Google Products imbibes :-/

Google already knows its search sucks (and is working on to fix it) !!

It’s a popular notion these days I've posted in my blog that Can Google Get Its thaumaturgy Back ?? due to failed products like Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Google TV. But Google’s core business — Web search — has come under fire recently for being the ultimate in failed tech products.

Search has been increasingly gamed by link and content farms year by year, and users have been frogs slowly getting boiled in water without realizing it. (Bing has similarly bad results, a testament to Microsoft’s quest to copy everything Google.)

But here’s what these late-blooming critics miss: Yes, Google’s search results do indeed suck. But Google’s fixing it.

The much acclaimed PageRank algorithm, which ranks search results based on the highest number of inbound links, has failed since it’s easy for marketers to overwhelm the number of organic links with a bunch of astroturfed links. Case in point: The Google.com page that describes PageRank is #4 in the Google search results for the term PageRank, below two vendors that are selling search engine marketing.

Facebook, which can rank content based on the number of Likes from actual people rather than the number of inbound links from various websites, can now provide more relevant hits, and in realtime since it does not have to crawl the web. A Like is registered immediately. No wonder Facebook scares Google.

But the secret to Google’s success was actually not PageRank, although it makes for a good foundation myth. The now-forgotten AltaVista, buried within Yahoo and due to be shut down, actually returned great results by employing the exact opposite of PageRank, and returned pages that were hubs and had links to related content.

Google’s secret was that it could scale infinitely on low-cost hardware and was able to keep up with the Internet’s exponential growth, while its competitors such as AltaVista were running on expensive, big machines running processors like the DEC Alpha. When the size of the Web doubled, Google could cheaply keep up on commodity PC hardware, and AltaVista was left behind. Cheap and expandable computing, not ranking Web pages, is what Google does best. Combine that with an ever-expanding data set, based on people’s clicks, and you have a virtuous circle that keeps on spinning.

The folks at Google have not been asleep at the wheel. They are well aware that their search results were being increasingly gamed by search marketers and that this was not a battle they were going to win. The answer has been to dump the famous blue links on which Google built its business.

Over the past couple of years, Google has progressively added vertical search results above its regular results. When you search for the weather, businesses, stock quotes, popular videos, music, addresses, airplane flight status, and more, the search results of what you are looking for are  presented immediately. The vast majority of users are no longer clicking through pages of Google results: They are instantly getting an answer to their question:

Google is in the unique position of being able to learn from billions and billions of queries what is relevant and what can be verticalized into immediate results. Google’s search value proposition has now transitioned to immediately answering your question, with the option of sifting through additional results. And that’s through a combination of computing power and accumulated data that competitors just can’t match.

For those of us who have watched this transition closely and attentively over the past few years, it has been an amazing feat that should be commended. So while I am the Second to make fun of Google’s various product failures, Google search is no longer one of them.

Reservoir !!!

A Game for philologists ;)

“Z-Type”: An HTML5 Video Game for English Majors !!!

If you have, throughout the course of your life, spent more time typing on a keyboard than fiddling with a joystick, We’ve got the perfect video game for you. We hope you’re prepared to dominate.

Z-Type might remind you a little bit of Asteroids or Missile Command, but it might remind you even more of scrambling through keystrokes to send an emergency e-mail or finish an overdue term paper (or in our case, break news in a blog post).

Words appear in the screen, accompanied by dramatic music. As you type, you “shoot” at the words until they explode at the last keystroke. The higher you level up, the faster the words appear, and the greater their numbers become.

Z-Type was made with Impact, an HTML5 JavaScript game framework released at the tail end of 2010. It plays nicely with most web browsers as well as with mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Both the game and the framework were created by developer Dominic Szablewski. Szablewski made Z-Type for the Mozilla Game On development competition. He said in his blog that he was inspired by games like The Typing of the Dead .

Reservoir !!!

Snips :

• Gaming.mozillalabs
• The Typing of the Dead

Facebook says its faux news !!!

Facebook Says It’s NOT Shutting Down March 15 !!!

There’s a silly rumor exploding on the Internet this weekend, alleging that Facebook is shutting down on March 15 because CEO Mark Zuckerberg “wants his old life back,” and desires to “put an end to all the madness.”

But mashable team have official confirmation from Facebook Director of Corporate Communications Larry Yu that the rumor is false. We asked him via e-mail if Facebook was shutting down on March 15, to which he responded, “The answer is no, so please help us put an end to this silliness.” He added, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down and there’s lots to do, so we’ll just keep cranking away like always.”

Let’s think about this for a minute. Would Facebook decide to shut down the company just a few days after announcing a round of funding, consisting of $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, on a valuation of $50 billion?

The spurious report was started by a site to which we refuse to link, known for its reports of impending attacks of alien spaceships and false reports of a Michelle Obama pregnancy.

Reservoir !! 

Snips :

• Facebook
• Crunch base Profile

What's Going Wrong At Google ??

Can Google Get Its thaumaturgy Back ?? 

A spectre is haunting Mountain View. No, not bed bugs: bit rot. Google is in serious decline.

I don’t see how they can deny it. They have famously always been a data-driven organization, and the data is compelling. Business Insider’s list of the 15 biggest tech flops of 2010 cited no fewer than four from Google: Buzz, Wave, Google TV, and the Nexus One. Bizarre errors have erupted in Google Maps. Many of its best engineers are leaving. Influential luminaries like Vivek Wadhwa, Jeff Atwood, Marco Arment and Paul Kedrosky (way ahead of the curve) say their core search service is much degraded from its glory years, and the numbers bear this out; after years of unassailable dominance, Google’s search-market share is diminishing—it dropped an eyebrow-raising 1.2% just from October to November—while Microsoft’s Bing, whose UI Google tried and embarrassingly failed to copy earlier this year, is on the rise.

Even their money fount, AdWords, is problematic. An illustrative anecdote: I recently experimented with a $100 free certificate for my own pet app, and found my ad got stuck “In Review” indefinitely. According to users on AdWords’ discussion boards, this is common, and the only way to fix it is to file a help request. I did, and the problem was soon repaired—but what happened to the speedy algorithmic solutions for which Google is famous?

The general tone on the AdWords forums is exactly like that on those devoted to the other Google service I use a lot, App Engine: users on both frequently complain about the way Google neglects and/or outright ignores them. I like App Engine a lot, but it’s prone to sporadic bursts of inexplicable behaviour, and some developers are abandoning it because of Google’s perceived reluctance or inability to fix its bugs and quirks. Another example: a bug in Android’s default SMS app which sent text messages to incorrect recipients festered for six months until a spate of high-profile coverage finally forced them to fix it. How can they neglect problems like that in their only big hit of the last five years? 

Never mind don’t be evil—what happened to pay attention?

Once upon a time, Google was the coolest place for a techie to work. Not any more. While I can’t quantify this, I’m confident that most engineers will agree: somehow, over the last 18 months, their aura has faded and their halo has fallen. Once their arrogance was intimidating and awesome. Now it just seems clueless.

It’s not like they’re Yahoo!, halfway past the point of no return. Google is still a giant money machine full of brilliant engineers. Google Voice could be huge. If the rumors of their super-secret augmented-reality app are true, they have another hit in the wings. Even their self-driving cars make strategic sense to me. Still, the trajectory is clear; they’re in decline. They seem to have finally stopped believing their own press releases and realized that they have a problem—but is it too late? Has Google grown too big to succeed? I fear that the answer is yes.

Reservoir !!

Snips :

• The Anti-Google FAQ
• ihategoogle

Its collimate !!!

The Facebook-Microsoft Parallels !!

A computer prodigy drops out of Harvard and builds one of America’s hottest companies. He brings on an M.B.A. to help him think about things other than programming. He wants to keep his very profitable company private. But as his company grows, he begins distributing shares to his ever-increasing employee base. This gives his company more than 499 shareholders and forces him to consider an initial public offering. The investment bank Goldman Sachs plays a major role in the I.P.O.

This isn’t Mark Zuckerberg in 2011. It’s Bill Gates in 1986.

Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Gates was dealing with uncannily similar issues to the ones facing Mr. Zuckerberg today. And Goldman was wooing Mr. Gates and his decade-old Seattle software company, Microsoft, in much the same way that it has romanced Mr. Zuckerberg and his fellow Facebook executives.

(In case you missed it, Goldman has invested $450 million in Facebook at a $50 billion valuation and is raising a pool of capital from its clients to invest alongside the firm. All this likely makes Goldman the lead candidate to handle Facebook’s I.P.O., now expected sometime next year.)

In July 1986, Fortune magazine published a 5,500-word story by Bro Uttal about Microsoft’s I.P.O. process. Here’s a description of Microsoft’s then-revolutionary business: “Microsoft’s biggest hits are the PC-DOS and MS-DOS operating systems, the basic software that runs millions of I.B.M. personal computers and clones.”

And here’s Fortune on why Mr. Gates eventually capitulated, reasons that would seem eerily familiar to Mr. Zuckerberg: “To attract managers and virtuoso programmers, Gates had been selling them shares and granting stock options. By 1987, Microsoft estimated, over 500 people would own shares, enough to force the company to register with the S.E.C. Once registered, the stock in effect would have a public market, but one so narrow that trading would be difficult. Since it would have to register anyway, Microsoft might as well sell enough shares to enough investors to create a liquid market, and Gates had said that 1986 might be the year.”

Mr. Gates’s chief financial officer, Frank Gaudette, held a beauty contest to choose an investment bank to handle its debut. A few years earlier, Mr. Gates had recruited another business-minded executive, Steve Ballmer, to join the company.

“Among the major houses, Gaudette had been most impressed by Goldman Sachs, which tightly links its underwriting group with its stock traders and keeps close tabs on the identity of big institutional buyers,” Fortune wrote. “For those reasons, Gaudette thought Goldman would be especially good at maintaining an orderly market as Microsoft employees gradually cashed in their shares.”

Mr. Gaudette called Eff W. Martin, a young Goldman banker in San Francisco who had been calling on Microsoft for two years, reported Fortune. He invited Martin and his Goldman colleagues to a dinner in Seattle to meet Mr. Gates. The dinner was awkward, Fortune said, and “it was not until talk turned to pricing the company’s stock that Gates folded his arms across his chest and started rocking to and fro, a sure sign of interest. At the end of dinner, Martin, striving to conclude on a high note, gushed that Microsoft could have the ‘most visible initial public offering of 1986 — or ever.’”

“‘Well, they didn’t spill their food and they seemed like nice guys,’” Mr. Gates drawled to his colleagues afterward in the parking lot, according to Fortune. “‘I guess we should go with them.’”

On March 13, 1986, Microsoft had a hugely successful I.P.O. Priced at $21 a share, the stock spiked to $35.50 before closing at $27.75. The Microsoft chief financial officer called Seattle from the Goldman trading floor: “It’s wild! I’ve never seen anything like it — every last person here is trading Microsoft and nothing else.”

The I.P.O. put a $350 million value on Mr. Gates’s 45 percent stake, making him one of the wealthiest men in America at 30 years old.

About a year from now, if all goes as Facebook and Goldman plan, expect a similar scene at 200 West — the investment bank’s new state-of-the-art headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

We can see it now. The firm’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and his team of traders will be wearing hoodies in Mr. Zuckerberg’s honor. Mr. Zuckerberg, already jaded at 27, might not be there, but his No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg, a Harvard M.B.A., surely will.

Everyone will be happy, and very, very rich.

Source !!