Tag: search

Photo by Joe WilcoxApr 8, 202410:12 pm

Circle to Search THIS

I ignored today’s solar eclipse, which was nowhere near totality here in San Diego. Had we moved home to Maine as planned last year, well my interest would be—sincerely, ignore the pun—astronomical. While local and national news honed on Houlton, my hometown Caribou was in the path of totality.

That topic dispatched, let’s move on to the Featured Image. Late afternoon, I discovered a bug behind the bathroom door. Black color and white striations suggested spider; any eight-legger gets a free pass in this household; spiders aren’t pests, they’re pest control.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 16, 20249:32 pm

What the Devil?

Neither Bing nor Google search could identify the symbol in the Featured Image. ChatGPT-powered Microsoft Copilot came up with nothing, too. So much for the intelligence portion of AI.

Continuing the investigation, I stuck with Copilot, wondering if perhaps a crop that included phone number and symbol would identify something. Part of the response: “If you can provide the complete number or more context, I might be able to assist you further”. So I sent the entire photo with text “more context as required”.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 27, 20172:00 pm

Europe’s Anti-Google Ruling Stifles Competition

Today the European Union gave Apple a great gift to celebrate iPhone’s 10th anniversary (on June 29th): The ridiculous, record $2.7 billion fine, and associated sanctions, against Google that once again demonstrates the EU’s small-minded oversight that wrongly regulates evolving technologies in a big world. The adverse antitrust ruling finds that the online titan favored its own online shopping services (and paying customers) over rivals.

In February 2010, with the EU Competition Commission’s preliminary investigation starting, I rightly called “Google a dangerous monopoly“. Seven years later, the competitive landscape has dramatically changed, and rapidly evolves. The Commission’s action is too much, too late, and in the short-term can only benefit rivals like Apple that will dominate online activities and commerce as what we knew as traditional web search becomes something else.

Apple by Joe WilcoxMay 24, 20163:30 pm

Tim Cook’s Last Stand

Washington Post reporter Hayley Tsukayama asks, following up on a commentary by software developer Marco Arment: “Is Apple really at the risk of becoming BlackBerry?“. The answer is absolutely “No”. But the concept is right. The fruit-logo company’s dire straight is much more profoundly catastrophic. The risk is becoming Nokia, and the path to that destination is already well-trodden.

Marco calls BlackBerry “king of smartphones”, referring to its market position before Apple released iPhone nine years ago in June. The description is apt enough. “BlackBerry’s success came to an end not because RIM started releasing worse smartphones, but because the new job of the smartphone shifted almost entirely outside of their capabilities, and it was too late to catch up”, he asserts. But smartphones were a niche category in 2007, so insignificant that analyst firms lumped the devices together with PDAs. iPhone’s disruption was far, far greater—Nokia lost its perennial global handset lead; for many of the reasons Marco identifies. Nokia, and not BlackBerry, is the metaphor, and it is frighteningly foreshadowing.

Mobility by Joe WilcoxMay 18, 20165:14 pm

Google Gets Context, Sours Apple

Depending on the day, Apple or Alphabet is the world’s most valuable company as measured by market cap, and both manage the two dominant computing platforms used anywhere: iOS/OS X and Android/Chrome OS, respectively. As I write, Alphabet-subsidiary Google holds its annual developer conference. Apple’s event starts June 13.

During the opening keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai frames the conference and the company’s direction by rightly focusing on two fundamentally future-forward concepts: Voice and context. Google gets what Apple likely won’t present to its developers, and we’ll know next month. But based on product priority to date, the fruit-logo company is unlikely to match its rival’s commitment to the next user interface.

Mobility by Joe WilcoxApr 21, 20169:44 pm

European Trustbusters fight the Android Army’s Advances

Once again, as it has done in the past, Google makes the classic monopolist defense for its competitive—or anticompetitive, depending on perspective—behavior with respect to Android. Yesterday, the European Union’s Competition Commission formerly charged Alphabet and its major subsidiary, which has 12 weeks to provide satisfactory legal response before the Commission issues corrective sanctions.

Simply stated, the EC finds that the company abused its dominant position, in part by contracts compelling Android licensees to preload Google apps and related services, including search. Microsoft ran into similar bundling headaches starting in the late 1990s with respect to Windows. Responding, Kent Walker, Google general counsel, claims that licensees and consumers can choose to install third-party apps. Microsoft made like-claims during its antitrust defense here and in Europe; they fell flat.

Google by Joe WilcoxSep 16, 20152:30 am

Google’s European Problem

Three weeks ago, Google filed its expected rebuttal to the European Competition Commission’s statement of objections released in April 2015. The EC alleges unfair competition in online shopping services.

My missive focuses less on the “what it is” and more on the “what does it mean”. Google blogged about the filing, but I haven’t yet seen the document. I choose not to source the blog, which is more about public relations. You can read the post by Kent Walker, general counsel, for yourself or the recap somewhere else. A Google blog recapping the filing is secondary to the legal document.

Google by Joe WilcoxSep 3, 201512:01 am

What is the Google Free Economy?

Today I posted the third installment of my investigative news analysis series “What Does the ‘Google Free Economy’ Cost You?”, which is being crowdfunded through Byline: “Obituary for the Fourth Estate, Part 1“. The headline derives from a subhead in the first story, which I share here, below the fold.

During the editing, I nearly broke up Part 1 in two to make a third. The first of the pair recaps how the Google Free Economy illuminated a path for new media companies as the Fourth Estate lost its way. Part 2 will look at the rise of social media and how it has fundamentally shifted authority from a small number of editors and reporters to the audience of news consumers. The initial concepts build from my groundbreaking, but largely ignored, June 2009 analysis “Iran and the Internet Democracy“.

Google by Joe WilcoxAug 11, 20151:49 pm

What Google gets from Alphabet

I predict that the innovation of the year will go, not to a tech product, but to Google’s creation of a new company: Alphabet. The search and information giant that disrupts so many other companies on and off the Internet essentially disrupts itself. By doing so—divesting the core, established business from future research and inventions—cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin unshackle weights dragging growth.

To recap: Page announced the dramatic change after the market closed yesterday. Google becomes secondary to Alphabet, which will hold a collection of related entities. Page hands over Google chief executive reigns to Sundar Pichai, while becoming CEO of the new entity. Brin is president. Can we call him letterhead instead of figurehead? 🙂

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 11, 201512:30 am

Siri Says: ‘Google is Big Brother’

I have some advice for the European Union Competition Commission: Lay off. You don’t need to reign in the Google monopoly. Apple will correct the market around search and mobile. That’s one of two related takeaways from Monday’s WWDC 2015 keynote. iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan up Apple’s push into search and proactively-delivered information in big ways. That is if delivery is as good as the company promises.

The other takeaway harkens back to what I told you last week about Tim Cook’s piracy rant against unnamed Facebook and Google alongside the friggin U.S. government—plural if thinking beyond the Feds: It’s BS marketing. Apple prepares a major competitive assault against Big G, hitting where damage can be severe: Perception and profits. I cannot overstate Google’s vulnerability, which ironically is where the search and information giant exploited Microsoft during this Century.

News Media by Joe WilcoxMay 17, 20156:10 pm

Responsible Reporting Section 1 ‘News in Context’: Chapters V and VI

The fourth installment in the serialization of my ebook Responsible Reporting: Field Guide for Bloggers, Journalists, and Other Online News Gatherers continues the assault on Google, which provides a necessary utility that benefits all news organizations; they sacrifice content and revenue for the privilege.

Last week, Chapters 3 and 4 focused on the broken advertising-driven model in context of Google’s greater ambitions. The previous two, and the Foreward, explain what changed since 2006 and why the Fourth Estate is in crisis.

News Media by Joe WilcoxMay 10, 20152:30 pm

Responsible Reporting Section 1 ‘News in Context’: Chapters III and IV

One thing has changed in the 13 months since the following book excerpt was written: Google loosened some of its services and software cross-integration, presumably in response to antitrust problems in Europe. The company is in the process of divesting some Google+ assets, for example. But in other respects, integration is tight as ever, particularly around mobile, which in 2015 dominates U.S. Google search—and nine other countries, including Japan.

That introduction is important context for reading today’s serialization of my ebook Responsible Reporting: Field Guide for Bloggers, Journalists, and Other Online News Gatherers. The third and fourth chapters carry forward an incredibly important, but often misunderstood, theme: The Google economy’s devastating impact on news gathering, and eroding ethical standards around it. I am not anti-Google, being myself a huge consumer of the company’s services. Nevertheless, criticism stands.