Holoom

Dave Matthews wrote a fantastic song for his first album for which he did not have a name. Since his sister liked the song a lot, he entitled it “The song that Jane likes”. I did not know how to express that this post was about a lot of stuff happening in the search business, hence the illuminated title. Although I’m not as bright as Mr. Matthews I am better looking, or so my girlfriend says. Take that DM!

Wolfram’s Computational Knowledge Engine

Ok, it’s old news, I know. A while ago Wolfram, one of the brightest and kwaziest people I know of, presented us with his Alpha search engine. It holds a poop-load of pre-processed information and it presents it in very slick ways, as opposed to Google that just indexes whatever is out there to index, not caring if some of the information is completely bogus. For instance, someone could write an article stating that 1 + 1 = 5. You would find that in Google, but not in Wolfram.

The existence of Alpha will not modify my search habits a lot. At best, I can slowly introduce it in my searching on the rare occasions in which I need historical, statistical or mathematical facts as an extra, but I’m too lazy and my usage of Google is too rooted to make that shift immediately. That’s the beauty of Google, if Wolfram is, say, a Library, then Google is that same Library + all the other libraries + all the newsstands + all the personal diaries + all the sex shops + etc, etc, etc.

The curious thing about Alpha is that the search results are copyrighted because Mr. Wolfram feels that although the facts are well… facts, the way the information is presented was previously nonexistent, so, Mr. Wacko is basically copyrighting the presentation. That is something we need to watch closely since it could introduce some serious changes to copyright laws.

The Bing Experience

Ay Microsoft. Eventually I will comment on my profound dislike of their creativity (or lack thereof). To me MSFT is looking more and more like a rich kid that envies other kids’ toys. I have yet to say “Wow, Microsoft did that? What a creative bunch!”

Anyway, a few months ago we were blessed (?) with Bing, Redmond’s attempt at robbing Google of a portion of the search market. Google positioned itself at the top of the search industry by re-inventing search and later started making humongous profit off search advertising. Greedy MSFT cannot let that one slide so they have been struggling to eat some of that cake for over ten years now. These are the highlights of Microsoft’s search extravaganza:

1. First there was MSN Search (circa 1998) powered by Inktomi (later purchased by Yahoo) and Altavista and later by their own search technology.
2. In 2006 they dropped the MSN Search in favor of a search feature within the Windows Live toolkit which was powered at one point by the Yahoo engine but later by their very own technology.
3. In 2007, they separated the search feature of the rest of the Live products and launched Windows Live Search.
4. On June 2009 Bing replaced the Live brand while a deal with Yahoo is in the making to give Microsoft Yahoo’s share of the search market (about 20%)

So far, Bing on its own has not managed to harm Google significantly, so they are trying everything: UI improvements, deals with Facebook and Twitter, adding delicacies provided by Wolfram Alpha, etc. It’s building up to look more like a bad soap opera than a well thought out business strategy.

I know we users stand to benefit from decent competition in any market, even one as clearly dominated as the search market, but nonetheless I find myself very tempted to say: “Get your own toys Microsoft! Leave the other kids alone.”

Google Caffeine

Be it the inevitable result of the competition with Microsoft or their very own will to constantly out-do themselves, Google is ready to launch in at least one data center in the very near future (late 2009 or early 2010) their Caffeine project.

Caffeine is Google’s promise of a faster, more accurate, more temporarily relevant search. It was opened as a beta for a while and rapidly closed due to an apparent very positive outcome which indicated all systems go. You can find a test drive review here.

This could very well be the spin-off of that competition I was referring to before, but call it what you want I will call it a very welcome effort that will undoubtedly benefit me as an end user.

That in my book is a lot of potatoes.

Shuje

On my next post I will show you how to survive a month with only 10 dollars … and a shotgun. In the meantime, if you feel I left out any interesting stuff regarding search, please comment below or e-mail me at shuje@holoom.com