Entrepreneur Watch

Business week magazine for sale?

Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg report that McGraw-Hill has hired an investment bank to explore selling its flagship magazine.

As a former Business Week reporter, I have a couple opinions on this.

First, it's incredibly short-sighted. Yes, ad revenue at BW was down 30% in the first quarter. Its ad pages were down 34%.

But ad pages dropped 45% at Fortune and 40% at Forbes. There's a recession going on. It won't go on forever. Print ads may never come back completely, which is why publications need to learn to make money in online advertising. There is a future in journalism after the recession retreats.

In the 1990s at at BW retreat, Joe Dionne, then CEO at McGraw-Hill, got up and gave a rather arrogant speech about how journalism was changing in the new online world. As if he knew. He also said that experience showed that most of the reporters in the audience would not survive the transition. It was like radio stars trying to move to TV.

Well, some of us left the business, many have reinvented ourselves. It's McGraw-Hill management that can't seem to make the transition.

I also recall in the 1980s, when another corporation -- American Express, as I recall -- made a hostile bid for McGraw-Hill. BW wrote an editorial against it, saying a publication like BW should only be owned by a publisher. How could we write unbiased stories on financial institutions if we're owned by such an institution ourselves?

That deal did not go through. This one might, as McGraw-Hill looks for short-term gains to feed its stock price. Gotta keep those McGraw family shareholders rich. 

But I wonder, will they stick to the ideal of only selling to a publishing company?

Google Chrome OS and the Post-PC age

I have another post on CNBC.com about Google Chrome helping usher in the Post-PC age.

What happens when Microsoft's OS is no longer the key standard of home computers? This is tough news for Microsoft as computing moves into the cloud.

Chrome OS doesn't even need to become the new standard, and probably won't. Others will probably come along and prove popular. But it is a great catalyst to help make the move. The Post-PC era will probably not have a single company with overwhelming market share.

At least, that's the way it looks right now. There is opportunity out there. People just have to stand up to it.

Why journalism is dying

If there is any industry barely surviving on life support these days, it's the field of journalism. Forget banking, Wall Street trading, the auto companies. They're considered "too big to fail" and are getting bailed out with trillions in taxpayer money -- money taken from future generations of taxpayers.

But journalism, the most essential business to maintaining a free state, to maintaining balance of power and keeping an eye on government and business dishonesty, is lying in a coma with no health insurance.

Why is this? Many people blame Google for giving us access to free news on the Internet. Some blame Craigslist for taking classified ads from newspapers. These are scapegoats.

The problem is, quite simply, the Internet. Before radio and television, the printed word was the most efficient way of spreading information. These new media cut into newspapers and magazines, but did not kill them. Printed publications managed to give us more depth and thought than the broadcast media. You can read them on your own schedule, and choose the stories you're interested in, rather than waiting for the allotted time slots of broadcast.

The Internet wields a much bigger knife. It can do anything the print media can, and do it better, cheaper and faster. The problem is that print media used to pay a living wage to journalists. The Internet does not.

For that I blame the media companies. Every one of them survives through advertising. The price of subscriptions does not cover the cost of paper and postage. Paid subscriptions are merely a way to prove to advertisers that people actually read the things. Online media can prove readership with tracking software. Paid subscriptions are a joke. I do not believe for a minute that the WSJ online is breaking even.

The media companies should be able to create profitable, ad-supported online publications. Why doesn't this happen? Here are some examples:

FoxNews.com has an article about a concept car designed by some Googlers that I found interesting. The ads with the article feature a Sprint smartphone, how to drop 47 pounds like a mom of three did, how to get whiter teeth like another mom did, how to plump your lips, etc. The site caters to moms. It ignores people who may actually read the articles.

How about a New York Times article on venture capitalists cutting back to basics? Ads for Toyota cars, for the movie Adam, and -- blissfully -- Ads by Google for a private equity database, private equity software, and an investment site.

So why is Google making so much money from advertising?

The only immediate future I can see for online media is a partnership with Google or other clever online advertising companies. Work with them on tools that identify the readers' interests, not only by what they're reading, but by other metrics the advertisers can track.

Yes, some people will be concerned about privacy. It's an overblown issue. Nobody at Google or Microsoft is going to read my personal email or track the sites I go to. Only computers have the bandwidth to collect that data on billions of people. Follow me all you want. Just give me relevance in return.

The Internet is changing the world, and businesses have to adapt. Paper publications will not die, but they are shrinking and will never grow back. Real depth, long articles and books are still better on paper, unless the Kindle takes over (and that's another story.) The future of media is online, and the revenue source is targeted advertising.

Deal with it.

Why DOJ will not go after Google Book deal

I admit it. I'm naive. Someone please explain this to me as though I were 12 years old. In simple terms.

Here's what confuses me: The Justice Dept. has confirmed that it has issued formal "requests for information" about the recently-signed settlement between Google Books and groups representing publishers and authors.

A Request For Information is just what it sounds like -- a preliminary steps to collect the facts before deciding if any action is needed. But taking that step means that DOJ has decided there is enough merit to the concerns that it should spend money investigating the issue. In a letter to a federal judge reviewing the settlement, deputy assistant attorney general Bill Cavanaugh said that DOJ has "determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry."

OK, pretend I'm 12. Here's what I know.

Since the time they were graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have dreamed of making every book ever written available to anyone who wants it. Pay for it if the copyright holder is around to get paid, offer it for free if no one seems to own the property any more. Cool. It's kind of like the Great Library at Alexandria, an attempt to collect, preserve and make available every book ever written.

So in 2002, they started Google Print, later renamed Google Book Search. They hired engineers to design and build robots that could turn the delicate pages of ancient books, scan each page, and put the books into a searchable database. They agreed to pay to scan books in some big libraries so that anybody in the world could read them, not just those with a local library card or access to the special books section. Also cool.

French libraries complained that all the books were from English-language libraries. Google was being biased against the French masterworks. OK, Google started adding other languages. Problem solved.

Then Google went to book publishers. Google would digitize books in print, make excerpts (as short or as long as publishers and authors wanted) available online with links to places to buy the books. Sounds like Amazon, except that Google doesn't make any money from it, unless you run ads along with the book search results. No prob.

Then it went to book authors. If your publisher can't be bothered, send Google your book, get it digitized, and use the snippets to sell it through Amazon or another retailer. No brainer.

But what about books no longer under copyright, or long out-of-print books that haven't sold a single copy in decades? In most cases, nobody knows who owns the copyright if it exists. Google could make it available online, like a library book, unless a copyright holder comes forward and says no. Then he or she would get the same deal.

Whoa, wait a minute. Make the author do some work -- notify Google -- in order to protect a work that nobody is going to read otherwise and has certainly not made any money in years?

Now this is where I get confused. I co-authored a book about investment banker Thom Weisel seven years ago. I think it sold about 100 copies. It will never make me any money. You want to buy it? Go ahead. Amazon will make some money. My publisher will get a little revenue. Thom will get some free publicity. I'll never make another dime off it. Like 90 percent of all published books, it will never sell enough to cover the advance I already got from my publisher.

As far as I'm concerned, Google can distribute a billion copies around the world for free. My publisher probably wouldn't like it, though.

In fact, no publisher does. The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and others complained. Google should find out whether every library book it digitizes is still under copyright. If so, it should find out who owns the copyright, contact that person and get permission and set up a way for the rights holder to get paid. A few hundred million dollars ought to cover the cost.

They didn't just complain, they sued.

It's a good thing they didn't hold up public libraries to the same standards.

So Google reached a settlement. It would put up $125 million to pay authors and publishers for the rights to digitize and make their books available. The money would come from ads Google sells alongside the book search results. Google would also create a nonprofit Books Rights Registry to try and locate the rightw owners, maintain a database, and make sure they get paid.

Here's an explanation of the settlemet from the New York Times for those of you with a reading comprehension level above that of a 12 year old.

OK, everybody happy now?

No. Harvard professor Robert Darnton doesn't like it because Google has backed off on the goal of providing books for free, like a library. Now libraries will have to pay a fee for access to the copyrighted and orphan books. Suddenly, Google is selling access to books. It could compete with Amazon. Jeff Bezos doesn't like it either.

Google was forced to take this approach by the book publishers. It's perfectly happy making money by selling ads. It's a non-exclusive deal, so if Jeff Bezos wants to do the same thing, he's free to set up his own organization.

But now DOJ is investigating whether this deal turns Google into a monopoly book seller. And google thought that the deal was a no-brainer, one that everyone could easily accept. And I think that the folks of Google have a higher IQ than most 12-year-olds.

I just don't get it. I want people to have access to every book ever written. Larry and Sergey want people to have access to every book ever written. It turns out to be a tough thing to accomplish unless you're a pharaoh building a library in ancient Egypt. What's an alleged search engine monopoly supposed to do?

Why Bing is good for Google

I've started a guest blog on CNBC.com. My first posting is up today.

Bing is a great search engine. It always takes Microsoft three attempts to get charmed. 

The problem is that Microsoft has been neglecting one important aspect of its online business: How is it ever going to make money off this stuff? 

So far, Bing looks like a money-loser for Microsoft. I performed a fairly obscure search and it gave great search results but found NO ADS that were relevant (Same search on Google came up with five ads)! And all the sites Bling linked to had ads by Google. 

Great way to make money -- for Google.

Google figured out six or seven years ago that it not only needed to create a great search engine, but a great engine to match ads to search results.

Maybe after a few more attempts -- about nine years from now -- Microsoft will get that right too.

Google: Larry and Sergey and the status quo - 2

"Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" to be released Sept. 17, 2009

Both Larry and Sergey are Jewish, but that ethnicity has affected Sergey’s family more than it has Larry’s. Sergey’s father, Mikhail (changed to Michael when he came to the United States) is a curmudgeonly intellectual and a gifted mathematician. At first, he wanted to study physics at Moscow State University and become an astronomer. But he was turned down because the Communist Party banned Jews from the Physics Department; the government didn’t want them to have access to Soviet nuclear secrets. So he studied mathematics instead, and took the entrance exams in rooms reserved for Jewish students, appallingly nicknamed the “gas chambers.” Mikhail graduated with distinction in 1970. Sergey was born three years later.

In 1997, Mikhail attended an international conference, where he met foreign researchers and academics. It was a life-changing event. He went home that night and told his wife that they had to get out of the country and settle in America, where real opportunities lay. In 1978, Brin’s family applied for an emigration permit. Simply applying for emigration got Mikhail fired from his job; his wife Eugenia had to quit hers, and the family had to relinquish its Soviet citizenship. Sergey was six years old when his family finally landed in Maryland the following year.

Michael Brin is now a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. Sergey's grandmother—over sixty when the family emigrated—taught Russian for several years at the university. Eugenia became a scientist at NASA.

Michael Brin discovered his son’s promise one day when Sergey was eight or nine years old. Anatoly Katok and other colleagues from the university were sitting around the Brin house listening to Michael complain about how stupid his undergrads were. He had tried giving them a graduate-level math problem, just a little above the capabilities of most undergrads, he grumbled, yet not one of the students had had the brains to solve it.

Sergey, who had been quietly sitting in the corner, decided to speak up, and in his “squeaky little voice,” according to Katok, offered a solution to the problem. At first, his father dismissed him as too "stupid" for the conversation. Katok then interjected: “No, Michael. That’s the correct answer.” Adds Katok: “In my memory, it was the first time Michael took his son seriously.”

Sergey graduated from the University of Maryland in 1993 with a dual degree in math and computer science, and entered the Ph.D. program at Stanford in 1994. He had turned out to be such a brilliant mathematician that his father expected big things from him. But business mogul was not one of them. After Sergey dropped out of Stanford to start Google, Michael Brin said, “I expected him to get his Ph.D. and become somebody, maybe a professor.”

Larry and Sergey brought their left-wing bias and their love of the Internet and open systems to Google. It reflects the world in which they were raised from childhood through college: an academic shire of open systems and free software. After all, what college student doesn’t appreciate free beer, music, games, programs, and information to get him through the next exam? The Internet provides everything but the beer.

           

Google: Larry and Sergey and the status quo - 1

"Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" to be released Sept. 17, 2009

Larry and Sergey’s families came from just beyond the outskirts of the status quo, a land embattled by class struggles and bigotry. Larry’s family waged labor union battles against the American auto industry, while Sergey’s family suffered through government oppression and discrimination in the Soviet Union.

Larry’s grandfather was an autoworker and a politically leftist member of the Teamsters during its antagonistic confrontations with a young auto industry. The union was led by factions with communist influence. Larry’s grandfather participated in possibly the greatest labor struggle of the early twentieth century, the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1937, when the workers took over a major auto factory. Larry still keeps a memento from those days: a hammer that his grandfather carried with him for protection during the acrimonious strike.

But Larry’s father, Carl, broke out of that environment and became a leading computer scientist, a talent his sons inherited. He was the first person in the family to graduate from high school (in 1956). He then went on to the University of Michigan to study engineering. While still an undergraduate in 1959, Carl Page was hired to work in the university’s Logic of Computers Group, a pioneering research team headed by legendary computer scientists such as Art Burks and John Holland. He earned two bachelor of science degrees in engineering in 1960, one of them in the specialty field of computer science—the first graduate with a degree in that field at the University of Michigan. In 1965, he earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the same university.

Larry got his undergraduate degree in engineering at the University of Michigan in 1995, winning many honors, including the university’s first Outstanding Student Award. But he’s fonder of telling people how he built a working programmable plotter and inkjet printer in a casing he made out of Lego blocks. He also started showing his entrepreneurial interest at Michigan, taking business classes and joining the LeaderShape program, which teaches its members the skills to be leaders in society.

           

Google: Success and controversy - 3

"Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" to be released Sept. 17, 2009

Contrary to popular belief, Google’s success was not simply a matter of inventing a better mousetrap and watching the money flow through the door. The initial design of Google’s search engine did not have technology much more advanced than its competitors. It was how they used and refused to abuse the technology that mattered. Larry and Sergey have been successful because they have completely rethought the process of catching mice. Not surprisingly, they’re upsetting a lot of business fat cats in the process.

Revolutions do not come easily. They arrive like an invading army, pillaging industries in their path. One group’s revolutionary is another’s corporate terrorist. Google’s fans see it as a corporate version of Thomas Jefferson, or a freedom fighter trying to spring dissidents from a Gulag work farm. Its enemies think of it more like Joseph Stalin, and are mobilizing to attack Google like capitalist idealists fighting the Red Menace. Competitors, Hollywood executives, book publishers, copyright holders, privacy advocates, civil rights activists, and government regulators are menaced by Google’s enormous power.

Larry and Sergey are wickedly clever. They break the rules. They challenge old industries and make a lot of enemies. They’re ruthless businessmen. Most of all, they’re idealists, believers in the power of the Internet to make the world a better place.

           

Google: Success and controversy - 2

"Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" to be released Sept. 17, 2009

Google now employs about twenty thousand people, but just two of them set the pace and guide its evolution. Larry and Sergey work together like two halves of a well-balanced machine. CEO Eric Schmidt is responsible for growing revenues, but the decisions that Larry and Sergey make are the fuel that powers that revenue growth. Everybody in the company refers to them by their first names—sometimes as the single unit LarryandSergey—but treat them like emperors, the final arbiters of all important decisions.

A young, smart, and athletic kid whose family escaped the oppression of the communist Soviet Union and a clever young geek from Michigan with a fondness for Legos would seem a very unlikely pair to create a business revolution. Asked by reporter John Ince in early 2000 what Google’s biggest challenges were, Sergey admitted it was learning to run a business:

“The most difficult part has been learning to deal with organizational challenges. We have over 70 people now. It’s a more complicated beast. It’s not very clear how to keep everybody productive and focused. That’s been more of a learning process. Business dealings . . . have been a little bit new to us.”

But they’ve turned Google into more than just a great company. They almost single-handedly revived Internet businesses and changed the rules of commerce on the Internet. They have commercialized the Internet and started an Information Revolution the way Thomas Edison helped start the Industrial Revolution by harnessing electricity and saying, Let there be light bulbs.

           

Google: Success and controversy - 1

"Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain" to be released Sept. 17, 2009

“Good luck. I’ve been trying to do that for some years.”

— Google CEO Eric Schmidt after being told the title of this book

Google has become the de facto head librarian of the world’s information; the entity that guides us through the labyrinthine web of online information, philosophy, entertainment, opinion, debate, slander, pornography, art, and worthless blather that the geeks and executives of the Internet like to lump into the single category of “content.”

To say Larry and Sergey struck the right business chord would be the understatement of the twenty-first century. When they launched Google, they were entering a war that pundits were insisting they had already lost. In mid-1998, it was Yahoo Inc. that sat on top of the World Wide Web, the place where 75 percent of Web searches were begun. More than twenty-five million people visited Yahoo every month. In September 1998, it became one of the first pure Internet companies to claim a profit.

The previous March, Fortune magazine had summed up the prevalent view: “Yahoo! has won the search-engine wars and is poised for much bigger things,” its editors declared. Its stock peaked at $230 at the end of 1999.

Then it all fell apart. By mid-2000, Yahoo’s stock was in free fall, on its way to hitting the bottom at under $5 a share. Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle, once hailed as a great Internet visionary, was a year from being fired. Nobody seemed to know what hit them. Whatever it was, it missed Google.

As the cash flow that had kept the technology world afloat reversed direction, Google seemed to catch the runoff. In 1999, Google took in revenues of $200,000. In 2000, the start of the technology recession, its sales had grown 940 percent, to $19 million. By the end of 2002, when most dot-com companies were either desperately dehydrated or dead, Google’s revenues had bloated to $440 million. In 2003, just four years old, its sales hit $1.5 billion, its profit was $100 million, and it had taken over some 80 percent of the world’s search queries.

Verizon Wireless to adopt Android!

Verizon Wireless just saved me as a customer.

I HATE my current Verizon/LG phone. Now Verizon Wireless is going to launch an Android phone from Motorola by the end of the year, according to AMOL SHARMA and SARA SILVER at the Wall Street Journal. 

My current Verizon phone boasts "Web access," but only using Verizon Wireless's OS, browser, maps, search engine and other apps and they all SUCK! It give me access to all the major online email programs EXCEPT Gmail. Verizon Wireless generally hates Google for trying to open up the cell phone business. 

I had vowed to quit Verizon Wireless as soon as my contract expired in order to get an Android phone, even if it meant switching to T-Mobile.

Now I have a reason to stay. Is the company getting smart, or just desperate? Who knows? It's a good move either way. Maybe the company will actually survive.

A source in the wireless industry recently told me that Verizon had passed up the opportunity to be the first to offer the iPhone, and then passed on the opportunity to be the first to offer the Android phone. It regretted both decisions. Now it's playing catch-up.

Steve Jobs has been frustrated with his deal with AT&T as well, because of its mediocre service.

So the next question is, will Verizon Wireless also get a deal with Steve Jobs to put an iPhone on its network when the contract with AT&T ends?

A victory for openness.

Steve Jobs and the culture of secrecy

BRAD STONE and ASHLEE VANCE have a nice article at the NYTimes about Apple's "baked in" culture of secrecy and disinformation. It mostly comes down to marketing.

I think it also comes down to ego. Steve Jobs likes to make a bigger splash than Namu the killer whale in a small pond. He wants people to adore him. He doesn't just release products, he unveils them with a flair for the megamaniacal. People must not just lust after his products, they must be rabid about them. It guarantees that people flock to his product releases, both for the products themselves and for a chance to hear the great man speak.

Jobs wants to be bigger than life. I guess it feeds some deep-seated insecurity.

Even Apple employees don't know about new products until they're released.

There has been debate over whether he should be allowed to keep secrect his cancer and recent liver transplant. I can sympathize with his desire to keep such personal issues secret. But one has to wonder about the danger of such a public figure keeping such secrets. There's always the possibility of insider trading by the few people who know what's going on. 

Google has a similar culture of secrecy, but it seems to me it comes more from a touch of paranoia. Larry and Sergey rarely give interviews, but they're also shy. They also seem afraid that others will steal their ideas. For my book, I had access to just about anybody at Google I wanted except Larry and Sergey.

Jeff Bezos at Amazon also likes to closely control his own publicity. He'll appear anywhere to promote his Kindle, but try asking him for an interview about the company in general. I can't get an interview with anybody at Amazon, period.

The problem is that it puts them all in danger of misinformation. If a reporter is trying to write an accurate story, closed-mouth secrecy ensures that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

But then, I'm a reporter. I believe in full disclosure. It's a big part of what the Internet is all about. Sigh. What's a reporter to do? Work harder and pray you get it right.

And with that, I'd better get back to work.

Bezos doesn't like Google Book Search

The big question is, exactly what doesn't he like about it?

Asked that question by Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference, Bezos said, as reported by Caroline McCarthy at CNET:

"We have strong opinions about that issue which I'm not going to share ... But, clearly, that settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited and it is being revisited."

The one clue he offered:

"There are many forces of work looking at that and saying it doesn't seem right that you should do something, kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights," Bezos said.

Huh? Wasn't the settlement reached specifically to avoid violating copyrights?

Is Bezos afraid that reading books on Google will keep people from buying them? You mean, like checking them out from a library, where you can read the full text?

I recently read part of a book on Google Books, all the way to the to the point where Google cut it off. I then went to the library to check it out and finish reading it. I could have just as easily bought the book, but I don't have any more room on my shelves.

Too bad Bezos isn't more forthcoming about anything except the phenomenal success of the Kindle -- without revealing actual sales figures, of course.

Sergey Brin afraid of Bing?

Probably not as much as the New York Post reports. It's just not the best source of unbiased journalism. Neither is Fox News, which carried the story on its site. Fox News' slogan of "Fair and Balanced" is like McDonald's ads trying to convince people that fast food is good for them.

Says the Post:

"Brin, according to sources inside the tech behemoth, is himself leading the team of search-engine specialists in an effort to determine how Bing's crucial search algorithm differs from" Google's.

Also:

"But co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned."

The Post article of Sergey's fear is based on "sources" but it quotes only one (anonymous) source:

"Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey," said one insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity." 

That doesn't exactly sound like fear. Sergey's "fear" is more likely the type that Andy Grove always promoted -- always stay ahead of competitors and never ignore them.

The interesting thing about Bing is that it's Microsoft's third attempt at building a seach engine. For some reason, that's the version that Microsoft tends to get right. 

Thomas Claburn at Information Week suggests that Google's bigger fear is antitrust investigations from DOJ. Losing a few points in market share to Microsoft could lessen the pressure from DOJ.

Greed isn't good. But a little fear is. One of the guys I follow in Twitter, Raju Vegesna at Zoho, who has always professed to like Google, said in a recent tweet, 

"10 Days into using Bing as my default search engine and I happy with it. I guess I am sticking with it."

Will be interesting to see how Bing does. I guess buying Yahoo is out of the equation.

Dell profits from Twitter spam

PC PRo News reports that Dell has brought in $3 million from tweets, $1 million of which came in just the last year.

What does this say about potential revenues for Twitter? Dell has resisted proposals from Twitter to charge businesses for such tweets. It seems fair to me that businesses should be charged. I consider business tweets to be spam. I keep getting notices that certain tweeters are following me, only to find out they're frm businesses selling things, apparently hoping I will follow them as well.

But it's a good way to find out what Dell has on sale at the moment. An alternative would be to just offer ads off to the side, targeted at the topics one is following. I would have no problem with that.

For that matter, I don't see any problem with ads on any social network. Targeted ads are often just as valuable as the content itself. That would work on Twitter for companies not as well-known as Dell.

These postings from Dell are very valuable. They're opt-in ads. The followers are already in the market for Dell products.

I say, charge! 

New search technique reveals Batman is richer than Bill Gates

Technology Review has an article about a research project from the University of Washington that combines information from 500 million Web pages to answer questions. Instead of just returning Web sites, it returns snippets from Web sites that (it hopes) answers your English-based question. Google provided the database of Web pages for the project, called TextRunner. 

The project is a demonstration of the technology and is not ready for prime time yet. But it represents what may be a better approach to natural language search queries.  

TextRunner does not require human intervention to teach the computer the relationships between words. TR explains the concept:

'[UW computer scientist Oren] Etizioni says TextRunner's ability to extract meaning quickly and at huge scale flowed from his group's discovery of a general model for how relationships are expressed in English that holds true no matter the topic. "For example, the simple pattern 'entity1, verb, entity2' covers the relationship 'Edison invented the light bulb' as well as 'Microsoft acquired Farecast' and many more," he says.'

The results are still rough, but amusing. Type in "who is a billionaire?" and the first solid answer is Batman. JK Rowling was 3rd, Sergey Brin and Larry Page 7th. Iron Man was about 38 on the list, but you had to get to response #65 to find Bill Gates' name.

I wonder what this tells us about what society is reading, or about the database Google provided.

Some answers are enigmatic. The first response, before Batman, was: "guys (28)

, men (18)

, people (16)

, 114 more... are 

billionaires"

Response #22 was:

"Batcave (3)

 is the alternate identity of bill-

ionaire playboy Bruce Wayne )"

It couldn't answer the question "Why is the sky blue?"

Slashdot suggests trying "Who has Microsoft acquired?" That one gives better results.

Hey, it's more fun than tagging your Web site for "natural language" search engines.

Google's ad future

Rob Hof at Business Week has a nice article about Google's moves in online display ads.

Here's my conclusion on Google's forseeable future in advertising:

Search ads: WINNER

Display ads: WINNER

TV ads: WINNER

Newspaper ads: LOSER

Radio ads: LOSER

It's quite simple. Targeted ads work, non-targeted ads don't. Google is great at targeted ads.

Search ads are targeted. The BW article outlines Google's move into a type of display ads known as "performance ads."

Here's what Hof says about performance ads:

"They allow advertisers to use data analysis and user-tracking technologies to match ads more closely to likely buyers and measure mouse clicks and other actions so advertisers pay only when ads deliver. Google spies an opportunity to apply its mathematical wizardry to make those ads even more effective. The idea is to make display ads useful knowledge instead of visual clutter." 

Is there any question that Google will do this well and that they will be effective? Google will be ramping up a revised DoubleClick to take advantage of that technology this summer.

Newspaper and TV ads? I've never thought Google had a future there. There is no way to leverage its expertise in targeting ads. Earlier this year Google dropped those efforts.

What about TV? Hof's article says that area is still iffy: 

"And a TV ad project has been slow-going."

Slow, yes, but still great potential. I've written before about how Google is working with cable and satellite set-top box manufacturers to track people's habits as they watch TV. They track which ads people watch, which they click away from, and how quickly they leave.

It's only a matter of time before they use that data, plus data from YouTube, to figure out how to deliver the right ads to the right people on the fly. Sounds like a winner.

Options traders make Google a pawn in their game?

Asher Hawkins at Forbes has an interesting article about options traders apparently manipulating Google stock. 

He cites a study by Jerry W. Liu at Cal State University who has studied put and call options on Google stock. Seems to be too much clustering of the options, with uncanny ability to predict Google's stock price after an earnings release, then profit from it.

Is somebody leaking the earnings before they're announced?

Abstract of the paper is here.

The study only covered the first 34 months of Google as a public company, though. Wonder what's been happening in the subsequent 23 months?

Liu sent a copy of his study to the SEC.

This one is worht investigating.

DOJ vs. Google

One of the most interesting things about the DOJ investigating Google's deal with book publishers is the fact that the Obama administration gets so much support from Google. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is an adviser to President Obama and Google execs threw him a lavish inauguration party. 

Does this indicate that Obama cannot be bought, or that he is purposely staying out of DOJ's business? Does it indicate Obama is trying specifically to stay out of any issues related to Google?

Interesting in light of Washington Post article outlining the ties between Obama administration and Google. Three execs have left Google to join the Administration, including "the company's former head lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin, who will be the nation's deputy technology officer."

One analyst quoted in the Post says:

"Everything they do will be scrutinized, and they will be as careful as a teenager on probation not to do anything foolish."

But I'm not sure if she's referring to Google or the Obama administration.

Microsoft is doing everything it can to bash Google:

"looks like a full embrace of Google by the White House."

Not sure how it can say that with all the investigations going on.

Personally, I think DOJ has a tendency to go too far. Some of the accusations leveled against Microsoft in the past were justified, some were not. The investigations of Google seem over the top. The deal with publishers is non-exclusive. Maybe other companies can't afford such a deal. But do you pubish Google for being successful and willing to spend money?

Hmph.

Startup Xunlight

Tech Review has an article on Xunlight, a company that's making solar cells on flexible sheets of stainless steel. Says they can fit more easily on irregular rooftops or rolled up and carried in a backpack. To run your radio on those backpacking trips?