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On the 2nd May - when the 'something weird is happening on www-sj.google.com thread' started [webmasterworld.com...] - which led to the 'Update Domenic' threads - we all had no idea that Google was about to (we now speculate) move to new algorithms, new filters, new pagerank and a 'rolling update' process.
I suppose I've been trying to understand the timing - and the best analogy for Google at this point in its evolution is it has become just like Intel.
Intel's success in the PC Micro processor marketplace was underpinned by the observation of one of its founders, Gordon Moore. 'Moores law' identified that the number of transistors that you could fit onto the same space on an Integrated Circuit doubled every 12 - 18 months. Moores Law has been true since the mid 1960s - and still holds true today. Exponential growth. The realisation of Moores Law effectively made Intel adopt the business proposition - if you don't become your own 'worst nightmare' competitor - someone else will.
Once Intel realised that every 18 months - you could build a whole new generation of processor - at lower cost, on a smaller piece of Silicon - thats what they HAD to do - and it became a self fulfilling prophecy. Why? If they didn't - someone else would. There was no room to be complacent, and 'milk' the technology marketplace, and slow the rate of introduction - or someone else would launch a faster, better, cheaper processor. And they tried - with technologies eg. RISC, from numerous competitors.
So Intel became their own 'worst nightmare competitor'. As soon as they made cost savings - they reduced prices. As soon as a new breakthrough manufacturing process became available - they jumped on it. They moved up to the next highest ground - and left the 'old' technology for the 'compatibles' companies. When traditional supporting chipset manufacturers couldn't deliver chipsets to support new generations of Intel processor fast enough - Intel started making support chipsets itself. Pretty soon - Intel was making the whole motherboard - and was driving the rate of change. In short - they made the whole industry so fast paced & cuthroat - no one else could easily, or profitably, compete. There is Intel - and there is 'everyone else'.
In the Search industry - in the past 6 months - we've had the 'contenders' line up. Yahoo bought Inktomi. Overture bought AltaVista and FAST/Alltheweb. Google bought Pyra (Blogger), introduced 'content targeting' for Adwords; & bought Applied Semantics. And only a week ago, Ask Jeeves sold Jeeves Solutions, and announced plans for a $100M Convertible Notes issue - bolstering its battle chest.
The Intel strategy was based on the premise that if you don't take advantage of the technological advancements you know will happen - your competitors will. Thats what makes the technology industry different to most other industries. Todays Hard disk drive cost less - and holds more - than the one you bought 2 years ago. A competitor who replicates Googles distributed PC architecture today will do so at a substantial discount to Googles cost for the same platform. But the car you buy today doesn't cost half as much as the same one you bought 5 years ago, and yet have 2 times more power, speed or fuel efficency. Yet the PC you buy today is far cheaper - and much faster, with more storage and....
We were all 'happy' with Google - but Google can't wait for its competitors to move forward - for fear of leapfrogging. Several people have already commented that Alltheweb can do some neat stuff - and it accurately counts backlinks, it now gives whois information to the unwashed masses etc. And all the PFI's by definition, are doing 'rolling updates'.
Google has done a lot of things - and introduced a lot of features in a short space of time - but it had to accelerate the rate of change - and really become its own worst nightmare competitor. Because if it didn't - it would risk someone else (probably the new Overture/Fast Alltheweb/ AltaVista entity - lets call them 'All-Over-FAST') becoming Googles worst nightmare.
Google worked out what AltaVista didn't understand a few years back. If Google wanted to stay number 1 - it had to grab the goal posts, and run away and move them as soon as technology allowed it to. And it had to do it before 'alloverFAST' gets its collective act together. Otherwise, alloverfast might become Google's worst nightmare competitor in a month and leapfrog them. And if its not alloverfast - what have Yah-tomi been plotting?.
Who really thinks Google wanted to do these 'Domenic' changes live and in full view? I think it didn't want to - it had to. It couldn't justify the cost in time to market to do this behind closed doors - and wait for months. It had to do it - it had to work in the datacentres live - and Google had to do it now. In the last month, Google has exhibited all the desperation usually associated with being pushed and wrongfooted by a competitor - and is acting like a company rushing to catch up. Google has been smart enough to bring this on itself - Google has become its own worst nightmare competitor - before itsallover has got its act together....
Google was already clearly ahead - the current 'roadworks' are Googles way of moving further ahead - before it got pushed/ leapfrogged & was forced to play catch up. These roadworks will move the goalposts. And 99% of Googles users don't even know that there are currently roadworks..... As we all know - in the serps - who better to be the competitor breathing down your neck - than yourself?
Alternatively - I may be wrong - Google may have just messed up - as many have suggested. But I don't think so. I think Google will still be holding the crown when the dust from these roadworks settle. And just think - we've all had the chance to share some of Googles worst nightmares....
Chris_D
Sydney Australia.
VERY well reasoned and worded. :)
I think your analysis of what Google has done has a lot of merit. However I'm not sure it really needed to do it right now, a month or two wouldn't have made any difference.
If Google was trying to convince Yahoo to stay and not go 100% INK then I could see the urgency....but Y! must be aware of the problems and therefore Google has "dumped" on itself rather than produced a good solution.
Yahoo may have even encouraged this urgency to put them under pressure to gain a competitive advantage!
I think Google may have been out-played and out-witted, will they be out-survived.....time will tell;)
The above is my theory. Just a screw up.
It does seem that Alltheweb is much better than Google now at counting links.
excelent and very well founded post. I suspect you are very correct when you suggest that google is in a way preparing it's self for the future.
In many ways it seams very logical for google to do this. Not just for tomorrow but perhaps this is planning for the years ahead.
Thanks for that.
Mack.
: )
Percentages - I really think Google couldn't wait. Overture announced a week or 2 back that it will be offering an integrated paid inclusion product in August - which I assume will be integrated for all their properties - Alta/over/FAST. Google had already made the Dominic play - but many had dismissed it as a 'botched' update. I've already said - I don't think it was - it was roadworks.
In the technology business - no one knows exactly what the other guy's got - you have to assume the worst - and move faster. The quick and the dead.
You can bet that PFI isn't all that Overture will be 'integrating'. They've had a few months to 'get integrated' already (and they must have already had a plan before the acquisitions) - I believe Google had to move the goal posts before that integration is complete - to wrongfoot alloverfast. Google's choice was to do it now - or potentially play catch up in August once alloverfast starts making 'integrated' announcements.
Once you've decided to become your own 'worst nightmare competitor' - you have to act like one. You can't just be a 'disrupted sleep'.
This keeps reminding me of when Intel recalled the Pentium 60 Mhz processor back in late 1994, after a heap of bad press over a 'floating point' problem. Bulletin boards, the technical press, and mathematicians went wild. Andy Grove (Intel CEO) even made a post on Usenet bulletin boards - on a weekend - to calm everyone down! Intel recovered - they were still first to market - and they got much more bad press on that one than Google is getting today.
Doing it now means Google will potentially be stable and further ahead of the game in August... when alloverfast is just starting to go live..... And Google has matured to the 'next level' as a company...
Chris_D
I love the "alloverfast" term...:)
I personally don't think "alloverfast" is the real competitor here....and that is probably why we disagree on the timing.
To gain a large percentage of the market "alloverfast" will need to do much more than produce better technology. Many today will argue ATW is already superior, but ATW has very few users!
Having the best technology doesn't always mean you turn out the winner.
I personally would argue that Motorola had a better processor back in the 80's and early 90's.....but as you pointed out Intel won. I remember using an Apple Mac in a wooden box in 1983 before they has the plastics designed, but IBM and compats won even though they were "late" to the game. M$ did the same via numerous clever marketing strategies.
I'm a programmer by nature, and always want the best technology to win, but history has proven it often doesn't turn out that way.
I think Google were pressured into this development and chose to implement it before it should have been. Of course they are not the first to do this, M$ did it for years....I don't see this as their downfall, I think that will come from the sidelines.
However 'New Google' ends up, I'd be very surprised if it turns out not to be an improvement. I guess that having the occasional phase of vocal minorities proclaiming the end of Google will only make them seem stronger in the longer term.
Excellent - you communicate akin to a person who is worldy wise and conversant in business.
I believe yours is the best synopsis of the situation I have read here at WW - there again though some informative postings have been avalaible together with a huge amount of drivel and of course Google could still, as you say, just be feeling a little unwell:-)
EW
I totally agree with you. Let me add that - Having best technology alone of course does not guarantee a winner; it has to be combined with other factors and strategies to secure the winning spot such as shrewd marketing strategy, innovation, customer satisfaction, good management and fast response to wind of change. The best horse could hardly win if it got lousy jockey.
Although I'm not happy with Dominic because I lose more than I gain, I still wish Google could leap forward and maintain its crown. Having AllOverFast dominate the SE world could be more than a nightmare.
I think this may be a case of seeing the forest rather than the trees, especially our own tree.
Google will never have the dominance it acheived by wrong footing complacent competitors with just some very common sense principles a few years back. That sort of opportunity is rare. But by reinventing itself regalarly, it is in a much better situation to compete with the OVplex and MSN and Y!, and remain the leader or significant and profitable competitor for the years ahead.
The first thing I discovered is that QA at Google goofed big time here. They didn’t know of the problem. Maybe this problem corresponds to the process Chris describes here but I don’t think so. I have documented the same problem back in November and it happened again in May.
The second thing that comes into my mind is the feeling that the Googleplex has a huge wall around it. In order for GoogleGuy to listen to my complaint, I had to write an article on my website, relying on my personal (but virtual) relationship with Doc Searls so he will put the link on his weblog, and Dave Winer to pick it from there and put a link in scripting.com where GoogleGuy would read about it and come back here to answer a thread I have started a few days ago. I have a feeling that I had to stand outside the walls and shout with all my available voice in order for someone inside to hear me while they are having fun eating Greatful Dead food. I feel that what’s going on here in our little webmasterworld forum is wrong. We talk among ourselves while GoogleGuy is sometimes listening and answering our questions and complaints. If Google want’s to be ahead of their competitors, they have to listen more to their customers. It’s not so easy to identify the customers of Google (searchers? advertisers? webmasters? SEO’s?) but Google has to do that and give its customers better ways of having conversations with them. Google have to open some windows in its walls to the outside world.
(DISCLAIMER: I have translated the Cluetrain Manifesto into Hebrew.)
The third thing I discovered is the slowness of software changes in Google. GoogleGuy wrote “it's not a problem in the index, but rather with the generation of snippets (the display mechanism)”. Today, three days after GoogleGuy have posted this (and a whole month after the problems begun) sometimes the snippets show and sometimes they don’t, for the same page. There are two explanations to this fact. One is that Google didn’t wholly fix the problem. The other explanation is that the software fix hasn’t propagated to all the data centers. If Google want to be better then their competitor, they have to fix their software problems faster and more thoroughly.
More thoughts to come, when I wake up a little more.
I believe google IS listening, and very closely, to their stakeholders - users, advertisers, webmasters etc. Just because they are not responding as certain stakeholders would like, or to our personal concerns, does not prove they are not listening, aggregating data, filtering it, and even starting to apply it.
Secondly,
I dont think anybody is under the illusion that GG is here just to help us. Its just that Google, whether GG is paid to do it, or does it in his spare time, has chosen to open up some level of two way commeunication with webmasters through such boards as this. Similaly i dont think anybody would be under the illusion that reps from all major search engines are not here daily, picking up info, and gaining some benefits from GG's particpation as well. After all its a major meeting/gossip/place of webmasters anywhere and they are listening very closely to see the webmaster (making up only one of their "customer" groups and maybe a less important one than most of use here would like to assume) perspective. Its just that they choose to remain invisible or have a very low profile.
Google having opened up some level of dialogue, also would not want to disclose more secrets of their secret recipe than KFC would want to disclose to their potato salad supplier. (eg. on a need to know basis).
I just really can't see how Google is particularly poor at having discussions with customers. Especially in comparison with their competitors.
We are a research company and as part of that use focus groups quite a lot. One thing you learn in listening to customers is that 95-98% is fairly worthless for various reasons which i wont go into now, but that 5 to 2% is extremely useful. (which just about sums up the update threads to GG and the rest of us i guess!)
Google has many ways to get info - happy faces, maybe click tracking, their own logs and toolbar data, which constitute a very good way of getting cutomer data that is more objective - as we know opinions sometimes can be worthwhile, but generlly what consumers SAY they do and what they actually DO, is very different. I would also guess they are doing other research too - on usability and browsing behaviour for example, (with Jakob being a board member im sure they use some of his research methodologies!)
I say that there is no real even slightly hard evidence to say they don't have a fairly good mix of customer data from opinion-perception-based qualitative data to more objective quantitative data. Thats not to say there is evidence that they do. but that we dont really know.
>>the Googleplex has a huge wall around it<<
Maybe, but is so it's a one way wall! It's more like a one way mirror in a focus group room. They can see out very effectively, and they have some control over our behaviours, but they don't want us to see them working inside the wall, and we wouldnt have a clue what they are doing just from inferring strategies from their results. That may seem "morally" wrong to many, but as a research practitioner, we wouldnt be in it if we didnt see more good things than bad, for the consumer come from this method in the end.
But what GoogleGuy brings to this forum is the ability to direct an 'anonymous' spam report - qualified by your participation in this forum - to him, via the Google spam report page. Now thats a direct link into the engine-room!
Hanan - I've pointed out various issues, to various search engines - using their forms. No one responds - Search Engines don't have a business model or infrastructure capable of responding 'personally' at this point. They are there to provide search - and Google handles 250 million searches a day (according to Danny Sullivan) - so they are already answering a lot of questions!.
At least - through GoogleGuy - you get to ask a question - or report some spam - and put a 'name' on it. I actually sent GG a spam report on a subject closer to your beliefs than mine just a few days back!
I too would like a higher level of formal communication with Google on 'issues' - that was my suggested question in Brett's '10 Google questions' thread. But it would have to be a channel into Google where we could add value at a higher level - not just ask day to day questions (like 'when's the next update?', 'How can I get....')!
Setting up a formal programme - as an extension of what GG has already done here at Webmaster World, would be something I think which would give Google an insight into the 'next' quantum leap. Now that would be a challenging role!
And Chiyo - you can still call me Dave if you like : )
Best
Chris_D
The pain from search engines, and any heavily data-laden operation, comes from the fact that many innovations require a change to the underlying data model, which breaks all the tools that rely on that data model being what it is, as well as causes the need for a data conversion tool to bring the existing data into the new model.
This is Google's major problem, and probably the reason why they did things the way they did. Once someone, or some committee, brought up the fact that their current datamodel was inadequate to the new algorithm that had been proposed then the bullet was there to bite.
I'm in the same situation with my own endevours: it's impossible to foresee what algorithms and features you will devise in the future, and the best data model in the world doesn't save you the conversion time needed to implement a new data model, and new data models become necessary because of the features and algorithms that keep getting invented.
It's a sticky business.
Peter
JudgeJeffries, I think it's handy to be able to take off my Google hat sometimes. :) I appreciated that Chris_D had an interesting thought and communicated it well, but I wasn't agreeing or disagreeing with it either way.
Mainly, I was enjoying the fact that WebmasterWorld is an informal place where we can meet and everyone can share theories and thoughts about search engines. I try to help answer questions, and in turn I appreciate the feedback that we get from WebmasterWorld. Besides, where else could you find so many people passionately discussing search engines? :)
Google doesn't produce any product that will compete for the same niche in the same temporal space as any other Google product.
It certainly isn't analogous to intel in this manner.
I think you hit it perfectly.
I think it was a data format issue, and they were hitting the wall with what they were able to accomplish using the old format.
The reason they went ahead with the conversion now instead of waiting was that no matter when they did the changeover it would still end up working with 2 month old data because it really is that much work to get things converted and transferred to the datacenters.
They are better off taking the hit now than waiting till august when other engines might be in a better position to jump in.
I mean, isn't that what smart businesses always do anyways - strive to constantly improve their product as fast as possible?
I think it would be much more profound if Google did NOT take drastic measures to improve their service regularly. They'll make $800 million this year - that gives them a little captial to fund some R and D and growth.
Dolemite
I don't think the "worst nightmare competitor' idea quite holds true.Google doesn't produce any product that will compete for the same niche in the same temporal space as any other Google product.
It certainly isn't analogous to intel in this manner.
LMAO I love the fact someone pointed out an obscure semantic point of disagreement and had to post it! I LOVE that about the internet.
And the fact you wrote "temporal space" instead of "at the same time", well, you sir are THE MAN! More power to you Dolemite! You brightened my otherwise boring day!
Your analysis of the current Google Dominic situation is very refreshing, insightful and perhaps right on the dart.
Great post/thread!
I feel that what’s going on here in our little webmasterworld forum is wrong. We talk among ourselves while GoogleGuy is sometimes listening and answering our questions and complaints.
As a relatively new member it became quite obvious very early on that the logical and contextual analysis of GoogleGuy's comments was exercising a lot of clever people's grey matter for extended periods.
I think it is true to say that he is the only real means of communication, to and from Google, as far as SEO's are concerned. So it is understandable that over analysis will occur, it's the only game in town.
But what staggeringly inefficient communication (and this is no reflection on you personally GoogleGuy just the procedure). Statements appear at random in some threads and not others, answers can be cryptic to the extreme and when serious intelligent comment is made we have responses like
Just speaking for me personally, I like your post...
I think it's handy to be able to take off my Google hat sometimes...
Well, I am sure it is convenient to swap hats but what is required here is not a juggler or a cryptic clue composer but someone (or a group) who can answer questions directly and to the point. Even if they have to say - 'No comment' to most of them.
It would save a hell of a lot of peoples time and help overcome the 'fort Googleplex' mentality that is slowly becoming Google's trademark. To its detriment I might add.
