Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

“‘Y” is Steve Souders, Chief Performance Yahoo, ”jumping” to Google as of January 7? Henry Blodget wants to know! Despite dubbing himself a ”Silicon Alley Insider (SAI),” the Wall Street outsider marks the end of 2007 with a public plea for “insights” for 2008, from the public:

“From the outside, hard to see this as anything other than yet another long-term exec fleeing a sinking ship. Any insights appreciated.”

No problem, Henry (only hard for you, perhaps): Here goes. Unfortunately for your signature “Yahoo to Zero” style sensationalist headlines though, and contrary to the “outrageous conculsions” your SAI traffics in, the Souders move from Yahoo to competitor Google is undoubtedly outrageously non-dramatic.

Steve Souders, a seven year Yahoo veteran, conculdes a banner year: YSlow performance tool, “High Performance Web Sites” book, conference mainstay…most significantly, success in making performance a “prioity” at Yahoo.

What next? High performance engineers continually seek more challenging challenges. Rather than “fleeing a sinking ship,” as Blodget brandishes, Souder is seeking new waters for professional navigation. 

Souder is far from abandonning Yahoo, he leaves the company with his performance mission accomplished and a Yahoo performance team ready and able to carry on the performance roadmap Souder set underway for Yahoo in 2008.

Why NOT move to Google now? Souder changed the Yahoo developer culture to one that is perfomance-centric. For his own personal development, however, Souder will grow more by being at Google now, a company which has long differentiated itself by performance.

Souders is curious, in particular, about how Google achieves proprietary competitive performance advantage, especially via its “hardware topology.”

Why does Google want Souders? It is unlikely that Souders will unveil anything not allready in the public domain that can speed up Google.com even more.

Google is keen on Souders accomplishing his next performance objectives under the Google banner, especially given that Souders’ next big performance challenges complement the Google development roadmap.

If Souders had remained a Yahoo!, he would be tackling two big speed challenges in 2008: ad serving and mobile. What good timing for Google, given its DoubleClick and Android investments!

Souders has already made a comittment to “improve the performance of ads” because he deems ad serving to be “the slowest part” of a users’ Web experience. Souders wants to make sure “people don’t hate ads.”

How about mobile? How about “YSlow for mobile”? Souders believes the performance field is but at “the tip of the iceberg” and is keen on evangelizing faster mobile performance.

In 2008, Souders will have ample opportunity to make the world better for ad serving and mobile surfing, thank’s to Google’s (soon to be?) DoubleClick and Android.

Google, itself, however, has some some big challenges of its own coming up. SEE: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008

Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and
2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! 

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Who needs Aristotle, Socrates, Plato…when Google offers “Our Philosophy.”  Heck, who needs Moses’ Ten Commandments, as Jeff Jarvis continues his ludicrous public cry to join him in worshipping God Google, really.

Google concurs: “To fully understand Google, it’s helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet.” 

On the eve of the New Year, when learned men and women generally reflect on how, as individuals, we can help make the world a better place, Jeff Buzz Machine Jarvis doubles down on his inane campaign to negate thousands of years of spiritual yearning with an ode to a ruthless, $200 billion market cap corporation with the unholy mission of obtaining and controlling all the “information” in the world as its own private, for-profit property, aka Google.

What is REALLY scary, is that Jarvis is undoubtedly evangelizing his personal, one-corporation G worship to the nation’s future journalists as an instructor at the City University of New York, and MY tax dollars are helping fund the irrational, and dangerous, Google exuberance!

How IS Google God? Google has encapsulated all its Googley “ways” in a “Ten Things Google has found to be true” handy cheat sheet.

I repost them below (in italics), along with my Insider Chatter translation (in bold) of how Google is REALLY redefining how individuals, businesses and technologists are impacted by the Internet, Google’s Internet.

1) “Focus on the user and all else will follow”

There is NO escape: We follow the user all over the World Wide Web, and into the cloud.

2) “It’s best to do one thing really, really well”

It’s better to do dozens of things ad hoc, keeping our Googley fingers crossed that some will work out OK.

3) “Fast is better than slow”

We control YOUR data: Caching content owned by everyone else within Google’s server farms keeps US in control.

4) “Democracy on the Web works.”

Here’s the (Back)Rub: Google Democracy is for sale to the highest, non-transparent bidder.

5) “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer”

We know where you live, work, play…what you think, dream…

6) “You can make money without doing evil”

A little evil is good for the bottom line, a lot of evil makes us GOD.

7) “There’s always more information out there.”

Resistance is futile, we WILL control the world’s information, all of it.

8) “The need for information crosses all borders.”

Who needs the United Nations! YouTube is the only electorate that matters.

9) “You can be serious without a suit”

It won’t be any fun to watch GOOG on the way down, but there is always the free lunch.

10) “Great just isn’t good enough”

Thanks to our Fuzzy Logic, Google is always great! Just Google-It, or ask Jeff Jarvis!

Jarvis’s new found G religion apparently worships dominant corporate market share which crushes all competition, oversized corprorate profit margins garnered at the expense of millions of businesses worldwide and defacto corporate control of the World Wide Web.

Fortunately for the sane Internet world, however, Jarvis’ spiritually misguided G yearnings may soon haunt him. While Jarvis revels in rattling off Google’s mighty corporate dominance stats, keen Wall Street analysts have a keen eye on the one-trick, rich pony that is GOOG.

YouTube may hope to move the elections, but it is NOT moving GOOG. Tech bloggers may swoon over Google Apps, but corporations are shunning it. Google Checkout may succeed in garnering free PR media puff pieces, but Google can’t buy its way to success…

Google Gears, Open Social, Android…so little, so late.

BUT, the biggest, baddest Google problem of all is the GOOG cash machine itself, Google.com. Read all about it in: Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia 

ALSO: 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
Google Ignores Hanukkah, Again: Festival of Lights Dark on Homepage and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! 

ALSO: Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

“Become a knowledge management ninja with Google Reader”? 

If 2007 was the year of Facebook’s “social graph,” Google hopes 2008 will be the year of Google Social. From Open Social, to Google “shared stuff,” to Google Reader “sharing,” Google hopes it can simply “share” its Googley way to Facebook extinction.

I have often underscored, however, that sharing Web 2.0 social media style is NOT really caring.

SEE: NewsFriends? Facebook Anti Social Utility: Real Friends DON’T Share and  YAY? Weblo Cheapens Facebook ‘Friendship,’ Whales Rejoice! and Twitter and Facebook: The BIG Illusions of Friendship and Influence

After all, Old Chinese proverb says: “You can hardly make a friend in a year, but you can easily offend one in an hour,” i.e. Facebook Beacon and Google Reader “sharing.”

Nevertheless, Steve Micro Persuasion Rubel wants more sharing in 2008, especially the Google kind:

Be a ninja in 08. Go forward and good luck.  have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I’ve tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it’s the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

Rubel’s buzzwords dazzle, but where is the real knowledge that he claims to be managing?

I encourage you to throw as many feeds as you can at the Google Reader just so you can capture and mine it. This should include relevant feeds that you never have any intention of reading or even scanning.

Sound familiar? Facebook whales “throw” up to 5000 “friends” around, with never any intention of ever being their friends.

Rubel nevertheless believes his own custom searchable database makes him a knowledge “ninja”:

With the recent addition of search, the Google Reader becomes much more. Like Gmail, Reader should be viewed as a database that you can build from scratch and continually hone.

The end game? Rubel can do his own search for all mentions of employer Edelman’s client Microsoft’s Xbox in Techmeme!

YAY? For Google! Google is the one becoming the knowledge ninja, all knowledgeable of Steve Rubel’s every personal and professional interest and need.

The end of the year privacy brouhahas over Google Reader “sharing” and Facebook Beacon were but charades, feel-good “outrage” with no meaningful privacy effect.

What privacy transgressions were Facebook and Google accused of? The enabling of “sharing” of users’ information with users’ own social graph. The real privacy danger of Google and Facebook continues to be ignored by users, however, as I often underscore here at Insider Chatter.

SEE: Google Reader: Naughty or Nice? Santa Safe! and
YES! Facebook IS Scarier Than Google! and
Facebook is ‘Sorry’? Savvy Users Will Forget, NOT Forgive, Mark Zuckerberg and
Beacon Privacy Solution: STOP USING FACEBOOK! and
Dear Facebook, Beacon Tracking STILL Evil: Will Zuckerberg Partners Repent?

Why have I deemed facebook to be scarier than Google? Each Facebook user knowingly and willingly provides an interested corporation with the intimate details of their daily personal and professional lives to enable persistent data records for the unique data mining profit advantage of the corporation. Because Facebook as “Big Brother” is consensual, there is no redress.

Google has now tied Facebook for scary honors, however, due to how it profits from users’ personal genetic materials obtained by Google under false pretenses via GOOG 411. SEE: Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers

Bottom 2008 line? Use Google and Facebook accounts at your own risk.

ALSO: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Good riddance Netscape? Blogosphere reaction to AOL’s announcement of the end of the line for its Netscape Browser ranges from fond nostalgia to intense disdain. Lost in the Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Netscape debate, however, is the still browserless Google!

GBrowser anyone? Not according to Googler in Chief Eric Schmidt and friends. BUT WHY NOT?

It is the Google mission to “organize the world’s information,” all of it, in Google’s cloud, a very BIG cloud. The Schmidt holiday wish: 90 percent of all computing shall reside in the cloud, a Google branded one. After all, if Google succeeds in shifting the world’s computing from the PC to the cloud, it will be a “real improvement for people’s lives” because (Microsoft powered) computers are complex and unreliable, so preaches Schmidt.

The very same computers that Google disses, however, power Google’s cloud computing!

Upon Google’s announcement of its purported Microsoft killing Gear’s in May, I was the lone voice underscoring Google’s love hate relationship with the (Microsoft) desktop. I asked, does it gall CEO Schmidt to have to “Microsoft-enable” Google products? OR, does he get personal satisfaction in “using” Microsoft to achieve his Microsoft domination end-game?

“Because the Web is Google’s platform, we are interested in improving it as much as we can,” so declared Bret Taylor, Google Gears evangelist, of the planned “browser extension for creating offline Web applications.” For a user to access ”Google’s platform,” however, he or she generally arrives via Microsoft, desktop and browser.

Schmidt on Gears:

With Google Gears we’re tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud.

The Google platform is dependent upon its biggest competitor’s ”browser,” aka Microsoft Internet Explorer, big time.

MORE: There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Google wants to change ALL the Microsoft software rules. BUT, are enterprises really “crazy to buy packaged software,” as the Googler in Chief ridicules?

Microsoft ridicules “Google’s optimism as wishful thinking,” and so do enterprises themselves, as I have been chronicling, reporting and analyzing from the field since I heard Michael Lock, Director of North American Sales for Google Enterprise, declare “Death to the (Microsoft folder) hierarchy,” one year ago at the Googleplex in New York City, when I broke the news of a scheduled Q1 2007 launch of Google Apps for the Enterprise.

Given the “explosion” of unstructured data in the enterprise, “old methods of information management don’t work,” Lock asserted. Google Enterprise Solutions makes organizational life as “fast and effective” as a personal search at Google.com, he underscored.

“Google is a different kind of technology company, we build technology products that people love, not that they have to use,” Lock concluded.

Google love belongs in the enterprise is the Google Apps Premiere pitch that I have heard first hand from Google execs multiple times since in NYC:  Kevin Gough at the Enterprise Search Summit in May, Matthew Glotzbach at Interop in October and Michael Lock once again at the Googleplex in June.

One year ago, I asked Lock for a projection of when Google will succeed in bringing the “Death to the hierarchy” he heralded. Lock told me that forward thinking enterprises are moving away from hierarchical data organization, but no specific date for an absolute demise of the “hierarchy” was provided.

Nonetheless in his return visit to the NYC Googleplex eight months later, Lock said in the affirmative: “Hierarchies are dead.” “Data has changed and it doesn’t come in columns and rows,” Lock assured.

REALLY? I asked Gough in May, “Why can’t Google make any serious money in Enterprise Search?” Just as he did not have a convincing answer, Google does not have a winning Enterprise case. In fact, not only is the much ballyhooed Googley consumerization of the enterprise NOT happening, corporate decision makers are wondering if Google Enterprise is a joke!

While the two-day enterprise event Gough presented to in May was touted to IT managers as the place to be for “learning strategies and building the skill sets you need to make your organization’s content not only searchable and findable,” consumer search king Google was not the talk, but the joke, of the Enterprise town. Keynote expert insights and blustery IT consultant pitches made Google a target of enterprise derision, an unusual position for “everyone’s favorite garage band” to be in.

From a pointed “I don’t want to be lucky in enterprise search” allusion to the “silly” consumer facing “I’m feeling lucky” button at Google.com, to a Googzilla pastiche of Google’s Sergey & Larry founding duo, Google Enterprise was not accorded the hero’s welcome Google’s YouTube has become accustomed to.

The Google Enterprise keynote was a joke at Interop just two months ago, which even conference producer Lenny Heymann admonished Glotzbach for, on stage, as I recount in Interop: Citrix XenSource Flys as Google Crashes.

The “inspirational” Google Enterprise concluding Glotzbach keynote message: A YouTube worthy home video “clip” of his infant “tech savvy” girl playing with the iPhone, while dissing (Microsoft) smartphones!

Google may be laughing at Microsoft, but the Enterprise is laughing at Google. MORE on why TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business:

Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer

Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway

Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines!

IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat 

ALSO: Google Has Insomnia: Mrs. Manber Beats 21,300,017 SERP and AdWords! and Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

YAY Google? Once again, $200 billion plus market cap Google envelopes its mission to gain cost-free access to and control of ALL the world’s information at Google.com–so it may sell high-priced, high margin ads against it–as a benevolent, altruistic effort to make the world a better place.

Google’s latest shrewd GOOG-centric maneuver has Senator Lieberman introducing a bill to amend the E-Government Act of 2002 seeking to reauthorize appropriations, and for other purposes.

The public facing PR arm of the high-powered Google Washington DC lobby machine–aka Google Public Policy Blog–waxes poetic about how it is “working to make publicly available government information more accessible to the public” and commends Lieberman’s Senate efforts to “help make government more searchable.”

While hailing the need for U.S. government transparency, however, Google itself is not engaging in political transparency.

Google does not disclose that its lobbying of elected U.S. government officials to require federal agencies to configure U.S. taxpayer financed systems to the optimal advantage of for-profit corporation Google may result in U.S. taxpayers funding the market growth of Google, to the advantage of the massive corporation’s shareholders.

Google is doing all in its power to ensure that the U.S. government conducts government by Google rules, underscoring that the bill requires federal agencies to ensure their compliance with Google-centric “best practices” for optimal Web “crawling” and directs the Office of Management and Budget to report anually to Congress on agencies’ progress in making U.S. Governement Websites Google-friendly.

In other Google words, Google aims to make sure that U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill to make Google.com the world’s one and only go-to destination for accessing their own information–and thereby make AdWords even more expensive for advertisers and even more profitable for Google.

What’s more, the Googleplex triumperate–Schmidt, Brin & Page–will hold the U.S. Government to the fire, on behalf of GOOG shareholders.

MORE ON GOOGLE U.S. GOVERNMENT RULES: The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google AND
Google CEO Schmidt: Anti-Microsoft Lawyers Good, Viacom Lawyer in Chief Bad AND
Google to World: AdWords Need Political Freedom AND
Google on Government, Schools: Google Search to the Rescue AND
Google Masters Art of Influence Peddling AND
Cisco to Google: Get Real! AND
Eric Schmidt: Google Cures What Ails the World AND
How Google Library Displaces Librarians

ALSO: Google’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: AdWords Inflation

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN