Editor&Publisher interviews Sergey Brin via email, and while his responses have clearly been given a once-over by Google's professional PR staff, this response struck me as a bad omen for the DoubleClicks of the world: 2. Many newspapers are publishing display ads on the Web, with photos and graphics. Will…
Editor&Publisher interviews Sergey Brin via email, and while his responses have clearly been given a once-over by Google’s professional PR staff, this response struck me as a bad omen for the DoubleClicks of the world:
2. Many newspapers are publishing display ads on the Web, with photos and graphics. Will AdSense evolve beyond text-based advertising? Or is text the best medium for these types of ads?
SB: At this point, text ads are the best solution for our users, advertisers and partners. However, online advertising, especially contextual advertising, is evolving rapidly. Google is committed to a leadership position in online advertising technology and we continue to explore new technologies in every aspect of targeting, delivery and display.
The Washington Post prints something of a Sunday rumination on how search engines might evolve, a rather flippant piece of magazine writing that reads like a poorly edited Wired rant from the early days (I should know). Overall the piece bothers me – it takes search seriously in word, but…
The Washington Post prints something of a Sunday rumination on how search engines might evolve, a rather flippant piece of magazine writing that reads like a poorly edited Wired rant from the early days (I should know). Overall the piece bothers me – it takes search seriously in word, but the tone finds a way to be dismissive at the same time, and only gives a cursory answer to the question it sets up (what might search look like in the future). The set up illustrates what I mean:
Only now in the bright light of the Google Era do we see how dim and gloomy was our pregooglian world. In the distant future, historians will have a common term for the period prior to the appearance of Google: the Dark Ages.
Well, in fact, I’ll warrant that when historians look back at this era, they’ll disagree. But enough about that. The piece does provide an interesting signpost of popular culture: our most respected institutions of journalism are trying to make sense of this phenomenon as more than just a business story. Thank God.
The last entry on Yahoo's new search got me thinking about search results, and in particular Google's, which nearly everyone imitates in one form or another. We all know about the endless list of results, 10 to a page, stretching past what Tim Bray calls "the Google event horizon." I…
The last entry on Yahoo’s new search got me thinking about search results, and in particular Google’s, which nearly everyone imitates in one form or another. We all know about the endless list of results, 10 to a page, stretching past what Tim Bray calls “the Google event horizon.” I used to think that horizon was 100 or so entries – no one will ever look further than that. But the truth is, it’s usually one page of listings, if not less.
I’ve gotten to thinking – what’s the use of having all those results? I mean, really, from a user interface point of view, the only information we gain from “Results 1 – 10 of about 3,950,000” is the rather attenuated sense that the search engine is, in fact, pretty darn thorough. That used to be a big deal, back when engines were really crappy. But these days we expect engines to be thorough. What’s the point of giving me a list of more than 3 million results when I am never, ever, ever going to go through them?
Seems to me it’s time to change the interface. Clearly many others have thought about this, from Grokker to Mooter to Vivisimo and beyond. But it’s the big guys, Google and Yahoo, that make the standards, and I think we’re getting close to the point where a new user interface paradigm is needed for search. Danny talks about invisible tabs, and that’s a good idea. But I’m not talking about intuiting what the user wants – that’s the hard stuff, and I know there are plenty of PhDs working on that. I’m talking about something much less difficult – changing the way results we get are presented.
From the WashPost, via the Straits Times, comes this instance of scaremongering: "Your secrets aren't safe – from the search engines." A casual reader might conclude that somehow search engines can scan your hard drive and tender your private information to anyone. But in fact, the point is, some people…
From the WashPost, via the Straits Times, comes this instance of scaremongering: “Your secrets aren’t safe – from the search engines.” A casual reader might conclude that somehow search engines can scan your hard drive and tender your private information to anyone. But in fact, the point is, some people (and more often, companies/universities) are dumb enough to put the wrong thing online, and there is a subculture of folks who make a sport (or a business) of finding these documents (ie excel spreadsheets with credit card numbers). “It is all legal” the paper warns omminously, “using the world’s most powerful Internet search engine.” Sigh. Reminds me of early coverage of the net itself.
Over at Joho, David Weinberger gives us a tantalizing glimpse of his full length essay in Esther's Release 1.0: The Semantic Earth Every business in the world is headquartered on earth. Every employee works somewhere. Every customer is at some location at every moment. Every product is delivered to some…
Over at Joho, David Weinberger gives us a tantalizing glimpse of his full length essay in Esther’s Release 1.0: The Semantic Earth
Every business in the world is headquartered on earth. Every employee works somewhere. Every customer is at some location at every moment. Every product is delivered to some spot and every service is performed at some coordinates. Every transaction involves at least one place and usually more than one. And yet, until recently, businesses have systematically managed location information only for processes directly concerned with moving people and goods. Why has the literal common ground of business been largely absent from business applications?……
Today was a meet-with-interesting-folks day, starting with Louis Borders and Doug Herrington, Chair and CEO, in that order, of KeepMedia. Doug and Louis last worked together on WebVan, which I loved as a service. "We overexpanded," Doug confessed. I can relate. KeepMedia has some grand visions of where it might…
Today was a meet-with-interesting-folks day, starting with Louis Borders and Doug Herrington, Chair and CEO, in that order, of KeepMedia. Doug and Louis last worked together on WebVan, which I loved as a service. “We overexpanded,” Doug confessed. I can relate.
KeepMedia has some grand visions of where it might be headed (think learning and communities), but it’s quite busy focusing on its current model, which is providing what I’ll call a “clean and well lit space for magazine search.” OK, so I see most things through the search lens, but really, when you think about it, folks who use the KeepMedia service are looking for content that matches their particular interests, and the KeepMedia service has some interesting search and personal filtering technologies to meet that intent.
(more via link below)
It seems every day Google, and now Yahoo as well, adds more features to its search – first it was phone numbers , then tracking packages, then patents, now it's whois, flights, UPC codes, VINs, and God knows what else. Read a few pages of Google Hacks, and you'll realize,…
It seems every day Google, and now Yahoo as well, adds more features to its search – first it was phone numbers , then tracking packages, then patents, now it’s whois, flights, UPC codes, VINs, and God knows what else. Read a few pages of Google Hacks, and you’ll realize, you never use even 2% of Google’s power, and, most likely, you never will.
This leads me to wonder, where is this all going? I mean, the fact is, most searchers simply don’t use advanced search features *at all* – not even simple operators like quotes (” black jaguar” cat) or negative inclusion (jaguar -cat). So why are these search sites loading up on features that, honestly, nearly all their users will never take advantage of? Do they think searcher’s habits are going to change? I doubt it. I’d be interested in why you these features are being added with such abandon. Just because they can? Maybe they think folks will be building applications on top of the search platform, or will they do it themselves? Are they expecting that a layer of expert searchers will develop who peddle intermediary services (ie Google Answers)? I mean, I can get as excited as the next guy about the addition of the tilde operator or the “*” function, but….it feels like there is something in aggregate I am missing. Must be the varathane on the floor in the next room, keeping me from grokking the grand plan in all this. Help me out!
Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for pointing me to this Reason interview with Bruce Sterling. In it he opines on media, tech, etc., and has some words of wisdom on search in particular. Excerpts: There is a Google blindness. It’s a kind of common wisdom generator, but it’s not necessarily going…
Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for pointing me to this Reason interview with Bruce Sterling. In it he opines on media, tech, etc., and has some words of wisdom on search in particular. Excerpts:
There is a Google blindness. It’s a kind of common wisdom generator, but it’s not necessarily going to get you to the real story of what’s actually going on.
reason: As today’s children get older they’re internalizing Boolean search logic, and they actually do show some discrimination and drill down to the useful information.
I was going to let this one slide, but I thought, what the hell, this is what a blog is for. So perhaps some of you readers might have an answer to this query and its associated hypothesis (as yet unproven or even tested), and, if true, the related problem…
I was going to let this one slide, but I thought, what the hell, this is what a blog is for. So perhaps some of you readers might have an answer to this query and its associated hypothesis (as yet unproven or even tested), and, if true, the related problem I have with it.
Query: Why, on New Year’s Eve, which my wife and I spent blissfully housebound with a newborn and our two other young’uns, were NONE of the news channels, not NBC, not CBS, not ABC, not even CNN or MSNBC, running the traditional “New Year’s Around the World” fare? The stuff you see every single New Year’s Eve? You know – It’s New Year’s Eve in Paris (ooh – fireworks behind the Eiffel Tower!), then New York (the ball drops!), Chicago (revelers drinking), etc? This stuff is usually shown live around the world. It was very very odd to see re-runs of Aaron Brown’s evening program on CNN, instead of live shots from world capitals. And on the networks, only ABC had a New Year’s special, and it was clearly canned and overly produced (Dick Clark, from beyond the grave), with no live shots (at least, not to us in California).
Hypothesis: It seems to me that this had to do with the heightened terror alert level. I can’t think of any other reason. Television news didn’t want to potentially broadcast an attack live to the world, and wanted terrorists to know that the opportunity to strike live on television would not exist.
Jeremy has an interesting proto-meme brewing over at his site on the concept of FriendRank. Worth a good JAM session or two. (And it smacks of whuffie, no?)…
Jeremy has an interesting proto-meme brewing over at his site on the concept of FriendRank. Worth a good JAM session or two. (And it smacks of whuffie, no?)