algorithms. Users can ask Alpha any kind of question…
Alpha taps into a buzzword that like a summer tornado has been gathering momentum before it hits the trailer park of content that makes up much of the information available on the public Internet. To duck into the storm cellar, Alpha focuses on sources that are “curated”. My impression which is not even based on a demo is that Alpha is in the “deep Web” business. The idea is that there are some useful sources which may be tough to index with a general purpose indexing system like that used by Microsoft Live.com or Yahoo.
When results appear, the system attempts to answer the implicit or explicit question. AskJeeves.com focused on this angle in the early 1990s, but quickly ran aground due to editorial costs and the reluctance users had to ask questions the template system could answer; for example, “What’s the temperature in Chicago?” worked. Questions like “What is the IBM patent for RDBMS?” did not work.
ReadWriteWeb.com pointed out that there will be a free and a for fee version, alerts, and a way to “embed” Alpha into other applications. According to ReadWriteWeb.com, the demo “mostly focused on math and engineering data, so we’ll still have to wait and see how Alpha copes with questions about historical events, for example.”
Let me make several observations:
- There continues to be a hunger for a system that answers questions. Users don’t ask questions, but those in the research and investment business assume or know that users * should * ask questions. The ArnoldIT.com worked on a couple of question answering systems in the past, and we learned first hand that users want the system to make life easy. The idea search system just displays information the user needs to know at a particular point in time. Today the predictive mobile search systems that hook into a context clue like a geographical position seem to be closer than a search box.
- Questions pose big problems in ambiguity. There are many ways to serve this fish. Google has its PageRank core wrapped in add on methods to give you a rock star when you type “spears” or “idol”, not Macedonia weapons. The proof of the disambiguation will emerge not from a demo or from impressions but from subjective and objective tests. So the fish remain in the stream at this time.
- The hope for a Google killer is now a catchphrase. The problem with killing Google is that it has morphed into more than search. The Google platform is going to be tough to break up because it is polymorphic, a characteristic I I discuss along with fluxion in my new study Google: The Digital Gutenberg here. Google has some interesting data management tools that can deliver answers as well.
To wrap up, the ReadWriteWeb.com story is good. The Alpha system seems interesting. The desire to have a kinder and gentler Web search engine is intense. The challenge will be delivering users who understand an answer and who have the types of questions a system can answer without sucking too much money from its investors until the cash begins to flow.
In the meantime, “Cuil” is not longer the word. The word will be “Alpha” for the pundits until the next Google killer walks out of the computer lab into the world of the average Web user.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
As Print Fades, Online Readership Grows, Asserts Research Guru Nielsen
April 26, 2009
Leo LaPorte, a radio personality and one-man podcast network, popped into my crawler as the author of “Online Audience3 Grows for Newspapers” here. I did some clicking and discovered the attribution here on The Long Tail, a Web log by the author of the book by the same name. Another link aimed me at http://www.techfuga.com. I found a version of the story on MSNBC here, but to my dismay the source was the deeply litigious Associated Press. No Leo LaPorte in sight, but his name drew me into a festival of clicking.
And what was the story?
Oh, people are reading more news online. The ultimate source of the data is the stats giant Nielsen. You can read the data, but my thought was, “If newspapers kill off their print editions or make them too expensive, maybe online is the alternative.”
The problem which the mathematics whizzes at Nielsen don’t address is that the online business models in use by the dead tree crowd don’t pay the bills.
I wonder if Leo LaPorte knows he is the attributed author of what strikes me as a somewhat obvious study? Maybe he linked to the story? Pretty darned confusing provenance. At least the free Web news search systems worked. I could find the MSNBC story easily.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
Security: Not If There Is Money for Some Humans
April 26, 2009
ITBusiness.ca ran a story with the eye catching headline “One-Third of Employees Willing to Steal Company Data If the Price Is Right” here. Studies of this type require some mental prudence. I found the write up a useful reminder than humans are the weakest link in a security fence. For me the most interesting comment was:
Research by the security event organizer revealed that of those willing to steal sensitive data, 63 per cent would expect at least £1 million (Can$1.78 million) for their troubles, while 10 per cent want enough to pay off their mortgage.
Now, what about that confidential information secured with industry standard systems? Take out your checkbook?
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
An Howl of Hyperbole Induced Pain
April 26, 2009
PCAdvisor.co.uk is a Web site that complements a consumer computer magazine in the UK. I recall buying a copy and getting a DVD stuffed full of “editor picks” in shareware, code snippets, and articles from back issues. I saw a reference to the article “10 Things We Hate about Technology Now”. You can read the story here. This is the second “we can’t take it any more” write up in the last 24 hours. Dan Sullivan pointed to the public relations blitz that accompanies a new search engine. My take on his article is here. Now the journalists at PCAdvisor.co.uk are showing signs of stress. I can’t recite the entire list of 10 pain points, but I can point to three items and offer a brief comment about each.
First, the magazine objects to the buzz about Twitter. I don’t agree. Twitter is the poster child for real time search. RTS is novel and not well understood. The outrage makes clear to me that no one on the PCAdvisor.co.uk team thinks about the Twitter messages from the point of view of a person involved in police or intelligence work. Twitter is important. A failure to understand is a problem of analytic intelligence, not Twitter. RTS is not likely to go away quickly.
Second, news releases. Last time I checked PCAdvisor.co.uk it seemed to have its share of recycled news releases in its “news” section. Companies generate news spam and publications gobble up the bits and bytes. Story ideas are often hard to get when a publisher pays low wages and rationalizes staff. Recycling is a big part of the profession of computer journalism. Remember. I worked for one of the big guns in the industry.
Third, Apple and Microsoft. I am combining two items because each illustrates a characteristic of news. High profile companies are high profile because people want their products, need information about the companies, or enjoy keeping pace with the buzz about something that has ubiquity. No company is perfect. Publications have to cover the high profile companies in order to attract eyeballs. A niche publication covers more specialized topics and attracts a smaller, more specialized audience. Writing positive or negative articles about high profile companies is a requirement.
I think the marketing bandwagon has been pimped by West Coast Customs. Marketing is now a Hummer, not a Mini Cooper. The change says more about the nature of unchecked capitalism, the desperation some publishers feel when trying to turn red ink into black ink, and journalists who are short on copy ideas.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
Search and Hyperbole: Even the SEO Crowd Is Jaded
April 25, 2009
You must read Dan Sullivan’s “How to Overhype Your Search Engine” here. The title is not in line with the story as I interpreted it, but it includes two hot words: “overhype” and “search engine”. The author explains the basic public relations steps to get coverage of a Web search system. If you want a checklist of what you want Bryce or Buffy to do, follow Mr. Sullivan’s checklist. The second part of the essay tackles “over hyperbole” (is that a bound phrase?) and seems to get into more subjective aspects of search; for example, “stealth”. If a search engine is in stealth, no one should know it is there. Therefore, a “stealth search engine” by definition is a poorly kept secret in my addled goose view. The beef in the essay is broiled for the search engine developed by a real live math guy, Dr. Stephen Wolfram here. Dr. Wolfram fares slightly better than Microsoft, a company that is almost too easy to make a case study for unsuccessful search management.
My take on this essay is the following:
- Search hyperbole is now part of the landscape. The claims and assertion that a specific system will revolutionize search or “kill Google” is tiresome. In certain parts of the world, “killing Google” is going to be difficult. In Denmark, for example, more than 90 percent of referral traffic comes from Google based on my examination of a number of high traffic sites Web logs.
- Mr. Sullivan notes that Google is an exception. I am not sure that I line up on his side of the gymnasium. Google faces some challenges in China, Korea, and Russia. Each country has a dominant search engine and Google is working to gain traction. So, there are three or four examples of successful Web search systems, not one. A thorough study of the business models and technology of Baidu.com, Naver.com, Yandex.com, and probably some about which I have no knowledge are indeed “out there” and doing reasonably well. Google is an exception, but its approach to search is based on a combination of methods that work reasonably well, but Google’s secret sauce is its platform’s ability to scale at a relatively reasonable cost and handle petabyte flows of data. The search is a combination of what’s popular with some clever math added to season the pudding.
- Over the years, one of the principal venues for introducing Web search systems have been search engine optimization conferences. I may be mistaken, but Mr. Sullivan has been involved in the two highest profile SEO conferences, which are in my opinion, platforms for incredible claims and marketing that reminded me of some consumer product trade shows.
Three search engines doing quite well and keep Google at bay.
My conclusion is that substantive discussion of search and content processing is now quite difficult. Everyone is an expert. Even search systems with clever technology must position themselves as software that does everything. When the SEO guru identifies too much hyperbole as a problem, I am convinced that not only does a problem exist but it is too late to make substantive improvement. In short, hyperbole is more important than what a search system actually does.
Stephen Arnold, April 25, 2009
Demographics and Their Search Implications: Breathing Room for Online Dinosaurs
April 25, 2009
ReadWriteWeb.com’s “The Technology Generation Gap at Work is Oh So Wide” pointed to a study that I had heard about but not seen. A happy quack to RW2 for the link the the LexisNexis results here. RW2 does a good job of summarizing the highlights of the research, conducted for this unit of Reed Elsevier, the Anglo Dutch giant that provides access to the US legal content in its for fee service. You can read Sarah Perez’s summary here.
I wanted to add three observations that diverge from the RW2 report and are indirectly referenced in the WorldOne Research 47 page distillation of the survey data and accompanying analysis. Keep in mind that the research is now about nine months old and aimed at a sample of those involved in the world’s most honorable profession, lawyering.
First, the demographics are bad news for the for fee vendors of online information. As each cohort makes it way from the Wii to the iPhone, the monetization methods, the expectations of the users, and the content forms themselves must be set up to morph without paying humans to fiddle.
Second, as I zoomed through the data, I came away convinced that lawyers’ perception of technology and mine are different. As a result, I think the level of sophistication in this sample is low compared to that of the goslings swimming in my pond filled with mine run off water. The notion that lawyers who are younger are more technologically adept may be little more than an awareness of the iPhone, not next generation text and content processing systems.
Third, the overall direction of the survey and the results themselves make it clear that it will be a while before the traditional legal information sources are replaced by a gussied up Google Uncle Sam, but it will happen.
My conclusion is that LexisNexis got the reassurance it wanted from these data. Is that confidence warranted as law firms furlough or rationalize staff, face clients who put caps on certain expenses, and look at the lower cost legal services available in the land of outsourcing, India.
Stephen Arnold, April 25, 2009
Digitizing Medical Records
April 24, 2009
Business Week’s “The Mad Dash to Digitize Medical Records” here by Chad Terhune, et al is interesting. The business publication points to the money that the Obama administration will attempt to make available for “health” gets pride of place in the article. The reporters then leave the money to summarize some of the challenges digitizing things medical face, what Business Week calls “red flags”. There’s a nod to “pharmacy errors”, issues with correcting problems, and product testing. In short, the article gathers up issues and provides quotes to make the point that digitizing medical records is going to be exciting.
Let’s step back. Digitizing any data is challenging and fraught with problems. The medical information wagon train is beginning to roll because:
- Information processes cost a great deal of money
- The giants of technology are on the trail of a big thing; for example, Google, Microsoft, Siemens, and others from insurance, hospital holding companies, and Tom the plumber who can program in perl
- There is Obama money.
What’s the future look like? I think medical information in general and patient records in particular will be in a state of confusion for quite a while. The fact that big companies are signing up partners and moving forward with individual agendas dictating the actions guarantees challenges.
At some point, the options begin to coalesce, not because of a single reason but that’s the way online information works. Many different activities and then a hybridization that leaves us with two or three ways to achieve an outcome. Microsoft has demonstrated this hybridization with its dominance of the desktop. Google has demonstrated its hybridization in Web search.
Medical information will be a bit different because people can die. So the stakes become quite a bit higher from the outset than those stakes were when MS DOS was rolled out or when Google indexed public Web sites and made the index available without charge to anyone with an Internet hook up.
The story of medical records, medical information, evidence based medicine, and related informatics issues makes this a big deal. Did I mention the government? Lots of regulations. Did I mention national self interest? Some nations are definitely into medical information. Did I mention the money? There’s a lot of money in health and medical plays. Business Week explains the problems, and I suppose the regulations, the interests of certain nations, and money are self evident truths. Game changing interaction on the horizon is my take on this subject.
Stephen Arnold, April 24, 2009
Say One Thing, Do Another with Google Online
April 24, 2009
The Guardian, a UK newspaper publisher and diversified information company, reported here that “Conservatives to Buy Google Keyword Ads in Live Rebuttal’ of Budget Speech.” The Guardian reported that some politicos are okay with criticism but shovel money into Google’s advertising programs. The newspapers write up underscores the utility of the GOOG. If the politicos get the desired results, my thought is that Google will have some UK officials who see the positives that result from using Google services.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Google Local Push in Australia
April 24, 2009
I don’t care too much for print directories. The Google has a formidable directory initiative. I found the story in The Standard here interesting. Kathryn Edwards’ “Google to Boost Local Businesses with AdWords Offer” here wrote:
Google Australia Wednesday announced it will offer a free A$75 (US$53) search marketing campaign to help more than one million Australian small and medium businesses. According to the search engine giant, more Australians than ever before are researching products and services online, before venturing into a shop, with Monash University research showing that this trend makes up 50 per cent of Australian shoppers.
Google is offering a helping hand to get businesses to shift into a higher gear for online marketing. Will this type of booster program find its way elsewhere. If the Australian program takes off, the Google may become the de facto online information source for small and mid sized businesses. Bad news for print directory businesses.
Stephen Arnold, April 23, 2009
Sun Google Security Support
April 24, 2009
Now that Sun Microsystems has been rescued by Oracle, the news about Sun’s tailoring some of its security services to support Google Apps slipped into the media stream. Sun has tweaked its identity services so that it plays more nicely with MySQL. You can read more detail here in “Sun Ties Identity Software to Google Apps Premier, Amazon Cloud Platform” in Network World here. Sun’s support for Amazon’s cloud services hedges Sun’s bets. My view is that tension will rise between Oracle, Sun Microsystems’ and Google once the honeymoon ends. My research suggests that Google will be pulled deeper into0 enterprise data management. I don’t think the Googlers will be able to pass up an opportunity for more enterprise revenue.
Stephen Arnold, April 24, 2009
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
