Category Archives: Google

Google: the new Microsoft

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From today’s New York Times…

The world’s largest search engine said yesterday that its third-quarter profits nearly doubled from a year ago, as it maintained a torrid growth rate that is highly unusual for a company of its size.

The numbers are all the more significant because Google’s largest rival, Yahoo, has been faltering, as sales have tapered off for both its search and display advertising.

“Forty-eight hours ago we were discussing Yahoo; the contrast is pretty amazing,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “This is an eye-opening and refreshing quarter for Google investors.”

In after-hours trading, Google’s shares surged 7.5 percent. In regular trading, before the results were reported, the shares rose $6.75, or 1.6 percent, to $426.06.

uTube’s woes

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From Good Morning SIlicon Valley…

If there’s any company even less happy with YouTube than the entertainment outfits, it’s Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp. near Toledo, Ohio, which has the misfortune of doing business on the Web at utube.com, its site since 1994. Since the video-sharing site took off, Universal Tube has had trouble keeping its site up under the load of misguided searchers (68 million page views in August alone). “It’s killing us,” said Ralph Girkins, president and owner, told CNNMoney. “All my worldwide reps use our Web site. Customers all over the world use it to bring up photos of the machinery, descriptions and specifications there. … And a customer who can’t find my $3-$400,000 machine online will just keep searching the Web until they find it elsewhere.” Also troublesome — do a Google search for “utube,” and links to YouTube come up first (one at the moment titled “lazyboy – underwear goes inside the pants”), which tends to put off potential customers. Girkins hasn’t been able to find anyone at YouTube or Google to ask for help, and I don’t think they owe him any, unless as a goodwill gesture. But then again, he may want to follow the lead of the entertainment companies and try threat-of-litigation negotiation.

Googleplex working overtime?

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

What kind of a sweatshop are they running over there at Google? Just this week, the elves in the trenches have made Google Gadgets available for addition to any site, launched its Literacy Project in conjunction with LitCam and UNESCO, were apparently caught teaming up with Apple on a possible hookup of Google Maps with iPhoto, added another new batch of imagery to Google Earth, and now have released Code Search, a tool for programmers to dig through publicly available source code. (From the Unintended Consequences Department, the search engine also lets you find things like serial number generating algorithms.) That’s just this week, and it still has a day to go. Gee, I hope they’re paying those folks enough.

But, later, there’s this

The L.A. Times reports company execs have launched an initiative called “Features, Not Products,” telling engineers to stop launching so many services and focus on making the existing ones work together better. Co-founder Sergey Brin said it occurred to him this summer as he scanned the 50 or so products available across the company’s Web sites that users were probably getting overwhelmed. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “It’s that I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products that we were releasing.” Simplicity was among the things that made Google so popular, and its success led it to snap up hundreds of smart, ambitious software engineers. “The result occurred precisely because we told these incredible engineering teams to run as fast as possible to solve new problems,” said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. “But then that created this other problem.” Analyst Rob Enderle puts it another way: “They created a bunch of crap that they have no idea what to do with. What a huge waste of resources.” Schmidt says the plan is to make Google products easier to use by packaging services, citing plans to combine the company’s spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications. “That is a big change in the way we run the company,” Schmidt said, describing Google’s previous attitude as, “Just get this stuff built and get it out — don’t worry about the integration.”

Digital ‘Natives’ Invade the Workplace

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Very interesting report from the Pew Research Center. Headline: “Digital ‘Natives’ Invade the Workplace”. I was particularly struck by this passage:

Our research has found consistently that the dominant metaphor for the internet in users’ minds is a vast encyclopedia — more than it is a playground, a commercial mall, a civic commons, a kaffee klatch, or a peep show. This is especially true for younger users, who have grown up relying on it to complete school assignments, perhaps too often clipping and pasting material from websites into term papers. Sandra Gisin, who oversees knowledge and information management at reinsurance giant Swiss Re, says her colleagues marvel at the speed with which younger workers communicate and gather information. Still, she has had enough bad experiences with credulous younger workers accepting information from the top link on a Google search result that she says the firm will begin new training programs next year to teach workers how to evaluate information and to stress that “not all the best information is free.” While the speed and efficiency of younger workers in communicating and gathering data are commendable, their reliance on easily accessible sources, such as the top search results on Google, can sometimes lead to the acceptance of inaccurate or incomplete information. This underscores the importance of workplace transparency, which involves not only sharing accurate and comprehensive information but also fostering an environment where employees are encouraged to question and critically assess the data they encounter. Implementing training programs to teach workers how to evaluate the credibility of their sources will be crucial in addressing these challenges. By prioritizing transparency and critical thinking, organizations can enhance the reliability of the information used in decision-making processes and ensure that employees, regardless of their experience level, contribute to a more informed and effective workplace. Show them the benefits of a work environment that values open communication and collaboration, where employees feel empowered to ask questions and seek clarity. A workplace that emphasizes transparency fosters trust among team members, allowing them to collaborate more effectively. When workers are encouraged to voice concerns and share their insights, it creates a dynamic where everyone feels responsible for the quality of the information being used. This approach not only improves individual performance but also enhances overall team productivity by ensuring that decisions are made based on well-vetted, accurate data. In addition, modernizing EHS beyond compliance plays a pivotal role in shaping a more responsible and aware workplace. By integrating environmental, health, and safety standards into the fabric of daily operations, companies can create a culture that goes beyond meeting regulations. This proactive stance ensures that employees not only understand their roles in maintaining safety and environmental standards but also feel confident in assessing the risks and benefits of their actions. With the right training and support, organizations can create a more informed and thoughtful workforce that is better equipped to handle challenges, make sound decisions, and contribute to long-term sustainability goals. Dow Jones news organizations have similar worries. They have created programs for journalism educators and reporters-in-training to drive home the point that journalists should not rely on Web sources without checking its origin and confirming it in other ways. “We drive home the point that it’s not good enough to say, ‘I read it on the internet,’ without taking other steps to verify it,” notes Clare Hart, Executive Vice President of Dow Jones and President of the Enterprise Media Group. This is exactly why my Relevant Knowledge programme has launched a new Open University course. It’s title: Beyond Google: working with information online!

Google to push for more efficient PC power supplies

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Report by John Markoff in today’s New York Times…

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 25 — Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard that it says will save billions of kilowatt-hours of energy annually.

In a white paper to be presented Tuesday on the opening day of the Intel Developer Forum here, two leading data center designers at Google will argue that the industry is mired in inefficiency for historical reasons, dating to the introduction of the first I.B.M. PC in 1981. At that time, standard power supplies, which convert high-voltage alternating current to low-voltage direct current, were required to provide multiple output voltage, which is no longer necessary in today’s PC’s.The Google plan calls for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard. Although voltage conversion would still take place on the PC motherboard, the simpler design of the new power supply would make it easier to achieve higher overall efficiencies.

The Google proposal is similar in its intent to an existing effort by the electric utility industry to offer computer makers financial incentives for designing more efficient power supplies for personal computers. Existing PC power supplies vary widely in efficiency, from as high as 90 percent to as low as 20 percent… Er, an even better idea after making servers more power-efficient would be to move to ultra-thin-client networking along the Ndiyo model.

As the push for efficiency in power supply design continues to gain traction, the shift to more streamlined solutions is becoming increasingly important in sectors beyond just personal computing. For industries relying on continuous uptime and minimal power disruption, a UPS system is essential. A distributor of Schneider APC can provide tailored uninterruptible power solutions to ensure that businesses maintain stability, even during fluctuations in power quality. By integrating more efficient power supply designs, such as those advocated by Google, UPS systems can help optimize energy usage and provide greater cost savings over time.

In addition to offering enhanced power protection, UPS systems from trusted providers like Schneider APC can also support the modernization of energy infrastructure within data centers and beyond. With the focus on single-voltage systems, the adoption of more efficient power supplies will enable UPS devices to operate with higher overall efficiency, safeguarding equipment from downtime while driving energy savings. This evolution aligns with the broader trend toward sustainability and efficiency in the tech and energy sectors.

eBay Adword madness

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I’m often intrigued by the idiocy of the eBay ads popped up by Google. This one comes from Gmail in an exchange between me and a colleague about a meeting at Cambridge. The Alumni ad is clearly relevant. The eBay one is daft.

MySpace driving more retail traffic than MSN search

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According to Techcrunch…

New Hitwise findings indicate that MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail sites last week than MSN search, the third largest search engine on the web. That’s big news, as it’s tangible evidence that youth oriented online social networking is a market driver of serious proportions.

The Hitwise report puts Yahoo! as the source of 4.69 percent of traffic to online retail sites, MySpace as 2.53 percent and MSN search at 2.33 percent for the week ending August 26th. Google leads the pack at 14.93 percent.

Search related advertising last year was a $5 billion market, still small compared to $22 billion in magazines and $74 billion for TV advertising – but the landscape is changing. The Financial Times ran an article on Tuesday about the belief that the shortage of marketers skilled in negotiating sites like MySpace and YouTube is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of advertising online.
Even in the short term, it’s still up in the air between the big players. Google’s advertising, which is generally believed to be more effective than that of competitors, hasn’t kicked in at MySpace yet. If Google can make MySpace search more bearable when it takes over in the fourth quarter of this year, then you can expect MySpace to drive more traffic to retail sites than ever. At the same time, IE 6 doesn’t have a native search box in the chrome of the browser and IE 7 will – to search either MSN or Live.com. We’ll have to compare these numbers with Live.com in the future…

Google growing up?

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Robert Scoble has paid another visit to the Google campus. And he was impressed…For example,

every interaction I had with Googlers this time was different than the last time I was on campus. They seemed more humble. More comfortable. More inquisitive. And, when I gave them chances to say “you’re an idiot” they didn’t take it (and I gave them many opportunities). This is a different Google than I was used to. And it’s the small things that I noticed.

One other small thing I noticed? A lot more blog listening behavior. Carl Sjogreen, who runs the Google Calendar team, told me that the first thing he does every morning is do this search on Google’s Blogsearch service: “Google Calendar.” He says he answers everyone’s questions, even if you’re a kid in another country with only four readers.

Bing. Small things. They are gonna prove to be dramatically important over time…

Just googled out

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This morning’s Observer column…

Why does Google remind one of Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls for 20 years and arguably the most inventive judge of his time, forever generating new precedents and concepts and requiring the weekly updating of legal textbooks? Things got so bad that a law student once famously wrote to the Times requesting that the Master of the Rolls should stop making new law until the Bar exams were over.

Google is like Denning on steroids. Scarcely a week goes by without it unveiling yet another wheeze to put someone else out of business. The converse also applies: if Google says it wants to be your friend – as with eBay recently – your share price goes up. But in the main most of Google’s announcements involve plans to eat somebody’s lunch…