Googling to the max

Philip Bell addresses the expanding Google empire, and stimulates discussion and involvement with byte-size serves.


Google remains a central talking point round the 'net.

It's still number one search engine - by a long shot.  And its lead over competitors continues to grow.

An end-year US survey found that Google was used in 48 % of US web searches, which number 2.4 billion per month.  Yahoo came second with a 22% market share and growing at a slower rate than Google. Micro$oft's M$N came third at 11%, with growth weaker than market average.

Last week I sat down to write up my notes for PCUG Coffee n Chat about the newish double "Watch Watch" website on Google (see below). And one think led to another think.  So here we go.

Google's 7-year itch

Do you remember opening the Google homepage earlier this year and seeing a birthday cake image to celebrate Google's 7th anniversary - the biblical "fullness of time".

To recapture this moment, I went to Google News. The lead story of that day in Google News for the 7 years celebration was a long and wide-ranging piece in Computer World about Google's development and recently obvious "7-year itch". http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1108127624;relcomp;1

Not that there was any talk of Google deserting the marriage bed of its established revenue stream - namely, pay-per-click advertising based on response to its web search results. But Google definitely does have an itch to be going places elsewhere. Google has decided to put itself about.  "We are not just a 'search engine company'", says Google. "We are an 'information company'.  And we go wherever the info leads us."

Such waywardness of course can lead to all sorts of promiscuities and dubious dalliances. Google has doubled its number of employees in the last 12 months to over 6000 employees.  Google Europe is about to put on 500 new people in Ireland.

Just think of all the unlikely things that over the last year or two have jumped out of that hotbed of software engineering called Google Labs as well as from other parts of the Google organisation: ·    Picasa, ·    Orkut - the (lead balloon) social networking tool, ·    Froogle, ·    Google Define, ·    Google Scholar, ·    Google Books, ·    Google Maps, ·    Google Transit for planning your public transport trips, ·    Google Ride Finder and ·    just released today, Google Music ·    Etc etc.
It goes on and on. But one must mention also Google's Gmail - offering every citizen of the world a minimum 2.5 gigs of free mail storage space. I still find this mind blowing.

Google now seems to be heading off in more than a dozen different directions. But relentless competition continuing for their major revenue base - the pay-per-click advertising from web searches.

Below are some jottings on various goings-on at and about Google. Nowadays even IT events outside Google tempt analysts to look around to see what Google might be doing about them.  If you are always the centre of attention, if you are the Sun King, and wisdom streams out of your every orifice, well - What have you got to say about this,? For example, what about BlinkX?
Image has proved to be recently the fastest growth area of web search.

BlinkX

I thought it may be of interest to those CNCers who are doing things with digital video to have a look at this recent startup competitor to Google, which specialises in video search, namely, BlinkX. http://www.blinkx.com/overview.php

I read that "technically" Blinkx knocks the sox off Google in video searching. But how many have yet even heard of it?

Google Watch Watch

Many of you will have heard of the playground site for Google paranoids at: http://www.google-watch.org/

In last week's CNC notes I mentioned my recent discovery of the "Watch Watch" Google-observer site: http://www.google-watch-watch.org/

Google Watch Watch is "guarding the guardian", keeping watch over the Google Watch website - and taking GW to task for daring to question the motives and commercial practices of our good friend Google. GW has provoked a Google devotee's equal and opposite reaction.

Over the years I have found some interesting stuff about Google from the GW website, even if you need to take it with a large dose of salt. It's somewhat ironic that a company whose informal motto is "Don't be evil!" should inspire such a sustained attack on its commercial morality. http://investor.google.com/conduct.html

I must say that some of the criticisms from Google Watch become more understandable once you know the GW author's background, as revealed by the Watch Watch author. The original Google watcher is a web publisher with a very sharp axe to grind about why doesn't his commercial website get much better ratings in Google?

Comparing search engines and "Googling to the max"

I spent quite some time about 2 1/2 years ago trying to find the best site for understanding search engines and how to use them. It was then that I discovered the UC Berkeley library site with its raft of detailed tutorials on every aspect of the Internet as a source of information and research.

Every university library needs to be able to help students get started in finding stuff on the net. I found that virtually all the most prestigious Anglophone universities refer their students to this UC Berkeley site: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html

You will find here a detailed analysis of the 3 leading search engines and how to use them.

This UC site has long held the view that metasearch engines are no longer helpful for most search purposes. Note also the discussion about differences in results obtained from different search engines.

In looking again at this UC Berkeley library website, which is constantly updated, I found only one broken link, among such a large number. This website is exceptionally well maintained.

It is interesting to note that many of the major observations and findings on how the web works (and still currently reported on this web site) were made a few years ago. This UC site has not found updates to a lot of these findings. Some aspects of the web have hardly changed, apparently, in recent years.

The 'Googling to the Max' page on this UC site is at: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Google.html This page discusses why Google often turns up pages near the top of its search results which do not have all your search terms.

Google Base and "Googlius disruptus"

The new Google tool "Google Base" is yet another outrageous example of the "Googlius disruptus" or even of a "Gooitus interruptus!" phenomenon which is causing havoc in normal commercial relationships.

It's as if the Google software engineering triads start every day by discussing: "Whose applecart shall we overturn today?"

I find it fascinating to read about how Google organises its research effort in order to maximise creativity. For example (and I quote from a Newsweek blurb direct from Google at): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10296177/site/newsweek/ "Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. There is, of course, an approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a company wide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app. The software allows for everyone to comment on and rate ideas, permitting the best ideas to percolate to the top."

This Newsweek article quoted above gives you a glimpse inside the ideas factory of Google. I found it fascinating.

It looks to me as if the new Google Base may revolutionise the way a lot of the web operates.

The established WWW pattern is for web authors to publish all their stuff out into the wide blue yonder.  Then search engine spybots have to try and find all such websites worth finding; and then try (within strict limits of cost and time) to discover what useful info may be hidden deep within them.  The limitations, inexactness, inefficiencies and commercial limitations of the web crawling process have led analysts to describe the phenomenon known as the "hidden web" or "invisible web".  This major impediment to web searching is discussed in detail on the UC Berkeley site: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/InvisibleWeb.html The spybot managers draw arbitrary lines as to how deep they dig, even in a website rich with information. Sometimes the technology does not even allow the spybots to enter information-rich sites.

Google appears to be planning to shortcut the spybot search engine process by inviting web site publishers to lodge their material direct with Google, perhaps enhanced with the publisher's carefully chosen indexes taking the web searcher perhaps deep into their rich information.

Paranoids and even non-paranoids may see this as an attempt by Google to "take over" the web! The fact that Google now has the processing power to offer the Google Base option must make even non-paranoids wonder somewhat about the concentration of so much power within one organisation. Google's Beta site on this product is at: http://base.google.com/base/default

It is just as well that we can feel relaxed and comfortable, knowing that "Google is good" and "Google is your friend." Just as our ever loveable PM has promised us he would never abuse the majority we have given him in parliament.  We are so blessed to be living in a world peopled with benevolent powers.

I notice that Google Base has been publicly released in Beta without first getting a listing in Google Labs, http://labs.google.com/

Perhaps the Google marketing people wanted to get this new tool straight out into virtual full operation before the Google paranoids try their damnedest to stop it, by raising a stink in the US Congress etc.  They would rather not face again the storm raised by the release of Gmail and Google Books.

It looks as if a fair bit of the Google Base tool is aimed squarely at those legendary "rivers of gold", namely, the classified ad pages of the major dailies. No wonder some folk now describe Google's creativity as organised disruption - including disruption of established information access patterns within various industries and disruption of those who feed off these established patterns.

Just think of the poor Canberra Times advertising market and how much the web is already undermining it! It looks like another body blow is looming.

Google "Black"-mail

The Google Watch site concentrates particular venom on Gmail - "it's too spooky", says GW, "so don't send us any messages via Gmail."

Another irony here.  The engineer at Google who was the main architect of Gmail is the same person who came up with Google's informal logo "Don't be evil."

Personally, I tend more and more to see Gmail as a "killer application" for Google, and I don't mean that pejoratively. The stream of improvements to the product continues, and shows no signs of abating. In fact, the pace of improvements seems to be quickening - with centralised virus checking recently added, as well as RSS feeds (the next BIG thing, as they say), Gmail Mobile, Vacation notifier, Group mailing facility - as usual, the list goes on.

Gmail's enthusiastic following so soon after its release must have a lot to do with Google's software development maxim "Eat your own dog food".  Apparently, this product and all improvements to it have been extensively tested on Google's own staff before release.

Following Rod B's example, I recently integrated my Gmail with my resident email client (a more practical way for people still on dial-up to use Gmail, in my opinion). But since going overseas in April I have lost interest in using my dear old Eudora. Going back last week to face using Eudora once more did not fill me with joy. I find the filtering and folders approach of traditional disk-resident email clients just too old hat. Bypassing this and having Google's search engine at your fingertips on your personal mailbase is a facility I find hard to beat.

I also much prefer Gmail's approach to contact listing (address book). It's so much more streamlined.

I believe I now like Gmail so much that I would be prepared to pay for it. I wonder if Google regrets their declaration at the outset that they have no plans to charge for Gmail. I reckon probably not, as it integrates so neatly with the revenue generation patterns of their web search results pages which has proved such a "river of gold" for Google.

In fact, I suspect that Gmail will continue to be a major focus of Google software development.  It has already proved to be an important diversification for the company.  Such a major part of Google's googy eggs are concentrated in the web search advertising pay-per-click financial basket.  Gmail opens up an entirely new stream of discreet but personally-targeted advertising and a consequent new revenue stream.

My guess is that Google will in due course release a version of Gmail which will offer all the functionality of Outlook in personal information management, and more.

So make sure you get your address ASAP, while more attractive addresses are still available. Give yourself the monopoly of earlier choice.

Concluding - PC World's top 100 products for 2005

In putting together this article, somehow or other I stumbled upon a listing in computing magazine PCWorld of its 15 December awards for the world's top 100 info technology products for 2005. http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120763,pg,12,00.asp

Sadly, I could only find about a dozen that had even rated a mention during our past year's wide-ranging discussions in the PCUG Coffee and Chat meetings.

Their top product is the Open Source web browser Firefox.

Number 2 is (Don't mention the too spooky!) Google Gmail.

No 8 is Skype, the free VoIP Internet phone software.

The PC World story links to individual assessments of each one of these 100 products.

Feeling out of it?

Do you get the same feeling as me - namely, that in this race to the future, some of us are falling ever further behind?

But at least at Coffee and Chat, we seem to have heard about the top 2 plus one other in the top 10 products, if little else!

It's as if Gordon E. Moore's law of 1965 is having the same devastating effect on our personal rate of obsolescence as it does on the computer chip and all those myriad devices that hang off it nowadays in their blossoming diversity. (Moore is widely known for "Moore's Law," in which in 1965 he predicted that the number of transistors the industry would be able to place on a computer chip would double every year. In 1975, he updated his prediction to once every two years. While originally intended as a rule of thumb in 1965, it has become the guiding principle for the industry to deliver ever-more-powerful semiconductor chips at proportionate decreases in cost.

Moore's law continues to the present day and seemingly into the future. To see a graphic on how this doubling of the chip's power and cost efficiency every 1 to 2 years, go to: http://tinyurl.com/dhmds
Ah well. C'est la vie! Like the 8080 chip and Pentiums I, II and III and so on, we all approach our fullness of time and our ultimate demise.

Long live our children and grandchildren, if we are lucky enough to have them and lucky enough to be able to celebrate with them over Christmas the birth of new life and new hope for a new generation.

Let us all wish for ourselves in 2006 a measure of the same dynamism and "joie de vivre" which appears to animate the Google machine!

Philip Bell <philip.bell@gmail.com>    Dec, 2005
INDEX       NEXT