Keeping Up: The Latest in Web Innovation

Sad or Ironic Genius: Bing runs Google Adwords ads

 During a regular searching session today, I noticed something quite odd.  Much to my surprise, I saw a Bing ad running on Google Adwords.

I can't figure out who is smarter here...Bing or Google?  Bing could be thinking "If we can't beat them, join them." Maybe they are so confident in their product that they think that its going to be easy to show how much better Bing is by redirecting a Google visitor.

My opinion is that Google is laughing all the way to the bank.  We all know Google could have put the kaibash on these ads but instead let them go up on some pretty sizeable high volume search terms.  This gives Google the ultimate PR to quietly show who owns search.  I think we all want a viable competitor to emerge but advertising with that competitor doesn't seem to be the way to do it.  Your thoughts?

Wolfram Alpha Tweets look positive

  In today's world, if you want instant feedback on anything from TV shows like "24" and movie releases like Star Trek (no, I have absolutely not one shred of a Trekkie bone in my body), Twitter is the first place you go.  Its a great way to get intel if you are a marketeer releasing a new product or maybe a reporter trying to gauge public sentiment. Thus, Twitter is a great place to go check out what the world thinks of WolframAlpah which I have previously posted about. It looks like for the most part, WolframAlpha is well received and will be here to stay for a while.

Wolfram Alpha Tweet Stream looks good...

Heard of WolframAlpha yet?

If not, you probably will soon as it supposedly goes live this weekend.  Its being dubbed as an "answer engine" rather than a search engine.  The key points that I find most interesting about WolframAlpha are:

- WolframAlpha answers questions rather than display a list of matching results. This is its strength and its limitation. It doesn't have thousands of terrabytes of data powering it as does Google.

- WolframAlpha may be the most visible foray to date into the world of the "semantic web" or Web 3.0.  The semantic web is still a fuzzy concept and this may bring it into more focus.

- Google co-founder Sergey Brin once spent a summer interning for Wolfram, the creator of WolframAlpha, prompting speculation that the two could team up one day boosting Google's capability as a search and answer engine.

As with most new search engines. many enjoy a lot of launch hype and are called the "Google Killer". This one is no exception.  Clearly this type of technology has its place in the search world and with WolframAlpha, I see the industry (along with Twitter Search) evolving still and putting ever more pressure on big G. A good summary article describing WolframAlpha is on MediaPost by Laurie Sullivan - "A Wolf in Google's Killer Clothing"

A Glimpse of the future? Gmail goes down, Tweets go up

The sun is barely above the Valley floor here in Phoenix this morning and I have already had a vision of the future and two indicators that the tech and communications world continues to rapidly evolve. Usually it takes at least one Mountain Dew for that to happen (no I am not a coffee drinker).

Rather than email, the first thing that I did this morning was check Twitter - signal #1.  The first Tweet I saw was from Barry Schwartz at Searchengineland commenting on Gmail servers going down yet again (Search-Werks mail server goes through Gmail so we experience the downtimes noticeably). Barry's posted a link to a live Twitter Search showing of all of the people Tweeting about Gmail going down - signal #2.  The red flags should be waving at Google this morning as this behavior occurs. It seems ironic that folks turn to Twitter to communicate in real time about email unreliability at Google. This exposes to me cracks in the Google time space continuum where instant communication and search behavior are both happening WITHOUT them.  Google's goal is to be involved in everything digital and this morning, plenty was happening online regarding Google and the Gmail brand. Unfortunately, it was without them.
Google take notice.

Technology is Dumbing Us Down

Another unfortunate example of technology collectively dumbing down the human mind.  Do the latest and greatest gizmos and tech enhancements help us or hurt us? 

911 Call: Help! I am locked inside my car!

Bad Idea? Microsoft to open stores a la Apple

In my opinion, this is a bad idea waiting to happen and could hurt the Microsoft brand very publicly if it fails. Although they have brought in skilled help with pedigree from Wal-Mart for instance, this looks like the futile actions of a giant being routinely out smarted by a more nimble and smarter rival.  My prediction is that this one day becomes an MBA business case about further hurting a declining business model.  Microsoft is mimicking a competitor that has already won the game rather than innovate and create a new playing field.

Quote from article at Reuters: Microsoft Corp announced plans Thursday to open its own chain of branded stores as it looks to catch up with rival Apple Inc's successful move into retailing.

Amazon.com's Best Friend....

I saw an interesting graph posted by Sam Decker - CMO of Bazaarvoice at the Bazaarblog regarding Amazon's growth and overall retail market share trends.  The graph below shows Amazon growth in % as essentially the mirror opposite of overall retail e-commerce.  Clearly Amazon's customer base, email marketing, and overall customer experience continue to grow the business.  However, I would offer that this chart is heavily related to the growth of another company that provides traffic to Amazon.  Anyone want to throw out one guess who I am talking about?  Yes of course, Google again.  If you search on most retail product-oriented terms on Google, there is an extremely high likelihood that Amazon will show on page 1 (ie. my camera the "canon eos rebel" - Amazon shows in the 3 & 4 position on my search).   The chart showing Amazon's growth continuing to march upwards over the last 6 years is roughly the same trend that Google's traffic has been on.  If Google were to lose share or even decide not to rank Amazon as well any more, I would be willing to bet this curve would take a right turn quickly. 

I am sure Amazon knows this quite well and probably sends flowers to the Googleplex often.

I searched the Hitwise blog to see if I could find a % of upstream traffic from Google to Amazon with no luck.  Maybe someone else can find it?

MSN Adcenter Doesn't Like My Browser

I will give you one guess which browser I was using this morning when I tried to login to MSN Search Adcenter and of course, it locked up.  Let's see, it starts with *OOGLE and ends with CHROM*.  Being a conspiracy theorist about this sort of thing, I quickly opened up a Mozilla browser and it went through quickly.  So the question is:

Is it Microsoft not bothering to code well, is it Microsoft deliberately blocking sessions, or is it the inverse and Google trying to prevent $ being spent at AdCenter? 

My guess is that its a simple coding issue but could it be more? I would be curious to hear what you think.  If its Microsoft not playing nice, soon enough, Chrome will have large enough adoption that MSN Adcenter will HAVE to make sure the sessions work or say "bye bye" to a decent chunk of ad business.

Google takes it on the chin - Verizon Goes with Microsoft

In the grand plans of Google to dominate the mobile market and rightly so as it clearly is the "next big thing", this is a huge setback in my opinion for them. The article doesn't say how long the deal is...I wonder if they will change their mind when users get a look at the goods.  Google loses Verizon to Microsoft.

Interview in Business Week article on Small Business E-Commerce

Last week, I received a call from a reporter at Business Week who was interested in interviewing me for an article on small business e-commerce.   I am happy to report that that interview showed up online on Friday.  Here is a link to the article discussing small business e-commerce options and deciding on where/if/and how to sell online.