VC. In Chicago??

Narrow search 2

After thinking about this a little more, and reading this post by John Battelle and its links, I understand the need for a separate narrow search a little better. The changes in a site like scholar.google.com can include, among others:

1) Different algorithms

2) Different returned data (e.g. citations in this case)

3) Less noise IF you know you want "narrow" search

But I still think that all results should appear in the general search.

Narrow search?

Frankly, I dont much get "narrow" search in the context of Google. Paul Kedrosky talks briefly about it here. I think that now that search engines are indexing over 8B pages, there is a pretty good chance that what I'm looking for is indexed. So the next step is to make sure that what I want comes out at the top of the list. And if I have a particular interest or focus on say, software, that should be taken into account.

So, I agree there is value in an engine having deep knowledge about a certain area. But why not just make it accessible through the general purpose search interface? If it isnt, I may not realize that I'm supposed to look for it on the "deep" site. If it is, then it comes up automatically anyway. To me, Google making a "scholar" search available separately seems just seems like a way to get some good PR and play nice towards that community. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that. But I would expect those results to be available through the main interface anyway.

Now, narrow search is very different in the case of a smaller startup. Focusing on a specific niche would be a good plan to stand out from the crowd and become an acquisition target for the big guys.

Personalization

Greg Linden points to a flash movie that "looks back" from 2014 and recounts how companies like Google and Amazon completely change the way media is created and consumed. Essentially, people in 2014 actively participate in media creation and consume it through services that feed them completely personalized versions of the news. I think the movie is thought provoking and worth seeing.

One of the outcomes of what happens, according to the movie, is that media is dominated by "narrow, shallow, sensationalist trivia". Greg goes on to argue that personalization, instead of creating a more narrow, shallow experience will do the opposite. But I disagree. If a media service knows that I have an interest in technology, and more specifically software, it will feed me news having to do with these topics. At the expense of articles on, say, economics. So I will have access to a deeper knowledge base on software, but am less likely to see articles on economics. So my media may be deeper, but it will be narrower. This is inevitable, not only because of the personalization, but also because as time goes by there will be increasingly too much to keep up with outside our primary interests. So Greg mentions that the CNN home page is bland because its catering to millions of users. I can see what he is saying. But I still make a point of going every day, if only to catch the random/different stories that I wont read about in the 200+ technology/business focused RSS feeds I try to keep up with.

My point is that personalization by itself will not be enough to avoid the "narrow, shallow" future. People will have to make a conscious effort track areas outside their main areas of focus. And companies would do well in researching how to make this easier, reaching a balance between being too focused (although some people will like that) and being bland.

Pakistan

One final post today. Just read this short article on Pakistan's shot at becoming an important outsourcing hub. While it is a good thing to see, there are two things that surprised me:

1) The fact that Pakistan would have the necessary educational infrastructure to support this industry. Not to take anything away from Pakistan, and I know many extremely well educated Pakistanis. But it was my impression that they would not be in a position to staff and support this industry to a level that would be in any way comparable to India. Also I wasnt aware that English would not be an issue there as well.

2) That India would pass any sort of tax laws that could jeopardize the huge development happening in their country around IT services. I would think the govt would still be doing all it can to encourage more multinationals to open up offices. But, the article was not heavy on details and I dont know enough about this to debate it further. So maybe this is the case, maybe it isnt.

In any case, would be an interesting development for Pakistan and one that would open up much opportunity there.

Charlie Rose

Just finished watching Charlie Rose's panel with John Chambers, Paul Otellini, Eric Schmidt and Terry Semel. It was a great conversation. Very impressive to see these guys' command of what is happening in the technology industry as well as the fact that all 4 come across as fairly down to earth and very intelligent. I was particularly impressed with Terry Semel. Given his background (entertainment and movies) and having never heard him speak before, I was expecting someone who perhaps wasnt as tech savvy as the others. But he definitely held his own, had some interesting ideas on where things are going and was also an entertaining speaker.

Some of the more important topics they touched on:

1) The big trends affecting technology today:

- Increasing computing power on all devices. Obviously this is something more important to Otellini, and to Chambers, than the other two. In fact, Google and Yahoo need the power on the server side but would probably be ok with PCs staying where they are today. But its very true. With chips getting more powerful all the time and no real end in sight, that computing power is going to get used. And it just makes me believe that there is a real future for thick clients that, while a user is connected to ever more capable online services, improve his experience, provide local storage, etc. And I'm not just saying that because I work for Microsoft.

- Broadband penetration. Changes the way we interact with all sorts of services on the Internet and eventually changes our lives. For several years now I have had broadband at home and cant imagine going back to dialup. I go nuts everytime I go to abroad and have to use a dialup connection for a few days.

- Convergence. Every day we are getting closer to being able to access any type of digital data from any type of device.

- Wireless. As soon as we start having more pervasive, city-level wireless access to the Internet our lives are going to change even more.

2) The US is falling behind. They all agreed on the fact that the US govt is not taking the necessary measures to improve education, encourage immigration (or at least residence) of the worlds brightest students, promote broadband, etc. etc. I fully agree with this. Especially being a foreign citizen and having to jump through numerous hoops to get a visa and be allowed to study and work here. Chambers is especially hot on option expensing. Having studied at Chicago and hearing many times from professors that option expensing simply makes more sense, I am torn on this particular point. While I do believe that option expensing more accurately reflects a company's financial situation, I can see that US companies will be at a disadvantage when competing with companies from other countries that do not have to expense options and are therefore able to better attract employees. As financial markets around the world become more established and companies are able to tap into them for financing, this will become even more of an issue.

3) China. Nothing new here. Its an incredibly important country both for its potential as a market for products and as a source of talent and resources for developing products. I need to learn Chinese.

There were several more interesting things they talked about, but I have to go to bed. But again, great panel. Only guy missing to make it more interesting would have been Bill Gates.

Platform Leadership

Ive read most of Platform Leadership by Annabelle Gawer and Michael Cusumano, and think its a decent book. It sets up a framework for thinking about managing and extending a technology platform:

1) Scope of the firm - What should be done internally and what should be encouraged externally

2) Product technology - The decisions regarding the technology and the platform

3) Relationships with external parties - How competitive/cooperative should the firm be with potential platform complementors

4) Organization of the firm - What is the best internal organization for the firm

The first part of the book looks in some detail at the actions Intel took over the years to build their platform. They cover several situations, from Intel deciding to, for the first time, establish their industry leadership and propose the PCI bus standard, to the constant interplay with partners on what to do internally and what to leave for others. Its interesting that the people at Intel werent really working off of a framework themselves, but instead breaking new ground as they went along. The job Andy Grove did is admirable.

The second part looks, more briefly, at what other companies have done in terms of their platforms. Perhaps the most interesting one is Microsoft and how they have at times been cooperative with complementors, but at other times (fairly often) been very competitive. Most importantly, they chose to develop a suite of office apps themselves instead of leaving that to other ISVs (obviously now a great decision given that Office brings in ~10B in revenue). This contrasts with Intel's largely cooperative stance.

Overall, I think the book is a good one. Its good to put a framework to the whole space. I dont believe points 1) and 3) are totally mutually exclusive, so the framework could be improved somewhat. But its worth reading to get some structure around this and for the historical details on what Intel did to build its platform.

Channel 9

Ive started to look at more of the Channel 9 videos and I think these guys have done a great job. Not only are many of these videos interesting topic-wise, but they also give you some insight into how things work here at Microsoft. I dont think there is any other tech company making a similar type of effort to open up their inner workings.

I thought this video on VOIP and SOIP (Services over IP - first time I hear that one) was quite informative. MS is doing a fair amount of work on this and Ive seen some of the upcoming stuff. Very interesting.

MSN Search

Obviously a lot is being written everywhere about the new MSN Search. Personally, I think its a great start. Ive been using it about half the time (the other half I still go to Google) and I think the results are almost as good. When you are talking about a 5B index vs. an 8B index, most of the time I dont think you are able to tell the difference in terms of reach. And while their ranking algorithms may not be quite there yet, they are definitely "good enough".

One area where they are lacking is in the many little features that Google has put into its engine and that give it extra polish. For example the ability to track a FedEx package, status of a flight, etc. But those are small features and I'm sure they will catch up (especially since it is still in beta).

Just read about a really nice feature though (that Google does not have). MSN Search will solve equations. Try this (found via Chris Pirillo). Pretty nice.

Posting again

Well, Ive decided to start posting again. Like Ive said before it is something I would like to get in the habit of doing, simply for posterity's sake. I'm not getting any younger (just turned 30) and want to be able to look back to things like this in a few years. So here goes.

I just signed up with Feedburner to keep better track of my stats. I'm also going to try to play around with ads soon. I want to understand well whats out there and how it is evolving. No better way than to try it yourself.