Google Chrome Changes the Game: The Browser as Platform

Google announced their new browser named “Chrome” today. Check out the blog post and, better yet, the Google Chrome comic book.

The platform wars just moved from the OS to the browser and Google took a commanding lead.

Rather than re-write everything, allow me the luxury of re-purposing my Tweets:

• Chrome is all open source. They have made the world their R&D department. Brilliant.
• Chrome just increased the importance of Javascript dramatically. They launched a platform where Javascript is the dominant language.
• Google just moved the development platform to the browser. The OS just took a backseat
• If MS was afraid that Google had them in the Search Engine Market, they should be shitting themselves about now about the browser market.
• Chrome will set the bar for what people will expect in a web browser.
• Google didn’t have to reinvent the OS; they just had to build the best browser that could run on any OS.
• Automated testing against google’s vast index of web pages is a stroke of brilliance for stability testing a browser.
• Chrome should solve the biggest annoyance I have with my browser: better memory management so I don’t have to restart my broswer 3X daily.
• Chrome is privacy-oriented. That’s a good thing.
• The name is very toungue-in-cheek: chome is a refernece to the UI for an application, Google wants Chrome to be the UI for the user’s web experience.
• This is the biggest architectural leap in computing in a long time.

Google has just moved to the forefront of the Browser wars and will force the competition to keep up. They have the brand recognition, industry leverage and exposure to get their browser installed in a LOT of computers.

Oh–an it’s also built on the same engine that the Android mobile browser will run on.

Mark my words: Google just changed the game on the web. Chrome is the lever they use to move the world.

Is Twitter a Better Search Engine than Google?

I have had a flurry of thoughts since posted my blog “My New Distributed Brain.”

The result of that epiphany is this: that Twitter has the potential to be a better search engine than Google.

“But,” you say, “Twitter is a microblog? How can it beat Google at search?”

Are you on Twitter?

Try this out: the next time you have a question, post it to Twitter instead of doing a search on Google.

Did you get an answer? Was it The Right Answer?

This doesn’t work everytime–at least not yet. But it works often enough that I use this approach to answer a lot of questions on a daily basis.

It works well enough that I notice a lot of other people that I follow are using it to ask questions–and get answers. (Twitter founder Biz Stone, Jason Calacanis and Chris Pirillo come to mind.)

It works often enough that Google and the other search engines would be well advised to take notice.

Querying Twitter does not always work right now but Twitter is growing fast.

With it’s open and flexible APIs, people are finding more and more ways to use the Twitter platform in new and innovative manners.

Twitter is a great platform to tap the collective intelligence and channel it into enhancing–even transcending the search engine as we know it. It’s not AI, it’s all “I” (real human Intelligence).

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft–watch out!

Why Twitter?

Why Twitter?

Could another messaging / microblogging platform beat Twitter at this game?

Possibly–but Twitter has several advantages at this point:

• Large user base. Twitter has 1 million users and it’s growing 800% annually.
• It seems to have a user base that skews towards openness and community. Good, good.
• Following is open by default; following does not require consensus by both parties; one person can choose to follow another in an non-symmetrical relationship; this makes it easy for people to build a list of people they want to hear from, easy for people to build a following.
• The “Track” feature allows you to track words of interest to you: this is critical.
• SMS integration. Can send and receive tweets via SMS. Perfect for mobile search.

Would people really have time to answer all these questions? Don’t worry, as Clay Shirkey points out: We Have the Time! (Part 2)

Scenario: A Major Search Engine Acquires Twitter

Once this meme catches on, I see a very high potential for this scenario to unravel:

• One of the major search engines moves rapidly to acquire Twitter.
• The search engine uses the Twitter API to post some queries as tweets.
• People start to answer the search engine tweets; they do it for many reasons: ego, community, interest in the topic, self promotion–the reasons are many.
• The search engine uses Ajax to put twitter responses on the results page in real time, augmenting their algorithmic search results. (Thanks for pointing this out, Arthur!)
• The search engine becomes the #1 search engine AND the biggest social network on the planet, dwarfing the Google of today.

There is a whole lot more the Search Engine could do to optimize the process; this is an idea in it’s infancy. Options to increase performance include: caching results of previous similar tweets, using the tweets as another source of signals for standard search results, build and integrate a reputation system so that tweeters are ranked by their accrued trust and accurate ratings (this would help to prevent spam from cropping up in tweet results). And more. A lot more.

I have done a search (on Google) and I have not found a similar system proposed. Hmmm.

I did however, get an answer on a similar system when I tweeted about this idea. (See! See what I mean!)

@tewson pointed out that ChaCha is a search engine that can take queries from users via the web, voice and SMS and a real person compiles an SMS response, but this is no where near as powerful as querying the masses.

Sergei, Larry, if you guys are reading this, follow me on Twitter: @jfxberns. We should talk.

2008.06.18 Update:

@celerachan pointed out this blog on SheGeeks by Alana Taylor that, basically, reaches the same conclusion: She Geeks In Tech – Stop Using Search Engines, Start Twittering

Blogging Until You Drop

The NY Times has an interesting article on people who are blogging for a living and the 24/7 lifestyle that driven bloggers have adopted.

Photo by Aaron Jacobs

Some blog-for-money folks do it to make some spare cash, some in the hopes of becoming a blog star and the riches that fame (or a book deal) can bring, some do it well… just because it’s kind of a rush to know that people all over the world are reading what you write.

My Blog Gets a Long-Overdue Upgrade

After almost 3 years, my blog has finally undergone a major renovation

• A new theme (4u)
• Upgrade WordPress 2.0.x to 2.5.x
• A few new modules and upgrades to old ones
• Some re-edits of old entries
• Streamlined categorization

It’s still a work in progress.

CNN Fires Blogger

Funny, for an industry that thrives on freedom of expression, they can be rather harsh censors of their own people.

Chez Pazienza was fired from her job at CNN for blogging about her job at CNN.

While I understand that a company has to protect it’s proprietary secrets and shareholder value, somehow news companies seem like they should rise above the rest in protections for freedom of expression.

The firing of Chez Pazienza for blogging just gives credence to her criticism of CNN as a company that has lost touch with the core values of the news media that made Murrow and others of his generation respected giants of American culture.

It seems CNN’s effusive support of blogs, bloggers and blogging (not to mention freedom of expression) is somewhat of a superficial show of face and not a real core value.

Sphere.com: Blog Search that Works

I get some of my best information from blogs. When you have thousands and thousands of brilliant minds blogging their ideas for all to share it’s an amazing thing: great information happens. Unfortunately, a lot of crap happens too.

I have tried to use blog search engines like Technorati and IceRocket, but to be quite honest, the results I got back were not at all useful.

Recently tested the beta of a new blog search engine called Sphere. My opinion of blog search engines has changed.

My Test

I am in the online travel business, I build travel web sites. I am always interested in travel industry news and affiliate marketing tips. Unfortunately, the terms for the searches in this area tend towards a lot of spam blogs. “Book your vacation on Travelocity here!” “Super-Easy Affiliate Marketing Tips to Make You Rich Overnight!”

Luckily, these are also good terms to use to see if a search engine is doing a good job seperating the wheat from the chaff. So I used the terms “Travelocity” and “Affiliate Marketing” and searched each phrase on Sphere.com, Technorati and IceRocket.

Comparing Results: Search Term “Travelocity”

Sphere.com
Out of the top 10 results, 4 were good articles, 2 were inane personal musings, 2 were on a site that appeared to slap up travel-related stories to get traffic and 2 were obviously a travel splog (spam blog). Verdict: 4 worthwhile links.

Technorati
Of the top 10 results, one was a good article, one was just a link to a good article, two were personal musings, 4 were splogs and 2 were in Chinese or Japanese. Verdict: one worthwhile link.

IceRocket
Of the top 10 results, one was just a link to a good article, two were personal musings, 7were splogs. Verdict: nothing worthwhile.

Comparing Results: Search Term “Affiliate Marketing”

Sphere.com
Out of the top 10 results, 4 were good articles, 2 were rather cheesey articles, 2 were RSS splogs and 2 were affiliate marketing get-rich schemes. Verdict: 4 worthwhile links.

Technorati
Of the top 10 results, one was a good article, the rest were get rich schemes and other splog. Verdict: one worthwhile link.

IceRocket
Of the top 10 results there was nothing but splogs and get rich schemes. Verdict: nothing worthwhile.

One Feature That Should Be Ubiquitous

IceRocket has a nice “Exclude” feature that the other sites would do well to emulate. Unfortunately it’s wasted on IceRocket; there is too much junk returned to make it worth the effort to weed out the bad results.

Conclusion

Sphere is the first blog search engine that comes close to having enough relevant results to make a blog search useful. Technorati and IceRocket both do a terrible job of determining relevance and, unless they make some major changes quickly, run the risk of becoming irrelevant themselves.

Postings at My Travel Blog

It’s been a while since I have posted to this blog. Since I have been outside the USA I have been posting more on my travel blog. But that’s not saying a lot either…