Why Google losing sight of search comes at a bad time

by AndersP

How Siri Disrupts Search
[Via Daring Fireball]

Rich Mogull, at TidBITS:

Siri doesn’t replace search, but in many cases it circumvents it by directing users straight to integrated partner services. When you ask for the nearest Indian restaurant there’s still a search taking place, but it’s through Yelp, not a generic search engine that would include Yelp plus various other results.

By skipping the search engine and going straight to a designated source there is no place to insert advertising.

[More]

I wrote earlier about the apparent trend of Google to modify search in ways that actually make it less useful. This is a bad time for it to lose sight of its primary product.

Because Siri is about to change mobile search. 2/3rds of mobile search comes from iOS devices. But Siri reduces directed search that Google needs in order to get revenue.

In fact, Siri uses things like Yelp and thus supports their models while Google actually actively works to harm Yelp.

So Apple now has a method to reduce ad revenue that Google is used to getting and to also help Google’s competitors.

I’m thinking that Google shouldn’t aughta have ticked Steve off.

Strange Wall Street doings – Apple and Amazon

Bizzaro valuations: Amazon (P/E = 100) vs. Apple (14)
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

Even after Tuesday’s free-fall, Amazon’s shares cost seven times more than Apple’s

It’s never been adequately explained to me why Amazon’s (AMZN) shares are so expensive and Apple’s (AAPL) so cheap.

Both stocks were punished after reporting their most recent quarterly earnings. Apple fell $23.62 (5.6%) last week when the company came in with iPhone sales that were lower than analysts expected, reducing profit growth to 54%. Amazon fell $10.46 (4.4%) Tuesday after reporting net income down 73% and offering investors the strangest guidance I’ve ever seen:

“Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(200) million and $250 million, or between 142% decline and 47% decline compared with fourth quarter 2010.”

[More]

So Apple is trading at a PE ratio of 14.4 and Amazon is at 100.2. Yet one has increasing profits and the other one is headed in the other direction.

If they treated Apple like they do Amazon, Apple would be trading at about $2800.

Who says the stock Market is rational? Seems like some sort of manipulation is going on somewhere.

Pete Seegar on the banjo almost 70 years ago.

Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Banjo Play
[Via Boing Boing]

[Video Link] Mike Springer of Open Culture says:

This past weekend, Pete Seeger marched through the streets of Manhattan with the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was a spritely 92. It was the latest in a lifetime of political engagement by Seeger, dating all the way back to his youthful support of the Spanish Civil War. Today we bring you a film of Seeger when he was only 27 years old: To Hear Your Banjo Play. Released in 1946, To Hear Your Banjo Play is an engaging 16-minute introduction to American folk music, written and narrated by Alan Lomax and featuring rare performances by Woody Guthrie, Baldwin Hawes, Sonny Terry, Brownee McGhee, Texas Gladden and Margot Mayo’s American Square Dance Group. To Hear Your Banjo Play is included in our collection of Free Movies.

[More]

Alan Lomax spent much of the Depression years collecting American roots music. His recordings are some of the first examining indigenous music created in America.

And today’s banjo is an American invention. So it made sense to show us both.

Here we get to listen to Pete Seegar introduce people to the banjo and its history. People singing ballads. People singing spirituals.

And Woody Guthrie singing John Henry. And square dancing.

Fun to watch.

The Royal Society makes my day

Royal Society opens archive, kills productivity
[Via Boing Boing]

60,000 peer-reviewed papers, including the first peer-reviewed scientific research journal in the world, are now available free online. The Royal Society has opened its historical archives to the public. Among the cool stuff you’ll find here: Issac Newton’s first published research paper and Ben Franklin’s write-up about that famous kite experiment. Good luck getting anything accomplished today. Or ever again.

[More]

The Royal Society is one of the oldest science organizations and has been producing some of the best science articles for centuries.

Now we can all read any of these articles. This is what open access means.

Google starts destroying it core product – search

Google quietly removes + functionality from search
[Via Boing Boing]

It used to be that you could make Google include terms in search results by placing the + symbol before them in queries. Not any more! Writing for Wired, Andy Baio covers Google’s increasing willingness to muck around with your search queries and how to work around it. [Wired]

[More]

It used to be that by adding the “+” forced that word to explicitly be on the page, not in some sort of meta part based on Google’s magic computers.

Now to do the same thing requires twice as much work – placing quotes around everything.

All so it can use the + symbol for Google+ like Twitter uses the hash (#).

The reason Google took over with search are many but one of the basic things was how it combined the words in the search. It allowed very simple control over a search, meaning that the often arcane commands many earlier search engines used became unnecessary.

But as time has gone on, they have meddled with this. I  often do searches where some of the words I use are not found on the page at all. It becomes a worthless search. Putting the “+” in front of a word helped make sure I would find it. Other’s have commented on this exact thing.

Now, to make it more convenient for their social service – which copies other services – they are harming their whole reason for existing.

Because it appears that the branding of “+”  for their social services is now more important than their core product. Companies fail when branding becomes such a core part of their business, especially when it overshadows core business units.

There are already beginning to appear competitors to Google search that may find a large niche here if Google continues to take it eyes off the prize.

I know I will be looking for a service that acts more like the original Google than this new bastard version.