;P nmw

Ok, so it’s you, me, nmw, and the Turkish spammer. Four peas in a pod.

Now — these few sentences above pretty much lay-out an inevitable path forward IMO — how can it not happen? It’s technically feasible and it fulfills unmet needs. But am I worried that a big, established player will read these comments and run off and execute this inevitabilty? Nope.

That quote alone should move us at least from web 2.4 to web 2.96!

>> Scale is a wonderful thing for a business to have that can be leveraged in many beneficial ways

IMHO, nothing scales as well as “natural language” (see http://gaggle.info/miscellaneous/articles/wisdom-of-the-language — but “natural” language is not “owned” by anyone (even Hitler / Goebels didn’t manage to fool all of the people all of the time — they merely intimidated them with torture and/or fear of power).

Our host (John Battelle) presented a very good model for how this could happen (and/or how it has played out) — and he used an age-old analogy: the command line versus the menu (I think his presentation at the first CM conference was very well done). He has argued that Google is offering a “command line” — but apparently (as the latest release shows) this pseudo-command line is merely a facade. When people begin to realize that their queries are being pigeon holed into some “segment” which advertisers might be able to target… — well, will they? (see JG’s quote, above)

IMHO, Google is moving “one step forward, two steps back”. Ultimately, more and more people will realize that Google is nothing but an ad agency (something I have been arguing for years already — and “ultimately” is apparently not so far away (check the comments section to the NYT article that John pointed to the other day . As this becomes more widely known, people will probably start looking for other sources of news and/or weather reports — and I guess that will make CBS and NBC quite “happy campers”.

I suggest that we all forget about Google and start paying more attention to the sites that really matter. “Traditional” search engines will probably also continue to change, since the “one size fits all” approach of today’s top search engines will simply no longer suffice to separate the wheat from the chaffe — early indications of future engines is the plain and simple fact that cars.com is already a search engine for cars (in a commercial setting) and/or the fact that hotels.com is already a search engine for hotels (in a commercial setting).

Another good quote of JG’s is also rather plain and simple: “the proof is in the pudding”.

;D nmw

And one reason, in my case, is that if your business revolves around innovating, it starts with understanding the unfulfilled needs people have. And thoughtful threads like this is a great place to get insights into those kind of unmet needs.

Like the need for more transparency with regard to the database of intentions/inferences — I hadn’t thought too deeply about that before. What I had thought deeply about is providing explanations for recommended items (where a recommendation can be an ad, the response to a search query, etc.) to reinforce to the recommendation recipient why the recommendation should really matter to them. But putting the two things together makes the case for explanatory-driven ads/recommendations even clearer because the approach delivers greater transparency, and hence increases trust, plus being more authoritative because of the compelling logic that is exposed.

And the beauty from a business model standpoint is that explanatory-based ads will not only fulfill unmet needs of ad/recommendation recipients, but also be superior at moving product for advertisers, so both sides of the equation win.

Now — these few sentences above pretty much lay-out an inevitable path forward IMO — how can it not happen? It’s technically feasible and it fulfills unmet needs. But am I worried that a big, established player will read these comments and run off and execute this inevitabilty? Nope.

Scale is a wonderful thing for a business to have that can be leveraged in many beneficial ways — but not for creating and implementing the most fundamental innovations. History has shown over and over again that nearly all businesses are, in fact, one trick ponies, and that trick (which, granted, may be a helluva trick) is always developed when they are still foals . . .

Don’t you mean, “On the Internet, no one realizes that they’re actually a frog”?

To go with the frog analogy:

1. Most don’t realize that they’re sitting in the water;

2. On the Internet, no one can tell if you’re a dog

;D nmw

But again, this is only a relatively recent development, and is not a well-established pattern throughout most of Google’s 10 year history. I.e. despite a few folks (couple dozen? a hundred? out of 16,000?) with the “Researcher” title, in the core of their DNA, they remain an “Engineer” company. With the exception of a few people here at their, it seems that they are still really only throwing programmers at the problem of organizing the world’s information, rather than research scientists, library scientists, sociologists, behavioral anthropologists, etc. The proof of the pudding is still in the nature of the products that they release.

They have so many resources, though, and so many good people. I just wish they would do more. That’s really all I’m saying. It’s a pity, really, that they seem to be stuck in a single mindset.

And, @Joel: Yes, I have also heard that the boiling frog is an urban legend. But the principle, that of slowly going down a path, little by little, rather than all at once, is still a behavior that we can observe all around us, in human society, quite often. Privacy, or any other, violations do not occur all at once. They occur little by little, so that we don’t notice what is slipping away. So I agree with you that the frog analogy is false. But the idea itself is still generally observable.

@nmw: Yes, I agree with you as well. The information content of a picture is not 1 million pixels/bytes. The correct conversion factor is 1 picture = 1000 words.

@nwm: By the way, why do I feel like you and I are 2 of only like 5 people that ever read the comments section, and get into this stuff

ah, yes — that’s a fine distinction!

;D nmw