Google oppermachtig, maar hoe lang nog?

Dat is wel een heel raar artikel. Zeggen dat Microsoft Google verslaat en dan het artikel laten sponsoren door Microsoft! Emerce is dus ook al niet langer serieus te nemen als onafhankelijk medium. Bedrijven die denken dat ze de "heerschappij" op Internet kunnen pakken begrijpen echt helemaal niets van het medium en het zal mij niet verbazen alsl Microsoft over 5 jaar slechts nog op de desktop is te vinden 🙂

Google gaat zichzelf snel tegenkomen. Het product is niet zo 'sticky' meer als het 3 jaar geleden was. De glans is er af. Er komen betere alternatieven met Microsoft als grote drijfveer. Voor wat betreft de Google organisatie: het is de enige club die nog zweeft en heel snel terug naar aarde moet komen om niet dezelfde fout te begaan als veel andere (vergelijkbaar succesvolle) bedrijven een jaar of 3-4 geleden. Heb echt het idee dat ze hun eigen hype staande houden. Leuk voor nu, eng voor straks want wie houden ze voor de gek? Wat dat betreft kan Google in ieder geval beter met wat minder arrogantie de markt benaderen, om te voorkomen dat ze na de crash echt bij het grof vuil gezet worden. ….What goes up, WILL come down. 

Wanneer houdt dat gezeur over banners nou eens op. Egbert, denk je nou echt dat een banner(tje) van Microsoft bij een artikel over Google betekent dat de redactie is omgekocht? Wat een kortzichtig gezwam. Buiten dat is het onderschatten van Microsoft wel het allerdomste wat je kunt doen als bedrijf (of consument). Ze hebben meerdere keren bewezen hun dominantie op de desktop aan te kunnen wenden om elders ook dominantie te verkrijgen.  Als laatste heeft de geschiedenis aangetoond dat voor zoekmachines geldt "easy come, easy go", als Google slim is dan nemen ze kennis van de geschiedenis (die de neiging heeft zich te herhalen) en doen ze er alles aan om hun positie te behouden door kwaliteitsverbetering, binding, etc. En dan nog blijft het een verassing of de gebruikers trouw blijven.  I.t.t. een eBay, waar de monopoliepositie een 'strength' is is bij een zoekmachine de monopoliepositie een 'threat'. Maar ze zijn niet gek daar bij Google, er zullen dus nog wel wat azen uit de mouw komen.

Mark je kunt wel heel veel roepen, maar onderbouw het dan ook. Tot die tijd blijft het onzin. Dat ze arrogant zijn, okee. Daar ben ik het mee eens. Maar ik zie ze niet zweven. Bedrijven (als Google) die in staat zijn geweest om de afgelopen twee jaar geld te verdienen met nieuwe media verdienen een pluim. Jouw vergelijking met bedrijven van een jaar of 3-4 geleden slaat nergens op want die bedrijven opereerden onder andere omstandigheden.Google heeft een enorme voorsprong, mede ontstaan door de consument die de zoekmachine graag gebruikt. Als ze die consument niet in de steek laten zie ik ze nog lang doorgaan. Echter, consumenten bepalen heel veel en net zo snel als ze Google gekozen hebben, kunnen ze overstappen op en andere zoekmachine.

Kijk naar altavista, rond 1998 waren die ook oppermachtig, zowel in percentages als in technologie, google stampte ze in 2 jaar volledig van de markt. En wie had rond 1998 nou echt van google gehoord? In de IT sector herhaalt alles zich, het zou wel heel raar moeten lopen wil google haar positie kunnen vasthouden.

Google heeft haar innovaties niet alleen verdienstelijk gemaakt in de zoektechnologie, maar ook in de schone interface, de duidelijke scheiding tussen zoekresultaten en betaalde links. Ze moet blijven innoveren en dat doet ze ook. De thema zoekpagina's zijn daar een voorbeeld van. Deze zijn veel goedkoper dan redactionele pagina's en minstens net zo goed. Ze zal dus ook blijven innoveren op het gebied van zoektechnologie. Het is duidelijk dat het moeilijk vechten is tegen een monopolist als Microsoft die zowel het product als het distributiekanaal beheerst. In andere branches is dit allang verholpen, denk aan de verplichte scheiding tussen de grote platenmaatschappijen en de retail of de historische zaak van het opbreken van het Rockefeller imperium die zowel de olie als de spoorlijnen bezat. Windows is niet alleen een product, maar met haar dominante installed base en verplichte licentieupgrade model ook HET overheersende distributiekanaal. Door zoektechnolgie in te bouwen in het besturingssysteem hoeft ze niet eens een superieur product te bieden, slechts gemak! Daarmee zeg ik overigens niet dat Microsoft niet met superieure technologie op de proppen kan komen. Alleen dat concurrentie Google continu dwingt te verbeteren, maar het bijvoorbaat wel een ongelijke strijd is, waar alleen de consument de dupe van kan worden.

With the semantic web gaining momentum, it would appear that google's days as market leader are indeed numbered. Traditional search engines using old technology are having to play catch up to the smaller more visionary players in the market. A handful of companies such as Infolution Software are taking this a step further by helping companies to optimize knowledge share through the power of the internal semantic web. The prospect of accessing a repository of literallly billions of pages that are machine understandable instead of machine readible has the potential of changing the rules dramitically.

@ Sacha: << I.t.t. een eBay, waar de monopoliepositie een 'strength' is is bij een zoekmachine de monopoliepositie een 'threat'. >> Kan je dit ook onderbouwen dan wel uitleggen?! Waarom is een monopolie een threat voor Google, en bijvoorbeeld niet voor Microsoft? @ Andere reacties: Heerlijk om te lezen dat iedereen over zoveel 'dossierkennis' beschikt dat hier even de toekomst van Google en Microsoft in 2A4'tjes wordt samengevat. Niet zozeer cynisch bedoeld, maar wel op tijd de stelligheid van een bewering afhalen.  WIe weet nou wat ze echt bij Google doen om hun positie te behouden? Blogger is aangekocht, de Toolbar is ge-introduceerd en wellicht nemen ze strax een bestaande browser over (Opera of Mozilla)? En om het nog gekker te maken; ze gaan in zee met Friendster en daardoor wordt de internetbrowser zometeen een zoekmachine, een instant messenger, een weblog en een sociaal netwerk in een Google verpakking.  Wow… en dat alles voor maar $5 per maand.

interessante discussie om volgen. Iemand een mening over deze zoekbot: www.kartoo.com Nieuw concept, even wennen, maar misschien wel in het oog te houden…

Merkwaardig, eerst verkondigen dat Google echt niet onverslaanbaar is en dat het zo gedaan kan zijn met deze zoekmachine en vervolgens letten op de woorden: "Het gaat Microsoft lukken om Google te verslaan. Als ze slim zijn kopen ze Google gewoon. Dan zijn ze helemaal heer en meester.”  Op dit moment zou Microsoft daar een gigantisch bedrag voor moeten betalen (merknaam Google), en dat terwijl de techniek elk moment achterhaald kan zijn. Behoorlijk risico dus… 😉

Johan E, dat is nogal wiedus; Als intermediair tussen kopend en verkopend volk wordt je positie sterker naarmate je een groter deel van de markt in handen hebt. Noch het aanbod, noch het winkelend publiek zijn zomaar even afzonderlijk neer te zetten (kip, ei problematiek). Bij een zoekmachine is dat anders, als je (volledig geautomatiseerde, nog(!) spam-vrije, technisch betere, etc) dienst om wat voor reden ook in de smaak valt van het zoekende publiek dan is de overstap zo gemaak. Microsoft ligt wat lastiger. Dat is namelijk niet alleen een zoekmachine, maar ook monopolist op de desktop. Met name die monopolie op de desktop biedt allerhande mogelijkheden om dominantie uit te breiden zonder dat iemand daar iets aan lijkt te kunnen doen. De dominantie op de desktop lijkt een 'strength' voor Microsoft, en tevens een 'opportunity' voor uitbreiding in andere richtingen. Labiel of stabiel evenwicht is ook een manier om er naar te kijken.

Sacha, dank voor de uitleg… mijn economische onderbouwing schiet af en toe tekort ;) Maar de threat van een monopoliepositie van een zoekmachine is toch meer een interne aangelegenheid?! Door het succes overmand worden door laksheid en geen aandacht meer hebben voor de markt?! Maar goed, het neigt alweer naar een off topic. Toch denk ik dat het met de dominatie van Microsoft wel mee gaat vallen. Als dat de trend wordt, dan is elke aanbieder online niet meer zeker van zijn positie. Als Microsoft besluit boeken te gaan verkopen, gaat Amazon dan failliet?! Of reizen en dan is Expedia verleden tijd?! Maar inderdaad digitale producten (e.g. browsers en zoekmachines) zijn gevoeliger voor concurrentie en nieuwkomers.  Maar zolang Google waarde toevoegt aan zijn product zal het de voorkeur genieten. En gezien het aantal werknemers dat er werkt, denk ik niet dat de enige bezigheid is het ontwerpen van weer een nieuw logo – ergo – ook zij denken vooruit.  Wat ik in de vorige reactie al neerzette; er komt nog wel een nieuw kunstje van Google en pr technisch waarschijnlijk zo rond de beursgang. MIsschien richting een Habbo Hotel voor volwassenen?! 

Johan E, indien interesse in de geruchten rondom de uitbreiding van Google en eerste beelden van de nieuwe Google gecombineerd met de Mozilla browser; hier een aardige link:  http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2004/03/08/did_you_say_google_ipod_hot_topics_lukewarm_news.html  Merk wel op dat het allemaal geruchten zijn en dat er voldoende knip en plak artiesten op internet zijn!

Ik ben niet zo bang dat Google te oppermachtig is of zal worden. Er is genoeg concurrentie zoals reeds gemeld. Ik denk zelf onder meer aan de volgende partijen:- Yahoo (met AlltheWeb overname veelal nu al beter dan Google volgens test in Wall Street Journal)- Nutch.org- Teoma- Vivisimo- Wisenut- Kartoo (inderdaad) En het speelveld zal blijven veranderen….gelukkig maar…:-) MVG,Yuri

Sigh, Google keeps 'em guessing. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001868095_btbriefs01.html

Onderstaande is naar mijn smaak een prettige en vernieuwende bijdrage aan deze leuke discussie. Zeer on the edge, compleet en uitgebreid. Groet,Yuri Searching for the next Google Five-and-a-half years after two Stanford University students shook up the Web by founding Google, the search market appears to be all but sewn up. The top search sites – like Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN – now account for over 90 percent of all searches on the Web, according to consultancy comScore Networks.  With millions to spend on developing new technologies and promoting brands that are already recognized around the world, the top sites’ stranglehold looks intractable. Or is it?  “As sophisticated as search appears to be, it’s still very early in the game,” says Chris Sherman, associate editor at Search Engine Watch. Dozens of niche engines exist, ranging from picture searches to DNA searches to search engines linked to online social networks.  Mr. Sherman says that small players are still significant. While large companies are saddled with revenue and profitability targets, smaller players have some more room to innovate, he says.  Search is a market worth fighting for – even if you’re scrapping over a small sliver. Worldwide search revenues will grow from $1.4 billion in 2002 to $7 billion in 2007, projected investment bank Piper Jaffray in a report last year. Revenues from search marketing will grow by nearly 40 percent in 2004, says Kaufman Bros. Equity Research.  And there’s always more to search: In 2002, the volume of information on the surface of the Web amounted to some 170 terabytes (about 17 times the size of the U.S. Library of Congress print collections), up from between 20 and 50 terabytes in 2000, according to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley.  After figuring the returns Google’s early investors are likely to make if the company goes public, search is a hot topic in VC circles. “Google might be one of the most successful investments in the history of venture capital,” says David Hornik, a partner with August Capital. “Everyone who missed the Google opportunity is kicking himself and trying to figure out how to make up for it.”  They only have to look at the example of Alta Vista to take heart. Created by two researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Palo Alto research lab in 1995, Alta Vista was the first searchable full-text database of the Web. “Alta Vista was able to scare the pants off all the leading search engines,” such as old rivals Infoseek and WebCrawler, says AltaVista co-founder and then CTO Louis Monier, who is now director of eBay’s advanced technology group. “It raised the bar and forced those guys to work harder.” Despite its lead, Alta Vista’s technology started to lag as it was sold first to Compaq and then CMGI, a technology holding company.  People don’t like to change their email addresses, but they’re not as loyal to search engines, say search upstarts, who describe search as less “sticky” than other technologies. “If a search company came along with something that is tangibly better, those guys could take on the leader overnight,” says Mr. Monier.  Trouble is, the next Google is still at large. Teoma, a Google alternative that searches by identifying communities of expert sites, is already owned by publicly traded Ask Jeeves. (Ask Jeeves is certainly a good proxy for the booming interest in search – its stock is up nearly 1,000 percent since the start of 2003 – see “Ask Jeeves Scraps it Out with Search Engine Giants”). Meanwhile, Google quickly gobbles up promising new search companies, such as Xerox Palo Alto Research Center spin-off Outride and Stanford University spin-off Kaltix, acquired in 2001 and 2003, respectively. What’s more, Mr. Hornik thinks that Google’s main asset is its brand, not its technology. “There aren’t a lot of Sand Hill Road VCs who like to bet on brand over technology,” he says.  But for each emerging trend in the search business – such as local search, social networks, subject clustering, and visual search – there are old and new companies trying to be among the first on the block. “We believe the search industry is in the very early stages of development,” says Lisa Gurry, group product manager for MSN.  Ms. Gurry says Microsoft is working on creating its own algorithmic search engine, and mentions categorization, personalization, and localization of results as three trends of interest. Some could be blind alleys. New companies face the threat of competition or consumption by Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. But odds are this is an industry that is just getting started.  Other hot search engine areas include the following:  Search and social networkingVenture capitalists invested tens of millions of dollars last year in social networking startups such as Friendster, LinkedIn, and Spoke Software. Some analysts estimate that Google could be worth $15 billion as a public company. Why not put two of the hottest post-bubble trends together? One company making a first attempt at the recipe is San Francisco-based Eurekster.  Launched in January, Eurekster allows a certain degree of personalized search results by remembering which sites were most useful to searchers and then prioritizing them in their ranking. The site then shares your preferred results for a specific search with people in your Eurekster social network. For example, if you search for “Linux,” the site checks to see if your friends have done the same search, and displays the sites they found most useful at the top of your results list. It’s like your friends vet your search results before you see them.  “Information we get through our friends is very important,” says Grant Ryan, Eurekster’s CEO. “At the moment, do a search and everyone gets the same results. We’re going to look back some day and say ‘How were we ever satisfied with that?’” Eurekster also displays a continually updated list of what others in your social network are searching for – a sort of “online water cooler,” says Mr. Ryan.  Eurekster doesn’t actually search the Web itself – instead, it uses Overture’s AllTheWeb search engine to garner its results, and then sorts them accordingly. Mr. Ryan says he’s not interested in competing with the likes of Google – instead, he wants to sell Eurekster’s software to other social networking or search companies. Whether he’ll succeed remains to be seen. Google could reproduce Eurekster’s idea relatively easily by integrating its search technology with Ork-ut, a social networking site developed by one of its engineers. More than that, the idea that people want their search results affected by their friends’ interests, or their search terms publicized – or whether this actually yields better results – is unproven. But Eurekster is a step towards what many say is the Holy Grail: a more personalized search.  Localized searchAs good as Google is, it still has difficulty limiting a search to a specific locality. Search for “Restaurants in London,” and Google brings back a long and unstructured list of links. The lab rats at Google are hard at work on a solution – Google Search By Location, which is currently under development in Google Labs, and allows users to limit a search to a particular address and zip code.  InfoSpace, a company older than Google itself, has similar ideas. Founded in 1996, InfoSpace wanted to become the Yellow and White Pages of the Web, and now handles 12 percent of all directory searches on the Web, according to comScore networks. Along the way, however, InfoSpace lost its focus: it acquired 32 companies in 18 months during the late 1990s, when its stock peaked at over $1,000. After weathering the tech collapse and overhauling its management, the company stripped down its 12 product lines to three, and now hopes to combine its local directory service and search technology (which includes search engines such as Dogpile and WebCrawler that aggregate results from other search sites) to help people search more effectively within their locality. In the process, the company sees the opportunity to draw in more local advertisers. InfoSpace also wants to be on your cell phone, delivering directory services based on location. “We are a small player in the search market,” says Brian McManus, who leads InfoSpace’s search and directory business. “But we are a significant player in the directory market.” Now InfoSpace is banking its future on integrating the two.  Searching for smaller marketsFounded in 1996, LookSmart had a typical bubble strategy: create a portal, build up a community of users, and profit with banner ads. When the advertising market crashed, so did LookSmart’s business model. Its stock fell from nearly $70 at its height to just under $2 today. In October last year, Microsoft said it would stop licensing LookSmart’s technology on MSN, the backbone of LookSmart’s revenues, causing the stock to halve in value. Now, LookSmart is struggling to cut a niche by identifying profitable segments of the search market that it can call its own. “We think that search is relatively consolidated,” says Damian Smith, LookSmart’s interim CEO. “We’re not interested in being a sixth or seventh player.”  The turn around strategy calls for LookSmart to roll out search engines targeted at specific underserved segments of the market over the next few months. “We’ve been seeing a fragmentation of the market into different vertical sectors,” says Mr. Smith. He won’t say exactly which sectors he plans to target – but one option could be to target a specific demographic – kids or teens, for example, or a specific industry such as travel or shopping. While this creates more specialized audiences that are more valuable to advertisers, LookSmart’s competitors could easily adopt a similar approach – such as Yahoo’s Yahooligans site for kids.  Document clusteringRaul Valdes-Perez, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and president and co-founder of search software company Vivisimo, has a problem with the term “information overload.” True, the modern Web surfer is bombarded with tens of emails a day, dozens of pop up ads, and has access to billions of Web pages. To Mr. Valdes-Perez, this isn’t a problem: it just means we ignore most information most of the time. The real problem, he says, is overlooking the information we actually need.  By spontaneously making sense out of pages of text and categorizing them into different subjects, Vivisimo’s technology is designed to help people work out what information is relevant to them, and what information to ignore. When you use Vivisimo to search for “Jaguar,” for example, the nifty software distinguishes between pages about Jaguar cars and pages about a version of the Mac operating system called Jaguar. Founded as a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon in summer 2000, Vivisimo’s model is to license its document clustering software to other companies. The company currently demonstrates its technology by clustering searches for the Library of Congress’ PubMed database and the government portal, FirstGov, as well as eBay. “We do it to show that we can cluster anything,” says Mr. Valdes-Perez. The company also licenses its technology to InfoSpace.  Funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the 13-person operation is already profitable, thanks to licensing fees and paid listings on the Vivisimo search site. While only a minnow in the search pool, Vivisimo’s technology is turning some heads. Its Web site, which uses other search engines to generate its results and Vivisimo’s software to categorize them, was designed to be a demonstration but now processes over 200,000 searches per day.  Visual searchIf a picture is worth a thousand words, an application called Grokker could make waves in the search world. Developed by Groxis, a startup based in Sausalito, California, Grokker clusters search results into subjects and displays them in an interactive graphical diagram, allowing the user to add, delete, and reorganize the results. “Doing search on the Web is interesting, but when you are doing research, you want to leverage your results – by reorganizing, annotating, saving, and sharing them,” says Jean-Michel Decombe, Groxis’ co-founder and its chief design and technology officer.  Already in its second version, Grokker is a standalone application users download from the Web for $49. The software uses search engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista, and Teoma – other sources can be added using plugins, and a plugin for Google and eBay will be released this month. The company also plans to offer a software development kit that will allow developers to create plug-ins to other information sources.  Groxis makes its money solely from selling its software – it just closed a deal for a 30,000-user site license with Stanford and over 50,000 people have downloaded the second trial version of Grokker since it launched two months ago – the company won’t saw how many people have actually bought the software. In the future, Mr. Decombe says it could possibly negotiate revenue sharing deals with search engines for sponsored search results. Founded in 2001, Groxis’ 15-person operation has raised $3 million in seed money, but Mr. Decombe says the company is close to closing a second round of funding of up to $10 million from a top-tier VC.  Mr. Decombe says Groxis will also release new software to represent social networks and blogs in the coming months. “The evolution of search is a no-brainer,” he says. “The ultimate search interface will search everywhere for you, and return everything to you in one place.” But Mr. Decombe is realistic about the company’s future though: “It’s quite unlikely that Groxis will become a major software company,” he says. “It would seem that we would be acquired before that.”  Enterprise searchGoogle is best known for its no-frills search page, but less famous is its Search Appliance, a device that handles search queries for companies’ Web sites and internal networks. There’s a growing need for this type of technology: the proliferation of corporate databases and internal Web sites means the important tidbit is getting harder to find.  Still, several startups are looking to go further than Google. By integrating complex corporate systems with a simple search box, these companies are staking their territory in enterprise search. Two examples are Dejima and iPhrase.  Dejima, based in Redwood Shores, California, wants to make information tied up in corporate databases more accessible through a combination of search and wireless devices. Instead of wading through pages of reports from indecipherable corporate databases, a manager can just type their request into a Dejima search box and the software does the legwork by trawling corporate databases for the answer. Sales reps on the road can use a cell phone or a BlackBerry wireless device to access these databases – or other information such as driving directions – by sending requests to a Dejima powered server.  Antoine Blondeau, Dejima’s president and CEO, says that companies invested millions in enterprise resource planning applications, but haven’t maximized the return on their investment. Dejima’s software means that sales reps or company executives can easily access and edit data stored in their sales and accounting systems. Need to know what your revenues in Japan were last month? Just send an email saying “revenues Japan last month” to the Dejima-powered server, which breaks down the request into understandable chunks. The system remembers the context of your query: If you then type “break down by product,” it returns a list of products by revenue in Japan.  Mr. Blondeau says Dejima’s software does more than just give information. For example, people can use the search interface to alter data on an internal database – such as updating someone’s contact information. “It’s a turbo-charged search box,” says Mr. Blondeau. Dejima sells its software to enterprise software companies and mobile operators – its customers include Salesforce.com and Orange. The 25-person company, which Mr. Blondeau says is currently not profitable but is projected to break even this year, has raised $27 million from the likes of Mitsubishi and Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry.  This goal of a more interactive search is shared by Tony Frazier, senior vice president of marketing for iPhrase, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He says the list of links search engines commonly produce often don’t help people with what they want to find or do. iPhrase’s software, on the other hand, helps companies create search engines and customer service applications that have human like intelligence.  For example, type “technology companies with revenues over $1 billion” into iPhrase’s search engine on Charles Schwab’s Web site and it returns a list of companies matching those criteria. Ask which company is the largest in the United States by revenue and it will tell you Wal-Mart. iPhrase’s customers also include Gateway computers, National Semiconductor, and Neiman Marcus. Mr. Frazier says advanced forms of search and online customer service make simple economic sense: A customer calling a call center costs between $5 and $20, an email costs between $3 and $5, while the cost of Web self service is negligible. With 100 employees, iPhrase has raised $36 million in financing from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Greylock, and Charles River Ventures.  That’s just the beginning. The most promising search startups might be taking shape in a student’s dorm room. If history is any guide, it’s too early to tell the winners and losers in the search business. 

Het zijn mensen die hun onderbuikgevoelens vertalen in arrogant gedrag van Microsoft. En stel dat er een stukje waarheid zit in die gevoelens, is het wel van belang om te fixeren iemands arrogantie? Hoge bomen vangen veel wind.

Een aardige uitbreiding op de search discussie…… With the Internet search-advertising boom showing no signs of abating, search engines large and small are scrapping to get more users, and to get them searching more often. To that end, more search sites are offering downloadable toolbars that attach themselves to Web browsers, giving the sites a constant presence on users' screens regardless of where their surfing takes them. They hope that by making Web searches easier — and providing other unique tools like pop-up ad blockers — they'll drive more traffic to their sites. The stakes are high: Revenue from search-related advertising reached an estimated $2 billion last year. Several companies are launching toolbars this week, joining a crowd that includes a recent entry from Microsoft Corp. and more-established products from Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. Among the newcomers: Lycos Inc., which is using its HotBot toolbar to let users search their own files and e-mail in addition to Web sites, and InfoSpace Inc.'s Dogpile, which combines search results from different engines. Even companies not previously associated with Web searching are getting into the game. Viewpoint Corp., chiefly known for its Internet media player, will start notifying its users — who number more than 100 million, according to the company — that they can download a toolbar that offers a graphical presentation of search results, based on Yahoo's search engine. They'll be competing with toolbars from the more established search players. Yahoo was one of the first to offer a toolbar, back in 1999. The Yahoo Companion is tightly integrated with other products from the company, offering Yahoo news updates and notification when a new Yahoo e-mail message has arrived. It also allows users to access their bookmarks from any computer. Google's toolbar gained quick popularity by offering the now-standard feature of blocking pop-up ads, and recently added a feature that lets users save information like name and phone number for quick entry when registering on Web sites. In some quick tests, all of the new toolbars did a good job at the basics of searching the Web (albeit with slightly different results from different engines) and blocking pop-ups. The newer functions worked as promised, though their appeal will vary by user. Here's a rundown of the three new toolbars. Dogpile Search Toolbar DogPile's news ticker can show headlines from any Web site that uses a technology called RSS. Dogpile this week has expanded its toolbar with a news ticker that can display everything from the latest ABC News headlines to the most recent postings on a blog. It does so using a technology gaining popularity among Web surfers, called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication and allows for text-based feeds. Users can click on ticker items to go directly to the article, and can disable the ticker if the moving text distracts them. The toolbar also offers a scrolling list of searches that other users are conducting on Dogpile. The ticker is tied to another tool that allows users to manage their RSS subscriptions. Another new feature in the version released this week: Users can right-click on words in Web pages or Microsoft Word documents to quickly do a Web search on that term. Along with the ticker, the toolbar allows for searches of online white pages and yellow pages. The company said that users, on average, doubled their searching activity after downloading its toolbar. HotBot Desktop Onetime search giant Lycos's entrant is branded HotBot, for the search engine the company acquired in 2000. This toolbar is targeted mainly at existing HotBot users. Like Dogpile's, it includes a way to manage subscriptions to RSS feeds, though users must either locate their favorite sites on a list chosen by Lycos or find the subscription address. Future versions will allow users to search for RSS feeds by name. One of the HotBot toolbar's main selling point is the ability to search e-mail and files on a user's computer. HotBot indexes the files to make searches faster. Future versions of the product will allow for searches of Web-based e-mail systems, says Tom Wilde, who manages Lycos's search products. There are also more exotic features that may appeal most to advanced users, like one that makes it possible to create custom searches for sites users visit often — such as dictionary.com. The process associates the search with a character, say a colon, so that typing in ": perspicacity" in the HotBot toolbar searches dictionary.com for the definition of the word. (First entry: acuteness of perception, discernment or understanding.) Setting this up was more difficult than most toolbar features, but didn't take advanced knowledge and directions were clear. The feature could be especially compelling for people who visit a specific site often to conduct a search there. "The HotBot user is an advanced user, a sophisticated user," says Mr. Wilde. Viewpoint Toolbar Viewpoint's entry has a graphics-heavy look that differs from its competitors. It shows graphical previews of Web pages in its search results, from left to right in a tray beneath the toolbar. "People are very much used to reading from left to right," says Jay Amato, chief executive of Viewpoint. "Going from top to bottom is somewhat counterintuitive." Users conducting searches through Viewpoint's toolbar can see graphical previews of the sites in the search results, and mouse over thumbnails to see larger images. The utility of the graphical previews varies; in thumbnail form, many Web sites look similar, with a mix of graphics and text. Also, they are best used by broadband users, since downloading images takes longer than with text. Mr. Amato says that "for kids and casual users, physically seeing something is more fun and intuitive than seeing text." Users can also see a live snapshot of pages stored in their bookmarks. As part of Viewpoint's emphasis on graphics, it will in the next few weeks start allowing users to "skin" their toolbars, dressing them up with images like three-dimensional characters. For now, users can choose from a few colors. Viewpoint's toolbar also has a unique look that makes it appear more like a separate software application than a component of the Web browser. This toolbar also takes a novel approach to pop-up ads. While many toolbars offer a popular option to block all pop-ups, Viewpoint instead collects pop-ups in what it calls the Pop-up Bin — a tab that users can click on to see all captured pop-ups. Mr. Amato says this method is better able to withstand inevitable countermeasures from pop-up advertisers, and also ensures that desired pop-ups aren't accidentally zapped. "Not all pop-ups are evil," he says. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the toolbar is that Viewpoint is involved at all. The company has little history in search. It is using results from Yahoo's new search engine, and keeping more than half the revenue from clicks on search ads, says Mr. Amato. (A Yahoo spokeswoman declines to comment, citing company policy on partnerships.) The lack of search experience may be reflected in the confusing nature of results shown in the tray: Sponsored search results are shown first, with no indication that they are ads. Mr. Amato says in the next version, the ads will glow a different color when users move their cursors over them.

Hoe denkt Google over haar eigen bestaan en toekomst? Zie onder. Lang maar wel compleet. Google's man behind the curtain If there ever was an employee who carried the water for Google, it's Craig Silverstein, employee No. 1, technology director and loyal chanter of the search company's "don't be evil" mantra. Silverstein, 31, left his doctoral studies at Stanford University in 1998, joining school chums Sergey Brin and Larry Page in a nearby garage to build the now famed search engine.  It turned out to be a wise diversion, too, now that the search company is poised to raise $2.7 billion in one of the hottest tech initial public offerings since 2000.  Imminent wealth aside, Silverstein has long been a champion of working hard and whistling while you do it. As Google's director of technology, he balances pie-in-the-sky visions for search–in other words, artificially intelligent search pets–and churning out products that improve people's access to information. Just a sampling includes new technology to personalize the company's Web site; comparative shopping prices on wireless devices; and the ability to send, store and manage up to 1 gigabyte of free e-mail, otherwise known as Gmail.  In an interview before Google's IPO filing, Silverstein discussed the backlash against Gmail among privacy advocates, the company's cultural changes and its shifting reliance on PageRank, the mathematical algorithm that has helped Google shine. The company recently renewed an exclusive PageRank license from Stanford that's valid through 2011.  Q: What is your perspective on Google's role in the history of search?A: Google was in the right place at the right time. The history of search, since the advent of computers, is one where more and more information is available for people, and you need ever more sophisticated techniques to make sense of it and to make it useful–and Google was at the cusp of (that).  You have portrayed the ideal search engine as one resembling the intelligence of the Starship Enterprise or a world populated with intelligent search pets. Can you talk a little bit about those ideas?Well, the third idea is having the computer be as smart as a reference librarian. That's interesting, because reference librarians, of course, use computers, use Google to help them search, but they put some element of intelligence into it that the computer cannot do by itself. So, part of the goal is to make computers smart enough so that when you interact with them, they can do something with that information to help you actually get better results. That is certainly something Google thinks about to improve quality. When do you think that kind of artificially intelligent search will happen? I think that understanding language is kind of the last frontier in artificial intelligence, and then talking to a computer will be just like talking to a reference librarian, because they will both be equally knowledgeable about the world and about you.  The big difference, and this is where the search pets come in, is that the reference librarian will understand emotions and other nonfactual information that even a fully intelligent computer may have trouble with. In terms of timing, I typically say about 200 to 300 years. I think it is probably closer to the 300th year end of it. But if it ends up being closer to the 200th year, I would not be around in any case, and I will not be able to have anyone gainsay me. Good thinking.Going back further, even 30 years, the people who were working on artificial intelligence in the '60s thought all these problems would be solved by today–and we are basically not very much closer in terms of those overall high AI goals of understanding language. Some computer scientists suspect that PageRank is dead, because Internet marketers have managed to exploit it by creating false popularity for their sites. Is that true? Has it been altered, or is it playing less of a role? The point of view that PageRank is dead is kind of a very static view of the world. It will always continue to be a part of our ranking scheme but, over time, as we develop new ideas on how to do ranking, as we tweak existing ideas, as we think about new ways to have them play together–the role of any one of the techniques that we use will obviously change. Are there any other algorithm techniques that you are using that are playing a bigger role?Well, there are certainly other techniques that we are using. Talking about it is the trickier part. In broad terms, techniques we use fall into, like, two or three categories, and one is we try to understand and leverage human intelligence. We look for signals that people put in to indicate intelligence, like deciding to link from one page to another or annotating text with the description of what the text is about. How many servers is Google currently running? Some say 100,000; others say 10,000. Others say Google's computing setup is the most interesting thing about the company, in that search is just an application that is running on a platform that can do literally anything you want it to–for example, Gmail. Is that a fair assessment of Google's strengths? That is very interesting you should say that. The history of search is actually a history of search engines being put on top of an application that was not developed for search. AltaVista, for instance, was developed as a proof of concept of Digital Equipment's Alpha servers. The point of view that PageRank is dead is kind of a very static view of the world.  We have more than 10,000 computers, as part of a rich tradition, in terms of commercial Web search engines. However, it is definitely the case for us that we developed the infrastructure we have in order to better be able to do search. We needed something that could grow very easily, because we knew the Web would grow very quickly. We had to develop algorithms that we could easily scale so that we could just get more capacity, as we added more computers, and we would not need to rewrite any code. So, keeping those ideals in mind let us grow Google to the size it is today from something that was orders of magnitude smaller–a thousand times smaller–from when we first started the company. But the thing that we found is that a lot of these techniques are useful for the more general task of making lots of information available. Gmail is a perfect example of this. And this amount of information could be as big as the Web or even bigger in aggregate. We have the technical know-how to be able to do that as well. Then what other applications is Google working on?I cannot talk in specifics. The general direction I think are some of the things that I have been talking about already: making more and more types of information available. Gmail is trying to search over private information–that is our first real effort into that area.  What have you learned from the negative reactions to Gmail from privacy advocates and now lawmakers?What I have learned is that Google plays a very important part in people's lives, and it is worthwhile for people to get worked up about. I remember the last time there was a big brouhaha over something that Google did, which was when we acquired the Usenet archives from Deja.com, and the Usenet community was all up in arms about what this meant for the future of Usenet and being able to get access to the information. Over time, it became familiar, and they had the chance to play around with the product and see that it actually was really good. That brouhaha subsided, and I expect and hope that the same thing will happen in this case. The issues that are important to people any company should take seriously, and I feel that we are doing so. How do you think the service might change?It is premature for me to speculate on what changes might happen. In the long run, what do you think will be more interesting: one gigantic search space, or lots of little ones partitioned off from one another–different databases for this Web site or that company's e-mail archive?From a user's point of view, you want one place you can go to do the search. I do not necessarily have a technical preference. The important thing for me is that it be as easy for the users to get the information that they want and, to me, that means they just have to only go to one place, and that one place should be smart enough to figure out, out of the zillions of different types of information sources in the world, which ones have the right results for you. What are your ideas on the need for privacy, with search histories, registration data, e-mail documents in one place? Well, we definitely respect the fact that the people who create the information and who own the information have the rights to decide how that information should be viewed. We give all sorts of controls to let people control very finely how their information is made available through Google. That is going to be our policy.  Do Google's algorithms scale? And if the amount of data in your database doubles, for example, does it take twice as many computers to return a search result?Our algorithms do scale, and if, you know, the size of the Web doubles, and the machines double, then we are keeping pace. Does it break it at some point? Does it work with arbitrarily large data sets?As far as I know, it works with arbitrarily large data sets. If there is a constraint, we have not run into it yet. Do you think advanced search features should be built into the operating system, and does that allow Microsoft to create a tool that is far better tuned to the individual? And if so, would Google want access to the information Microsoft collects?I remember when the whole Microsoft-Netscape debate happened several years ago, and there were all these talks about what should and should not be in the operating system. It all kind of floundered on the definition of what an operating system is.  At some point, it's not an interesting question to me. (What interests) me is that it be as easy as possible for people to get the information they need.  Do you think that Microsoft is creating fear and uncertainty around search, considering that its products are not likely going to come out until 2006?I do not really pay so much attention to those kinds of things. Microsoft has decided and stated publicly they think search is very important to people, and that is certainly something that we would agree with. The history of search is actually a history of search engines being put on top of an application that was not developed for search. What are the complexities of building a video or audio search engine?Part of the complexity is speaking of and (leveraging) nontextual information–having humans describe it in some way. I think that is possible for audio and video, though certainly, the challenges are nontrivial.  It is a hot area in the academic community, but I would say the challenges in the short term are nontechnical issues. The people who own this content do not necessarily want to make it publicly available or available for searching. We respect that and, until a time comes where there is a business model or some other arrangement where they feel comfortable making the information available for searching over the Web, we are not going to really provide the functionality.  There are some personalization tools emerging. Amazon's A9.com and MSN are using different techniques. Google's tool is a little bit more like, "Give us information, and we will help you out," and the others take the approach, "We will learn from you, and then we will help you out." Tell me why your approach is superior. In the latter scenario, where first you learn, and then you help the visitor out, you have two places where the computer has to make intelligent judgments. I am not saying that is not an interesting or promising approach, but it does put more strain on the computer. When you tell it what your interests are, then the computer only has to be intelligent to use that information to try to help you out. They are both part of the same goal of trying to help people out with personal information–it is just a matter of how you get there. We will be seeing more of this in the future.  Can you talk about how the culture at Google has changed since you started there, as employee No. 1?It has certainly changed. I used to know everyone in the company, and now I do not, and it makes me sad. But what impresses me and is basically the reason I am still here is that even though the culture has changed, the basic principles that underlie Google, both in terms of the products and how we run internally as a company, have not really changed since it started.  We still believe that it is important to have a work environment that is fun. That is still true, just as much now as it was when we started, even though instead of having one massage therapist come in, you know, a few times a day, we have, you know, a whole crew going in, making sure that everyone can get a massage who wants or needs it.  And on the other side of the products, we're a very technology-focused company, and we are very much focused on the user experience. There are a lot of pressures on a company, as it goes through its life, and certainly, five and a half years is a long time for an Internet company. To see it stay so constant through all those pressures, I think, is really remarkable, and I am really grateful for it

Ik zal niet het hele verhaal hier op de Emerce site zetten, maar er verscheen vandaag in de NYT (registratie verplicht, maar niet verplichtend) een ooggetuigenverslag over G-mail. Ik weet niet of er Nederlanders onder de testers zijn, want daar zou ik graag hier bevindingen van lezen. De teneur van het verhaal is dat G-mail met een aantal hele goede oplossingen komt. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/technology/circuits/13stat.html?8hpib  

Waarom zou google uit de ogen van de consument verdwijnen? Daar is geen enkele reden voor, ze hebben nu eenmaal de markt veroverd en eens je op dat punt bent zit je vrij goed. Als we het toch over microsoft hebben: zij hebben toch ook met succes de markt van besturingssystemen in handen gehouden. Dus ik verwacht niet dat een goed georganiseerd bedrijf als google die positie zal afgeven.Dit artikel lijkt idd wat aangestuurd om google in slecht daglicht te plaatsen en microsoft weer eens alle macht over de software/IT wereld te geven. Wie is er nu arrogant?

Net zoals Tom B lijkt het me een interessant uitgangspunt om te kijken naar de informatiebehoeften van de consument. Waarvoor gebruikt hij een zoekmachine? En zijn er verschillende categorieen consumenten aan te wijzen? Daarnaast lijkt het me interessant om de dynamiek in de vraag naar bepaalde informatie te analyseren. In hoeverre is het mogelijk om hierop in te spelen c.q. te voorspellen (b.v. informatiebehoeften naar leeftijd, voorziene evenementen)? En aan welke locatiegerichte informatie is behoefte? En met welke technologie zou het beste kunnen worden voorzien in de (specifieke) informatiebehoefte van de consument? Ik denk dat in dit stadium van verdere ontwikkeling van zoektechnologieen het analyseren van informatiebehoeften van consumenten essentieel is. In het bijzonder informatiebehoeften gerelateerd aan gebruikers eigenschappen, processen en/of plaatsen (people, process, places). Wie de race uiteindelijk zal winnen is niet te voorspellen, maar het aanwijzen van drivers van informatiebehoeften van de consument kan wel de meest kansrijke spelers identificeren. Overigens denk ik dat de introductietijd (time-to-market) en patentering hier een cruciale rol in gaat spelen (zie google).