Bing and Google : Smoke a Fatty and Chill
Apple, Bill Gates, Bing, Computers, Google, Internet, Mountain View, PC, Steve JobsDavid Coursey | Friday, October 02, 2009 7:35 AM PDT
Tech Inciter– PC WORLD
OK, so after the hoopla, Microsoft‘s Bing search engine may have fallen back to earth. Is Microsoft supposed to just give up? Not hardly.
New statistics show Microsoft’s share of searches is down below 4 percent, having risen during the previous three months. Google, meanwhile, captures 90 percent of search traffic.
I am not sure I totally believe these newest statistics, from NetApplications and StatCounter. Nielsen’s numbers are quite different, as are Comscore’s — both giving Bing a much larger share of the search pie. Let’s give it a month or two before declaring Bing’s honeymoon to be over.
Bing was introduced in May as the successor to Microsoft’s previous search engines.
Microsoft continues to spend heavily on search technology research and development. Bing is only the tip of the iceberg, though progress is slow because search is such a huge problem. Anything you develop that improves search must be almost infinitely scalable and able to be offered for free.
That’s a pretty tall order. You need innovation in all areas, including the business plan, to take search to the next level.
Bing is an example of what I call a “demographic” search engine, tailored not to be all things to all searchers, as is Google, but to attract a defined audience. In Bing’s case, that means shoppers.
I believe but cannot prove that Bing may generate more revenue per search (in terms of customer spending as a result of searching) than Google. Even if that were true, however, it would only dilute Google’s leadership by just a smidge.
The Yahoo/Microsoft deal, should it pass regulatory muster–and it deserves to–will help Bing’s share, but won’t do much to reduce Google’s numbers.
While Google is today, for most people, the first word in search, I don’t think it’s the last word. Even with ongoing changes to improve accuracy and make results easier to manipulate and digest, Google searches still return way too much of what I don’t want.
If it takes looking through three pages of results to find what I wanted, Google has failed me. I know I am expecting Google to be psychic–essentially to understand what I want even when I have a hard time explaining it–but with all Google knows about me, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request.
Maybe Google will meet this challenge. Maybe it will be Microsoft. The betting favors Google, but you never know what will happen. The Netflix prizewinners are examples of what can be done to match users with improved search results.
Bing is wise to follow its current course. It will probably never challenge Google in overall numbers, but it could easily find a place in the market as the search engine that does specific things better than Google and generates traffic as a result.
It is too early to judge Bing’s success or failure. Its share drop was to be expected. Its progress will be slow. But, it is still a player and should Microsoft’s R&D create a breakthrough, Bing will be there to launch it.
David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web page.
The Dead | Shoreline Amphitheatre | Mountain View , California ~ May 10, 2009
Bill Graham, Billy Kreutzman, Bob Weir, Dead, Google, Grateful Dead, Jeff Chimenti, Mickey Hart, Mountain View, Phil Lesh, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Warren HaynesYahoo to Shorten Logs of User Activity to Three Months
Computers, Internet, Tech, web 2.0, Yahoo
WASHINGTON (AP) – Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) (YHOO) said Wednesday that it will shorten the amount of time that it retains data about its users’ online behavior – including Internet search records – to three months from 13 months and expand the range of data that it “anonymizes” after that period.
The company’s new privacy policy comes amid mounting concerns among regulators and lawmakers from Washington to Europe about how much data big Internet companies are collecting on their users and how that information is being used. Yahoo’s announcement also ratchets up the pressure on rivals Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT) to follow its lead.
In September, Google said it would “anonymize,” or mask, the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses on its server logs after nine months, down from a previous retention period of 18 months. And Microsoft, which currently keeps user data for 18 months, said last week it would support an industry standard of six months.
Under Yahoo’s new policy, the company will strip out portions of users’ IP addresses, alter small tracking files known as “cookies” and delete other potential personally identifiable information after 90 days in most cases. In cases involving fraud and data security, the company will anonymize the data after six months.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo also said it will expand the scope of data that it anonymizes to encompass not only search engine logs, but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. That information is used to personalize online content and advertising.
Yahoo will begin implementing the new policy next month and says it will be effective across all the company’s services by mid-2010.
Anne Toth, vice president of policy and head of privacy for Yahoo, said the company is adopting the new policy to build trust with users and differentiate it from its competitors. Yahoo also hopes to take the issue of data retention “off the table” by showing that Internet companies can regulate themselves, Toth said.
European Union regulators have pressured Yahoo, Google and Microsoft over the past year to shorten the amount of time that they hold onto user data. And Congress has begun asking questions about the extent to which Internet and telecommunications companies track where their users go online and use that information to target personalized advertising.
Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, praised Yahoo for setting a new standard on privacy protection and said Google, Microsoft and other companies will now be compared against that standard.
Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group, agreed that Yahoo’s new policy is “step in the right direction.” He added, however, that he would like to see more clarity – and more standardization – from the industry about what it does with Internet users’ data. He noted, for instance, that while some companies delete full IP addresses, other delete only parts of IP addresses or simply encrypt them.
It's Academic! Grateful Dead Symposium At UMass
StoriesUMass gets dose of Grateful Dead at symposium
By Kristin Palpini
Staff Writer
November 23, 2007
AMHERST – For many fans of the Grateful Dead, the band’s songs are more than music, they’re a home.
The wandering rock guitar rifts of Jerry Garcia, the deep, soulful voice of Bob Weir, the driving bass lines of Phil Lesh and the primal drumming of Mickey Hart built a kind of mobile home for the band’s estimated 500,000 diehard fans, the Deadheads.
This musical community and why the Dead keeps on trucking is the subject of symposium last weekend at the University of Massachusetts. “Unbroken Chain” explored the band’s social, economic, musical and historic impact on America.
“It’s really about one thing: getting your mind blown,” said Jeffrey King, a 46-year-old Merrick, N.Y., man who has attended 300 Grateful Dead concerts. “When something like (the Grateful Dead’s music) occurs in a group of people, a sense of community, musicianship and intellectualism is born.”
On Friday morning, King, along with hundreds of Deadheads from around the country, congregated at UMass for the symposium’s inaugural address, “Strangers Stopping Strangers: The Deadhead Community.”
The gathering felt more like a family reunion than an academic festival, as people dressed in jeans, well-worn sweaters, Bohemian shirts and vests hugged each other and shared concert stories.
Why thousands of people, separated by hundreds of miles and a lack of communication between concerts, have formed a thriving subculture that persists are among the questions that University of North Carolina sociology professor Rebecca Adams tried to address in “Strangers Stopping Strangers.”
Adams leads the Deadhead Community Project, a collection of sociological field notes and surveys collected by Adams and some of her students beginning in 1989. The research has since been condensed into five analytical books.
Deadheads, Adams explained, elevated the band’s music from mere albums to a subculture based on the spiritual experience of attending Grateful Dead shows.
“The music brought people together, even though they didn’t live near one another. Their friendship was the basis for the portable community,” said Adams, who is an unabashed Deadhead.
“It’s difficult to explain how we all feel inside,” Adams said, trying to give words to what it is like to listen to the Grateful Dead. “It’s like talking about or describing why we love another person.”
Deadheads had a lot to bond and form friendships over, Adams said. In addition to their love of the Dead’s wildly improvised, but fluid music, the fans connected over their dedication to charity (providing free food, concert tickets and shelter, among other things, to fellow concertgoers), the “dirty hippie” stigma attached to the group by non-fans, and drug use.
But perhaps the most important link between Deadheads is spirituality, the feeling that attending a Grateful Dead concert is a religious and enlightening experience.
“It’s a multilayered experience for true Deadheads,” said Paul Freedman, 58, of Washington, D.C., trying to describe the importance of the Dead’s music. “It’s like flat land and then the Dead comes along and says, ‘No you’re a cube, man.’ It opens up different dimensions, different ways to think about things, to experience things. It’s not just music, it’s a live culture.”
“Unbroken Chain” is part of a semester-long graduate history seminar titled “American Beauty: Music, Culture and Society, 194595,” and an undergraduate course titled “How Does the Song Go: The Grateful Dead as a Window into American Culture.”
The Grateful Dead study was made possible by Dennis McNally, the Grateful Dead’s longtime publicist, who earned his doctorate in history at UMass in 1978.
“We all know this is a special trip,” McNally said in his opening remarks Friday. “I’m very proud to come back here and do this.”
In the future, UMass plans to hold similar studies that focus intensely on a single aspect of American culture.
“I was afraid people would look at this as a joke, not as a rigorous academic investigation, just some aging hippies back on campus,” said John Mullin, dean of the UMass graduate school. “We’re here because this is a new way of giving knowledge. This will be the first of [a number of] deep interdisciplinary looks into different cultural aspects of life.”
Symposium activities included more than 50 presenters for 20 panel sessions, ranging from music composition and improvisation to an examination of the band’s business model. The weekend also included concerts, gallery exhibits and presentations.
The New York Herald Sun 