We, as a species, kinda stumbled into this Internet thing. It’s all an inconceivably vast, unregulated, unhindered, unorganized cornucopia of digitized crap, and in order to deal with the fact that humans defecate in digital, we’ve had to invent stuff like Google to help us sift through all the … you get the point.

The way that we’ve evolved in our mode of seeking information has always been a function of the medium that holds what we’re looking for. Books added indexes, articles added abstracts, and libraries added compilations of indexed abstracts. Categorizable volumes fell prey to the formidable Dewey decimal, the granularity of taxonomy thought un-improvable. But Von Neuman screwd’em, and abstract data types, bubble sorts, relational DBs, non-relational DBs and relevancy algorithms took over the world (rich white men are so passé). [Read more...]

There was a time when I was a Linux fanboy – dual booting with LILO to a plethora of software options in Windowz, and a plethora of … ummm, different ways to maintain my computer, in Linux. By virtue of my attempts (failed later in life, thankfully) to become a pure geek, I acquired the essential, if adolescent, hatred of all things Microsoft. It was for the right reasons at the time, namely, my genius coder friend swore up and down that M$ couldn’t write a decent compiler (do you see the life from which I narrowly escaped, do you see?). [Read more...]

In researching (ha, if you can call it that, and I juuuuust did) my latest post, The Problems with Marketing Search, I had a conversation with an old friend of mine who happens to match up pretty well with the profile I consider important to Microsoft right now.

The Bing initiative needs the younger, tech-savvy crowd to accept Bing, embrace it, and most importantly, recommend it via word of mouth, if MS hopes to compete with Google in search. At the end of that post I reference the conversation with the target demographic rep, who we’ll call Non-SE-guy. He’s a PhD candidate in Chemistry at the University of Waterloo, quite web savvy, the kind of guy people go to when they need help using a computer, or finding something online, but has never worked in the search industry, and even though he knows me, has likely never considered it much of an industry at all.

This is that conversation – if you work for Bing you should read this as if your very job depended upon it. If you work anywhere else, what time is it? Stop reading this junk and go back to work! I just thought it was interesting to see some perspective on search related things without the smudge of the industry all over my lens.

(authors note: proper use of language, grammar and punctuation had, prior to this conversation, been sacrificed to the gods of speed, efficiency and apathy, proportionately in that order.) [Read more...]

With Google’s personalized search feature bringing a lawsuit to the ‘Plex earlier this month, it begs the question, ummm what Google personalized search? It’s like the old ABC commercials, I can’t see the difference…

Back in early 2007 there were so many boatloads full of buzz about Google integrating more ‘personalized’ results into the index, switching on a feature they called ‘Google Search History’ by default for many searchers. [Read more...]

UPDATE – When I woke up this morning, after having published this post … ummm, really early this morning, Webmasterworld had to say this, quoting somebody else:

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

So everything else in this post is now moot… or… maybe waaay more important. You decide (I’m too tired).

Back to your original post:

Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Microsoft has released a new search engine. A year from now, will either of these facts affect your day to day life? The North American search market has had a pair of hands gripped firmly around its gullet ever since Google rose to prominence in the first half of the shiny new, hard to pronounce dates from, decade.

With its hundred million dollar marketing budget, one of the richest companies in the world backing it, and billions of dollars of revenue at stake, is Bing the start of an industry segmentation, of some actual diversity in the search landscape? Meh prolly not, but what do I know? Not much! That’s why I put together a horrifically flawed survey to get to the bottom of the truth barrel! [Read more...]