Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Powerset is a BIG fan of Amazon: BUT, does Powerset have a love hate relationship with Google?

After all, while the “semi-stealth startup” based on the technologies of others hopes to be better than Google, it also wants to be bought out by Google! Whichever comes first, then?

Way back on January 1, when the Powerset “trio of Internet entreprenuers” publicly declared their intent to “out-Google Google,” thanks to licensed ”breakthrough” technology and outsourced infrastructure, I countered: Serious competition necessitates not only “breakthrough” concepts, but serious, proprietary, in-house assets.

The Powerset goal is to “deliver better answers than any other search engine, including Google.” To achieve that, it is relying on proprietary engineering and technology resources, those of others that is: Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (PARC) and Amazon, Inc. notably.

Powerset could not exist or function without both its “licensing agreement, patent licenses and long-term colaboration agreement” with PARC and its contractual arrangement with Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute services.

Powerset on why it relies on Amazon Web Services to power its attack on Google:

In the past, the upfront capital required to build out a datacenter big enough to scour the entire Web and serve queries for millions of users was a significant barrier to seriously competing with companies like Google.

YES! That is what gives Google a competitive advantage, as I underscored yesterday in asserting that IT DOES MATTER, contrary to Nick Carr’s pronouncements. SEE: What Commodity IT? Google Buys Strategic Engineering, Wal-Mart Too

IT matters to Google, to the tune of billions of dollars in ongoing investments:

From the beginning, Google’s developers recognized that providing the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers tha often slowed under peak loads, Google employed linked PCs to quickly find each query’s answer. The inovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It’s an idea that others have since copied, while Google has continued to refine its back-end technology to make it even more efficient.

Powerset may admire Google’s data center build out, but it can’t afford to compete head on from such an infrastructure angle.

Nevertheless, while the Web world impatiently waits for Powerset to actually launch, Powerset itself may be patiently waiting for a Google buyout, as I reported last month following Powerset’s TecCrunch40 “launch.” SEE: Powerset Reveals Strategy: Sell Out to Google by 2009

ALSO: Radio Ads Stall: Google Pins Offline Advertising Hopes On TV and Facebook, the Web’s State Fair vs. LinkedIn, the Chamber of Commerce and AdWords is Safe! Facebook Flyers NO Google Killer

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Gabe Rivera trumps Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt in one big way: He acknowledges his TechMeme algorithm can’t help but be biased:

“I wish it were obvious, but there’s no such thing as an unbiased automated news site (or search engine for that matter). Automation doesn’t remove bias, it merely obscures it.”

I have said the same in debunking Google’s claims of a machine driven perfection of its SERPs. The Brin & Page PageRank legacy espouses an unattainable, supposedly hands-off supreme neutrality:

There is no human involvement or manipulation of results.

So extols the Googleplex. Nevertheless, Mountain View neglects to recognize the human foundations of its PageRank formulations.

Two particular humans originated Google’s PageRank filter aimed at “organizing the world’s information,” Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders. Contrary to Google’s lofty mission statement, however, PageRank does not absolutely insure that the “world’s information” is “universally accessible and useful.”

Why not? The PageRank concept and Google’s specific implementation result in arbitrary, pre-determined exclusions and/or low rankings of “relevant” Web pages within Google SERPs.

At its core, PageRank is fundamentally flawed. By requiring that Web pages have inbound links from third-party Web sites, the PageRank based algorithm may result in automatic exclusion of the most relevant pages for a given query simply because no other Web sites have linked to them.

Google’s PageRank = “I am linked to, therefore I am.”

Page’s and Brin’s core assumption that a Web page can not be the most “relevant” if no third-party Web site links to it is not a defensible position, philosophically or scientifically.

Google’s “sandbox” also may result in automatic exclusion of the most relevant pages for a given query. Google’s exclusionary sandbox rationale is based on arbitrary, human-derived notions of “aging.”

If Google was indeed a public service, its sandbox could theoretically be disallowed due to age discrimination.

How about the TechMeme secret sauce? Rivera does not put forth high falutin notions of infallibility or absoluteness:

I hope you find it useful, and if you have a stake in tech reporting, not too infuriating.

One thing is certain: Every 20 minutes, 100 people with a stake in tech reporting will NOT find the Techmeme Leaderboard infuriating. AND, for the not so silent majority, the next shot at Leaderbaord glory will always be  but 19 minutes away!

ALSO: YAY! InsiderChatter.com on WebbAlert: NO Google Barbarians at Microsoft Gate and Hey, Henry: Doesn’t CNET Have a Blog Network, aka ZDNet?

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Does Facebook want to be the next Google? Mark Zuckerberg already claims to run the number one people search engine.

Dave Morin, Facebook senior platform developer, is now taking a page from the infamous Matt Cutts, Google’s Webspam fighter. Just as the world’s Webmasters brace for Cutts’ pronouncements at his blog of dos and don’ts impacting Google’s almighty PageRank, the world’s Facebook App developers shuddder when Morin posts Facebook Developer dos and don’ts for the almighty Facebook Platform.

Morin’s good cop, bad cop routine for “good apps,” bad apps: We’re focused on making “a better experience for both developers and users.”

In other words, Facebook Applications will be prohibited going forward from: 1) displaying profile content that the user isn’t aware of, and 2) email functionality within notifications.

Facebook is also “shifting” how Facebook Applications interact with the directory, invitation tool and news feeds.

Morin says Facebook wants to promote “good apps,” so that “the applications that achieve the most growth and usage are the ones that are the highest quality and add the most utility to users’ lives,” regardless of the individual (mis)fortunes of Facebook Developers.

Cutts always says Google “does what we think is best to maintain the relevance of our search results, and that includes taking action” against Websites, regardless of the individual (mis)fortunes of Webmasters.

At the end of the Google day, Google rules, for the good of Google shareholders AND Facebook rules for the good of Mark Zuckerberg and company.

Want in on “free” Google and Facebook love, play by their rules.

ALSO READ: Lending Club $108 billion Market Opp ex Facebook: Goodbye Banks! EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

AND: NewsFriends? Facebook Anti Social Utility: Real Friends DON’T Share and Hey Facebook! Free Robert Scoble: Unlock Your 5000 Friend Quota

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Did you know that Google’s top three “organic” search results are perhaps the Web’s most valuable real estate? Of course you did!A new comScore-TMP local search marketing agency study concurs:

60% of searchers online looking for local businesses think that the top results are most relevant. 25% don’t want to have to scroll down.

Why, then, does Google continue to give the house away, the SERP local house, in particular?

Most Google searches for local businesses are initiated at the general search box at Google.com, despite Google’s repeated best efforts to drive users to start their local searches at Google Maps. To capitalize more on local searches performed at Google.com, Google has been inserting more of the Google Maps local search experience directly in Google.com SERPS.

Earlier in the year, Google said:

Many people come to Google.com to navigate the web, but are you aware that you can use it to navigate the real world as well? Over the past few months, we’ve been hard at work making it easier to find and compare local businesses and services right from the standard web results page.

What Google doesn’t say, however, is how it determines which three local businesses to feature as listings number one, two and three results in the Google One Box which lead its SERPs in local searches.

Not only do the Google featured local listings come before the standard PageRank algorithm derived results, they are more prominent and are likely to be perceived by searchers as guide book type Google recommendations for the local businesses.

Top placement combined with enhanced presentation means the super duper Google SERP local listings slots are highly prized by local businesses.

WHEN WILL GOOGLE CASH IN ON ITS LOCAL SEARCH GOLD MINE BY PUTTING THE LOCAL ONE BOX UP FOR AUCTION?

ALSO READ MY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: How Pegasus News Fuels Local Media Business Model for Fisher Communications

PLUS:Yahoo Travel Shortcut? Try Undercut: Search Marketers Squeezed and Microsoft Works 9 Frenzy Overblown: What ‘Free, Ad Supported’ Really Means

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

What happens at Google does NOT stay at Google, anymore.

Google may keep all the information it gathers from the world’s citizens locked away for perpetuity in its “massively scalable” banks of server farms around the world BUT it can not lock up the minds of all the rocket scientists that help lock up the world’s information, for Google.

Jason Shellen’s mind is the latest to be liberated from the Googleplex.

Shellen has been a Googler since 2003, “acquired” as part of Google’s acquisition of Pyra Labs, creators of Blogger. According to Shellen, he spent the last few years as a product manager on diverse projects, and then worked with the Google New Business Development team to “drive partnerships and explore emerging markets.”

Shellen is a Googler no more. He announces:

Despite the fun I’ve had at Google and the weird looks I’m going to get from people for turning down the free Google food, massages, excellent benefits and the like - I feel I’ve got that entrepreneurial/start-up bug deep within me and I can’t help but think about the next thing. I’m going to take a little time off while I think about what is next (hopefully while surfing and riding my bike in Santa Cruz) but I’ve decided to leave Google.

What gives?

There were times when we felt like royalty and other times when we felt like guinea pigs but all-in-all it has been an amazing ride

Shellen hopes to have an “amazing ride” going forward, for his own account.

A cherished $169 billion market cap Google competitive advantage has been what Mountain View calls “surprise.” Secrecy is the more operative term, though, and it works. By keeping the Googleplex locked down and keeping Googlers mum, Google’s blockbuster fait accompli announcements have indeed been publicly perceived as bold, winning moves: Postini, Feedburner, DoubleClick…

Google famously requires prospective Googler rocket scientists to execute highly restrictive non-disclosure agreements as a condition of the honor of being evaluated by Google. Experienced Googlers’ brains, however, are difficult to police.

Shellen may not directly “give away” any specific Google “secrets” but he, and any future comany he works for, will indirectly benefit from the Google engineering DNA he has absorbed over the years of working on the Google products he “knows and loves like Picasa, Reader and Blogger.”

Another recent Google defection brings a mind enriched by intimate knowledge of Google PageRank DNA to a Web property aiming to increase its Google SERP rankings: Vanessa Fox went to Zillow.

In Zillow Gets Google Webmaster (secrets?) I discuss how Zillow may be “Your edge in real estate, ” BUT ex Google Webmaster Fox will be Zillow’s edge in Google SEO “goodness.”

Shellen is now planning how he can best personally exploit the Googley engineering and strategy goodness that he has amassed while enjoying Google’s free lunches.

ALSO: Battelle on Facebook vs. Google: Zuckerberg is NO Brin or Page and Scott Heiferman: Who Needs Google Rocket Scientists! Meetup Engineers Rock

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The founder and CEO of Meetup is on a who needs Google mission. Specifically, what New York City software developer needs Google for a job.

To welcome NYC Meetupers Tuesday evening to the 33rd meeting of the NY Tech Meetup he organizes, Heiferman had a crew of fire engine red tee-shirt clad Meetuper staffers give why work at Google pitches!

When I first arrived at the Meetup, I mistook the Meetup HR staffers for Googler engineering recruiters! WHY? Because the “ANTI-WORKING AT GOOGLE” pitch at first 95 degree NYC weather glance recalled my evenings earlier in the year at the Google engineering hosted events held at the NYC Googleplex where “WORKING AT GOOGLE” was the angle.

Of course, pleasant evenings spent at the NYC Googleplex are a thing of the past. Google has locked down its NYC Speaker Series to any and all manner of media and press, even though Google touts its open house showcasing of Google’s best and brightest as a heartfelt effort to reach out to, and be part of, the NYC tech Community!

Silicon Alley’s own Meetup is not shy, though! Heiferman welcomes all the “hudled masses” to Meetup and to Meetups. Several hundred New Yorkers (as well as some distinguished out of town guests) hudled Tuesday in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union School of Engineering to hear the elevator pitches and see the demos of a half-dozen entrepreneurs vying for the “next big thing” honors.

Heiferman belives Meetup is already a “big thing,” reporting RSVPs to Meetups are spiraling upward:

Meetup is growing! Our goal is a Meetup Everywhere about Most Everything, and we’re on our way. We’re fast growing, SoHo based, VC-backed, and a great place for top talent to do their best work.

What’s more, Google is NOT the only trendy Internet company that can lay claim to changing the world: “Meetups make a difference in people’s lives,” affirms Heifermen, proudly.

Heiferman handed out a nine-page long (cheeky) manifesto for why “working at Meetup” is way cooler than “working at Google,” such as:

MISSION: At Google, you’re organizing the world’s information. At Meetup, you’re organizing the world’s people.

SIZE & GROWTH: The Google economy will soon usurp most developed countries, thus enabling Google to acquire less developed countries so Googlers need not holiday with non-Goolgers. At Meetup, there is room for growth, in the quarter ending March 2007, revenue grew 174% year-over-year and 33% over the last quarter.

TEAM WORK: At Google, you are in the presence of Big Thinkers, such as Googler Vint Cerf, responsible for key architecture of the Internet. In fact, every Googler is as smart as Vint Cerf, and they all would have created key architecture of the Internet. At Meetup, you’re part of–or in the presence of–NYC’s hottest tech team. They’re brilliant, and their stuff goes live.

(AND, it was Vint Cerf’s NYC Google Speaker Series presentation in May that was CLOSED OFF: No press, no blogging, no photos…NO THINKING?)

MONETIZATION: At Google, most revenue comes from advertising, so Google must satisfy advertisers. At Meetup, most revenue comes from the people who love our service, so Meetup can focus on serving people.

GREAT AMERICAN ADVISOR: At Google, former VP Al Gore is a Senior Advisor. At Meetup, former Senator Bill Bradley (and former New York Knickerbocker, HOW could you forget that Heiferman!) is a member of the Board of Directors.

Heiferman has itemized almost two dozen ways how working at Google is so yesterday, compared to working at Meetup.

WHY THEN does Meetup proudly present Google AdSense “Ads by Google” at Meetup.com?

I asked Heiferman just that. “You caught me,” Heiferman reluctantly acknowledged, while insisting Meetup’s AdSense revenues are not particularly meaningful to the the Meetup bottom line.

What else does Meetup STILL need from Google? The Heiferman friendly anti-Google treatise is a Google Doc creation, which concludes with a shameless plea for one-of-a-kind Google love:

At Meetup, we love Google, and we don’t want them to lower our PageRank because of this.

ALSO: Battelle on Facebook vs. Google: Zuckerberg is NO Brin or Page

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN