Google and Games?

Stephen Arnold just posted an article that is a write-down of one of his talks about the Google and the search market.

This time the angle is Google as an application and gaming platform.

First, Google is a platform, and it offers a range of software development kits, application programming interfaces, and “sandbox” toys. The idea is that a developer with online basic programming skills can use the Google platform. At the other end of the spectrum, a professional developer or a company focused on game development can create applications that run on the Google platform.

And then something about the way Google operates:

Second, I think it is important to recognize that Google moves in small, incremental steps. The company does this in order to avoid alerting competitors to its broader strategy and to minimize antitrust actions. Nevertheless, you should plan on allocating your time based on how the Google market shapes up. This means that delay in learning how to code for Google is a bad idea. Among the technologies to learn are SketchUp (Google’s drawing program), Android (the visible part of the Google operating system), Wave (collaborative spaces), and Google Apps and OneBox APIs. These functions are, at a minimum, the way in which to obtain the Googley expertise you need.

I think this is another one of Stephen’s brilliant takes on what’s happening at Google’s HQ.

For me it is again proof that the Google is into nearly everything and that’s why it is bound to lose focus and will get more and more (negative) attention.

Tags van Technorati: google,platform,cloudcomputing,applicationprovider,games

Unified Search for Firefox

Gives me insight on how search results from Google compare to results that Big comes up with.

Unified Search is a FireFox Addon thats let’s you not only compare Google or Bing, but also searches WIkipedia, Delicious and Wolfram.

It seems that everyday the relevancy of Bing is getting better. Better of course if the results that Google comes up with is the “standard”. But how do I know if the results that Google serves are the best?

I have gotten to trust Google so much that I am not discussing that anymore, which frightens me. Am I so blinded by the Google?

That is exactly why I am using Bing side by side with Google. I don’t want to blindly trust something when I don’t know is there’s something else to trust better.

Tags van Technorati: google,bing

Why is everybody picking on Google

I said it a while ago and now Google is negatively in the news again. The Google is getting to big.

In one of my previous posts I stated that whenever a company or person gets to much influence, it’s only a natural reaction of people to oppose to that force.

On the other hand when a company gets to big, it’s harder to keep focussing on the goals and primairy activities that support those goals.

It’s just a matter of time until the Google breaks up (forced or not) into smaller manageable business parts:

• Office productivity (Apps)
• Advertising
• Enterprise / Internet Search technology
• Cloud computing

Anyone sees other business units?

Tags van Technorati: google,business,public

Twitter has evolved into…. a search engine

Twitter started as an internet equivalent of a short message service. The concept of beeing able to follow other people and to be followed by people that want to know what you’re up to has gotten millions of user to start twittering.

Twitter got in the news when media started to realize that real-time breaking stories were beeing spread through message of Twitter users.

Now Twitter has started turning this “real time news search” as their new “reason for living”.

Of course they have an advantage over Google and Bing to being able to index, enrich and explore their own data.

Also read “”It’s Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine”

Tags van Technorati: twitter

Yahoo search coming to an end?

Just read the post on Beyond Search about Yahoo giving te Search to Bing…

Will this really be the end of Yahoo as a First Real Internet Search Engine?

 

Luckaly Yahoo has some other great offerings like the news portal, Email and other productivity tools.

Tags van Technorati: yahoo,google,microsoft,bing,advertising

Relevance problems over simplified

A few days ago there was an article on CMS Watch about relevance ranking.

Grant Ingersoll of Lucid imagination reacted to that post:

I couldn’t agree more with Therea Regli’s excellent discussion of relevance, especially the point to be “skeptical” of why results are the way they are. This is definitely true for search application developers too. The problem is, if you’re using a proprietary vendor, the only thing you can do about such skepticism is bang your head against the wall. For Apache Lucene and Solr, on the other hand, understanding why something scored the way it did is as simple as making an API call (Lucene) or adding &debugQuery (Solr) to your input and you get, in full unadultered glory every last detail about why a particular document scored a particular way for a given query. Furthermore, if that doesn’t satisfy you, just pop open the source code or ask us or ask on the mailing list!

I must react to the technical over simplification of this relevancy problem. Off course there are options in several search engines that explain why a document has a high relevance score in relation to the query. Solr / Lucene obviously has excelent functions to show it, but I must say that even Autonomy IDOL displays links, scores, terms and weights that explain this also.

Lucid must be carefull not to react to every case about search and relevancy ranking with the "Open source is open so you can build your own search engine" attitude. Let's be realistic about the fact that implementing Search is not cheap and transparent. That's exactly why Lucid entered the business.

Chome OS... De Google val slaat dicht

Much fuzz about the announcement of the Google Chrome OS the past few days.

I must say that I am intrigued by the concept myself. My first reaction was like "Off course, after the Google Apps, Chrome Browser and Android this is the next step".

Google is revealing itself more and more like the other established players as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc. They are actually building a stack of software and platforms that lock in any company that is standardising on their software.

Google is more and more becoming a "normal" IT-company that sells software and tries to bind customers to their solutions.
There are 3 aspects to this issue:

1. Google still is a company that gets it's revenues from advertising
2. Google is starting to dominate (monopoly??) some markets (advertising)
3. Google is known for giving away free services

I wonder where this is going... Google is not the David fighting Goliath with small stones anymore. They are a David on steroids trying to get Achilles and Goliath at the same time.

Read more about this topic:

• With the Chrome OS, Google's software stack is revealed; Shrapnel everywhere
• With OS project, is Google over-extending itself?

Boost for Open Source Search through availability of connectors

Just read the Blog post on Beyond Search about the fact that ISYS is letting its connector technology be reselled by Lucid Imagination.

According to Eric Gries, CEO of Lucid Imagination, "The combination of ISYS File Readers and Lucene/Solr offers a best-of-breed solution for enterprises that do not want to be held back by lack of functionality and the high costs associated with proprietary search products from infrastructure and platform vendors."

It is clear that Enterprise Search is all about the connectors, as stated in many articles and blog posts earlier. The lack of connectability of Solr/Lucene has, up till now, held back the large scale adaption of the open source platform.

I think this is very good news.