Deep Jive Interests » Google

Google’s imperfections

Tony Hung — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 03:34:07 +0000

It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.”

There are many reasons why Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t perfect, and this unfortunate tale in the New York times is a perfect reason why. However, what’s really unfortunate is how people aren’t just gaming the system to merely line their own pockets, but who are doing so at the expense of others. The delicious irony, of course, is that Google’s own reputation for service is beyond atrocious, one of the causes of these issues (can’t complain to an algorithm) leading Google to end up on the same complaints 2.0 websites as the one above.

WolframAlpha, Where Are You?

Tony Hung — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:51:43 +0000

Time will tell if it was Bing’s inherent abilities or Microsoft’s deep-pockets spending that caused the initial bump of 8% in unique users after the first month — but its clear what is suffering from a lack of Buzz … Wolfram Alpha.

About two months after its initial launch, there’s been thundering silence from the blogosphere / socialstream on WolframAlpha’s computational awesomeness. And now, even with some buzzworthy stuff, it seems like its wholly underwhelming [not being a stats nut, I will take WebWare's take on VORPs for example].

While WolframAlpha was never meant to in any way replace Google, its got to be a little disappointing to see a 50% drop off in traffic and an almost complete drop off in buzz.

With its growing community, some pretty fantastic stuff with its development in frameworks, astronomy, and other eggheadedness awesomeness, I’m not sure if the problem is a piece of software which is inherently lackluster — Cuil, I’m looking at you.

Maybe buzz isn’t important. Maybe traffic isn’t important. But, I suspect that for WolframAlpha’s investors, and as a means to ultimately monetize things, both metrics probably *are*important to some degree.

Here’s hoping that the WolframAlpha team continues to improve its marketing outreach. Its not that Google needs more competitors, because WolframAlpha really isn’t about Google — its about developing a unique piece of computational answer-ware which deserves to live and thrive in its own right.

Finding Mahalo In Them Thar SERPs

Tony Hung — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:18:08 +0000

So, I’m not disparaging any company that gets 3M or so uniques per month, but its funny. I remember that when Mahalo was launched some year(s) ago, in its initial incarnation / hype, I remember someone saying something about building its index to the 25k most common terms, and then trying to own those terms in Google. I can’t find the actual link, so I may have hallucinated that last bit.

Long story short, over the past few years, I know that Mahalo has evolved its strategy, and that it now has a community, has an ongoing video that did have Veronica Belmont at some point, and has an answers-like program as well.

Interesting thing — I have never, ever, found Mahalo in Google’s SERPs since its inception. Mind you, I’ve never, ever, deliberately looked (past the first few pages, or in specific queries that I knew mahalo was competing for). But in the casual searches for travel issues, medical topics, geeky topics and what have you, the number of Mahalo pages that came up was zilch.

(Perhaps the same thing happened with you)

… until about two days ago, when I was looking for some help on Ninja Gaiden 2 (playing on “warrior mode” if you must know), there it was! [the query was "Ninja gaiden 2 walkthrough "]

http://www.mahalo.com/ninja-gaiden-2-walkthrough

– ahead of IGN.com, 1UP, and Gametrailers.com. Impressive! (For Google.ca, that is)

Not sure what this represents, but it is somewhat odd, since a cursory review of that particular URL in yahoo’s site explorer shows that it has no inbound links except for those that from Mahalo.com. Weird.

Question of the day, then: when was the last time you saw Mahalo rank for anything?

Tempering Overexuberance

Tony Hung — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:25:03 +0000

Dennis Howlett is amongst the realists when it comes to GoogleOS, and he rightly reminds us that:

Linux has not fared so well in the Netbooks market and I don’t see anything here that makes me think Google ChromeOS will do any better. Where’s the secret sauce here other than the Google halo effect painted over with the browser and duly hyped by the SV Google lovers? Sure, I can see why Google might make subtle statements that people wish to interpret but the reality is no-one outside the Silicon Valley tech bubble gives a damn what operating system and browser they use. Many are still mandated to use IE6 as a colleague reminded me the other day. Simply having Google wave its hand is not going to sway hard nosed enterprise buyers – even if it is free. Which neatly brings me to another point

Google has said it wants to get help from the open source community. I’ll bet they do. All those drivers that Arrington dismisses with a wave of the hand WILL need to be served. If he thinks I”m wrong then a quick call to any of the major banks’ CTO offices should put him straight on that one. Better still, listen to some of the discussions at CloudCamps where the problem of driver capabilities in the Internet Cloud matter a great deal.

I haven’t an intelligent thought about enterprise-related issues as it has to do with … well, pretty much anything. But the lusty failure of Linux as an OS for Netbooks (according to some accounts) for the lay-public (the Word-using, WOW-playing, I-just-canceled-my-AOL-subscription-6-months-ago public) is something no one should discount out of hand.

Twitter Scams Suckering In Gullible, Desperate

Tony Hung — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:55:28 +0000

And I supppose in desperate times, there are more desperate folks (and to be fair, perhaps “unsophisticated” rather than “gullible”). The Los Angeles times reviews the proliferation of Twitter scams, offering to teach people how to make buckets of cash via Twitter — not being up front, however, that they’ll charge you on the backend continuously for the pleasure of being taught such masterfully profitable tactics.

Recent schemes involve companies promising to pay Twitter users hundreds of dollars a day to tweet after they sign up for a free training kit, which the bureau said ends up sucking away a hefty monthly payment.

Having said that, similar scams proliferate on the Google, and if you look hard enough (because you probably ignore ads), you’ll see a whole whack of banner adds (in all sizes) proclaiming how people earn cash off the Google, and you’ll learn how if you only click and send in $19.99 … but only inform you in the fine print of how it’ll cost multiples of that initial cost in residuals.

The bureau said some companies have a presence on Twitter itself, but all of them use e-mail and websites to attract customers.

Twitter Inc. did not respond to requests for comment.

The bureau, based in Washington, warns job seekers to be wary of claims that they can earn substantial paychecks simply by tweeting from home. Websites asking for money upfront for a tweeting “position” should also be avoided, the bureau said.

One company, EasyTweet Profits.com, believed to be based in Surrey, England, claims that “Twitter workers” can earn up to $873 “before you go to bed tonight.”

No manager could be reached for comment.

How Many Geeks Are Even Trying Bing?

Tony Hung — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:00:13 +0000

I think one of the great advantages that Google has isn’t just the strength of its search technology, or the bottom-line deliciousness of adwords / adsense. Its really the thought leadership of what “Search” — and even, probably “The Internet” — means to so many ordinary people.

So much so, (and moreso than say, “Internet Explorer” ever meant to browsers, or Windows ever meant to PCs) that I wonder how many folks are actually going to give Bing a try. Notwithstanding the opinions of reputable technology publications like the New York Daily Post, how much of an uphill climb is Bing’s marketing approach going to be when you’re trying to penetrate some fairly hardened assumptions? And what about Geeks?

Personally some part of it for me is the simple disdain that Microsoft != “cool” (Xbox and its intellectual properties excluded, naturally), and that Microsoft could never really touch the sainted toe lint of Google. And if that isn’t a touch of Google fanboy-ism I dont’ know what is.

Maybe that’s true. It probably isn’t. To that end, I’m going to try and make Bing my default search tool for a couple weeks to try it out. Who knows? The last time I tried making anything my default [whatever] I ended up switching out of Firefox right into Chrome.

In Android vs. iPhone, Will It Be All About The Benjamins?

Tony Hung — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:15:46 +0000

In advance of the release of the Android OS for the T-mobile today at 10:30 EST there are a ton of questions — most of which I will not be addressing in this post. One of them, however, seems to have escaped the attention of most bloggers and that is this: will the quality and number of the applications for Android at all vary because the iPhone has a way for app developers to easily monetize their work?

Rather, could Android software development suffer because it won’t be able to attract the same number of developers — who are now looking to make boatloads of cash via the iPhone apps store?

Correct me if I’m wrong folks, and Android may surprise us yet,but there doesn’t seem to the same kind of simple application where you click, choose, and download — which is tied into a singular payment scheme. True, one would think that this would natively exist with software for cell-phone companies that allow you to put everything onto a single bill (I think our Japanese friends have already sorted this one out) but this level of sophistication is something that I will certainly be watching for with Android’s release.

Why? Well, I’m sure that many developers are looking to contribute to the growing library of Android applications out the goodness of their own heart, I’m sure many of them are also writing with dollar signs in their eyes … particularly with the rash of articles written recently about how profitable it can be writing popular iPhone apps.

Will Apple and the iPhone be poaching the best and brightest for the lure of cold hard cash? Hard to say at this point — particularly as I’m sure people program and dev for a great many reasons.

But with application development (for the iPhone, for Facebook) clearly being much more than a basement hobby, and something so profitable that it can power a real business, it seems reasonable to think that from the developer side at least, free vs. fee is, going to be, for some, a bit of a no-brainer.

On the flip-side, of course, is the mind-set of the user of the respective systems. Will iPhone users, because of things like iTunes, be conditioned to paying for software? And will Android users, being used to open-source ethos (whether they call it that or not), be used to software that is free?

I guess we’ll have to wait until 10:30EST today (and likely much later) to find out.