Knowledge Leadership Associates » Google

Google at thirteen

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:13:24 +0000

Did you notice what happened on Tuesday? Google celebrated its thirteenth birthday! In a thought-provoking piece, Danny Goodwin acknowledged this moment and reviewed the recent history of Google in order to remind us that the “terrible teens” can affect companies and organisations as well as people. His article, in Search Engine Watch of 27 September 2011, identifies twelve major developments that have occurred during the previous year and warns that these may be symptomatic of the behaviour of the search engine company in the future. In a summarising comment, Goodwin says, “Google faced several lows – luring Bing into public fights, revealing their Facebook envy, releasing baffling algorithmic improvements, facing public humiliation in the form of mainstream news stories calling out the quality of Google’s results, and relinquishing $500 million for accepting advertising from online Canadian pharmacies, but also had several highs – Google bought several shiny new companies (retail therapy?), Larry Page returned to his role as CEO and cleaned house, Google saw record revenues, Google introduced a suite of Instant products, and Android continued to grow”.

Google at thirteen is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Related material: a Google extension

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:58:40 +0000

There have been various attempts at providing links to suggested related material when searching — some approaches have been successful and others have merely added to the dross that accumulates during a purposive search. Google has just released an extension which may prove quite useful. It adds a “Google Related” bar to the bottom of the browser window and, through an analysis of searches conducted, assesses what might be considered “related”. If you do not object to this scrutiny by Google, find more details about the extension at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/find-more-while-you-browse-with-google.html and make your own decision about whether to install it.

A fresh round of cuts at Google!

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:09:56 +0000

Rob Young, in his blog entry of 2 August, “7 Google Projects shut down in the Page era (the Google friends newsletter is the latest)“, on Search engine watch lists seven Google Projects that have been shut down by Larry Page, who took over the running of Google in April 2011. Some of them, such as the “Google friends newsletter”, are unlikely to be missed but others, such as the withdrawal of the Firefox browser bar, are inexplicable decisions. Google Translate has gone, as has Google Labs, which often provided interesting small-scale applications for testing and experimentation. Is Google redefining its “core business”? If so, what else will vanish?

A fresh round of cuts at Google! is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Inside Google, by an insider

Peter G. Underwood — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:41:30 +0000

I’m feeling lucky: the confessions of Google Employee Number 59, by Douglas Edwards, promises to be a good read. It is available from Amazon at $15.28 (print and audio — but no Kindle edition!) and the first few pages can be read for free on the Amazon site. Greg Jarboe, in his blog of 31 July 2011 on Search engine watch provides an interesting summary, concentrating on the “Ah-Hah!” moments. He concludes, “Edwards captures the ‘Google Experience’, the roller-coaster ride of being part of a company creating itself in a whole new universe. And you’ll want to know how the ride began in order to understand where it is currently taking all of us in search and social marketing”.

Inside Google, by an insider is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Now you see it . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:09:01 +0000

Karen Blakeman’s blog site is always worth exploring and this week is no exception. On the 18 July, her entry entitled “A good year for culling Google search options” recorded the withdrawal of many search features that Google had launched. Amongst them is the “Wonderwheel” (launched in 2009) which drew a simple mind map for searches — a very useful feature if searching for a topic using terms with which was unfamiliar — it may reappear as a result of site redesign but Google management were unable to commit themselves on this topic. Blakeman documents several other features that have also vanished without any explanation or announcement. One of the most irritating aspects of the Google management is its seeming inability to keep its users informed of such changes and the reasons for these decisions; even direct queries by e-mail go unanswered.

Now you see it . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Facebook versus Google+: is it really a competition?

Peter G. Underwood — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:57:49 +0000

Google launched its social media experiment, Google+ Project, a few weeks ago for testing by a limited number of users. In going into this market, it is in danger of launching a “me too” product unless the company can add some distinguishing elements that will make Google+ be perceived as different from Facebook and similar sites. In his Search engine watch blog of 15 July 2011, 5 Reasons Google+ is not a Facebook killer, Dave Davies has concluded that this is going to be a very uphill task for Google: “It’s an interesting social media experiment by Google, but it is likely to remain that. Another ‘almost ran’ in the social media game; another Google property that just won’t quite make it”. The blog entry has created a very lively conversation, which can be followed at the same site.

The competition has not been long in responding. Facebook. The 6th of July saw the announcement of Skypebook — a partnership with Skype to allow face-to-face chat from a Facebook account. It is likely that companies offering similar services will enter the field or that existing services, such as LinkedIn, will also seek to expand their profile with adjunct functions. There is a “social networking” war about to begin!

In another posting on Search engine watch, Garry Przyklenky recounts an address “by Michael Eisner of Disney fame at the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City. In his address, he eloquently explained how technology enables a never-ending and consistently innovative evolution of content delivery mechanisms: from Gutenberg’s printing press back in 1440 all the way to present day with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook”. In this respect, Google+ probably won’t supplant any other technology!

Facebook versus Google+: is it really a competition? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

The underside of Google?

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:06:11 +0000

David Segal, in a column in the New York Times (12 February 2011), draws attention to the results of some research conducted by Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media into some rather odd results which have arisen whilst using the Google search engine: searches for a variety of domestic items, clothing and furniture were consistently yielding one site as the, apparently leading, supplier. J. C. Penney, a very prestigious company running department stores in the United States, has denied any attempt at manipulating the search engine results. Pierce’s research indicates that the curious effect has been achieved by creating an intensive set of links to the J. C. Penney web site, which has the effect of forcing the Google Page-ranking algorithm to force the site up the rankings. Once alerted to the problem, Google investigated and confirmed that someone had deliberately tried to promote the web site by this means, and adjusted its algorithm accordingly. Such “black hat” (by analogy with “bad” cowboys, who wear black stetsons in films with a Western cowboy theme whereas the “heroes” wear white hats) attempts are quite prevalent and the article presents a fascinating account of some recent attempts at “web influencing” on behalf of large corporations.

The underside of Google? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Google “bias” survey — start of a flame war?

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:58:53 +0000

Danny Goodman may have stirred up a hornet’s nest with his criticism of a survey conducted by Benjamin Edelman and Benjamin Lockwood. This attempted to measure bias in the organic search results of Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and Ask; the conclusion is that each search engine offers results that linking to pages using its own services more often. Moreover, Google’s algorithmic search results link to Google’s own services more than three times as often as other search engines link to services provided by Google services. This can mean that, for selected keywords, biased results promote the interests of search engine companies rather than those of searchers.

In his SearchEngineWatch blog of 21 January 2011, Goodman provides a critique of the conclusions drawn from the survey, its approach and the results and concludes that the survey is, itself, biased. In the subsequent correspondence — which can be read by scrolling through to the end of the blog — Edelman responds and Goodman replies. Inconclusive? Well, yes, but certainly thought-provoking!

Google “bias” survey — start of a flame war? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

2011 — It’s going to be VEVEM!

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:25:52 +0000

Very Exciting and VEry Messy — that is what Mark Anderson, a technology commentator interviewed on the BBC World Service, has to say about the year 2011. He asserts that a more explicit “split” between channel and content will become evident, this in turn, raising complex issues around what is “open” content and what is “secure”. Information security will become a leading concern for companies and other organizations, particularly around issues of intellectual property. Micro-applications will diminish in importance. Google is also recipient of some criticism, Anderson contending that it is a company that has lost its way and is no longer sure of what business it is in. E-book readers are predicted to make a big impact in 2011.

2011 — It’s going to be VEVEM! is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

The year of searching

Peter G. Underwood — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:56:58 +0000

Thom Craver has provided an interesting review of the year 2010 from the perspective of search engine development: The year in search: a re-cap of the biggest changes and a look ahead (SearchEngineWatch 6 January 2011). He comments on the changes introduced in Google and its competitors and suggests that 2011 may well be dominated by a contest between Yahoo and Google for market dominance. What is particularly interesting (but, perhaps, unsurprising) is the extent to which changes and development are driven almost exclusively by marketing rather than considerations of achieving better search results — all of which serves to confirm the need to consider choice of search engines in terms of search performance within particular search domains.

The year of searching is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates