Google and Its New Management Method: Intrapreneurs
April 7, 2011
I hated the word “entrepreneurship” when I first heard it a long, long time ago. It is fitting for this new Google management method. First, navigate to “A New Perk At Google: Run Your Own Startup Within The Company.” Read or skim the article. Now think about this passage:
Google is desperate to keep good engineers from leaving, but big money isn’t the only carrot it’s dangling in front of them. In some cases, Google is letting them form their own independent businesses within the company — with almost no oversight for two years.
Will this work? In my bug ridden world in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, I don’t think so. Three reasons:
- Google wants to keep engineers. But the engineers want to do some cool stuff for themselves and make a difference or a killing. Assume the idea work and the start up booms. Sounds great. Odds probably are long. So for 100 start ups, maybe the GOOG gets one winner and bunch of okays, and 75 to 80 percent losers. Lots of lost staff time if the management method grows big fast. So there is a productivity issue.
- Many start ups are not sure what they are starting. So lots of idle time and maybe slow ramps. Hey, if someone is providing food, a bean bag, and Odwallas, what’s the big rush? Urgency may not be the emotion du jour.
- For years, Google’s secret innovation engine was R&D from the 20 percent plan. Most looks at the Google skipped over the downside of the 20 percent free time method. Now there’s the no fail start up method. The difference between now and 2006 is that cost control is getting to look like a big job even for the cash rich Google.
Worth watching. If it works, hey, go with it. If it flops, it eliminates one management angle for Facebook to try.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2011
Freebie
Baidu: Asked to Pay and Baidu Rolls Over
April 7, 2011
Call it common sense, pragmatism, or a desire to eliminate expensive legal hassles.
First, Tim Geigner at techdirt posted “Recording Industry to Baidu: Look, We Know You Beat Us in Court, but Just Do What We Want Anyway, Mmkay?” Since losing their copyright infringement case in Beijing last year, the recording industry is trying the pretty- please approach. The labels sent a letter through the Financial Times asking that Baidu comply with their copyright demands.
The court decision hinged on the fact that Baidu linked to MP3 files instead of hosting them itself. Recording execs are asking the site to filter audio files out of search results. Geigner thinks the recording industry is being a sore looser, and uses a story about the his brother and the last eclair to make his point.
More pertinently, the writer mentions certain differences between China and the U.S.:
“Never mind the cultural differences that may be coming into play here. Never mind that the nominal GDP for the United States is some thirteen times that of China. We want the Chinese to pay as much for their music as Americans, d**n it, and the way to do that is to get Baidu to voluntarily limit their own search results. . . . So, you see, if Baidu would just filter out the infringing content, relatively poor Chinese citizens would suddenly spend big bucks for music.”
Second, we learned that Baidu was a well behaved giant in “China’s Baidu to Compensate Songwriters for Music Downloads.” In my opinion, the key point in that write up was:
Baidu announced that it had made an agreement with the Music Copyright Society of China to establish a partnership to protect legal digital music, and will pay copyright holders to use their music. This will encompass any song that is downloaded from Baidu’s music search site, said company spokesman Kaiser Kuo.
It’s been said before, but the recording industry would be better served by seeking a way to profit from the new reality rather than fighting it at every turn. Baidu, regardless of motivation, avoided some of the legal hassles that have plagued other online services.
Cynthia Murrell April 7, 2011
Freebie
SEO Experts and Content Farmers Face Pandapocalypse
April 6, 2011
Stephen E Arnold, managing director of ArnoldIT.com and this writer’s nominal taskmaster, annoyed some of the SEO poobahs in Manhattan on Wednesday, March 30. Now Mr. Arnold is an old goose and has avoided becoming a Thanksgiving dinner for more than six decades. A little roasting in the Big Apple does not trouble the chief goose.
In his debrief, what was interesting was the reluctance of the Manhattan search engine optimization crowd to realize that the game of metatagging, backlink fiddling, and other SEO “secret methods” are going to continue to loose effectiveness. The shift has a number of contributing factors. These range from Google’s fear of losing online advertising traction to the younger crowd’s penchant for asking Facebook “friends” where to buy a pizza. Google for Facebook revenues. Not so hot for the Google which is in the midst of a giant wood burning stove. (Wood burning stoves frighten the feathered Mr. Arnold.)
We wanted to throw a small life preserver to the SEO experts who were so agitated at Mr. Arnold’s suggestion that SEO was in a heap of sticky tar. Search Engine Watch has published a round up of trick to fool the Google Panda. We love it when SEO articles include the word “tricks”. We prefer phrases like “money burners,” “tom foolery”, and “questionable practices.” But “Pandapocalypse” it is.
As you may know if you were one of the 25 percent of Web sites down checked by the Google Panda algorithm change, Google launched its new pet Panda to curtail content farms and improve its accuracy algorithm. Some web sites are experiencing a loss of Google rankings and traffic, but “Is the Google Pandapocalypse Near for the UK and Beyond?” offers insights to avoid the Panda’s wraith. The most sites affected by the Panda launch were content, health, and e-commerce. In response, Google suggests that companies focus on brand advertisement than relying solely on the search engine to generate traffic.
From this angle, web site proprietors should consider using a paid search, social media, newsletters, videos, and Google news/images. When applied carefully and effectively, each suggestion will bring more visitors to a page. Here’s a snippet for the SEO folks who are trying to explain why those SEO fees produced a negative drift for their increasingly curious clientele:
“One of the big ideas at SES New York was “content optimization.” Google and Bing are looking for quality content. Basically, consider Google a teacher, and your site the student. The Panda algorithm is a brand new grading system, so you must aim to make your site an A, rather than a B or C+. And as with any teacher, some students may not be graded in the same way as others for whatever reason.”
Take a look at your web site and see how it can be improved. Check the spelling and grammar, tone down the ads, minimize duplicate content and links from low quality web sites, fix broken links, and clean up your source code. Following these suggestions will help you overcome Panda and will definitely improve your web site’s quality.
A trick may work, just not consistently. Unfortunately, clients of SEO companies are asked to pay SEO invoices consistently. There is going to be dissonance going forward.
Whitney Grace, April 6, 2011
Habits of Medical Doctors Thwart Paid Listing Efforts
March 31, 2011
Health Care IT News reports “Most Doctors Ignore Paid Search to Access Health Content: comScore.” Ah, more bad news for Google and others basing their business on charging health professionals for content.
Because we patients search for general terms, we will often explore the paid results. Doctors get a lot more specific, and those definitive parameters are best addressed with the organic, not paid, results. Physicians are also less likely to spend time browsing on their topic; they get what they need and get out. Furthermore, doctors tend to trust government content for its authoritative and exhaustive content. As the article concludes,
With doctors searching in an organic way, rather than using paid search, the research shows that companies need to build brand awareness and effective SEO strategies to attract physicians to their Websites, comScore reports.
The idea of pay walls is interesting but making money online is still a difficult task for many organizations. Stephen E Arnold, owner of this blog, collected some of his writings about online in this PDF. The pricing observations remain valid—20 years after summarizing some of the challenges of online.
Cynthia Murrell March 31, 2011
Freebie
Content with Intent Delivers Search and Sales Impact
March 28, 2011
Millions of content creators on the Internet must now tighten their output or face obscurity. As a result of a recent change in Google’s quality grading, writers and bloggers are scrambling. Luckily, something can be done. Stephen E Arnold, ArnoldIT.com, will be one of the speakers at “Google Changes the Rules” on March 30, 2011, in Manhattan at iBreakfast. The “content with intent” tag line is one that Mr. Arnold has used since his work on the Threat Open Source Intelligence Gateway, funded by an interesting government entity in the fall of 2001. He has refined the system and method for a number of clients worldwide. To see an example of the technique, navigate to Google, run the query “taxodiary” or “inteltrax” and follow the links. Your product or company can achieve similar sales and marketing impact in as little as one month. Unlike SEO, the content with intent method persists. Run a query on Google.com for “ssnblog”. This demo site has not been updated since April 30, 2011 and the content continues to be easily findable. Keep in mind that the Web sites for each of these examples is one way to access the information. The method touches hundreds of findability services, including real time and social systems.
Most SEO delivers an expensive, often problematic, failure for clients with unrealistic expectations for an expensive, low traffic Web site. Source: http://www.lifepurposediscoverysystem.com/blog/uploaded_images/fear-of-failure-768216.gif
This shift ArnoldIT’s “content with intent” approach manifest is an innovation driven by a high volume of lower quality online content and increasingly heavy handed SEO tactics.
Stephen E Arnold’s “content with intent” method works in a manner similar to a series of bursts, a digital MIRV. Source: http://www.rolfkenneth.no/NWO_review_Sutton_Soviet.html
In what appears to be increasingly desperate attempts to generate traffic to a Web site, search engine optimization experts have forced Google and other search systems like Blekko.com to take action. Going forward, search vendors will, like a strict teacher, to scrutinize, “grade”, and flunk some online information.
Arnold says, “In effect, Google is like a college composition teacher. Grades of C, D, and F are not acceptable. Deliver A or B content or suffer the consequences.” “Does Google have an emotional investment in great writing?,” asks Arnold. He answers his own question this way, “No, Google cares about ad revenue and lousy content could harm Google cash flow.”
The relationship between content producers and Google sounds grim at best. Fortunately, Steve Arnold, author of Google: A Digital Gutenberg and managing director of Arnold IT, recently provided four tips for moving out of “SEO hell”, where guessing and shoddy content are likely to yield decreasing traffic from major search engines like Google and systems which federate its outputs:
Antidot Funding
March 26, 2011
We learned in ITespresso.fr’s story “Antidot Raises Funds to Help Its Development.” (If you don’t read French, you’ll need to run this through a translator like Google’s free service.)
Antidot’s Finder Suite has been, according to the article, at the forefront of semantic web technologies. Now, Antidot wants to develop search engine-specific versions of their software. The company’s appeal to investors is not unusual, but they are hardly struggling. According to the company, the firm in 2009, experienced a 34 percent increase in revenue. The article said:
“ ‘In seven years, Antidot has multiplied its turnover 30 times and created 40 jobs, taking a strong position in a highly competitive market. Antidot has been profitable for seven years and we have the means to finance our development,’ explains Fabrice Lacroix, President and founder of Antidot.”
However, the company feels that this fund-raising is important to their growth at this time. There has been management change at Polyspot and Sinequa. Kartoo, another French search vendor, has gone dark. Antidot is not as well known as Exalead, which was acquired by the French technology and services firm Dassault in 2010. What will Antidot’s engineers develop? We will monitor the innovations.
Cynthia Murrell March 26, 2011
Is an AOL Management Shift Coming?
March 26, 2011
Let me go out on a limb. I have observed Googlers in cubes and in management positions. Unlike the Google believers, I think that the equation Google = Good Management is a bit like 1 + 1 = 3. I read “Huffington-Armstrong Smackdown at AOL” and realized that the author is pretty much on the right cow path.
Here’s the passage I liked.
Meanwhile, Armstrong has to keep control of the company. He needs Huffington — now regarded as the company’s savior — more than she needs him because she has such a strong image. I wonder how long Huffington, who has grown accustomed to speaking her mind and having all the power at her company, will remain content to report to Armstrong. AOL has done nothing since the Huffington Post deal to show that it is in control of its destiny, that it has a coherent growth strategy and that it knows how to win. Arianna Huffington, the theory goes, surely knows how to win.
I think this is on the money, but it does not make the point clearly enough. I think what I would have said is that the Googler (Tim Armstrong) is going to find himself reporting to a person who can manage, and dominate. In short, the Googler is going to have his hands full. Several decisions of the Googler will come back to hang like a cloud over the “new” AOL.
First, the play for local content was expensive and is going to be exposed as a move that won’t yield the money the local golden goose is alleged to reside in the AOL offices.
Second, the expensive New York media wizards will find themselves looking into the eyes of a person who knows how to get traffic and eye balls without expensive New York media talent. You can terminate folks in India today but tomorrow, the empty cubicles will be in the good old USA.
Third, in a day to day content of “who can manage better”, the Googler is going to be in one of those corporate Mixed Martial Arts’s battles. I go with the Huffster.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2011
Freebie unlike the local news company AOL bought
IBM OmniFind Tip: Corrupt Index Ruining Your Day?
March 17, 2011
Short honk: IBM’s support page contains a little item titled “OmniFind Enterprise Edition Returns Extra Invalid Search Results when Index is Corrupted.” When using OmniFind 9.1, fixpack 1, a power outage during your crawl can corrupt results, causing invalid search data to be returned. Fortunately, the fix is not difficult: just re-crawl. Time-consuming, but easy. So this is open source. What happens with Watson? Interesting question.
Cynthia Murrell, March 17, 2011
Freebie unlike IBM’s on site service and the FRUs we know and love
Is eBay Changing Direction?
March 8, 2011
Exorbyte just released some interesting news on its blog, “eBay is Magento’s Secret Investor – Internet Retailer”. It appears the leader of online marketplaces is finally catching on to its smaller merchants’ complaints. So much so that eBay had acquired a 49 percent stake in Magento, the open source ecommerce Web application. Exotbyte Commerce Search is available as a plug-in for Magento.
Here’s one snippet from the Exorbyte write up:
“This is confirmation that there will be an ongoing market of small online retailers who do not want to operate within the restrictive and expensive platforms of eBay.com or Amazon.com; where fees are high and they have no or little control of the customers relationships. This market of small online retailers using installed or hosted ecommerce platforms is where Exorbyte Commerce operates.”
The question in Harrod’s Creek is if eBay’s obvious need to appeal to its lower volume patrons foreshadows some version of a buyout on the horizon. We shall see. eBay has become dependent for sizzle on PayPal. eBay’s original service seems a trifle dowdy. Magneto is a fresh name at least.
Sarah Rogers, March 8, 2011
Freebie
Palantir: The Next Big Thing
March 3, 2011
I just read “Facebook Investor Peter Thiel: Palantir Is the Next Facebook or Google.” Quite a write up. The story references the Forbes’ story “Super Crunchers.”
To bring myself up to speed I reviewed my Overflight information about Palantir. It is a busy, busy outfit.
First, the company landed $90 million in venture funding last year. If you figure a 10X return on investment, Palantir was a company with a $1 billion potential.
Will Palantir be “the next big thing”? Image source: http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/social-media2.pn
Second, in late 2010, the company was embroiled in a legal matter with the pioneer in data analytics and data fusion for police and intelligence work. The allegations made by i2 Ltd. involved reverse engineering of the i2 proprietary file format ANB (Analyst Notebook). I don’t want to recover information so you can find my write ups about this at this link for Beyond Search and this link for IntelTrax, our data fusion news service.
Third, the Palantir organization was involved in the some muddled HBGary sales initiative. Some current information about this matter is at “HBGary Suspected Trickery.”
The Forbes write up and the recent item from the Forbes’ blog struck me as discordant. Here’s why:
First, Palantir generated traction via splashy graphics and basic data fusion functions. The assertions about Palantir’s technology as a platform upon which to build intelligence applications are not yet founded. Palantir is trying to move from US government centric products and services to the financial services arena. With $90 million, Palantir can move quickly, but I am not sure that the company’s speeding along has reached the definition. I am reminded of my children’s question when we drove from Washington, DC back to Illinois: “Are we there yet, dad?” The answer then and now is, “No, we are about half way.” Marketing makes things appear one way. Reality is a bit different.
A duct tape roof rack. Looks interesting. Source: http://www.myspaceantics.com/image-myspace-graphic/funny-pictures/duct-tape-roof-rack.jpg.html
Second, there are a number of companies with comparable or better technology than Palantir’s. The company that comes immediately to mind is Digital Reasoning. The firm does the Palantir trick of flashy graphics but—and this is a big but—has a platform called Synthesys 3.x. You can ingest disparate data, analyze it using quite useful, quite advanced analytic methods, and you can “see” where the key item of information is. Unlike Palantir, the Digital Reasoning folks are like a group of Eagle scouts. The team, based on my own observation, does not look for short cuts and avoids stomping on other firm’s systems and methods. If you are not familiar with Digital Reasoning, check them out. I am trying to wrangle another job with this outfit, but I have quite a bit of confidence in the technology and the people. No messy allegations, no out of court settlements.
Third, one of the most common errors made in analyzing next generation search is looking at PowerPoint presentations and crafted reports. The action is algorithmic, systems, and methods. When a person with some but not decades of experience in the types of systems used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies stumbles upon a vendor, the reaction is one of surprise. The desire to share the “insight” is high. The problem is that with experience the deeper values of systems emerge from real world experience, not from a crafted demonstration and a couple of interviews.
Check out the write ups about Palantir. There is quite a bit of interesting information about the firm’s business methods. A JP Morgan deal and a reference to some brush with HBGary is not the same as a figuring the plumbing and finding the dripping joints and careless soldering.
But if Forbes says Palantir is the cat’s pajamas, won’t most people agree? My view is that too many people take public relations as the Gospel. I am a bit more reserved in my acceptance of pronouncements from certain business publications. Are the legal hassle and the HBGary events a coincidence or an indication of business tactics?
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2011
Freebie and no public relations inputs whatsoever
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
