Analysis of Google and its search offerings, both on the Web and for enterprises. Related subjects include:
The silly fuss over Obama’s use of YouTube
President-Elect Barack Obama is posting videos on YouTube. Clearly, his use of relatively cutting-edge communications technology is a Good Thing. It’s also unsurprising, giving the sophistication and importance of video in the recent presidential campaign.
However, various commentators — even ones as smart as Dan Farber — see something wrong with the use of YouTube for this purpose. I think that’s silly. Read more
| Categories: Google, Social software and online media | Leave a Comment |
The Google flu search story is pretty interesting
Google reports that it is tracking flu outbreaks via search. Actually, that’s a misnomer. Google is not tracking articles written about flu; HealthMap et al. do that. Rather, this Google project is tracking search queries about flu-related subjects. They have graphs suggesting a strong correlation between flu-related searches and actual cases of flu, notwithstanding that many searches on “flu” would be for, say “flu shot.” The key point is that Google tracks where searches come from, and hence detects which geographical areas are suffering flu outbreaks. And it does this 1-2 weeks faster than the alternative method, which is physicians reporting to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).* Read more
| Categories: Google, Search engines | 2 Comments |
Google and the Author’s Guild establish an ASCAP for books
Most of the coverage of the Google/Authors Guild settlement today seems to focus on Google’s side of things. But I think the authors’ side is much more important. This deal paves the way for traditional publishers to become quaint and useless — and not a moment too soon.
Below are some quotes — fair use!! 
— from the Authors Guild official statement on the deal (emphasis mine): Read more
| Categories: Google, Search engines, Social software and online media, Specialized search | Leave a Comment |
Google vs. Microsoft search, per Seth Grimes
Seth Grimes did a head-to-head comparison of Google and Microsoft Live Search results about the Microsoft/DATAllegro deal, 10 hours after it was announced. He found that Google had picked up a number of relevant results, while Live Search hadn’t. (And this was on the main search pages, not on News or Blogs.) He goes on to note that Yahoo’s “contextual” ads were badly irrelevant (Google didn’t have any at all).
What this boils down to, mainly, seems to be a major win in spidering speed for Google vs. Microsoft Live Search.
And yes Seth — I like you too.
| Categories: Google, Microsoft, Search engines | Leave a Comment |
Cat retirement homes, spam tortilla sandwiches, and the dubious relevancy of Gmail “contextual” ads
I’m a big fan of outsourcing one’s email to Google, and then continuing to use one’s favorite email client. (I’ve never switched away from Eudora.) Accordingly, I rarely use the actual Gmail interface – except when traveling and hence away from my desktop computer.
For the past week I have been on vacation, logging into Gmail a lot. And so I started noticing the contextual ads that appear above the lists of messages. Well, it turns out that – well, on the whole they’re not terribly contextual. Let me explain. Read more
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Google Health spoof
FutureFeedForward is on a roll:
MOUNTAIN VIEW–Information search giant Google, Inc. announced Thursday the release of Google Body, a search service aiming to index the internal and external anatomy of every living creature on the planet. …
Early testers have remarked upon a fuzzy-logic “match my organ” feature, which helps users get in touch with the nearest, most suitable donor for multiple organ systems. …
Responding to criticism from privacy groups, Google’s Hind pointed to the program’s opt-out policy. “We are very concerned about user privacy, and that’s why we will not make publicly available any information about anybody who let’s us know they do not want to participate by wearing an Opt-Out headband when in public. Google archives information about those individuals, but does not make it searchable.” The yellow and black vinyl headbands can be requested free of charge by writing to the company at its Mountain View headquarters.
| Categories: Fun stuff, Google, Humor, Search engines, Specialized search | Leave a Comment |
Fun with the Google External Keyword Tool
Google announced a major upgrade to the Google (External) Keyword Tool — it now gives actual numbers of searches, instead of vague logarithmic green bars. This now makes it very cool for figuring out what people actually search for. Estimated average monthly search volumes include: Read more
| Categories: Fun stuff, Google, Search engine optimization (SEO), Search engines | Leave a Comment |
6 trends that could shake up the text analytics market
My last two posts were based on the introductory slide to my talk The Text Analytics Marketplace: Competitive landscape and trends. I’ll now jump straight ahead to the talk’s conclusion.
Text analytics vendors participate in the same trends as other software and technology vendors. For example, relational business intelligence and data warehousing products are increasingly being sold to departmental buyers. Those buyers place particularly high value on ease of installation. And golly gee whiz, both parts of that are also true in text mining.
But beyond such general trends, I’ve identified six developments that I think could radically transform the text analytics market landscape. Indeed, they could invalidate the neat little eight-bucket categorization I laid out in the prior post. Each is highly likely to occur, although in some cases the timing remains greatly in doubt.
These six market-transforming trends are:
- Web/enterprise/messaging integration
- BI integration
- Universal message retention
- Portable personal profiles
- Electronic health records
- Voice command & control
| Categories: BI integration, Enterprise search, Google, Microsoft, Search engines, Social software and online media, Text mining | 1 Comment |
The Text Analytics Marketplace: Competitive landscape and trends
As I see it, there are eight distinct market areas that each depend heavily on linguistic technology. Five are off-shoots of what used to be called “information retrieval”:
1. Web search
2. Public-facing site search
3. Enterprise search and knowledge management
4. Custom publishing
5. Text mining and extraction
Three are more standalone:
6. Spam filtering
7. Voice recognition
8. Machine translation
Google is idiosyncratic about what it displays
I was testing the new blog theme installed on Software Memories, specifically to see whether the title and description in the search engine results reflected the metatag title and description I’d just put in, which are
History of the software industry, its companies and its personalities
and
History of the software industry by Curt Monash, who’s been in the middle of it since 1981
respectively.
Well, the answer turns out to be a resounding “Yes and no.” Read more
| Categories: Google, Search engine optimization (SEO), Search engines | Leave a Comment |
