Google’s achilles heel: search, er, Technorati

I see 2 fundamental misperceptions in this post:

1. Google aims only at Microsoft. I think it’s more accurate that Google aims at anything it thinks is interesting and fruitful to the company.

2. Google is vulnerable by not addressing every aspect of the marketplace. It is only Microsoft that is so paranoid and vulnerable that they feel the need to conquer every market segment. Google does not feel fear or motivation because they are not the best at everything.

Heh, apparently, Microsoft doesn’t understand that Google kicks ass.

Oh, ever heard of http://blogsearch.google.com ?

And listen: I am a computer geek, and I am NEVER using anything labeled MSN or whatever. Why? I don’t give a fuck WHAT you can do better than Google, because Microsoft has RUINED it’s image with MSN. Everytime I hear MSN, I think of 60-year old moms looking for sewing clubs.

Google has the image of being hip, to the point, thinking outside the box, and generally being fucking cool.

Heh, apparently, Microsoft doesn’t understand that Google kicks ass.

Oh, ever heard of http://blogsearch.google.com ?

And listen: I am a computer geek, and I am NEVER using anything labeled MSN or whatever. Why? I don’t give a fuck WHAT you can do better than Google, because Microsoft has RUINED it’s image with MSN. Everytime I hear MSN, I think of 60-year old moms looking for sewing clubs.

Google has the image of being hip, to the point, thinking outside the box, and generally being fucking cool.

Cody: I have heard of Google's blog search (and have written about it a bit in the past). It isn't even close in functionality or coolness to Technorati. But, I'd love to hear why you think blogsearch.google.com is so good in your eyes.

good point…never though of it that way

it’s like playing chess….you focus too much on one move and you get hurt by the only one you didn’t see

“But, that kind of thinking is what allowed Google to exist in the first place (ala AltaVista, who thought that it had search all wrapped up).”

Again, you are showing that you have succombed to the fundamental flaw of thinking as Microsoft thinks. There is nothing in my two points which says that Google is ignorant and unfocused and doesn’t continue to improve what it is good at or to expand to new areas where it can be good at.

In fact, your post just reiterates the profound paranoia and need to control all that is fundamental to Microsoft.

If Google remains focused on search and advertising and expands to new compelling areas (without focusing on MS — as I said, a flaw in your thinking — and without feeling the need to be in every business — another flaw in your thinking and Microsoft, there is no reason they cannot continue succeeding). However, in your mind, if someone had success and lost it, it’s because they didn’t try to conquer the world? Sorry, that’s just poor logic.

I’ve found Google’s blog search to be far better recently, so much so that I will probably stop visiting Technorati all together AND I’m also thinking of removing it from my TAG links.
With Google, the results format seems better – more familiar, but also I’ve found it to get better results, cleaner more relevant results, and NO ADVERTS IN THE RESULT LISTING!!!!!!!It’s faster and less prone to technical problems…

Goebbels: no, if a company doesn’t react to the changing needs of customers they’ll lose it.

Or, do you think the world still needs Apple II software?

What is the measure you are using of Technorati’s “success” in this case? I find more than half of the searches I try end up with “too busy” pages regardless of the day or time of day.

If success is a measure of user happiness/satisfaction — from my point of view as a user they are far down the “successful” scale bordering on abysmal.

Brian: hmm, I haven’t hit one of those in quite a while. I’m mostly using Technorati for RSS searches, though.

Brian: hmm, I haven’t hit one of those in quite a while. I’m using Technorati quite a bit for RSS searches, though. As to success, mostly anecdotal at this point. But, that was how Google’s success started out too.

“Goebbels: no, if a company doesn’t react to the changing needs of customers they’ll lose it.

Or, do you think the world still needs Apple II software?”

How can you be so profoundly thick and dim to presume that saying 1. Google does not exclusively focus on Microsoft and 2. Google does not need to be a leader in every marketplace equates to Google does not need to react to anything?

I would hope that you know how profoundly stupid and pathetic your analogy is… Did you receive a brain injury today or something?

“Goebbels: no, if a company doesn’t react to the changing needs of customers they’ll lose it.

Or, do you think the world still needs Apple II software?”

How can you be so profoundly thick and dim to presume that saying 1. Google does not exclusively focus on Microsoft and 2. Google does not need to be a leader in every marketplace equates to Google does not need to react to anything?

I would hope that you know how profoundly stupid and pathetic your analogy is… Did you receive a brain injury today or something?

See, here’s where Microsoft and everybody make the mistake. Google is NOT a search company, they’re an advertising company.

The reason they don’t go after small things is because advertising isn’t as profitable at the small level..

However, this is also where the opportunity lies not for Microsoft or other competitors (as soon as you at MS figure out what you’re trying to compete with, youll be on the right track).

The small stuff, when added up, makes up a much larger sum of the internet.. It’s like the never ending tail of a logarithmic equation… Sure it tails off to a number.. but that tail goes forever.

The problem is, nobody can capture ALL that the tail encompases, it’s breadth is just too large. That’s why there will always be sites like technocrati.

how profoundly stupid and pathetic your analogy

Well, in his defense, he’s merely parroting the Redmond Bloogerish Reality Distortion Field line of the moment…think of a sponge (there’s my analogy).

And Technorati can’t scale and drives me batty and is hopelessly circular, and produces wild varianced results. Now Google is all blog-mucked to heck, it’s not even a search engine, it’s an advertising engine, really. As for MSN? Do be serious. But Ask.com starting to kick in more.

Real search, real research still costs…aka Lexis/Nexis, Westlaw and ilk. If information wants to be free, it will have to dress up a whole lot better.

Hey Robert,

Great post. What do you think about Sphere? They combine a semantic engine with live blog search.

I certainly go to Technorati and Sphere more than I go to Google these days.

- Rod

Never mind the blogs, it’s their lead in Tags and Microformats that makes Technorati one to watch ..

The reason that Google has been successful is that advertising is extraordinarily profitable at the microscopic level. A really smart guy named Bill Gross figured out that small businesses owners like me would pay to have people come to my website. He started Overture, Google took his idea and made it enormously scalable and profitable.

We can argue that Google is a search company…or they’re an ad company…or an eyeball aggregator…or whatever. What you can’t say is that Google doesn’t go after the small things. I would say, in fact, that they do focus on the small things and that they do them really, really well.

I think Scoble’s point is that you never know when some little insignificant thing is important enough to destroy a company. Right now, blog search may be eating around the edges of the Google empire. It might be very significant. I don’t personally agree but it’s worth considering, certainly.

Remember in the early 90s when Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was now an Internet company? He figured out that the Internet was important enought that they’d better do something about it. Fortunately, they had the vast resources necessary to turn the company on a dime and invest in the in the software that would put them in a dominant position for this newfangled medium. Microsoft thrives because they see everything as a threat/opportunity.

Microsoft and Google will both continue to be super successful because they enable me to make more money. Small businesses have more aggregate money than big businesses do. Microsoft has a desktop operating system and suite of software that is really great. It lets me email people, write contracts, surf, balance my checkbook, listen to music, build and serve websites etc. etc. Google has a search engine that is really great. It lets me find helpful websites, research products I want to buy, locate potential business partners, attract customers to my web store, etc. etc.

The question is not which will dominate the other but rather which will make the customer happy. I don’t care who wins. Just make me happy and I’ll give you my money.

Weird Robert, I find Technorati to be broken.

Let’s just search for links to your blog.
http://www.technorati.com/search/scobleizer.wordpress.com
Here’s what I get…

-side blogroll (I assume it’s been there for months, but it’s the freshess link according to Technorati)
http://allpointsnorth.co.uk/

-my brain hurts on this one
http://www.technorati.com/search/scobleizer.wordpress.com

Really! It’s a self-referential SERP result. Anyhow, I’m sure it gets better from there, but I won’t bother continuing.

there are things about Technorati that I like but other things that absolutely drive me batty.

BIGGEST GRIPE: My site pings technorati per thier documentation and three minutes later their spider appears as if on cue (evidenced in my logs). However, not once has technorati EVER published any of the data in the tags that I have on my pages…real or test data…not once. I’ve even tried really strange tags that no one else has ever used. Apparently, from easily searched for postings, I’m not the only one complaining about this.

Fix that, technorati dudes, and you’ll feel more love.

T

Scobles, T’rati is way ahead of the game in terms of Blog searching..

1) Tags searching
2) bold step into micro formats
3) Much better indexing-as of recently !1

..’nuff said

Robert, where did my comment go?

I don’t know if I buy the premise of the post. I think that google is hardwiring in lots of small searches — things like package tracking and movie times, for example.

Blogs are comparatively harder to search, because it’s so hard to counter spam and fraud in blogs. It’s comparatively easy to do a UPS tracking number (so long as UPS is willing to cooperate).

If I were at a search engine company, I’d do something LISPy that would let anyone upload macros that would let them define custom searches like movie times, using a custom syntax. Maybe tie it into something like a database service, so people could create sets of sits to search, or keep track of parameters, etc. A way to know what sites should be searched for show times, and what my username’s zip code is.

The point is, I’d try to get out of the way and let people make it work without having someone in the company sign off on it. And the stuff that was really good and useful would become part of a standard library — the company could embrace the best stuff.

What you’d really want, I think, would be industries creating standard services that would drive traffic to the site. If a microsoft search engine would search for auto parts really efficiently, and I was in a business that used auto parts, I’d use microsoft’s engine for other stuff too.

But basically, I think you’d make this happen by using the search engine almost like a platform or OS itself — make it extensible, and provide the ability to create data structures and db tables in it.

Randy, sorry, WordPress’s spam filter caught it and held it for me to approve. Which I just did.

Cool! Too many links