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Bill Gates told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Google kicked our butts," he said, while promising a better next-generation Internet search engine from Microsoft, due as early as next year.
The big news is the second half of that statement: due as early as next year.
So, another year of vaporware promises from Microsoft.
This is about money and he's got more than Google or anyone else.
I hope he continues to try to beat them at their own game rather than buy them out.
This is about money and he's got more than Google or anyone else.
The Waltons (combined) make Sir Bill Gates look like a high school bully. However, they are currently interested in increasing their Walmart sales first. Once that exceeds the US GDP, they might get interested in The Search.
It isnt over. It maybe Google's to lose (like IBM and PCs), but that happens more often than people remember.
(Kaled, you are correct. The title 'Sir' is reserved for British subjects, but I'm sure that doesnt bother Bill as he doesnt lack for people addressing him as sir.)
The fight over basic search as we know it is over. Besides the technology, there are the lessons you were suppose to learned in the required Socialogy 101 class you had to take. People are hard to change.
Thus, behold the power of the brand. martinibuster's cola analogy is near perfect. I'm from the south, so every cola is a Coke. Sometimes a Pepsi, but never a cola. And every search is a Google, except when it's a Yahoo. And Ask Jeeves and anyone (yeah, even Bill Gates) is going to have a very, very tough time overcoming that.
As has been mentioned, Gates does have the MSN brand and that's not bad at all. But, he's going to be re-inventing the wheel, tech-wise, it would appear.
What's interesting to me is there are still plenty of niches out there where someone could come in an make a claim as THE portal with some kind of kick tail search on it. Wigets Search, whatever.
Case in point is local search. You would think the newspapers would be on this like ugly on a monkey. But, no, they're going to turn it over to Google. Who, you will note, is taking it. As is Yahoo. (Yellow Pages would like it, but they're just not structured to do the job, it would appear.)
And, when you look at an issue such as local search or niche, you realize the reason nothing is happening is that there are too many players. It is going to take one or two powerhouses to come into each market or niche and build a local "This is it" portal to provide the functionality that is going to be meaningful.
There was some talk a couple of years ago that this was, when and if you thought about it, the proper role of government. But, that went nowhere.
What's interesting to me is there are still plenty of niches out there where someone could come in an make a claim as THE portal with some kind of kick tail search on it. Wigets Search, whatever.
The benefit of a niche search is that the user has made their intent clear just by going to that engine. When you go to Google News and type in, "blue sweaters" it is clear that you are searching for news about a software company named "blue sweaters" or a movie called "blue sweaters."
When you go to Froogle and do the same you get "blue sweaters" that are for sale.
Google, AV, AJ, and whoever will give you results that are all over the map because they have to be all things to all people. Go to Froogle and they only have to be ONE thing for all people. This is the network of sites, a hybrid of the portal.
MSN is talking about scouring your hard drive and knowing your intent from the contextual analysis of who you are- do you really want that?
Yahoo wants to use cookies to determine who you are to determine your intent and serve relevant results (ads)- do you really want that?
Hey, I'm just throwing some ideas out to think about. I don't claim to be right (life is too fluid to ever be correct about anything), I'm just throwing some ideas out to think about.
Yahoo wants to use cookies to determine who you are to determine your intent and serve relevant results (ads)- do you really want that?And the Google cookie....
Kackle?
MSN is talking about scouring your hard drive and knowing your intent from the contextual analysis of who you are- do you really want that?Yahoo wants to use cookies to determine who you are to determine your intent and serve relevant results (ads)- do you really want that?
I think my mother and brother would say, yeah, that would be nice. But, then, they use AOL.
Search is, indeed, powerful. But I come from a journalism tradition. I think information can be presented in a compelling, useful and entertaining way that readers will appreciate. Search is compelling, useful and entertaining but there are other ways of presenting information.
Now, combine those other ways (i.e., news) with search and put it in context. For example, under entertainment you offer a link to the movie Blue Sweater on a review that mentions the film. The link goes to the movie, more reviews, a list of all the films that director made and the meeting place and times of the local Blue Sweater fan club. You never see an offer for clothing.
That's search empowered journalism which makes for a better user experience. And, it can sell products and services as well. And that's not a bad thing.
Yahoo excels at trying and often gets it right. (I don't understand why they're not linking articles tighter into music file buying networks already and they could do more in their financial and health areas.)
Mostly, however, I don't understand why more publishers do not follow Yahoo's lead.
OK, I understand--many, many larger sites owned by media companies are not seeing the return on investment publishers are used to seeing. (Still, I hate seeing money left sitting on the table.)
Therefore, most of the leadership in this area is coming from the technology people or the search folks. Google is the obvious example besides Yahoo. Kanoodle and Tribal Fusion are sorta playing around with it, but I think Quigo's AdSonar could be a big step in this direction if in empowers publishers as they imply that it will. Vibrant Media, Teragram, nStein, Richlink, Clickability and start ups such as Kontera all have the tech expertise to make this happen for publishers.
The New York Times is moving carefully in the area and having some success. You'll note that they have had their travel section archive open now.
When publishers start taking the toll gate off of archives a year or so back, that's a sign the web is moving to this next step. (I'm not for opening the entire archive database in most cases. At some point the information is, indeed, the product.)
Microsoft, and similarly IBM, can work on certain
projects in relative obscurity because other
product announcements can keep the investment
bankers and pundits happy.
Just because there is no ongoing hype from either
of these two companies does not mean that there
is not something going on.
Think these days of Microsoft as a form of income
redistribution. If Microsoft, through Bill Gates
is able to suck enough money out of big business
and redistribute that to charity, then it is a
good thing(tm).
What commitments have Google made to funding
charity out of their IPO? A few scholarships?
Just a PR exercise.
Bill Gates has become very *consistent* in his
charitable works. Microsoft is the vehicle that
permits this. Is that all bad?
There comes a point when "money is just a means
of keeping score"(unattributed quote)
What commitments have Google made to funding
charity out of their IPO?
Google doesn't publicize their charitable work. Because you may not know about it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Just a friendly heads-up that Google does have charitable programs. ;)
Im sorry but I just cannot trust MS, they have to be up to something at all times...
I just wish google would be happy being google... I hope these florida/austin updates arent some tactic to sell more adwords and adsense becuase if it is, it will be a huge hit to their reputation and what will we be left with?
Pack that in your pipe and smoke it for a bit ;)
(I'm a dreamer)
Think these days of Microsoft as a form of income
redistribution. If Microsoft, through Bill Gates
is able to suck enough money out of big business
and redistribute that to charity, then it is a
good thing(tm).
Let's get something straight. Bill Gates has a dream. In that dream every electrical piece of equipment includes a microprocessor, etc. Every CPU runs Windows. There is only one operating system (Linux, etc. are all dead). There is only one major software company - MS. Everyone else has been crushed.
That is his dream. Even if he gave 100% of his profits to charity I would still oppose that dream as would any sane human being.
Kaled.
Google doesn't publicize their charitable work. Because you may not know about it doesn't mean it isn't there.Just a friendly heads-up that Google does have charitable programs. ;)
Yeah, well there are the recently announced scholarships.
And the public service announcement adsense ads.
The point is not that I might not know
about any specific google charitable works,
but rather that there is not much news of it.
Given that news organisations are always hungry for
anything to fill the void, it would be natural to
expect to have heard about anything of equivalent
magnitude. Not forgetting, that PR flacks, which
Google has, love to spin good stories for all they
are worth. What I have heard amounts to deafening
silence. And no one on this forum has posted
anything to the contrary. The scholarships
and public service ads amount to *nothing*
in the google scale.
Bill Gates also does charitable works quietly.
I know this for a *fact*. The amount on the
particular project topped $70,000,000.00 last
year. No, I did *not* put in too many zero's.
Ok, to be absolutely clear, that's $70 million
on a single project.
+++
A good example is the way that they have introduced stemming as the preferred results so that it is possible to do a 2 keyword term search and the top 10 listed sites on page 1 not contain that 2 keyword term in the title, with at least half having no relevance to the search term, yet the top 3 adwords have that exact 2 keyword term as their title.
Here in Australia yahoo was running an advertising campaign for its search facility (which of course uses google) and they advised how if you wanted to locate sites with your exact search term then you should put that search term in quotation marks.
Google's response to users adopting this practice, and thereby circumventing google's stemming, has been to include the stemming of search terms contained within quotation marks.
So you can now do a search for a term within quotation marks and get high ranking pages returned that do not contain that term anywhere on the page or title (the only possible justification I can find for it is if the term has been used in link text).
This is the same sort of behaviour we would expect from Microsoft.
[edited by: apollo at 9:33 am (utc) on Jan. 28, 2004]
One of these is going to be predominant in search. One only will be the standard. That's how the human brain works, we need an alpha male.
When we search we use Google.
good local search?
search weighted with public opinion?
quality search by genre?
search of not only our local drives, but those files we may like to share with others stored locally?
pure information search?
comprehensive pure product search?
comprehensive image search?
voice based search?
learning based (AI) search?
....and on and on.......
What if web servers cease to exist and desktop PC's become open (maybe limited) but shared resources? Then beyond that all sorts of fanciful, as seen today, possibilities exist.
Bits and pieces in some form of the above exist, but they are hardly comprehensive, some people probably don't even think they are adequate.
These problems aren't going to be solved in the next five or ten years.
Search is in its infancy, and open for numerous people to move in to stake a claim...outright or in niche markets.
Developing next generation products to satisfy the real needs of the public will take huge resources. The long-term winning companies in search are not necessarily any of the existing players today, but they are likely to be
companies that can afford huge development and advertising budgets.
To say Google has won the search war is like saying 25 years ago that Motorola or Zilog have won the CPU war, or Digital Research have won the OS war.....remember the folks that said those thing back then?
The likes of MS and IBM don't have 3 year strategies in these arenas, they have strategies that last decades combined with bank rolls to develop, copy, purchase, and crush other's attempts that may get in the way.......hate that as you will....but that's simply good corporate management!
We've only just begun, only imaginations preclude the inevitable future some foresee.
Da Vinci could envisage the future 500 years ahead....now some seem to have problems looking 10 years ahead......odd type of evolution IMHO;)
To say Google has won the search war is like saying 25 years ago that Motorola or Zilog have won the CPU war, or Digital Research have won the OS war....."remember the folks that said those thing back then?"
Not serious people, percentages ;) but marketing folks from the companies involved probably did make statements like that and Zilog zealots certainly did. The analolgy is interesting however as another illustration of how remarkably compressed technology cycles have become. The microprocessor architecture wars spanned decades but these days things move more quickly. What we're really pondering in this discussion is whether in 2004 somebody who has been a disinterested onlooker during the 8 to 10 year development of a major technology utility can join and dominate at such a late stage.
Given limitless funding and committed, focused, competent leadership, the answer is at best a maybe yes. A lot of things have to go right, including some degree of luck i.e there is a high level of risk. To succeed, MS would pretty near have to come at the task with another reinvent the company approach but there are no signs from Gates of the evangelism that would accompany this. An Xbox or MSN effort won't cut it against a rival as alert, skilled and well funded as Google or for that matter, Yahoo.
An important distinction to keep in mind is the likely different perception by Microsoft management of Longhorn and MSN. One is a highly strategic core product and the other a long term loss leader with diminishing prospects of redemption. In developing a search technology investment strategy they will do whatever it takes for Longhorn and make polite noises about MSN. The following mentioned earlier by CurtMonash could be revelatory in that context
Last September, a Microsoft employee told me that was going to write all the major algorithms for Microsoft's new search engine, personally.And I'm pretty sure she wasn't joking or spreading disinformation.
What I conclude from that is that, last September, the search folks at Microsoft were still badly confused.
Maybe more balkanized than confused. From the Longhorn product management point of view the capability they require possibly could be developed within their team and hence kept under control. The concept of hitching their product's success to an MSN concept would not be well received.
Last September, a Microsoft employee told me that was going to write all the major algorithms for Microsoft's new search engine, personally.
As an aspiration, it's a good one. In practice, large projects need many programmers, however, software designed or developed by comittee can, like so many other things, be dreadful.
It would appear that despite Google's algos becoming ever more complex, results are not improving. Some would say they are getting worse. One reason why this happens is that no one person actually understands the whole.
Kaled.
PS The original Google was based on the work of only two people was it not?
