Google Search
Google: Another look under the hood of search – the evolution of Google Search; http://eicker.at/GoogleSearch
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Gerrit Eicker
TINSTAAFL
There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch: and there is no exception for #TINSTAAFL on the Internet; http://eicker.at/TINSTAAFL
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Gerrit Eicker
Guardian: “Physics has Newton’s first law (‘Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed’). The equivalent for internet services is simpler, though just as general in its applicability: it says that there is no such thing as a free lunch. – The strange thing is that most users of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other ‘free’ services seem to be only dimly aware of this law. … But it costs money – millions of dollars a month, every month. The monthly amount is called the ‘burn rate’. … It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the best way to get big fast is to offer your services for free. … The penny drops for most suckers, er, users when it occurs to them that the service is, somehow, becoming more intrusive – whether through abrupt changes in default privacy settings, or sudden changes in the way their update and news feeds are reconfigured. What started as a lovely, simple, clean interface suddenly starts to look very cluttered and, well, manipulative. … It doesn’t have to be like this, of course. It just needs a different business model in which users pay modest fees for online services.”
Wikipedia: “‘There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ (alternatively, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’ or other variants) is a popular adage communicating the idea that it is impossible to get something for nothing. The acronyms TANSTAAFL and TINSTAAFL are also used. Uses of the phrase dating back to the 1930s and 1940s have been found, but the phrase’s first appearance is unknown. The ‘free lunch’ in the saying refers to the nineteenth century practice in American bars of offering a ‘free lunch’ as a way to entice drinking customers. The phrase and the acronym are central to Robert Heinlein’s 1966 libertarian science fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which popularized it. The free-market economist Milton Friedman also popularized the phrase by using it as the title of a 1975 book, and it often appears in economics textbooks; Campbell McConnell writes that the idea is ‘at the core of economics’. … TINSTAAFL demonstrates opportunity cost. Greg Mankiw described the concept as: ‘To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another.’ The idea that there is no free lunch at the societal level applies only when all resources are being used completely and appropriately, i.e., when economic efficiency prevails. If not, a ‘free lunch’ can be had through a more efficient utilisation of resources. If one individual or group gets something at no cost, somebody else ends up paying for it. If there appears to be no direct cost to any single individual, there is a social cost. Similarly, someone can benefit for ‘free’ from an externality or from a public good, but someone has to pay the cost of producing these benefits. – In the sciences, TINSTAAFL means that the universe as a whole is ultimately a closed system – there is no magic source of matter, energy, light, or indeed lunch, that does not draw resources from something else, and will not eventually be exhausted.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Failures
Google doesn’t get social: Google Plus‘ failures are plenty – but calling them dead? http://eicker.at/GooglePlusFailures
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Gerrit Eicker
Slate: “Google+ Is Dead – The search behemoth might not realize it yet, but its chance to compete with Facebook has come and gone. – [A] social network isn’t a product; it’s a place. Like a bar or a club, a social network needs a critical mass of people to be successful-the more people it attracts, the more people it attracts. Google couldn’t have possibly built every one of Facebook’s features into its new service when it launched, but to make up for its deficits, it ought to have let users experiment more freely with the site. That freewheeling attitude is precisely how Twitter – the only other social network to successfully take on Facebook in the last few years – got so big. When Twitter users invented ways to reply to one another or echo other people’s tweets, the service didn’t stop them – it embraced and extended their creativity. This attitude marked Twitter as a place whose hosts appreciated its users, and that attitude-and all the fun people were having-pushed people to stick with the site despite its many flaws (Twitter’s frequent downtime, for example). Google+, by contrast, never managed to translate its initial surge into lasting enthusiasm. And for that reason, it’s surely doomed.”
Scoble: “I wish I had never heard of Google+’s brand pages – The problem is that there’s no editorial tools for anything posted to our Google+ account. Google+ brand accounts are woefully inadequate for public companies’ needs. … Yes, Facebook didn’t have those features for its brand pages at first either but then when Facebook first came on the scene no one thought they would use it for business. Heck, when I first heard about Facebook it was still for college students only. … Did anyone really think these things through? Why did they take five months to get done? – Anyway, this is just a way for me to tell anyone thinking of signing up their company for a Google+ brand account to think twice. You might, because you signed your company up for such a thing, get saddled with an entirely new job that you might not like one bit. One that you’ll find that Google didn’t equip you for success in.”
Ruble: “I have decided not to post here for the time being. I will leave my profile up. Google+ is great. I wish them luck. Really i do. But I have to make choices about where I spend my time and for me that’s Twitter, Facebook and soon Tumblr – where I will be doing more so. It’s where I get the most value for the time invested. So, adios for now. See you on one of those networks. I may change my mind one day, but right now this is my plan. See you online.”
GigaOM: “[T]he problem with many of these criticisms – as with Manjoo’s premature obituary writing – isn’t just that social networks take time to evolve, and users need time to find out what they are useful for and what they aren’t useful for (Twitter is a perfect example of that, since its own creators didn’t really know what it was for when they built it). The problem is that they are seeing Google+ as JASN: just another social network. … But Google has made it clear that it has a lot bigger plans for Google+ than just making it a Facebook clone. Chairman Eric Schmidt has said the company wants to make the network an identity platform for all of its properties… So yes, Google+ is noisy for some, and for others is a ghost town. Many of its features are raw and need work, like the brand page rollout. But Google is not just trying to build a place to share photos of your cat – it wants Google+ to be a social layer for everything it does, and it has some powerful levers it can pull when it comes to encouraging people to use it, such as search and email. The full impact of that integration remains to be seen, but it is far too soon to call the network dead or a loser. It’s barely even the third inning.“
Gerrit Eicker
Search Engine Bias
Does Google favour its own sites in search results? New study: Google less biased than Bing; http://eicker.at/SearchEngineBias
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Gerrit Eicker
SEL: “Does Google favor its own sites in search results, as many critics have claimed? Not necessarily. New research suggests that claims that Google is ‘biased’ are overblown, and that Google’s primary competitor, Microsoft’s Bing, may actually be serving Microsoft-related results ‘far more’ often than Google links to its own services in search results. – In an analysis of a large, random sample of search queries, the study from Josh Wright, Professor of Law and Economics at George Mason University, found that Bing generally favors Microsoft content more frequently, and far more prominently, than Google favors its own content. According to the findings, Google references its own content in its first results position in just 6.7% of queries, while Bing provides search result links to Microsoft content more than twice as often (14.3%). … The findings of the new study are in stark contrast with a study on search engine ‘bias’ released earlier this year. That study, conducted by Harvard professor Ben Edelman concluded that ‘by comparing results across multiple search engines, we provide prima facie evidence of bias; especially in light of the anomalous click-through rates we describe above, we can only conclude that Google intentionally places its results first.’ … So, what conclusions to draw? Wright says that ‘analysis finds that own-content bias is a relatively infrequent phenomenon’ – meaning that although Microsoft appears to favor its own sites more often than Google, it’s not really a major issue, at least in terms of ‘bias’ or ‘fairness’ of search results that the engines present. Reasonable conclusion: Google [and Bing, though less so] really are trying to deliver the best results possible, regardless of whether they come from their own services [local search, product search, etc] or not. … But just because a company has grown into a dominant position doesn’t mean they’re doing wrong, or that governments should intervene and force changes that may or may not be “beneficial” to users or customers.”
Edelman/Lockwood: “By comparing results between leading search engines, we identify patterns in their algorithmic search listings. We find that each search engine favors its own services in that each search engine links to its own services more often than other search engines do so. But some search engines promote their own services significantly more than others. We examine patterns in these differences, and we flag keywords where the problem is particularly widespread. Even excluding ‘rich results’ (whereby search engines feature their own images, videos, maps, etc.), we find that Google’s algorithmic search results link to Google’s own services more than three times as often as other search engines link to Google’s services. For selected keywords, biased results advance search engines’ interests at users’ expense: We demonstrate that lower-ranked listings for other sites sometimes manage to obtain more clicks than Google and Yahoo’s own-site listings, even when Google and Yahoo put their own links first. … Google typically claims that its results are ‘algorithmically-generated’, ‘objective’, and ‘never manipulated.’ Google asks the public to believe that algorithms rule, and that no bias results from its partnerships, growth aspirations, or related services. We are skeptical. For one, the economic incentives for bias are overpowering: Search engines can use biased results to expand into new sectors, to grant instant free traffic to their own new services, and to block competitors and would-be competitors. The incentive for bias is all the stronger because the lack of obvious benchmarks makes most bias would be difficult to uncover. That said, by comparing results across multiple search engine, we provide prima facie evidence of bias; especially in light of the anomalous click-through rates we describe above, we can only conclude that Google intentionally places its results first.”
ICLE: “A new report released [PDF] by the International Center for Law und Economics and authored by Joshua Wright, Professor of Law and Economics at George Mason University, critiques, replicates, and extends the study, finding Edelman und Lockwood’s claim of Google’s unique bias inaccurate and misleading. Although frequently cited for it, the Edelman und Lockwod study fails to support any claim of consumer harm – or call for antitrust action – arising from Google’s practices. – Prof. Wright’s analysis finds own-content bias is actually an infrequent phenomenon, and Google references its own content more favorably than other search engines far less frequently than does Bing: In the replication of Edelman und Lockwood, Google refers to its own content in its first page of results when its rivals do not for only 7.9% of the queries, whereas Bing does so nearly twice as often (13.2%). – Again using Edelman und Lockwood’s own data, neither Bing nor Google demonstrates much bias when considering Microsoft or Google content, respectively, referred to on the first page of search results. – In our more robust analysis of a large, random sample of search queries we find that Bing generally favors Microsoft content more frequently-and far more prominently-than Google favors its own content. – Google references own content in its first results position when no other engine does in just 6.7% of queries; Bing does so over twice as often (14.3%). – The results suggest that this so-called bias is an efficient business practice, as economists have long understood, and consistent with competition rather than the foreclosure of competition. One necessary condition of the anticompetitive theories of own-content bias raised by Google’s rivals is that the bias must be sufficient in magnitude to exclude rival search engines from achieving efficient scale. A corollary of this condition is that the bias must actually be directed toward Google’s rivals. That Google displays less own-content bias than its closest rival, and that such bias is nonetheless relatively infrequent, demonstrates that this condition is not met, suggesting that intervention aimed at ‘debiasing’ would likely harm, rather than help, consumers.”
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Cookies
Cubilovic: Logging out of Facebook is not enough; maybe fixed. – Arrington: brutal dishonesty; http://eicker.at/FacebookCookies
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Gerrit Eicker
Arrington: “‘Facebook does not track users across the web,‘ – A Facebook spokesperson on September 25, 2011 and ‘Generally, unlike other major Internet companies, we have no interest in tracking people.‘ – Facebook employee on September 25, 2011 v. ‘A method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain.‘ – Facebook Patent application dated September 22, 2011 – Whoops”
Cubrilovic: “[L]ogging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies [including your account number] are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page [that integrate facebook] you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions. … To clarify, I first emailed this issue to Facebook on the 14th of November 2010. I also copied the email to their press address to get an official response on it. I never got any response. … I have been sitting on this for almost a year now. The renewed discussion about Facebook and privacy this weekend prompted me to write this post.”
Cubrilovic: “My goal was to both identify bugs in the logout process and see that they are fixed, and to communicate with Facebook in getting some of the unanswered questions answered so that the Facebook using public can be informed of how cookies are used on the site – especially with regard to third-party requests. – In summary, Facebook has made changes to the logout process and they have explained each part of the process and the cookies that the site uses in detail. … Facebook has changed as much as they can change with the logout issue. They want to retain the ability to track browsers after logout for safety and spam purposes, and they want to be able to log page requests for performance reasons etc. I would still recommend that users clear cookies or use a separate browser, though. I believe Facebook when they describe what these cookies are used for, but that is not a reason to be complacent on privacy issues and to take initiative in remaining safe. – I discovered a lot of other issues and interesting areas ripe for further investigation while researching the cookie logout issue – and I will be taking each one of them up on the blog here in the near future.”
BBC: “Facebook has said that it has ‘fixed’ cookies that could have tracked users after they logged out of the site. … In a statement, the firm told the BBC that it had done nothing wrong. ‘There was no security or privacy breach-Facebook did not store or use any information it should not have. Like every site on the internet that personalises content and tries to provide a secure experience for users, we place cookies on the computer of the user.’ … Most cookies perform basic tasks like storing your login details or personal preferences. – But some track the sites users visit, which means that they may be presented with adverts for products or services they researched on the web once they visit other unrelated sites. Consumer concerns over this type of cookie led to a new EU directive, with online firms across Europe currently working out how they can allow users to opt out of these bits of code.”
SEW: “It was recently discovered that some Facebook cookies were left in-tact after logout. While the issue has since been resolved, select data is still tracked and recent Facebook patent information indicates that all logged-out tracking may be intentional. … Facebook reports that the remaining cookies exclude personal identifiers and are completely benign in nature; they serve functions such as generating timestamps, contributing to Facebook’s page reporting, and helping to keep public computers secure. … Facebook isn’t the only one facing privacy and tracking issues, either. Marketers should give note to a couple other stories, including The Wall Street Journal’s recently revised privacy policy (which permits WSJ to track personally identifiable behavior without user consent) and the FTC probe into undeletable ‘supercookies‘ used by Hulu and MSN.com.”
SMH: “On Friday, 10 public interest groups asked the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook’s tracking of internet users after they log off. They urged the commission to examine whether Facebook’s new ticker and timeline features increased privacy risks for users by combining biographical information in an easily accessible format. … The lawsuit – filed by Perrin Aikens Davis, of Illinois – seeks class status on behalf of other Facebook users in the US. Davis seeks unspecified damages and a court order blocking the tracking based on violations of federal laws, including restrictions on wiretapping, as well as computer fraud and abuse statutes. – ‘We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,’ Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, said in a statement.“
Gerrit Eicker
AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo vs. Google
AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo have agreed to sell each other’s display advertising inventory to challenge Google; http://eicker.at/AMY
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Gerrit Eicker
ATD: “AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft compete for ad dollars. But a new pact calls for the rivals to cooperate on ad sales, too. – The three companies are going to start selling ad inventory on each others’ sites, in a plan they hope will make them more competitive with Google. … Executives from all three companies briefed a group of top Web publishers and ad buyers about the plan at a dinner presentation last night in Manhattan. … The three companies will share revenue on the ads, and supposedly they’ll pocket more than they would have if a third-party ad network sold their stuff.”
Guardian: “The potential tie-up comes days after reports that AOL and Yahoo, fallen giants of the first age of the internet, were discussing a merger in the wake of the firing of Yahoo’s chief executive, Carol Bartz. … The advertising hook-up, in the meantime, could help slow the fast growth of Google and Facebook in the lucrative online display advertising market. – Google has long dominated search advertising – or online classified advertising – but overtook Yahoo in display advertising in May this year in the US, according to research firm IDC.”
pC: “All three of issued statements to the effect that there have been some ties before and the portals are exploring ‘future’ collaborations. … But ultimately, it’s hard to see what the value of the three combining sales efforts would be. There is a tremendous amount of similarity in terms of reach among AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. So where’s the complement? … The reason Google and Facebook are eating away at the portals’ display dominance is easy: the users that advertisers want to reach are more and more easily reachable through social media sites like Facebook, not through general content offered by portals. At the same time, Google’s tight relationship with the agencies, through its demand side platform Invite Media and the Google DoubleClick ad exchange, make it a more efficient funnel for online ad dollars.”
VB: “Since the three companies will be sharing revenue from the display ads, the real challenge will be in convincing each of their separate sales teams to start selling their competitors’ ad inventory. – The partnership, scheduled to begin by the end of the year, doesn’t require that each of the companies exclusively work with each other, according to the report.”
TNW: “The ad pact will start at the end of 2011 and will not require exclusivity so each company is free to work with any ad network, even Google. I imagine it will still require a bit of training to get their internal sales teams to start selling competitors’ inventory. By banding together in Musketeer style, the three companies will share ad revenues in hopes of increasing their total earnings in Google’s shadow. The online advertising world is one of the most competitive landscapes and as companies go head to head in the language of CPM, CPC, DSP and conversion tracking pixels….it’s like the wild west for geeks out there.”
Gerrit Eicker
#NymWars
Google Plus‘ identity crises led to #PlusGate and escalated to a war for pseudonymity: #NymWars; http://eicker.at/NymWars
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Gerrit Eicker
Guardian: “Google Plus forces us to discuss identity – Google’s Real Name policy embodies a theory that states the way to maximise civility is to abolish anonymity. … Google Plus’s controversial identity policy requires all users to use their ‘real names’. … [P]roblems include the absurdity of Google’s demand for scans of government ID to accomplish this task and the fractal implausibility of Google being able to discern real from fake in all forms of government ID. … The first duty of social software is to improve its users’ social experience. Facebook’s longstanding demand that its users should only have one identity is either a toweringly arrogant willingness to harm people’s social experience in service to doctrine; or it is a miniature figleaf covering a huge, throbbing passion for making it easier to sell our identities to advertisers. – Google has adopted the Facebook doctrine… There could be no stupider moment for Google to subscribe to the gospel of Zuckerberg, and there is no better time for Google to show us an alternative.”
Gizmodo: “Google, Facebook and Twitter now all have similar products. But Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (somewhat inadvertently) made it clear yesterday that while all three have social networking features and make money from ads, they are in fundamentally different businesses. – At a very basic level, Google+ and Facebook are in the identity delivery business, and Twitter is in the information delivery business. That’s a powerful distinction. It reflects a fundamentally different conception of what’s more valuable: information or identity. It also gets at who is more valuable, advertisers or users. – Google and Facebook’s social products are committed to a real names policy. Both can serve someone up to a network of peers or advertisers with some degree of certainty about identity. – Twitter takes exactly the opposite route towards building a network. You can be anonymous, or use a pseudonym, or even impersonate someone else (as long as you indicate that it’s a parody). It will still connect you to others on its network, and allow you to both serve and receive data. And that’s working well, for everybody.”
SEW: “There has been a lot of speculation about why the push for real names on Facebook and now Google, with Google taking a much harder line than even Facebook, not allowing for even the simplest derivation of ‘nyms’ (pseudonyms). … Why is a company like Google taking such a hard line on something as simple as a name – even though there is no verification process for the ‘real name,’ so ultimately this policing is currently meaningless. … Google’s ambitions for Google+ appear to go far beyond social signals, marketing, and their efforts to make a better product. Dig a little further and you’ll find something called the ‘National Strategy For Trusted Identities In Cyberspace‘ (NSTIC). … A way to establish identity was never invented, so one needs to be. The difference is that companies will hold the real IDs, rather than the government – companies with ‘identity services,’ such as Google. … Maybe we have a new wrinkle in the reason behind the real ID movement, not the betterment of services for Google, but the government initiative into a real online ID system. … Real ID systems should be of concern to anyone who believes in the Bill of Rights and our freedom of speech and to not incriminate ourselves – to live a life that isn’t monitored by entities, ‘private’ or not. Is Google part of this? You have to be the judge.”
Boyle: “Thoughts on rel=author, #nymwars, ‘identity service’ – Over the past month or so, the ‘nymwars’ have become the thing Google+ is most known for among my circle of friends. This is a problem of Google’s own making: they are suspending profiles based on naive heuristics about ‘real names’ (actually typical two part western names), and demanding government ID to reinstate them. … This is not an effective defence against trolls as was initially claimed; they’re more concerned with ideas about G+ as an ‘identity service’ and a way to ‘improve our products’ than about the wishes of their users or the fact that they’re perpetuating the exclusion of minorities. … I recommend linking together your profile pages on other sites, rather than only linking everything to your Google profile. … [D]on’t just do what’s on the left here, because all those associations will be lost when your G+ profile is taken down. If you do something more like what’s on the right, other identity services / social networks and other search engines will have a better chance of presenting what you want them to present.”
Gartner, Blakley: “Google+ Can Be A Social Network Or The Name Police – Not Both – Google is currently trying to enforce a ‘common name’ policy in Google+. The gist of the policy is that ‘your Google+ name must be ‘THE’ name by which you are commonly known’. – This policy is insane. I really mean insane; the policy is simply completely divorced from the reality of how names really work AND the reality of how humans really work, and it’s also completely at odds with what Google is trying to achieve with G+. … A name is not an attribute of a person; it is an identifier of a person, chosen arbitrarily and changeable at will. … Google+’s naming policy isn’t failing because it’s poorly implemented, or because Google’s enforcement team is stupid. It’s failing because what they’re trying to do is (1) impossible, and (2) antisocial. … Google’s intention in moving into social networking is to sell ads, Google+’s common names policy gives them a lock on the North American suburban middle-aged conservative white male demographic. w00t.”
Botgirl: “Ejecting virtually identified people with active social networks shows that Google sees online relationships as illegitimate. When Google ejects you for using virtual identity it not only disrespects your privacy choice, but also the choices of everyone who circles you. Shunning the pseudonymous makes intolerance a community standard. – Today, most of the privacy we relinquish is volitional. But If we lose the Nymwars we all become permanent residents in a global Big Brother reality house. The expression of identity is multidimensional, aspects emerging and submerging in a fluid dance with the changing environment. … It’s ironic that those calling for authenticity want to make all the world a stage and cast us all as full-time unpaid actors.”
GigaOM: “Can gamification help solve the online anonymity problem? – There’s been a lot written recently about the issue of online anonymity, and in particular how Google believes that a ‘real names’ policy is necessary so that the Google+ network maintains a certain tone and level of trust. … It’s not so much that badges or other rewards – Slashdot, a pioneering geek community, has long used ‘karma points’ as a way of rewarding users and selecting moderators – cure bad behavior, or prevent trolls from coming to a site. What they do instead is make it easier to distinguish between what Slashdot calls ‘anonymous cowards’ and those who have gained the trust of the community. Over time, it becomes obvious (theoretically) who is worth listening to and who isn’t… Instead of simply trying to ban or exclude anyone who doesn’t want to use a real name, as Google is doing with Google+, why not try to design a system that rewards the type of behavior you want to see, and lets the users of that community decide who they wish to pay attention to?“
Gerrit Eicker
Google Acquires Zagat
Zagat got googled: Google acquires Zagat Survey, restaurant ratings and reviews since 1979; http://eicker.at/GoogleZagat
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Gerrit Eicker
Nina and Tim Zagat: “Zagat got googled – We are writing to share the most exciting news in our 32 years in business. Zagat Survey has been acquired by another great company, Google. – From the beginning, Zagat Survey has empowered people by providing a vehicle for them to express their opinions. After spending time with Google senior management discussing our mutual goals, we know they share our belief in user-generated content and our commitment to accuracy and fairness in providing users with the information needed to make smart decisions about where to eat, shop and travel. – It is a testament to the knowledgeable consumers who contribute their opinions that Zagat Survey has become an internationally respected symbol of quality. Their experiences, distilled into numerical ratings and concise, witty, quote-filled reviews, will continue to provide accurate guidance for a wide range of leisure activities.”
Google, Mayer: “I’m thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering – delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world. – With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry. …I’m incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users.”
pC: “Google … is expanding its push into local content with its acquisition of Zagat, which started out as a New York City restaurant guide in 1979 and now publishes guides in 13 categories and over 100 cities. It’s good news for Zagat, which unsuccessfully put itself up for sale in January 2008, pulling itself off the market six months later when there were no buyers. … Zagat has tried to develop its mobile business. Its app, which costs $9.99 per year, was one of the founding iPad apps. The company announced a partnership with Foursquare for a ‘foodie’ badge in 2010 and also partnered with Foodspotting to use that company’s data and photos. … In the past, Google has resisted the characterization of itself as a content company, but this is a major push into local content for sure.”
SEL: “This is huge news for Google (capital ‘H’) and for local. Google is a content publisher now and the content that Zagat brings arguably closes the gap between Google Places and Yelp. We’ll have to see the implementation. … Beyond restaurants, Zagat also offers ratings and revenues of entertainment venues, wine and travel. The online version of the site has developed a community as well; so there’s a social networking dimension to this acquisition as well as content that Google is buying. … I spoke with Google’s Marissa Mayer and Tim Zagat. They told me that nothing would change in the near term; Google will continue to publish the guides and maintain the subscription product. I asked if Zagat reviews would be imported into Google Places and Google’s response was non-committal. Of course they will; that’s the point of this transaction: the content.”
RWW: “The Google local apps are still relatively barebones compared to dedicated competitors like Yelp and Foursquare. Even recent additions to Google’s dominant Maps tools haven’t made it to mobile yet. But this acquisition, along with Google’s purchase of The Dealmap last month, reveal Google’s hand in the local recommendations game, and it looks like a flush.”
VB: “The move is a major blow to user-generated reviews website Yelp, which competes with Google Places and Zagat. Google failed to acquire Yelp back in late 2009, with Yelp reportedly walking away from a $550 million deal. Google further distanced itself from Yelp when it removed Yelp’s reviews from Google Places in mid-2010.”
TNW: “I see this as a much more powerful play than just local offerings. This, combined with Google’s purchase of ITA and its hotel reviews puts the company firmly into the travel business, with more offerings than almost anyone else in the business.”
Lowe: “All of the restaurant reviews on Yelp could fill 16,894 Zagat guides, and only 26% of businesses reviewed on Yelp are restaurants. Congrats?“
Gerrit Eicker
Social CRM (SCRM)
Gartner: The market for Social CRM [SCRM] is on pace to surpass $1B in revenue by year-end 2012; http://eicker.at/SCRM
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Gerrit Eicker
Wikipedia: “Social CRM is use of social media services, techniques and technology to enable organisations to engage with their customers. As an emerging discipline, interpretations of Social CRM vary, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Paul Greenberg: ‘Social CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.‘ – Social CRM is often used as a synonym for Social Media Monitoring, where organisations watch services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for relevant mentions of their product and brand and react accordingly. However, this is too narrow an interpretation, as Social CRM also includes customer communities managed by the organisation themselves.”
Greenberg: “What this means is that SCRM is an extension of CRM, not a replacement for CRM. Its a dramatic change in what it adds to the features, functions and characteristics of CRM but it is still based on the time honored principle that a business needs its customers and prefers them profitable and that same business needs to run itself effectively too. – The transformation that’s sparked the need for Social CRM seems to have occurred in 2004. It has been a social revolution in how we communicate, not a revolution in how we do business per se. All institutions that humans interact with have been affected by things like the cellphone/smartphone, the new social web tools and the instant availability of information in an aggregated and organized way that provides intelligence to the person on the street, not just the enterprise.”
Gartner: “The worldwide social customer relationship management (CRM) market is forecast to reach over $1 billion in revenue by year-end 2012, up from approximately $625 million in 2010… Worldwide social CRM is projected to total $820 million in 2011. … Until recently, many companies have treated social CRM as a series of experiments and tactical purchases. Few have a social CRM strategy or established metrics to measure its effect on hard business results. Different departments, employees and managers implement different types of applications for different purposes… The need for integration will favor more-traditional CRM vendors that add social capabilities. Integration did not matter much when enterprises were just experimenting with social CRM… [C]ompanies are asking for the integration of social data with other customer data within sales, marketing and customer service processes, which will require the integration of social CRM with applications such as a knowledgebase for customer service, multichannel campaign management, sales force automation or e-commerce, Web content and Web analytic applications, master data management, and even back-office applications.”
TC: “While the market is clearly competitive, Gartner says that certain factors can help differentiate Social CRM offerings, including interoperation between public social networks and internal collaborative communities, integration with established CRM products, analytics and more. – There’s no doubt that there is growth in the social enterprise in general. And there’s a lot of movement already taking place in the space. Jive just filed for a $100 million IPO, and Salesforce is making big bets on the space with Chatter.”
Gerrit Eicker
Don’t be Evil
Swartz: What does Google mean by “evil“? http://eicker.at/Evil – And a mentionable reply by Cutts: http://eicker.at/NoOne
Gerrit Eicker 07:23 on 29. November 2011 Permalink |
Google: “Over the past few years, we’ve released a series of blog posts to share the methodology and process behind our search ranking, evaluation and algorithmic changes. Just last month, Ben Gomes, Matt Cutts and I participated in a Churchill Club event where we discussed how search works and where we believe it’s headed in the future. – Beyond our talk and various blog posts, we wanted to give people an even deeper look inside search, so we put together a short video that gives you a sense of the work that goes into the changes and improvements we make to Google almost every day. While an improvement to the algorithm may start with a creative idea, it always goes through a process of rigorous scientific testing. Simply put: if the data from our experiments doesn’t show that we’re helping users, we won’t launch the change. … In the world of search, we’re always striving to deliver the answers you’re looking for. After all, we know you have a choice of a search engine every time you open a browser. As the Internet becomes bigger, richer and more interactive it means that we have to work that much harder to ensure we’re unearthing and displaying the best results for you.”
Google: “Following up on our video on how we make improvements to search, we wanted to share with you a short history of the evolution of search, highlighting some of the most important milestones from the past decade-and a taste of what’s coming next. – Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. For those of you looking to deepen your understanding of how search has evolved, this video highlights some important trends like universal results, quick answers and the future of search. – For more information, go to Google.com/insidesearch”
SEL: “Google released a short video today highlighting some of its key milestones in search over the past decade. It’s both a fun blast from the past and a worthwhile reminder of how much things have changed over the years. The video is also a nice follow-on to the look under the hood of search that Google released in August.”
TC: “One anecdote centers on the attacks of September 11: in the wake of the attacks, many people were searching for ‘New York Twin Towers’ and related queries as they attempted to get the latest news – only to find that Google’s index didn’t have any relevant news stories because it was weeks old (Danny Sullivan has written more about this failure). Google’s quick-fix was to post links to relevant news articles on its homepage, and its stumble eventually led to the launch of Google News.”
ATD: “So, what would be a hard query that Google wants to answer in the future? Complex questions that take reasoning, says Google Fellow Amit Singhal. ‘In my ideal world, I would be able to walk up to a computer and say, ‘Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India, given that monsoon was early this year?’‘ Singhal says in the video.”
RWW: “4 Big Trends in the Evolution of Google Search … Univeral Search – Google’s introduction of universal search in 2007 was the beginning of a trend away from separating Web search results by type and toward putting it all in one place. … Google Goes Mobile and Local – Before long, Google was deep into the business of local commerce. With the rise of Android, Google had an end-to-end business of finding location-based results for local businesses, restaurants and destinations. … Google Search and Time – Google has changed the impact of time on search, as well as place. It has tweaked the way timeliness of content appears in search multiple times, and its latest update calculates when a search is probably looking for recent results rather than historical ones. … Google+: Google’s New Identity – Identity is the final piece of the puzzle. Google has personalized results for a while using Web history and sharing data. But with the launch of Google+, Google has introduced a form of social SEO. Social activity is now a fundamental part of how search results appear for users logged into Google’s ubiquitous Web services.“