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Welcome, all.
We're going to focus on different facets of Google as the week goes on, saving the big-picture speculation for Friday, and we'd like to start by having you talk about the company's core businesses: search and advertising. Google has taken big steps to increase the amount of the world's information that falls into its search universe, among them Google Base, its platform for user uploads and a potential marketplace; Google Print, the controversial book-scanning program; and initial runs at blog and video search. On the ad side, it continues to refine its systems to put more control and information in the hands of advertisers and deliver ever more accurately targeted ads to the screens of users.
So what pools of data would Google be most interested or best served in adding to its search capabilities next -- more multimedia, including TV broadcasts? The information buried in the deep Net? Real-time retail inventory? What are the prospects for Google Base? Is there any concern that Google might, in fact, be neglecting search in favor of newer initiatives, allowing rivals to meet or surpass the relevancy of results? Where do you see Google going with its ad programs (print is one speculation) and how can it better serve its advertisers?
(By the way, don't feel bound by our specific questions; we're just trying to prime the pump. Feel free to address any aspects of the topic of the day you believe are important.)
Google neglecting search? That's not likely because that is their key strategic asset. I think the company is constantly improving its index and bringing it more in tune with the ad-engine.
Google Base and Google Print, are part of the company's strategy to increase low-cost inventory to sell more ads. Google realizes that in the end, its all about making money from ads.
Edited 12/4/2005 1:26:59 PM ET by PACZKOWSK1
Google has lost its once-overwhelming lead in basic web search. Yahoo has caught up, if not pulled slightly ahead, and Microsoft’s MSN search is closing in. I don’t think that’s a result of Google neglecting basic search (Google may be guilty of overreaching, but it doesn’t seem to be guilty of neglect). Rather, it’s just another example of how competition in software markets leads to homogenization. The question now is whether Google - or one of its rivals - can again leap ahead in basic search or whether the fight for advantage will now focus on other areas, such as services built on top of the search engine itself. My guess is it’s the latter, but you never know. - Nick Carr
Edited 12/4/2005 1:27:26 PM ET by PACZKOWSK1
First, thanks for the invite to participate. As noted in my bio I come at search and online research from a slightly different mindset, that of a librarian or to be politically correct, info professional who also does a great deal of training for various groups about online info tools. I often speak to non-librarians.
Of course, I do follow the business end of Google and all of the other major engines (yes, others exist though that's sometimes forgotten) for my writing with Search Engine Watch.
OK, with that out of the way let me respond with a few comments.
Kiddingly, what core business? They seem to have a new one each week though advertising is where the money comes from. Yet, when asked how they plan to monetize some of their servces we hear very little.
First, on Google Print which is now called Google Book Search.
Google Book Search itself is not controversial. In fact, Amazon.com has been doing the same thing (maybe even better, have you noticed all of the extra value they give to some results?) before Google with Search Inside the Book. Some examples of the value added features here. The controversial part of Google Print is the scanning of in-copyright library books from five major libraries both in the U.S. and in the UK. Google is using 1922 for a copyright cutoff here in the U.S. and different dates around the globe. In fact, as this article points out, for the time being Google will not be scanning any in-copyright material from European libraries. What most people also forget is that with in-copyright books users will NOT be able to read the full text online. In fact, they'll only see a "snippet of text" surrounding their search terms as you can see in this screen cap.
I don't want to get to off topic but other companies have been working hard with publishers to digitize the full text of new, in-copyright books and make them fully searchable and printable. I've recently written on NetLibrary (I know of one panelist who loves this service) and ebrary, a wonderful service that makes more than 20,000 full text books (new) available. You pay to print and copy. Personally, I see many services, maybe even Google, going in this micropayment direction.
Btw, Battelle and I recently blogged an interesting and I think illuminating comment from a recent Google Library debate. John called it his choice quote. I agree 100%.
Mr. [Allan] Adler [a vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers]said Google's contention that its search program might somehow increase sales of books was speculation at best.
"When people make inquiries using Google's search engine and they come up with references to books, they are just as likely to come to this fine institution to look up those references as they are to buy them," he said, referring to the Public Library.
To which Google's Mr. Drummond [Google's general counsel] replied, "Horrors."
Q: What are the prospects for Google Base? Let's see what types of content are in the database after six months or a year. Google often releases projects and then they are soon forgotten or out of the limelight. Let's see what content is in there that they weren't able to access via crawling. Are people using Google Base to sell products on eBay? How much in Google Base is duplication? For example, the same book for sale from many Amazon affiliates. Will the attributes added by creators add any extra value?
Q. What about multimedia? Sure, however others are also doing it beyond MSN and Yahoo. Smaller players like Blinkx offer video keyword transcript searching. Podscope offers keyword searching of podcasts. Actually, Podscope comes from a company named TVEyes that offers near real time keyword searching of most major networks and many local stations. TvEyes also has a small deal with Yahoo and Podscope will soon be available via AOL. I would also include AOL in the video search space. They are really promoting (online and off) their video offerings and have access to a ton of content via Time Warner.
Q. Is there any concern that Google might, in fact, be neglecting search in favor of newer initiatives, allowing rivals to meet or surpass the relevancy of results? A great question. For many people it's take whatever the first two results are and there is your answer. Sad but true. As Battelle has noted on his blog and I have said MANY times in many places perhaps all of the engines need to do more in training (not teaching) how to best use their tools. A little (minutes not hours) training goes a long way and it's been my experience that showing the average user (the one who types in 2.8 words and looks no further than the first 5 or 6 results gets people excited to learn more. As Udi Manber of A9 has said, search engines, at least at the present time, are not in the mind reading business. I believe that this training is especially crucial at the K-12 level. I'll add that teaching critical info skills today is also a must. 6 years ago I co-authored a book about the Invisible Web (aka deep web). Someone said to me then and I think it's even more true today that the deep web is everything beyond the first page of results.
So what makes Google a great company. Many things. The people, sure. The food, yes. (-: What makes Google better than just about everyone else (and this includes airlines, frozen food providers, auto manufacturers) is their branding and public relations. Pure genius with no signs as far as I can tell of letting up. I think the search war is as much about building great technology as it is about gaining mindshare and getting people to try new things. Changing behavior is not an easy thing.
Example. My co-panelist Rich Skrenta is the founder of what I think is perhaps the best (or one of the best) news search and browse sites out there that provides access to many more sources than Google publicly announces. However, trying to get the word out and just getting people to take a look is a challenge. ...[Message truncated]Edited 12/4/2005 1:44:46 PM ET by PACZKOWSK1
I’d argue Google’s core business is not search; it’s adding value through relevance. Search is just the first application they successfully launched on the road to making relevant information available whenever and however people want to access it. Bizarre as it may seem, Google’s mission statement actually defines what they see as their main business opportunity.
For example, while Google’s revenue comes mostly from advertising, large chunks of that are from content-related ads on other publisher sites, not search results. They’ve made ads more relevant and increased their value to advertisers, publishers and users.
So to the extent that they continue to find new ways to present people with relevant information, Google IS tending to their knitting. They started with the easy stuff, which was previously digitized, publicly available information on websites. It got harder when they moved on to books, homemade videos and users' hard drives, but Google seems willing to engage the challenges, not only of obtaining the data, but of getting it to people when and where they actually need it, which increasingly is not while they’re home sitting in front of a computer.
When I visited the Googleplex last week to give a talk about The Google Story, I was asked what I found most surprising in reporting and researching the book. I responded that in the realm of search, what surprised me most was the passion for using search to unravel the mysteries of genetics, Sergey Brin, particularly, considers searching all of the world's information to include the Human Genome and biological data about each and every one of us that is in our bodies.
While I was speaking about his passion for biology, technology and search, Sergey suddenly appeared in the back of the room wearing a white lab coat. He said something funny like, the doctor is here. Though he was definitely missing a stethoscope to complete the look. everyone laughed.
Brin envisions a day when we as individuals can use the search engine to Google our Genes and find out more about our predisposition to various illnesses, potential reactions to mediciations, food alergies and more as we move into the age of personalized medicine. Brin also has a hunch, shared by some at NIH and the Department of Energy, that Google has the massive computing power and long-term perspective needed to discover new relationships at the intersection of genetics, technology and biology that may lead not only to a better understanding of what causes certain illnesses and abnormalities but also possibly help to foster discovery of cures.
This is Stephen Arnold from Harrod's Creek, Kentucky, author of the Enterprise Search Report (now in its second edition) and The Google Legacy (Sept. 2005: Infonortics, Ltd.). I'm honored to offer some comments to this forum.
I participated in the Yale University policy forum about search this weekend. What became clear to me is that contentious legal battles will be with us for years. While not surprising, I marveled at the focus on indexing topics that I thought many people wise in the way of online knew top to bottom. I was naive. A great deal of information transfer is going to be needed before the courts make decisions about search.
Two points:
The word "search" is a beast that will not go into a cage quietly. Anyone with some exposure to the U.S. legal system will understand that that a definition is pivotal. Set aside Google and the rest of the vendors providing online access. Policy about search will gestate within a legal definition of "search." I know from the feedback after my short talk that what I thought "search" meant is not shared by the majority of those scholars and lawyers with whom I spoke at Yale.
Second, the technology of distributed applications that hook into information access systems is moving quickly, in fact, too rapidly for the lawyers to grasp. The sheer speed of innovation at Google, MSN, and Yahoo! means a disconnect between what's happening in the datasphere and what a person uses to find a Web page with a restaurant phone number.
Bottom-line: establishing a meaningful discourse among these contentious stakeholders -- publishers, authors, online service providers, and special interest groups -- will be difficult. Relevance, advertising, filters, standing queries, and the billing mechanisms of commercial online companies tug at shoelaces. At the same time, the morphing of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others, loops and whirls unnoticed in the ionosphere.
Searching retail inventory is particularly interesting and should be the most lucrative data to provide search for. There is still a long way to go for relevancy here as well. If I google for "hawaii rental jan 9" I'm going to get a mess of results, but hardly anything approaching the usefulness of an Expedia result page.
Google Base offers the opportunity for Google to index this sort of content is a more useful, structured way. Whether they provided fielded database searches or just hook it into their homepage, having the listing inventory in database form is a much better starting point than having to parse it out of free text on the web. The spam problem still looms large, but is probably also more manageable in a structured database than dealing with the web at large...
I agree with Doug that Google's mission is more about making the world's information relevant and less than the mechanics of search. One of the key ways I see Google doing this is through personalized and social search. This is because if both you and I put in the same keyword for a search on, say, Bluetooth headsets, we’d want to each see different results. So based on past searches, shopping preferences, and frame of mind (researching versus buying), we’d each want to see a different set of ordered results.
Google already has its Personalized Search service out of beta, which searches your past searches. But Google’s biggest challenge today is the competition has a natural advantage in this space – Yahoo! and MSN both have hundreds of millions of registered users and years of experience personalizing experiences for users. Similar services from Yahoo! like My Web and Mindset Search as well as MSN’s Search Builder point the way to more innovation and competition in this area.
I agree with Rich that retail inventory would seem to be a natural. It's an unsolved problem, and Google likes those.
But I'd also argue that core Internet searching still needs some work - at all the engines. I hear from people all the time that they have trouble finding what they are looking for through the search engines, that the results are not as relevant as they'd like or there's too much search spam. The personalization tools seem to be a step in the right direction. Google often surfaces cached web pages from my Google Desktop that are useful to me. But it's still not ideal. And because the search engines have trained users to rely on the single, default search box, all the innovation will need to happen in there. I don't see people using other, specialized search tools/sites for otherwise general searching.
I also wonder, now that there is a bit of a Google backlash emerging, whether there's really an opportunity for another Google to emerge. When my wife complains that she's starting to hate Google because of its ever-expanding footprint (she doesn't want Base to kill craigslist), I have to wonder. But maybe that's a topic for another thread.
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