Google Autocomplete: Is Smart Help a Hindrance?
September 10, 2012
You may have heard of the deep extraction company Attensity. There is another company in a similar business with the name inTTENSITY. Not the playful misspelling of the common word “intensity.” What happens when a person looking for the company inTTENSITY get when he or she runs a query on Google. Look at what Google’s autocomplete suggestions recommend when I type intten:
The company’s spelling appears along with the less helpful “interstate ten”, “internet explorer ten”, and “internet icon top ten.” If I enter “inten”, I don’t get the company name. No surprise.
Is Google’s autocomplete a help or hindrance? The answer, in my opinion, is it depends on the users and what he or she is seeking.
I just read “Germany’s Former First Lady Sues Google For Defamation Over Autocomplete Suggestions.” According to the write up:
When you search for “Bettina Wulff” on Google, the search engine will happily autocomplete this search with terms like “escort” and “prostitute.” That’s obviously not something you would like to be associated with your name, so the wife of former German president Christian Wulff has now, according to Germany’s Süddeutschen Zeitung, decided to sue Google for defamation. The reason why these terms appear in Google’s autocomplete is that there have been persistent rumors that Wulff worked for an escort service before she met her husband. Wulff categorically denies that this is true.
The article explains that autocomplete has been the target of criticism before. The concluding statement struck me as interesting:
In Japan, a man recently filed a suit against Google after the autocomplete feature started linking his names with a number of crimes he says he wasn’t involved in. A court in Japan then ordered Google to delete these terms from autocomplete. Google also lost a similar suit in Italy in 2011.
I have commented about the interesting situations predictive algorithms can create. I assume that Google’s numerical recipes chug along like a digital and intent-free robot.
SharePoint Feels the Heat
September 4, 2012
I know there are quite a few companies who depend upon, integrate with, and otherwise cheerlead for Microsoft SharePoint. Heck, there are consultants a-plenty who tout their “expertise” with SharePoint. The problem is that some folks are not taking advantage of SharePoint’s glories. There are also some, if the data in “Most Popular Content Management Systems by Country” are accurate, who may never embrace SharePoint’s wonderfulness.
The write up appeared in W3Tech and makes clear that the top dog in content management is WordPress, followed by Joomla. Both of these are open source systems. The article asserts:
WordPress, as the most popular CMS overall, also dominates this picture. It is the number one system in most countries in North and South America, Europe and Oceania, many countries in Asia including Russia and India, and surprisingly few countries in Africa. Joomla dominates a fair number of countries in Africa, for example Algeria, Morocco and Nigeria, several countries in Central and South America, such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba, two countries in Europe, Greece and Bosnia, as well as Afghanistan and a number of other countries in Asia.
Are SharePoint centric vendors ignoring the market shifts in content management and search?
So where is SharePoint popular? Where do companies like BA Insight, Concept Searching, dtSearch, Recommind, SurfRay, and dozens upon dozens of other SharePoint supporters need to focus their sales efforts? According to W3Techs:
SharePoint is the number one system in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Lebanon as well as on .mil sites, which again don’t show up as separate country in our chart.
And China? Bad news. W3Tech says:
Discuz is a Chinese system that dominates its home market with 49% market share, but is not so much used outside China.
Thank goodness for Skype and Webex. A sales call and conference visit in these countries can whack an expense budget.
Many stakeholders in search and content processing companies believe that SharePoint as a market will keep on growing and growing. That may indeed happen. However, SharePoint centric vendors are likely to find themselves forced to pivot. At this time, a couple of search and content processing vendors have begun the process. Many have not, and I think that as the cost of sales and marketing rises, investors will want to learn about “life after SharePoint.”
How quickly will this message disseminate? Paddling around in Harrod’s Creek, I think that some companies will continue to ride the SharePoint bandwagon. That’s okay, but the “sudden pivot” which Vivisimo is trying to pull off with its “big data” positioning can leave some people confused.
SharePoint has been a money machine for third parties and consultants for a long time. The history of SharePoint is rarely discussed. The focus is on making the system work. That approach was a money maker when there was strong cash flow and liberal credit. As organizations look for ways to cut costs, open source content management systems seem to be taking hold. We are now tracking these important market shifts in our new service Text Radar.
If the W3Tech data are incorrect, the SharePoint vendors with their assertions about smart algorithms and seamless integration will blast past Autonomy’s record search revenues of almost $1 billion. But most search vendors are not Autonomy and are likely to be mired in the $3 to $15 million range where the vast majority of search and content processing vendors dwell.
Could the future be open source and high value, for fee add ons that deliver a solid punch for licensees? We have analyzed the open source search and content processing sector for IDC, and open source as an alternative to SharePoint content management, content processing, and search may have some wind in its sales. How many SharePoint centric vendors will generate a hundred million in revenue this year? Perhaps zero?
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Predictive Coding Wins Major Case
June 18, 2012
We’ve heard before how data analysis will change how we view and use information, but it will have a huge impact on the legal system. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has the following headline, “Pittsburgh Lawyer Wins Landmark Case Involving Use of Predictive Coding In Discovery Process.” Thomas Gricks III, a partner at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, filed to have predictive coding useable in circuit court for ten suits his firm represented. Gricks had more than 2 million documents to sift through and he used predictive coding to characterize the files, so he would only have to review a smaller portion. His strategy worked and has set a precedent for the legal system.
Here’s a prediction for the future:
“Rather than keyword searching of documents, predictive coding uses analytic searching that looks for concepts, said Peter Mansmann, chief executive of Precise Inc., a Downtown-based firm that provides trial consulting, e-discovery and document retention services. ‘It’s kind of new to the legal industry, and though it’s statistically shown to be accurate, people are afraid to use it because they’re not sure if it’s admissible in court,” Mr. Mansmann said. ‘The importance of this case is that now you have a judge who said, ‘Yes. I’m going to accept this as a reasonable approach to handling discovery. It will open the door for this to become a more accepted method. And it’s a huge cost savings. Typically, attorney review is the most expensive part of the process.’ ”
Had Gricks not used predictive coding, he would still have several interns and paralegals sifting through two million documents to find evidence for his clients. He would have had to pay and train those people, but predictive coding takes out man-hours and lowers litigation costs. Content Analyst offers predictive coding technology and solutions as one of the many services it offers their clients. The Content Analyst technology is available for licensing. Worth a look.
Whitney Grace, June 18, 2012
Sponsored by Content Analyst
Protected: Pitney Bowes and iDiscovery Tack on Analytics
June 15, 2012
Protected: Gartner Praises kCura, a Content Analyst Partner
June 14, 2012
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