I don't know about you guys, but I see way too much of this when I search Google lately. Tonight I was looking for a particular frozen yogurt shop in Edgartown, which is a town on the island where my family has spent portions of the summer for the past…
Tonight I was looking for a particular frozen yogurt shop in Edgartown, which is a town on the island where my family has spent portions of the summer for the past 100 or so years. This was a relatively new shop, but not that new.
Anyway, we forgot the name, so I Googled “yogurt edgartown.”
Read MoreChina has announced it will build a state run search engine to compete with, no wait, dominate and overrun, its own semi-autonomous upstarts Baidu (CEO Robin Li is coming to Web 2 this year) and Yahoo-backed Alibaba (CEO Jack Ma came in years past). All I can say is…
China has announced it will build a state run search engine to compete with, no wait, dominate and overrun, its own semi-autonomous upstarts Baidu (CEO Robin Li is coming to Web 2 this year) and Yahoo-backed Alibaba (CEO Jack Ma came in years past).
All I can say is “Good luck with that, China.”
Read MoreInteresting investment by Google Ventures in a company called Recorded Future, a wonderful play on verb tenses and words. The company is a "temporal and predictive analysis engine." That just sounds cool. Google is co-investing with the CIA's investment arm. That's interesting, no?…
Interesting investment by Google Ventures in a company called Recorded Future, a wonderful play on verb tenses and words. The company is a “temporal and predictive analysis engine.” That just sounds cool.
Google is co-investing with the CIA’s investment arm. That’s interesting, no?
I've written before about my relationship with Foursquare, and I'm sure I will again. I've tweeted my complaint that the "friend" mechanism is poorly instrumented (in various ways), and I should note that this is certainly not just a Foursquare problem (more on "Friendstrimentation" shortly). But today I wanted to…
I’ve written before about my relationship with Foursquare, and I’m sure I will again. I’ve tweeted my complaint that the “friend” mechanism is poorly instrumented (in various ways), and I should note that this is certainly not just a Foursquare problem (more on “Friendstrimentation” shortly).
But today I wanted to build on my earlier post, “My Location Is a Box of Cereal,” and Think Out Loud a bit about what I’d really like to do on Foursquare: I’d like to check into a state of mind.
What do I mean by that?
Read MoreLast weekend the news was conjecture about Facebook doing web search, today, the news is conjecture about Google doing social networks. All of this has been sparked by two well known Valley guys opining on samesaid…Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg, tweeted that Google was working on a "Google Me"…
Last weekend the news was conjecture about Facebook doing web search, today, the news is conjecture about Google doing social networks. All of this has been sparked by two well known Valley guys opining on samesaid…Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg, tweeted that Google was working on a “Google Me” social network (he since was “asked to take down his tweet” by someone…) and then a former Facebook employee answered a related question on his own Q&A service, Quora.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, folks. I certainly don’t find it the least bit surprising that Google is continuing its push into social – let’s not forget, the company recently launched Buzz, which qualifies as a major social network, already owns Orkut, which also qualifies, and has added social features to its core search service – including Google Profiles and social search functionalities.
Read MoreGoogle today announced another step in its protracted divorce from China – to satisfy regulatory and license requirements, it's no longer directly serving results from its Hong Kong based (and uncensored) engine onto its Google.cn site. Instead, it's directing users to the Hong Kong site, in essence, creating one more…
And there’s no certainty that service will be allowed inside China, as the regime is clearly not pleased with Google’s failure to roll over. Google’s license to do business inside the country apparently expires tomorrow. This move was clearly intended to convince China that Google is living by the letter of Chinese law. I’m not sure that matters, and it may effect Google’s other businesses – Maps, for example.
Meanwhile, Google’s main competition, Baidu, which as a homegrown company has no such issues, has gained marketshare at Google’s expense. CEO Robin Li will be at Web 2 this Fall, a rare appearance and one certain to be newsworthy.
Read MoreThanks to Andy at Beet for asking. My post earlier here goes into far more detail. I do look rather querulous, do I not? It must have been the sun….
…you just have to rethink what "search" really means. Last night Jobs said he had no interest in search. I am quite certain what he meant is he has no interest in HTML, "traditional" search. But think about what search really is, and I am certain, Apple will be in…
Why? Well, as I said in the last post on the iPad (and rather hurriedly, and entirely my fault, poorly communicated to many of those who left comments), it’s all about the link. Perhaps I should have said, it’s all about the signal.
Let’s think about the allegories between search and the web as we knew it, and apps and the app platform that Apple controls, as we know it. Last night Jobs said that we’ve never before seen such an explosion of apps as we’ve witnessed on the iPhone platform – 200,000 and counting, up to 20K new ones a week.
Read MoreWhen Bing launched, I framed the new service from Microsoft as an important step in the evolution of search: I actually don't think Microsoft is trying to out-Google Google with Bing. I think it's trying to build a different kind of search application, one that sits on top of…
When Bing launched, I framed the new service from Microsoft as an important step in the evolution of search:
I actually don’t think Microsoft is trying to out-Google Google with Bing. I think it’s trying to build a different kind of search application, one that sits on top of commodity search and helps people make decisions in a new way. Done right, this totally breaks the AdWords model that has driven search so far. To me, that is a very big step in a new direction, and one that Google cannot afford to make.
Read MoreFrom the real time search service's blog post: Until today, we’ve been indexing the links shared on Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious and by our own OneRiot panel to help determine our search results. Now, with the addition of Facebook data, OneRiot delivers search results that reflect the pulse of a…
From the real time search service’s blog post:
Until today, we’ve been indexing the links shared on Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious and by our own OneRiot panel to help determine our search results. Now, with the addition of Facebook data, OneRiot delivers search results that reflect the pulse of a much, much wider social web.
Also, the service seems a bit wary of what might come of all this:
Now, of course, we’re only showing (indeed, only have access to) data that has been shared publicly by Facebook users. A user can restrict the visibility of these Likes on their Facebook profile. However, we’d be sidestepping the issue if we didn’t recognize that some users might be concerned that stuff they have shared on Facebook can now pop up on services like ours. Given that, we are rolling out this feature as a very limited bucket test today to assess users’ reactions and gather feedback. We love the new feature. And if users do too then we’ll roll it out to everyone at an appropriate speed.
As well they should. The service can be found here.
