How I search

Just realized how I search on my browser. Just type in the search term in the search bar or even the address bar in Firefox. Get the results, peruse them and click on the most appropriate link. I never bother to see the Google brand button next to it or never really “see” the Google logo on top of the search results. However, when I opened Internet Explorer and searched for something, it re-directed me to the Bing’s search results. Something I noticed immediately. Went back and reconfigured my settings to make Google my default search engine in IE as well. (In fact, I doubt the results would have been quite different, given the recent controversy of Bing “stealing” Google’s results.)

I guess brands and products are not just about delight and positive surprise. It’s about a sense of comfort in the consistency . Something like this.

I remember something that went like this:

Sex is like air…it’s not important unless you’re not getting any.

I guess that’s the nirvana for all brands

Google re-directs pages from its search results to the original page

I really don’t know what to make of this. Maybe it really isn’t anything. But usually, let’s say you search on Google for a Wiki article. Like in  my previous post, I searched for a story to link to for the Tunisia protests. Typically, once the results come in, you click on it to go to the article. And you would expect the link to point to that page. For example, it was supposed to link to:

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/02/tunisia_s_protest_wave_where_it_comes_from_and_what_it_means_for_ben_ali

However, when I copy-paste that url in my WordPress URL field, it shows as:

http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmideast.foreignpolicy.com%2Fposts%2F2011%2F01%2F02%2Ftunisia_s_protest_wave_where_it_comes_from_and_what_it_means_for_ben_ali&rct=j&q=tunisia%27s%20protest%20wave&ei=hXlCTd-eKM7MrQfKtbRV&usg=AFQjCNGu72wt66NgjVyI6OL1rZgwgrsnOg&cad=rja

So, why does it do that? Is there any impact on the way Foreign Policy.com tracks its MiddleEast traffic sources? Or any other KPIs in terms of page views for Google ? Revenue maybe? Or is it just a curiosity ?

Update: Ok, so I just realized just after hitting the “Publish” button that the second URL is a link to Google’s cached version. So that makes sense. But does it impact FP’s page views ? And ad inventory? If the page is being pulled from Google’s cache server rather than their web server? I’m not sure about this.

Google’s search algorithm takes a hit !

Why would I not be surprised if this guy’s consultant was an Indian ?

Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story

A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web

What Apple really did with the iPhone

Caveat: A large part of the latter part of this post on monopoly of telecom service providers has been discussed and dissected to death. Am adding it only from a completeness perspective. I am also using Apple as an example of a different business model rather than as the only company that works on this principle

A large part of my work as a consultant in the telecom domain related to VAS or value added services. This included services and products ranging from dialer tones, missed call alerts to multimedia applications like wallpaper downloads, MMS and the like. These really were the dominant applications during the time (I’m assuming it’s still the same). And for each of these services, the vendor system needed to understand and interact with various telecom systems such as the prepaid billing platform, the switches, the mediation or the SGSN. The main reason being that all this telecom elements were essential for one of two aspects: Service / content delivery and billing. So you always needed to understand the format in which data would be accepted by these systems to process billing (usually as a CDR or a call data record), understand in what scenarios could billing or service delivery fail, etc. Basically, you needed to have extensive domain knowledge in telecom as well.

What Apple done with its iPhone and iTunes products is, basically, is reduce the importance of understanding the telecom infrastructure( the service delivery and billing systems) and focusing more on building the product. Not only has Apple built an eco-system that transferred power from the service providers to the handset manufacturers, it has also transferred power from the telecom domain experts to the IT product developers. Basically, it has brought the control back into the vast IT community of developers. This was something I realized when building my prototype for an LBS-based product (let’s say severe re-working is going on right now). Even though, I already knew how geo-positioning is done, how GPS or triangulation works or what accuracy ranges are allowed, it is all immaterial. Why? Because the iPhone has already all this in-built with its GPS and allows you to extract the location coordinates using a simple API. An API that works just like any other product API. Something which is extremely familiar to all programmers. Even if you’re not designing for the iPhone, other third-party vendors have built similar APIs for Blackberry, Nokia and J2ME devices. This severely reduces the dependence on the network operators. Product developers no longer have to worry whether the service is provisioned on an HLR to deliver the service. Or whether an incorrect configuration on the network side is going to wreck havoc on their revenues. One product that already slipped from the grasp of the telecom operators was ring tones whose revenues fell when handsets started working on standardized formats such as MP3 which could be downloaded from any site on the web.

Further, ITunes allows you to use credit cards to purchase the application. Using a payment gateway. The same way all online transactions are processed. Another familiar platform for any one who has built e-commerce sites. No more worrying about whether the subscriber has been disconnected at the billing system and has, hence not been charged, or incorrect configurations at the mediation, or that a service has not been charged because well, the SMS short code and the rate was not configured in the billing system. Basically, no revenue loss because the telecom operator messed up. Remember: All operators have contracts with the VAS vendors saying that the operators will pay an X% of what they bill. Not X% of what is billable but what is actually billed. So if an incorrect configuration in the telecom operator’s system allows the subscriber to use the service free of charge, even the vendor does not get paid for the same.

However, the pain is not only on the side of the telecom operators alone. Till now in this post, I have not distinguished between the VAS content creator (who makes the content/ owns the copyright of the content) and the VAS content aggregator (who licenses the content from the creator and sells the content to the customer through the telecom service provider. But in the new scenario, aggregators are the online app stores. No longer do the aggregators control the service delivery to subscribers of a specific telecom operator. An Airtel subscriber, need not only extract content from aggregators that Airtel has a tie-up with. He can go to any store online and get the content. This allows content creators to sell their wares on numerous online sites. Hence, the content aggregator has also lost his own somewhat-cushy monopoly over the content creators because of his tie-up with the operator. Even stores owned by handset manufacturers such as Nokia Ovi has to compete with all the other app stores that sells Symbian (the operating system for Nokia handsets ) applications and products. Unless you are Apple of course.

One last way Apple is blowing up this eco-system is basically solving one of the most oft-lamented problems faced by VAS vendors in India. That of service providers have this incredible choke-hold on the entire service delivery mechanism that they pretty much dictate the revenue share % and the other terms and conditions. After all, what’s  the point of building an application if you can’t charge the customer or allow him to use it? Some of the apps were available for download on the Internet even before but Apple and iTunes brought it together at such phenomenal scale, that it cut off the legs of the telecom operator monopoly in the USA.

But make no mistake. Service providers do have a few cards up their sleeve as well.

1. There are still some services like Dialer tunes or Missed Call alerts which are still the dominant VAS services.  And these are completely network-dependent. However, other services in the ABC categories (Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket which dominate Value Added Services) such as downloads and periodic updates can soon break out of this monopoly only if there is the requisite proliferation of credit cards and in the future, mobile money products happens.
2. Service providers still control GPRS Mobile browsing – as per InMobi’s KK at the Mobile Monday Mumbai summit the day before, the Mobile Web is still providing it with its largest ad inventory yet. However, even in the mobile browsing business, the service providers are paid only for the volume of the content and not the value of the content. For example, irrespective of whether you are accessing the scores of the hottest cricket match or you’re visiting an old, dilapated blog that no one ever updates (hint: Z, Alpana, Charsi), the service providers get paid the same amount. They don’t get more money for the cricket website. And obviously, services like ZIP Dial are going to take their pound of flesh by destroying their other premium SMS services (KBC anyone? )
3. Further, the telecom service providers also have their own stores for downloading content. But these are no longer exclusive. You can’t lock-in a customer to your store. You have to still be price-competitive against the rest of the stores out there. You are just another store.

This is getting to be incredibly interesting given that one of the ways that telecom service providers were planning to shore up their falling ARPUs was through Value added Services. Wonder how the battle will turn in India given our incredible ability to turn every challenge into an opportunity.

Note1: When I say what Apple did, I mean what Apple started and what the general trend of service delivery is. Obviously, there are hundreds of app stores available today, including the Ovi store (Nokia), the Samsung app store (Samsung), Android Market (for Android phones

Note2: Obviously, given Apple’s limited success in India and India’s relatively lower wireless data usage/ Internet usage, this model will take a bit more time to mature before it spreads to the smaller towns. But I think it’s a matter of time

Note3: I am very interested in the rumors around Apple’s next phones which will have an embedded SIM and allow you to choose the carrier long after you have purchased the handset. What happens is that the operator does not provide the SIM but Apple does. The configuration of the network carrier is done through iTunes and is essentially software !

Media buying at $100? Brilliant !

 

‘Nuff said.

Check this out: How I ran an ad on Fox News

Didn’t realize Google AdWords was so well-designed for their television campaigns:

Battle expands definition of “database of intentions” – blows mind again

Credit: Amazon.com

John Battelle’s book The Search was one of the books I took more than 72 hours to complete. Not because it was long, tedious and boring. Rather, it was so packed with ideas and concepts (And some brilliant history of search as well….what I thought was Google’s brilliance of ads chasing subscribers wherever they went i.e. AdSense was the the brainchild of Overture – something I didn’t know). The book started with this concept of “The Database of Intentions” which was described by John as:

The Database of Intentions is simply this: The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind – a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture. And it has the potential to be abused in equally extraordinary fashion.

Simply put, our searches were a series of bread crumbs that created a trail leading straight to our real intentions. Whoever (i.e. Google) accessed the trail could understand our intentions.

Now in another pretty fabulous post, John states ( and I agree) that web search is now just one mode of identifying intention. As he states it “I’ve come to the conclusion that “web search” was just the first of many fields in the Database of Intentions. For those of you who are not database geeks, and to further pad the metaphor, a field in a database is colloquially defined as a specific type of information in that database. Sets of fields are called records, and sets of records make up the database.”

The Database of Intentions has now been updated as below:

So now the database does not just contain the query (or search) but the social graph (Me and my contacts), the Status update (What am I doing) and the Check-in (Where I am).

What I love about this post/ idea is that not only does it point to other sources of such information (for information gatherers) but executing excellently on even one of these “fields” as he calls them is a very viable business. Combine two or more of these and BOOM! A potentially very very successful operation. For example, take the check-in (e.g. LBS – my favorite) and the social graph and you get this. So many permutations are buzzing in my head right now……still need to think them through. For example, let’s say you have a platform on one of these four fields. You open it to allow others to build upon it (on the other fields). Can you even imagine?

Definitely get the book and most definitely read the complete post

I heart Google Googles

Seriously, all the noise about Google Wave and Google Buzz is cool. But what really kicked in my excitement-al hormones was Google Goggles . Simply put it is like a virtual Robocop kinda thing where he looks at someone and then based on the image, all the data from the FBI database would be available to him.

So basically, you take a snap of some object and based on the visual information, Google  searches out and gets you all the info on that particular object. From what I understand, right now this works on landmarks, art and books – not so good on people.

I really love this. If they could open it onto a platform where people could mashup services on this platform, such as build a facebook profile based on an image or usage this as part of what Battelle talked about in the Search about using barcode scanners for getting the best prices in the neighbourhood

See the video below as to how Goggles works:

via Indianweb2

Don Dodge joins Google; loses credibility

I’ve been following Don Dodge on his blog for almost a year now. Smart, incisive and one of the most vocal cheerleaders of Microsoft and its products when he was there. Recently, shockwaves hit Don Dodge’s fans when he was laid off from the software behemoth along with another 5000 people. Well, that was sad and TechCrunch gave him a send-off that he so deserved. Within an hour and a half after that exit interview, Don was offered a position  in Google. Obviously, everyone’s happy about that now. But. And this is a big BUT. Don’s last blog post on Microsoft has ruffled more than a few feathers. For example:

Thanks Microsoft Outlook, but I’m going to Gmail. I made the switch to Gmail last week and it has been awesome! Outlook has been an old familiar friend for years, but it was getting kind of tired. Gmail is new, fast, web based, and has all the features I need. I especially like the way it threads conversations making it easy to keep everything in context. And of course the search capabilities are world class. One other subtle thing…no spam. I never realized how much corporate spam invaded my Microsoft inbox. Endless emails about corporate meetings, events, promotions, and CC’s on email threads I don’t care about. Gmail has been liberating.

as against this post on Windows Live Hotmail:

The new spell checker is very good, automatically checking before sending the message. It underlines incorrect spellings and links to an online dictionary for help. Last time I checked Gmail didn’t have a spell checker.

It does obviously make sense to praise your company’s products and evangelize them. That’s what they pay you for. But we also learn not to put down your competitor’s products. And it’s even worse when they are your past employers and have recently laid you off. It damages your credibility as the comments on his blog post reflects. Don has a lost a significant amount of personal credibility. And this WILL affect his ability to evangelize Google as his readers (me included) would not know whether he truly was passionate about the products or the pay.

Leave it to Fake Steve to complete the hatchet job.

The App(le) Economy

Warning: This may be a post that's heard across blogs too many times before but I just feel that it needs to be said again

No matter how many times I think about it and no matter how many times I read about it, the apps economy still blows my mind. The Apple Telecom Group (The iPhone + iTunes + App store) is a gift that just keeps on giving.
The statistics are mind boggling by themselves: 7 million handsets in Q3 of 2009 giving it a 17.1% share of the net adds in the quarter.

More importantly, Apple has used its experience in the personal computer industry + selling songs through the iTunes store in a very unique way:

• First it created an extremely cool product – the iPhone (the equivalent of a Mac). People flocked to it and called it the Jesus Phone.
• Then they used its brilliant user interface, sexy looks and the lure of a REAL operating system to attract developers to build for the iPhone, albeit only after a lot of protests (the equivalent of getting Adobe and Microsoft to develop content for the Mac)
• Set up the iTunes store such that they get a piece of the pie for every app sold (unheard of the PC industry but definitely heard of the in the iPod-iTunes world)
• Let developers spread the word about the applications oh which is available for the iPhone
• And finally, using this very same plethora of apps to attract customers to its iPhone thus completing the vicious (or positive enforcement) cycle

It’s kinda like how Gillette sells the razors relatively cheap in order to sell many units of the more expensive blades. Except that in the Apple world, both are expensive

When you read articles like these on the Web, it gives you an idea of the phenomenal advantage that Apple has juiced out from its App Store. These are the statistics from Brad Kellett for the App store. A 165% growth rate between June 11, 2008 and May 25, 2009. See graph below:

Daily new apps released in 11 months

Break up of downloads for each price point

It’s easy to see why Dwyan Tweney says he’s not shifting to Droid despite all its amazing features. Beyond the hardware keyboard and the weight (really, are they even reasons?), the main reasons is losing out on two apps he usually uses. TWO APPS ! And there are 57,000 apps out there.
Now, Apple has obviously lost out on India and Africa (where the main telecom action lies) with a relatively lukewarm reception in China (highest population). Nokia dominates India. Now is the only time that Nokia has to lick its wounds and really really build up its Ovi store. Too bad they shut down their N-Gage store. They could really exploit its potential with 3G looming in the (distant?) horizon. Now is the time to really build applications that these developing nations can use to their advantage.  And people in these countries don’t want a iFart app. They just want extreme (and man, I mean extreme) value for money. Nokia has already invested $70 million in Obopay. Products and investments like these need to be really pushed to customers.

Secondly, there are some significant dischordant noises made by the developer community about Apple’s seemingly random procedures for approving or rejecting apps. There is only one company that stands to gain from all this. If Google is able to launch its Android OS on a much larger range of handsets (including displacing Nokia’s old and tired Symbian OS) and build a much more developer-friendly store, it can stop Apple dead in its tracks. I still feel, however, that Google ads may not really work in a mobile environment. Will justify this statement in another post. However, it all depends on how Google can migrate the simplicity of its Internet products onto its Android platform and tie-up with Nokia.

Updates on Murdoch’s intention to block Google

Previously on Braindumped: Here

Interesting updates from Techcrunch:
How Murdoch Can Really Hurt Google And Shift The Balance Of Power In Search

If other media companies joined Murdoch Google could actually find itself in a very difficult position, where Bing had content that Google didn’t. If you knew that Wall Street Journal and, say, New York TImes content was only in Bing search results, mainstream search users would suddenly have a big reason to go to Bing.

This would shift the balance of power away from search engines and to the content sites – if they could pull it off. Bidding wars over rights to index content would conceivably break out between Google and Microsoft, just as bidding wars have broken out in the past over the right to serve search ads into third party publishing sites.

If Murdoch is going to go through with this de-indexing Mexican standoff thing, he might as well do it the right way and drive the fear of God into Google. As a spectator, I’ll enjoy watching the fireworks.

Of course there’s another sideshow going on here as well – the renegotiation of the MySpace search deal with Google that ends next year. That deal brings in $300 million a year to News Corp., and it’s clear Google is done paying that much money.

From BoingBoing:

So here’s what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he’s still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump).

So what he’s hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you’ve never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year’s operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.

My favorite update from Mark Cuban:

1. Best Case: They opt out and see an increase in revenues and commitment to their sites because people choose to go directly to their sites. For those sites behind a paywall, they generate more revenue than when the site was free. Other sites notice their success and copy Newscorp, choosing to opt out of the Google index. The opt out choice turns out to be the better business move for any and all sites looking to increase revenues. Google’s position as the leading search engine is called into question. The Search business becomes competitive again. Content companies now understand how to best monetize their content efforts.

Far fetched ? Maybe. But not totally inconceivable.

2. Worst Case: They opt out of Google’s Index. Their traffic drops 99pct. No one buys their pay offerings. They all feel like idiots. Then the last idiot left in the office gets out the text editor and changes the robots.txt file or completely deletes it. They turn off the paywalls. Make the content free again. Life as they knew it before they opted out and started charging for content returns to normal as quickly as Google can reindex the Newscorp sites.

P.S. – I would updated my previous post but I don’t know how to ensure that updated posts rise to the top of my blog

Further updates: From the BBC: Did Google just blink?

From the Google blog: Google and paid content

I’m a little curious about the post from Google. How they track number of clicks? From the IP address? That spells bad news for companies using proxy servers. And if not, then how else? They can’t do it based on my Google id cos’ I can always log off and surf the links…..more importantly, is it enough?

There are a lot of people saying that obviously this will hurt Murdoch more than Google. I have my own reservations on that since it is not that it is not available anywhere; just not on Google. Given the amount of visibility this issue has gained, most people will know that if you want WSJ content or analysis, you have to go to Bing. The battle is between the brand strength of Murdoch’s publications with respect to the quality of its content vs. the brand strength of Google’s listing with respect to the quantity/ quality of its results