Tag Archive for 'google'

How cool is Cuil?

Published by Ben Kepes on July 28, 2008 in Business, Design, IT, New business, Strategy and Web x.0. 5 Comments

So new search upstart Cuil launched this week - with a search index currently at 120 billion pages (and growing).

They’ve got high-profile founders (a bunch of ex Googlers) and a heap of VC cash ($33 million).

So - only two questions

  1. Quality of offering
  2. Chance of success

How good is Cuil’s search?

Doing a side by side comparison with Google is unfair - Cuil launched yesterday while Google has had years to get it right. Regardless of how fair it was I thought I’d do the ultimate vanity-search acid test to check results.

First up the pretender;

cuil

Cuil found a heap of results. Most, other than a LinkedIn crawl, came from my previous blog which has been dead and buried for nearly a year (well it’s still there but no real traffic of note and no posting/comments.

And the current champ;

google

Google faired better. While the old blog came up in the results, the new one (diversity.net.nz) appears at spot three with my LinkedIn profile down to number five or so.

So overall it seems Cuil has done an initial scrape of the easily accessible information (LinkedIn is a lot of pages, pretty readily indexed)

What chance the pretender?

I’m fortunate that I wasn’t blogging back in Google’s early years - I’m sure I would have denied that they had any chance of beating the incumbents at the time - how wrong I would have been!

Having said that the Internet is a very different place now - Google has created themselves a pretty compelling argument around search - look at the number of toolbars out there all pushing out Google search - what would it take for a newcomer to beat the Plexers? It’s take a whole different level of search quality, but more importantly it would take a whole different level of compelling business model.

Cuil is pushing there new look search result display - this however is no killer feature. An interesting point of differentiation is that Cuil doesn’t retain users search data or surfing habits - possibly a bonus to the conspiracists out there but not enough to knock Google off any time soon.

Bottom line? - Cuil looks cool but don’t expect it to be a multi billion dollar company any time soon

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Maybe S+S makes sense….

Published by Ben Kepes on July 15, 2008 in Business, Design, IT, SaaS and Strategy. 2 Comments

As RWW reported, Google docs was down for 30 minutes last week. Part of the RWW included a poll asking respondents what sort of downtime would make them reconsider using Google docs. The results are even more interesting considering that RWW’s readership is arguably more likely to be users of on-demand apps than the general public.

googledocs_thumb

Microsoft insider Steve Clayton posted, and questioned whether or not the results indicated an unwillingness of users to really put their faith in purely online services. He goes on to say that;

That’s why Microsoft thinks a Software plus Services approach is the right one. You get the best of both worlds.

This isn’t a slight against Google particular but more an observation that the battleground of cloud computing is in its infancy…The announcements this week around Microsoft Online are a first salvo in what promises to be a whole new era here at Microsoft. Let the games commence!

Of course the logical response to Steve’s comment is that with Google gears, docs is no longer a purely online service, and in fact falls within the broad definition of S+S. And yes he’s right, outages of SaaS products do show why applications with a pure cloud base are sub-optimal. This of course isn’t a reason to throw the baby out with the bath water and go back to desktop apps - it is however a major heads up for SaaS vendors to think about offline access.

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Google on shaky ground?

Published by Ben Kepes on July 13, 2008 in Business, Design, Governance, IT and Strategy. 2 Comments

Kaila bought my attention to a Silicon Alley post that is a pretty stark assertion about Google. It seems an anonymous Silicon Valley insider claims that it’s not just Yahoo with significant internal strife, he claims Microsoft, eBay and Google also have problems. He is quoted as saying;

Google’s a complete f–ing mess on the inside. A total f–ing trainwreck. They don’t talk to each other. They fight constantly. A lot is being pissed away. In three or four years you’ll be looking back at this company and wondering what happened

Now it has to be said that Google is an exceptionally profitable trainwreck at the moment, but it also has to be said that most (nearly all) of that profit comes from one source - Adwords. It only needs a successful advertising foray by Microsoft to remove significant amount of the Google fairy dust.

As Kaila so rightly points out, and to paraphrase something I said a few days ago in relation to another company, when you’re big it’s easy for people to throw rocks at you. Google has grown so meteorically that they’re bound to trip up - admittedly it’s been a week full of trips for Google, but they’re so in the public view that every move they make is watched.

I don’t think Google will fall any time soon - I do however think that people need to think about a post Adwords revenue stream for the Googlers (and I’m sure they’re at the ‘plex right now doing just that)

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Even Google outsources functions…

Published by Ben Kepes on July 8, 2008 in Business, IT and Strategy. 0 Comments

News that Google data was lost in the recent burglary of an external human resources provider’s offices. Personal details where apparently on the computers that were stolen. Also involved was CNET networks. Aside from the predictable calls about required due diligence when utilising outsourced services, what struck me as interesting was the fact that Google outsources this sort of function.

I would have thought that an organisation the size of Google would, at least in their larger locations, internalise the HR function - apparently not - maybe Google are following that old business adage and sticking to their knitting?

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