Expedia and Filtered Search Results
January 10, 2011
Expedia must have learned how to throw temper tantrums from infamous JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater. After American Airlines pulled out of online travel booking site Orbitz, competitor Expedia began hiding the airline’s results in their own searches.
Techdirt reports in “Expedia Against ‘Search Discrimination’… Unless It Gets to Do the Discriminating” that this response is rich considering Expedia is a leading member of FairSearch, a group dedicated to fighting search discrimination (mainly that proposed by Google’s acquisition of ITA software.
Here’s a snippet: “So, just as Expedia, in an attempt to complain about Google, claims it’s against search providers discriminating by manipulating results to promote or punish certain players, it’s doing so in a way that’s significantly more noticeable than anything Google is doing…To complain about this exact form of discrimination, while doing it in a way that’s much more noticeable than the one you’re complaining about? That’s pure, unadulterated hypocrisy.”
Is this the end of objective search results as we know it? Maybe but when people run a search on one of today’s big systems, data not in the result set may not be missed? Will consumers know to run a separate query to locate the “missing” information? Whom does filtering “help”?
Christina Sheley, January 10, 2011
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A Theory of Android Stickiness
January 8, 2011
Can mathematics, specifically Metcalfe’s Law, be used to explain the assumption that mobile phone users will stick with a particular platform like Android for a lifetime? The recent Asymco.com blog post “How Sticky is the Android” makes this attempt.
After a lengthy explanation, author Horace Dediu surmises that mathematically, stickiness can be derived from the equation “value of a platform is K n log(n), where K is the stickiness of sunk costs.” He goes on to say that “in the end it’s not just about how big the user base n is (which is the only thing that is measurable), it’s how contiguous n is and how compelling the content,” making these important factors in keeping individual’s engaged with a particular platform.
A must read for those interested in more theoretical explanation of consumer behavior. There have been anecdotes about the “value” of the iPhone to AT&T. These rumors pivot on the data consumption of an iPhone user compared to a user of a BlackBerry or other mobile device. Stickiness may be partly defined by data consumption. Will a fast and efficient search service reduce stickiness or increase it? There’s more work to be done on the subject of stickiness.
Christina Sheley, January 8, 2011
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Will DuckDuckGo Ruffle Feathers?
January 8, 2011
Search engine DuckDuckGo’s new marketing campaign, summarized in Search Engine Journal’s “DuckDuckGo Pitches Private Search” ) says that what differentiates them from Google is privacy—they don’t store personal Internet data or associate it with a user account.
The heavy-handed marketing maneuver is being touted by DuckDuckGo founder and sole employee Gabriel Weinberg in a Search Engine Land report as an educational tactic. “I am trying to make the privacy aspects of search engines understandable to the average person who doesn’t have a lot of background knowledge on the more technical aspects.”
We are interested to see if Weinberg’s approach ruffles the feathers of the average searcher. Will they sit up and take notice of the privacy issue or does the attempt fly south?
Christina Sheley, January 8, 2011
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Is Google Chasing Dessert and Ignoring the Main Course?
January 7, 2011
We love the Google in Harrod’s Creek? The Street View picture of our office is now a bush. Our listing is in “review” and has been for months. The goose finds these actions amusing.
“Google’s Decreasingly Useful, Spam-Filled Web Search” keeps an earlier write up’s points alive despite the gingerbread. (You can read the source of the Marco.org information at this link.) Among the points, the subject of “spam” is the most interesting in our opinion.
One person’s spam may be another person’s dinner on a cruise ship. Our view is that a Google query is a useful adjunct to other research actions.
Is Google increasingly becoming an outsider for certain types of online research?
For example, yesterday we had to dig up quickly some information from our Overflight archive about a “relaxed SQL” search vendor. Here’s what we did to locate the items of information:
First, we ran the general query on Exalead’s search at www.exalead.com/search. This index is not distorted by advertisements and has more than 10 billion pages in its index. We also use the Exalead engine for Overflight. We then did the query on Blekko.com (www.blekko.com) and plucked specific results before navigating to Web sites. Yep, old fashioned pre-retrieval vetting. Still works at ArnoldIT.
Second, we ran queries for the company’s founder, who is in indexes under several spelling variants. We think spelling variants are quite interesting, particularly when the vendor is involved in licensing technology to what seem to be “dating” or “meeting people” services. The systems we used were:
- Cluuz.com at www.cluuz.com. This appears to be a Yahoo BOSS service implemented on content in the Bing.com/Yahoo.com index
- The Google News Archive at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, using the advanced search functions to get the string variants
- Icerocket at http://www.icerocket.com/
- Collecta at http://www.collecta.com
Third, we did our patent searching using my favorite site, the USPTO at www.uspto.gov.
Notice that we did not use the general Google Web index. There were four reasons:
- Relevancy, unless the advanced search features are used for the query, is focused on the person looking for Lady Gaga, not “relaxed SQL”
- The date of documents is important to us and we find that figuring out the date of an item and the freshness of the Google index a bit of a challenge and frankly not worth the effort
- The automatic truncation and spelling correction functions override what’s stipulated in certain situations. When looking for proper name variants, I don’t want automatic anything. I want to see what I typed in the search query string
- The 32 billion Web pages, the ads, and the other stuff jammed into a Google results display are mental clutter for me. I now avoid trying to figure out what’s what by using other services.
How did we do? We learned from the outfit asking us to perform the research that we surfaced information that directly supported what the company developing “relaxed SQL” was saying in briefings.
Mission accomplished using Google as one component in a secondary process. That’s quite a change from our original dependence on Google in 2002.
My hunch is that Google is nearly perfect and the change in our Web search method is a result of mental degradation here in Harrod’s Creek. If you are dependent on Google, good for you.
Stephen E Arnold, January 7, 2011
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Naming Search Systems: The False Hit Challenge
January 5, 2011
Run a query for Thunderstone, the pioneer in search appliances and highly configurable systems. You get links to a rock and roll band. Our Brainware feed reader returns stories that hit on crazy videos and not too much information about the trigram technology that distinguishes Brainware from other search vendors.
The name of a search system is important. Get the name wrong and it becomes difficult to locate specific information about a search system. From the number of inquiries I get about search vendors, I think the names are becoming a more significant part of the company’s presentation of its capabilities.
A recent example is Mindbreeze, the search arm of Fabasoft in Austria. Now the Mindbreeze search product must contend with the disambiguation challenge: the picture.
For anyone considering a name for a search technology, checking for overlaps is a useful step. Then once a name is in hand, that name has to be managed to ensure that a person looking for the company can locate relevant information. In the new world of non objective search, the name is the thing. For search, marketing–not technology–is the differentiator in 2011 in our opinion.
Whitney Grace, January 5, 2011
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OpenText Cares
January 5, 2011
Vendors claim that their clients are the most important parts of their companies. They back up this claim with automated customer service hotlines and technical support that creates more answers than questions. OpenText/NStein has released a press statement to assure their clients that they will be treated with respect and care: “OpenText/Nstein’s ongoing commitment to our WCM’s customers.” Here’s a snippet:
“When you contact your Customer Care Center, we readily check for improvements that may have been made for your version of WCM and often customize existing patches for your needs. These patches and fixes are all based on improvements built in the newer versions of WCM; they were ultimately inspired by your ideas and suggestions to the Customer Care Centre and our long experience in content management.”
We find that statements about ongoing commitments are thought provoking. Why make them if the commitment is evident to licensees? Just a question to consider.
Whitney Grace, January 5, 2011
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Amazon and Its Fast Moving Cloud
January 3, 2011
Several years ago, I noted that Google’s technical papers described features and functions that were evident in Amazon’s actual services. At that moment, I realized the Google had lost its chance for a cloud utility play. Now the GOOG may come roaring back, but with the legal friction increasing, Amazon has some clean air through which to float its big, fast cumulus cloud. Sure, Rackspace is a competitor to Amazon, and every vendor is yammering about the cloud. But right now, the Amazon has a big PR push underway. Now, to be fair, the Amazon cloud generated a nasty storm with its hardware crash the other day. Not good.
That’s why the PR guns are firing. You can see two examples of “good news”. Navigate first to the “I love Amazon” sky writing from Netflix. “Why We Use and Contribute to Open Source Software” and “Netflix Touts Open Source, Ignores Linux.” Netflix, of course, is flying in the Amazon clouds. The other PR example is a bit of a downer for library types who expect books to be available. Point your browser thing at “Amazon Erases Certain Books on Kindle Due to Content.”
But despite the good and bad PR, Amazon managed to pull of an interesting and useful technical coup. “Announcing VM Import for Amazon EC2” said:
VM Import enables you to easily import virtual machine images from your existing environment to Amazon EC2 instances.
Useful for many applications. Crash recovery. I think so.
Net net: The others in the cloud race need to kick into a different gear. Google? A question, “Can you get that airplane aloft?” Storm clouds rushing in.
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2011
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New iPhone App Takes Down Language Barrier
January 3, 2011
¿Usted quiere oír la cosa más asombrosa nunca? ¿Habla usted español? ¿No?
Without Spanish language skills or time to correctly type this into an online translator, you may not realize I just asked if you wanted to hear about the most amazing thing ever. A new post on gizmag.com entitled World Lens app turns your phone into a real-time translator details what has just incited giddiness across the tech community: the latest in translation tools. Quest Visual has brought the future into the palm of our hands with its recently introduced “World Lens” for the iPhone, an application that uses your phone’s camera to “view printed words and translate them into another language as you watch.” You can expect modest photo editing options such as cropping and zoom, and what camera would not be complete without a flash? If that was not good enough, the process is near instantaneous while still maintaining the texts original color and font.
There are noted limitations. First, Spanish is the only language currently available. Don’t be too disappointed though as the programmers are working on others, promising to continue until they “get all the way across the globe.” Also, it is only compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3Gs and the camera-equipped iPod Touch, so other users, including Android fans, are out of luck at this time. Finally, even Quest Visual recognizes that the translation will not always be exact; they do promise you will always walk away from the situation with the right idea.
I did notice a couple of reviews on the iTunes website stating that it was lame to give the application away for free only to turn around and charge five dollars for the plug-in languages (which is in fact the pricing model). Seriously? This novel instrument is straight out of a science-fiction novel, gadgetry many never expected to see in their lifetimes. We should be so lucky it only costs five dollars to own this incredible capability.
Sarah Rogers, January 3, 2011
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An Xoogler Looks Back at 2010
January 3, 2011
In “Reflecting on 2010: Searching for Answers” a former Endeca and Google (and current LinkedIn) employee, Daniel Tunkelang, gives his year-in-review. Some interesting notes about LinkedIn here, including that LinkedIn’s CEO sees his company as providing a Pandora-like service where job seekers can know instantly who has been promoted or left a given company and who they know there. Tunkelang also gives his opinion that Google should keep its relevance ranking secret, unlike Blekko, which is more upfront about its system. He states: “Now that web search is essentially a duopoly (at least in the US), I believe the real test of the value of transparency to users will be whether one of the two parties employs it as competitive differentiator.” It will be interesting to see where the other half of the duopoly (namely Bing) goes with transparency in 2011. Where’s my crystal ball?
Alice Wasielewski, January 3, 2011
BitTorrent Top Searches in 2010
January 2, 2011
Short honk: I am not into BitTorrent. You may be like the goose. Or, you may not. Regardless of one’s affinity or lack of it, the list of the most searched words and phrases warrants a quick look. Navigate to “BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Searched For in 2010.” You can determine your “with it” score. Just tick off the referents you know. My score was a dismal 11 out of 100. Obviously 66 year olds are clueless about the content available on BitTorrent. Those with a more agile life outlook may find the list either thrilling or disheartening. What is a “hot tub time machine.” See what I mean. The phrase is number 100 on the list. Number 1: Inception. Go figure.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2010
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