Video of Powerset's semantic search, demo'ing.
A bug report video that was leaked from CKLingo that displays an thin-client OS type of concept with session management:
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
What's Cuil Think Search Is... A Measuring Test?
As you may already know, the Stanford research team took off with most of Google's trade secrets, tricked some VDs for startup capital and entered the search game as if it were some kind of measuring test. A character count or analysis of indexes may sway some into believing that Cuil is indeed the largest search engine in the world, but this line is for the gullible and blind.
Google has the most established moat of all products and service available to society at this point in time, for the simple fact it is a precursor for it's constituents. Google is what currently holds the content on the web together, and the means of traversing from one place to another. While this alone provide what is needed to build a technology empire, the additional benefit of audience intelligence and transversial foot printing allows us to monitor the interests of society in real time. It is my belief that the queries in Google provide the most accurate representation of society as a whole.
Cuil's marketing campaign speaks to the engineering abilities of it's staff, and it's ability to compile large quantities of data. Google is simply in another game; delivering the most value to the end user, you know the concept... sometimes less is more. A convoluted search engine with irrelevant, but a high count of search results is just as useless as one that doesn't return results.
Our major concern is around the more disruptive technology, such as the recent developments in semantic search. While I remain confident that semantic search will never take the place of the PageRank algorithm, I do believe that semantic search is an untapped market. Unstructured data analysis has yet to be widely used in business intelligence solutions, but the power that it provides is clear even at stages this early. Microsoft's recent acquisition of Powerset will only be the first of many semantic search technologies.
My fear is that the market for semantic search will eventually outgrow the market for more traditional search engines. In response to this, Google has made several initiatives to be an early adopter and innovator in the area of semantic search. Early moves will include end-to-end solutions in the form of Google search servers with natural language processing capabilities and the ability to build and publish dashboards on the fly. Adobe will serve as a key partner, as we are utilizing their Flash format for publishing dashboards, and the Flex Builder application for extensibility work. The Eclipse IDE will provide a familiar environment for those who have utilized Eclipse for Java Development.
Google will also take on an aggresive industry awareness strategy, closing monitoring the developments of semantic search engines. Those on the top of our list this very day:
Google has the most established moat of all products and service available to society at this point in time, for the simple fact it is a precursor for it's constituents. Google is what currently holds the content on the web together, and the means of traversing from one place to another. While this alone provide what is needed to build a technology empire, the additional benefit of audience intelligence and transversial foot printing allows us to monitor the interests of society in real time. It is my belief that the queries in Google provide the most accurate representation of society as a whole.
Cuil's marketing campaign speaks to the engineering abilities of it's staff, and it's ability to compile large quantities of data. Google is simply in another game; delivering the most value to the end user, you know the concept... sometimes less is more. A convoluted search engine with irrelevant, but a high count of search results is just as useless as one that doesn't return results.
Our major concern is around the more disruptive technology, such as the recent developments in semantic search. While I remain confident that semantic search will never take the place of the PageRank algorithm, I do believe that semantic search is an untapped market. Unstructured data analysis has yet to be widely used in business intelligence solutions, but the power that it provides is clear even at stages this early. Microsoft's recent acquisition of Powerset will only be the first of many semantic search technologies.
My fear is that the market for semantic search will eventually outgrow the market for more traditional search engines. In response to this, Google has made several initiatives to be an early adopter and innovator in the area of semantic search. Early moves will include end-to-end solutions in the form of Google search servers with natural language processing capabilities and the ability to build and publish dashboards on the fly. Adobe will serve as a key partner, as we are utilizing their Flash format for publishing dashboards, and the Flex Builder application for extensibility work. The Eclipse IDE will provide a familiar environment for those who have utilized Eclipse for Java Development.
Google will also take on an aggresive industry awareness strategy, closing monitoring the developments of semantic search engines. Those on the top of our list this very day:
Hakia is built upon Yahoo's BOSS service, so they are seen as a source of innovation more than a threat to Google. TextWise recently followed suit and opened their semantic APIs up "the hacker" community. We believe their approach in approaching the hacker community will ward off anyone with the potential to build a viable business model around semantic search. Freebase is an interesting concept, looks to have hit a critical mass and caught the momentum it needs to sustain. While Google will continue to monitor activities of Freebase, they are not in our competitive space and are therefore seen as non-threatening.
CKLingo has some ground breaking work going on, but their restrictive search environment and dramatic learning curve will prevent any significant percentage of market share. Their strategy of serving as a showcase for Microsoft technology is an area of concern for us. If Microsoft were to take an interest and provide funding in the form of advertising dollars (similar to our move with Yahoo), the possibility of dedicated linguistic and UI/UX teams may serve detrimental to Google's long term business strategy.
In the advent that someone were to present a compelling case for semantic search, it will be Google's strategy to release technology currently in development as a service that compliments (not replaces) Google itself. We will continue developing the technology as quickly as possible while keeping it in small but very capable groups. This should keep the technology under wraps until we launch.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
MSFT... Baited, Hooked, and Hung Out to Dry!
Telsa's efforts netted a large gain for society as a whole, yet his lack of business acumen prevented him from placing himself in a more enabled position. If he had approached his feats employing more financial vigor, his impact would have been exponentially greater. My respect for Tesla overshadows that of Edison for the simple fact that I appreciate the creative element of innovation, though I believe Edison's predominant mention in traiditional history is justified, given his ability to harness the potential of his findings. After all, General Electric afforded Jack Welch with the opportunity of becoming the CEO of a company that was once considered the largest company in the world.
While I originally feared that I may be led down a path similar to Telsa, attention to this detail led me down the road not taken and to a place of enlightment. The simple key to success? There is a degree of ingenuity involved with the substance of an idea, but once this is conceived it is an intellectual puzzle which will carry the momentum... a game of relation to implement a use/reward cycle for the idea.
The magnitude of our success can be attributed to the underestimation that we became accustom to in early business dealings. I would have gladly accepted an offer to purchase PageRank for $1 million, and even pursued a buyer early on, but it was their belief in my arrogancy that allowed me to grow Google to what it is today. I can only hope this persona will persist as I smirk watching as Balmer and Icahn swim after bait like mindless fish.
While MSFT shareholders complain about their cash-on-hand, it has been key in allowing Microsoft to remain agile and adaptive in an industry with a very liquid landscape. During disruptive periods where many fundemental changes are underway, Microsoft simply acquires the leading competitors to anyone they consider a threat. Now what happens if Microsoft would need to compromise future acquisitions as an expense to purchasing the leading competitor to their largest threat?
This was the topic of discussion among the umbrelled table at Sun Fest. Yang was showing signs of distress, being pulled by leadership to go with the offer put forth by Microsoft, but I assured him to continue with the plan. Capital World Investors and Icahn will only continue to inflate the end price for the Yahoo acquisition, most likely above the price that Yang and I worked early on, or what we consider the teriminal inflection point... the point where Microsoft would be unable to acquire the reasonable competitor to the semantic search technology Google is *waiting* to release. The result for us is the same...
While I originally feared that I may be led down a path similar to Telsa, attention to this detail led me down the road not taken and to a place of enlightment. The simple key to success? There is a degree of ingenuity involved with the substance of an idea, but once this is conceived it is an intellectual puzzle which will carry the momentum... a game of relation to implement a use/reward cycle for the idea.
The magnitude of our success can be attributed to the underestimation that we became accustom to in early business dealings. I would have gladly accepted an offer to purchase PageRank for $1 million, and even pursued a buyer early on, but it was their belief in my arrogancy that allowed me to grow Google to what it is today. I can only hope this persona will persist as I smirk watching as Balmer and Icahn swim after bait like mindless fish.
While MSFT shareholders complain about their cash-on-hand, it has been key in allowing Microsoft to remain agile and adaptive in an industry with a very liquid landscape. During disruptive periods where many fundemental changes are underway, Microsoft simply acquires the leading competitors to anyone they consider a threat. Now what happens if Microsoft would need to compromise future acquisitions as an expense to purchasing the leading competitor to their largest threat?
This was the topic of discussion among the umbrelled table at Sun Fest. Yang was showing signs of distress, being pulled by leadership to go with the offer put forth by Microsoft, but I assured him to continue with the plan. Capital World Investors and Icahn will only continue to inflate the end price for the Yahoo acquisition, most likely above the price that Yang and I worked early on, or what we consider the teriminal inflection point... the point where Microsoft would be unable to acquire the reasonable competitor to the semantic search technology Google is *waiting* to release. The result for us is the same...
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