We're all lab rats and Google is Beta for something bigger

[FDJA]

All the hub-bub RE: Google of late has got me to thinking and trying to put the pieces if the puzzle together... The following is mere speculation - What's your thoughts?

We're all lab rats and Google is Beta for something bigger:

An article in the May 1 2006 edition of CIO Magazine entitled "The Enterprise Gets Googled" which provides some insight to G's Enterprise ambitions led by Dave Girouard, reminded me of an ambitious company I worked for named divine, Inc which was an "Enterprise Solutions Company" run by Flip Filipkowski of Platinum Technologies.

Long story short, Flips vision was enabling the workplace through primarily web based applications and fine tuned back-ends. The company acquired some really innovative companies and the plan was to tie it all together, into something scalable for global and fortune clients. Some of divine's offerings were gobbled up with much gratuity, while others were slow burns. Anyway, the Bull Market Ended, 911 happened and the technology sector took a dive, we all know that story and it's why many of us are now doing whatever we do now for a living.

So how does this tie into Google? Well... The way I see it, Google is ramping up for a gold rush. The most valuable thing on the planet, aside from H2O and Oxygen is information right? The problem is, it's all over the place in little chunks and a lot of it is free for the taking. That's no good for profit. Why should the most valuable thing on Earth be free? How does one cash in on that?

One of the projects that divine did, which closely resembles what G's up to, was it's NorthernLight (northernlight.com) offering. Yeah... What they did was try to tie in the northernlight search engine with eprocurement and some low level data-mining. It was all subscription fee based and promised the end user a wealth of knowledge just a mouse click away. All neatly arranged, highly catagorized and super searchable high quality content to be used for primarily research and procurement. The system actually did work well and was tied into many a corporate Intranet and Portal.

Fast Forward 5 years... divine is history and NorthernLight is still around, as are most of the acquisitional tech solutions they promoted. Problem is, everything is still so unstandardized and chaotic. My thought is that Google's Enterprise Division will in essence take that old dream of Flip's (he was always way ahead of himself), and use their muscle to make it work. Here are some of the things I see as cornerstones:

* Deal with Dell... Most any enterprise company starts with Dell, because they provide a ton of equipment and services for corporate use. Let's say middle market on up... That was divine's target as well and they were tied into Dell.

* Big Daddy - All the up, down, sideways, forwards and backwards search results in the past few months indicate something more than a tune up. Speculation that they are building a stronger data system and better algorithm for the future is probably true, but not for the reasons most think. Typically speaking, nothing gets fixed until it's broken. Google was certainly not broken. I highly doubt they are spending money and time fixing the search engine to please all of those people who use it for free and us web masters who make money by designing sites that show up good... No that can't be it. In my opinion the recent whacko search results is them trying to fire up a new machine that will power it's enterprise division's ambitions. Simply put, I think the old search engine just was not compatible with their Enterprise stuff.

Google's PR: I think the current Google PR which is dropping bread crumbs here and there is keeping the focus off of the big picture and it helps them figure out the bugs in their new "beta Google". Really... What do they care if all of us kick scream, squirm and complain? It's also painfully obvious they could care less about the outcome of their beta test or rollout in relation to the population at large. Why? Because there is no money there. Sure AdWords are paying the bills right now and giving them fuel for the enterprise division where the big money is really at, but AdWords are probably either A) Coming to an end because they realize they can't stop PPC fraud, or B) The new search system will be able to "tune out" AdWords for use in a corporate pay to use search portal.

So what could they possibly offer to Corporations that they can't already get somewhere else? An all in one, web based solution that can be modified and customized with applications that can replace all or most of every system in place at a company now. Think about the current betas and how they could fit nicely into a company if packaged the right way: email, VOI, Forums, Blogs, Websites, etc etc... NOW - Here's the 1-2 KO punch that Google can deliver so that this thing is a "must have"... Worldwide access to trillions of bits and bytes! Oh yeah... Imagine that NorthernLight thing I was talking about before, except Google strength. All neatly tied into enterprise applications that can run securely and probe into the depths of humanity from behind firewalls and proxies thanks to tidy little datacenters and annonymous servers planted in hundreds or thousands of server farms across the World. Any kind of information you could possibly want, all for the taking and at a price you can afford... China? Just a Beta. Think your privacy is at risk when you're not https? That's nothing compared to what Big G can do if unleashed on mainframes with access to the Internet.

G Running Out of Room? I don't buy it. What do you do when you run out of hard drive space? Do you buy a whole new computer? You could, but it's more cost effective to just install a bigger or second drive right? The only reason you might get a whole new computer is if your old one was broken, prone to failure or you were ready to do something special that required "more power".

Another trinket...

How about IBM... They developed new software that they used on what was already the 3rd meanest computer on the planet, to make it faster. It works by distributing and access data across multiple storage devices sequentially and then funneling the data where it needs to be insuch a way that there are no traffic jams. How fast? Right now it's running at 102GPS. Hmmm... Let's see, how many data centers does google have? How many PCs can they tap into at a moments notice?

Do Google Job Postings give us an indication, for G's business plan of the future? Most sales pros know that one way to dig into a company's future plans so you can spin your product or service so that it looks like a match made in heaven, is to spy on your prospect's help wanted ads... What positions are they hiring for and why? I'm an avid careerbuilder subscriber as well as Monster and I can say that for nearly a year now, Google has been agressively looking for sales people. Right now as a matter of fact, they have 101 sales jobs available at their own website: See Google Sales Jobs. At one time there were probably that many google sales jobs posted at careerbuilder, but now its down to a handful. In all fairness to Google, the sales and advertising jobs only make up a little more than 10% of available jobs. (There are 948 current job openings at Google). As mentioned earlier though, seasoned sales people will use classifieds to dig deeper into a company's ambitions and plans... So, looking at the "type" of sales people they are recruiting gives us a great idea of where the company is headed. For example, this is one type of sales person G's interested in:

Account Planner, B2B/Markets Vertical

The primary responsibility of the Account Planner is to provide exceptional client-specific sales and marketing support, as well as to add value to the customer sales experience.

Responsibilities:

Develop and enhance sales presentation and proposal materials for regional/vertical customers.
Proactively provide client research and industry specific information.
Plan and execute client events in your region (Customer Feedback Breakfasts, Getting to Know Google, etc.).
Assist in client calls with regional/vertical customers.
Function as liaison between the Field Marketing and Regional pods.
Requirements:
BA/BS degree, top tier school preferred, strong academic performance required.
Minimum 4+ years experience in advertising industry.
2+ years of sales or sales support experience.
Exceptional communication skills, including high level of proficiency with PowerPoint presentations.

SO??? What do you think? All the webmasters I've seen posting in this forum and others (including myself up until now), have focused on the obvious... The stuff Google lets us see or can't hide. But ALL of us are like school children if we honestly think Big Daddy and Googles search crashes of late are indicative of their plans to satisfy their "Free Client Base"... You know, a gabillion searchers and all of us whiny ass "why is my site gone?" web masters... I don't know about you, but hmmm.... What would Google need with all those new sales people? Having worked for a global technology company's sales dept in the past, I know one thing... The ad above shows that they are looking for face to face field reps that can sell to top level executive decision makers at the biggest corporations. These pros make roughly 80k to 250k per year base. They're heavy hitters that can bring down deals in the 100's of $1000's...

Anyway... That's just the ramblings of a non-techy old fool. Maybe it screams conspiracy... Maybe it's just smells like money. What's your thoughts?

[PhilC]

Google was certainly not broken

It depends on what you mean by broken. The quality of Google's results was continually being eroded by link pollution. The engine worked, but the quality was broken, and the break continued to increase.

G Running Out of Room? I don't buy it.

Why not? The systems are complex, and simply adding more hard drives would be unlikely to automatically increase storage space. They spent several hundred million dollars on new servers this year, so spare capacity for all the things they do must have been getting in short supply. You don't spend that sort of money if you don't need to.

I don't believe they are now short of capacity, but I could certainly believe that they have chosen to stop adding new capacity all the time just because more and more sites come onto the Web, and to NOT index everything just because it's there. There is so much crap that nobody wants in the search results except the owners of the crap, so why keep adding new capacity when so much of it is being taken up by crap?

[FDJA]

Originally Posted by PhilC

It depends on what you mean by broken. The quality of Google's results was continually being eroded by link pollution. The engine worked, but the quality was broken, and the break continued to increase.

Why not? The systems are complex, and simply adding more hard drives would be unlikely to automatically increase storage space. They spent several hundred million dollars on new servers this year, so spare capacity for all the things they do must have been getting in short supply. You don't spend that sort of money if you don't need to.

I don't believe they are now short of capacity, but I could certainly believe that they have chosen to stop adding new capacity all the time just because more and more sites come onto the Web, and to NOT index everything just because it's there. There is so much crap that nobody wants in the search results except the owners of the crap, so why keep adding new capacity when so much of it is being taken up by crap?

Phil, Thanks for contributing. Remember I'm just speculating at all of this.


Googleillusion... Will be a new word at webster... I would say that David Copperfield is free lancing for google and has done one of the biggest illusions in history, as illustrated by most web masters opinions that G did all this for us and for the public, because they care about relevancy.

Shake your head and pinch yourself... "Poof" you're awake... You said "Nobody spends that kind of money if they don't have to", and with that you spotted the number 1 clue that poses the greatest questions. You are absolutely right - Nobody spends that kind of money unless they have to. So let's look at this closer:

1) Free Search Engine. Do they need to spend money here? No. They're not getting paid for this service anyway.

2) Free email and all the Betas. Do they need to spend money here? No. They don't make any money from that either.

3) Creating a more relevant search engine. Do they need to spend money here? No. It's like shooting AdWords in the foot. If anything a LESS relevant search engine produces more PPC opportunity. (Look at Yahoo).

So - Here's the quiz, Why would Google spend that kind of money? I think it's for one reason... SHAREHOLDERS PROFIT.

1) Can a shareholder profit if Google makes a more relevant search engine and subsequently less AdWord revenue?

2) Can a shareholder profit if Google provides more relevant organic search results to websurfers who use G's free search engine?

3) Can a share holder profit if Google increases it's capacity for web page storage so that more webmasters can add more content to G's database for free?

I think the answers to all of these are no. But... That's just me. What do you think?

[beu]

Originally Posted by FDJA

So - Here's the quiz, Why would Google spend that kind of money? I think it's for one reason... SHAREHOLDERS PROFIT.

1) Can a shareholder profit if Google makes a more relevant search engine and subsequently less AdWord revenue?

2) Can a shareholder profit if Google provides more relevant organic search results to websurfers who use G's free search engine?

3) Can a share holder profit if Google increases it's capacity for web page storage so that more webmasters can add more content to G's database for free?

I think the answers to all of these are no. But... That's just me. What do you think?

1. I think so, the more relevant the results the more ad opportunity and revenue potential. Why do you think AdWords revenue would go down, if anything it should go up?
2. I think so, at the root of it all is market share and that goes to the engine with the most relevant results.
3. I think so, free web page storage opens opportunities for mom and pop business that might otherwise not have a site. 1 million mom and pop sites result in lots of ad opportunity.

Just my opinion!

[cryptblade]

Actually, FDJA, I think you got some great points. I've been paying attention to this as well. I once used Salesforce and even owned stock - bought in when they were below $40 a share. They reached about $50 and have stalled since - a good 2-3 quarters now. I saw the writing on the wall. What could the darling of the on-demand CRM industry do next that Microsoft couldn't do or GOOGLE couldn't do? Salesforce isn't even a good buyout candidate ...yet.

Reading about Google's acquisition of Postini and knowing the rollout of Google's spreadsheet, word processor, and all of that - I can definitely see Google making a run towards your ventured scenario.

I think it might be need to be a little bit more adjusted though. After all, Flip's vision was pre... well, pre everything. A lot of those people pre dotcom bust, pre 911, etc. had vision but didn't see the dots connecting the vision.

What I see - and I suspect Microsoft sees as well - is Google leveraging the "interfaceability" (yes, I just made it up) of the search engine - that is, the fact that people often use the search engine as the means of engaging anything online. This is why we here know the power of search.

As I have said before - and even people on Wall Street knows - Google, Yahoo, etc. are not merely search engines; they are in fact media companies.

Google is refining search, building advertising, securing media outlets, and engaging in on-demand software applications. They are doing on-demand software for personal use AND enterprise use.

That's pretty smart. Leveraging the interface of search engine as the main contact point for online use - and applying it to the consumption of information, media, and use of software.

I am not sold that people will want on demand personal software - but businesses, particularly small businesses, could definitely find plenty of benefit: low overhead cost!

...Makes me want to buy GOOG... below $500! Yes!

[Marcia]

I'm kind of wondering why this thread was bumped after over a year. Is there anything NEW about the topic?

[AbhishekSingh]

Now this thread need to be closed

[Tom Summer]

I didn't even see the start date of the topic I just read it. Do what you need to do with it. Close it!