Amazon is smarter than Google

An Interesting article from Yeald.com ...

The principle to sales and support success on the Internet is easy; the more relevant a company’s offer is to the receiver, the higher is the acceptance of the offer.

It’s that easy, in principle.

In practice, things look a lot different. Only a handful of companies have managed to create a successful personalization of their engagement with customers. Amazon personal recommendations and individual composition of the ecommerce site remain the classic example.

Not many other personalization efforts are touted.

Take a look at Google web search personalization effort, and you‘ll likely be disappointed. Event though Google is full of mathematical brains and technical resources, the current status of its personalized search function is way below my expectations.

How come it’s so difficult to build a decent personalized user treatment?

Why does Amazon succeed where Google fails so far?

One of the main reasons is the fact that Amazon understands a user better than Google does. Both companies track user behavior and would be able to track even more behavior than they do today. The user behavior is tracked as very basic, raw data.

What do these basic user behavior data mean?

This is where Amazon is smarter than Google. Amazon has managed to create a layer of meaning to lay over the basic user behavior data. Amazon knows that a purchase relates to a book, a DVD or a CD. Amazon knows that certain CDs have the same sort of music style. Amazon can combine user behavior across product categories and see if there are correlations.

Fundamentally, Google should be able to build a lot more understanding of a user.

In practice, this would require that Google would create a layer of meaning over all user behavior data. But since Google is dealing with a huge and extremely diverse knowledge universe, how could it build a framework that can structure the meaning of 8 billion web pages.

A possible solution is the semantic web. However, so far there are hardly any results known that can live up to a promise of even a basic understanding of the information universe.

The potential of Google’s knowledge is enormous. The company is an advertising machine. And if Google can manage to understand its users, it would certainly find a way to turn this understanding into advertising money.

But this will only work once Google understands the Internet's information universe.

Until then, Amazon remains smarter than Google.

The bad old days …

It was like visiting the remains of old civilizations … like walking midst the debris of Harappa … like kneeling down before the grave of your favorite person … like watching a sad classic … like thinking about your past love in one rainy evening … Well… I was browsing about the dotcoms that failed during the dotcom bust …

The reason I did that was a selfish one – to hunt for a good idea that was poorly executed … But I gradually got into the mood of visiting a lost civilization … I could visualize the energy, enthusiasm and dreams with which the entrepreneurs started their dotcom … The pain they went through when the reality struck straight in their spine …

I was reading articles that described in detail about the day when the decision to dissolve the company was made … Even visionaries like Paul Allen didn’t escape … Almost everyone said that their dreams collapsed just because of their inability to raise capital …

mmm… Its no different from a woman going through abortion … I should keep this in mind while executing my dreams, either for Amazon or for myself …

Note: Guys … If anyone of you is writing blog, send the link to me … I am looking for blogs and I would list the link in my blog …

Phone is a Phone is a Phone

Mobile phone is seen as the most attractive platform for the next generation utilities. Camera, FM radio, Movie players, Maps, Games, Dating utilities, Personal diary and what not … Mobiles are becoming more and more sophisticated and don’t be surprised if you see coaching classes for using mobile ( Nokia certified coaching centers !!)

Its not just the number of utilities but also the quality of them. Just now we have started with cameras and there is a long path till it replaces digital cameras and camcorders and offering the same quality they can offer. Mobile games is a very attractive field today and still there is a long path till it replaces XBOX and Sony play stations.

But between these hi-tech advancements, there are poor guys like me who want to use the phone just for speaking. I never play games in my phone and I have never used the personal diary or calculator in my mobile. I am not against mobiles having all the utilities in it. Infact I support mobile phone becoming all-in-one device. My point is there are users who want a no-frills mobile, not necessarily cheap mobiles. I am talking about no-frill high quality phones with very good battery, signal booters etc. I want to pay money for a high-quality phone and not necessarily for the extra utilities I get. And to add more salt, the extra utilities also make the UI very complex and most of the time these utilities are like JDK installed in my Mom’s computer.

Just now read that Vodafone has initiated this by coming up with a no-frills model. Way to Go!!

Have U heard of googlezon?

I am busy this week with a lot of work and so this post is going to be short.

I came across an interesting link http://epic.chalksidewalk.com/. It envisages that Google and Amazon will merge to challenge Microsoft. It’s interesting to watch and so I recommend it.

Apart from Amazon, there are three companies that I admire – Microsoft, Apple and Google. Usually Microsoft would be missing in the wish list but I am a great fan of William Henry Gates III. Apple, Amazon and Google attract me with their innovation rate. Lets leave Apple and Amazon. Is google really a threat for Microsoft? Why is Google a threat? Why not Amazon or ebay?

There are other related question too. Why did Microsoft come up with IE? What is it getting out of that free product? Answer lies in the jargon “Core Competency”. Microsoft didn’t mind Amazon becoming the world’s largest etailer as that noway is going to affect the core business of Microsoft – Operating System. But think about Late Netscape (sorry netscape lovers) or Google’s vision – Web OS and thin clients. Obviously if that works out, there is no business for MS. Now MS has the responsibility of preventing the clients from going to Google gym (for reducing fat). IE took care of crushing Netscape ( and firefox has come from the ashes). But what’s out there to take care of Google? I am ignorant in this area and will update once I get some information. But am sure, MS will have some deadly plans.

Coming to the point – If google gets access to the wealth of customer information Amazon has, I am sure Googlezon will be the don of internet. But I am still skeptic if that would affect Microsoft.

Mood-out? Reboot!!

Nowadays I am forming an opinion that girlfriends, especially the techies, are becoming more and more adamant and controlling than ever. When I climbed down the stairs today, I could hear the first floor girl shouting in the cell phone. I think my guess that her boyfriend should be on the other side is not that unreasonable. I have seen girls going out of café in the middle of a coffee and their boyfriends literally chasing them, pleading them and taking them back to the coffee. I know girls shouting at their boyfriends for commending some others girl’s work or for even saying that Paris Hilton’s shape is good.

I am from a town in Tamilnadu, India and have seen women not being given enough freedom to voice their opinion. I have seen in my childhood that women are treated like slaves. Maybe its time for them to take revenge on the chauvinistic male society.

I am also wondering whether the same story is repeated in the case of computers. You know once upon a time, it was just a slave doing the work ordered. Then we added complex contingency mechanisms, intelligent error tracking monitors, wizards to guide novice users and dynamic user interfaces. Now, computers are no longer listening to what we say.

I don’t see much difference between my girlfriend refusing to sit on my bike and the program throwing the sad face “Operation cannot be performed”. What’s the difference between your ladylove refusing to accompany you for the movie just because you are two minutes late and a stupid web service yelling “Operation Timed out”? And nothing pacifies them – neither my girl friend care when I plead “Sweetheart, please don’t go” nor the laptop listen “Oh my Dell darling… please don’t hang”

mmm… Time for them to take revenge … Thanks, God! Atleast I have the option of rebooting when computers are mood-out, but what about our girlfriends??

PS: I just read that the computers with the ability to reproduce are out there!!

Deep inside the shallow consumer …

I would attribute most of the popularity of internet to the fact that the contents are free. But there have been a lot of efforts to start charging for contents. Today there are a good number of web magazines charging subscription fee. In theory this makes sense, as there are customers who want a good browsing experience free from the irritating ads and pop-ups.

Even I was in the notion that no one would pay money for watching a TV program without ads. Infact some ads are even fun to watch. But this opinion changed as time passed and now I hate watching movies in TV just because of the ads. The same could be applied to internet also.

But there is a subtle difference between internet and TV. Internet lives by linking – Hypertext is the one that forms the core of the internet. Lets say, I start charging for my blog … mmm… moderate fee of $1 per month… Now people linking to my blog will rethink their decision as not all of their visitors can visit my blog as mine is a paid service. Then obviously my referral visitors would be reduced and there would be a anti-network effect ( “Hey … Did you read that interesting article that a mummy has been found with golden panties ?” “Oh interesting. Can you forward it?” “mmm… It’s a subscription service … May be I will tell about it in nutshell …”)

So going for a subscription model has its own handicaps … Think about subscribing for a magazine just to read a single article! (This problem could be solved by micropayments, which I will write about as a separate column later). Not just subscription … Even micro payments may not be perfect … My mom browses peacefully now but still speaks hastily in the telephone though the telephone charge is very minimal… Same would happen with metered browsing even if we are charging in cents… (I ignore broadband charges, which is more like a cable TV rent)

So whats the solution? We want to go for ad-free browsing but we don’t want to pay even a cent for the ad-free content… Well… If I know the solution, I can be the next Sabeer Bhatiya(hotmail), Pierre Omidyar (ebay) or Jeff Bezos(amazon).

Cupid Online ...

After my roommate swami’s recommendation to visit orkut, I decided to give it a try yesterday. As usual I wound up my work at 5:00 PM as I don’t want to work when my brain stages a dharna … (Swami says that even government officials put more hours …) and got into orkut … It required an invite to log in but it was not difficult to find one, especially when I am from ISB …

Orkut is a social networking site. There are lots of these types of sites out there ( I am already member of Linked in, HI5, Plaxo) and orkut slightly differentiates itself by including dating facilities apart from professional networking … ( I recommend Linkedin for professional networking) … I was just going through the site and browsing through the pictures of beautiful girls out there … (especially I am a fan of Pakistani girls ) …

I could realize the power of such sites and why google has bought this one … Though orkut didn’t pickup as much as one who understands the power of networking sites would have expected, it is surely a successful venture … I could see most of the entries were more related to personal relationships rather than professional networking, this indeed becomes a USP and differentiates it from Linkedin. I would say Google does a good job in choosing the future markets such as blogs, networking etc.

Social networking has huge potential just because of the network effects that comes alone with it. For those who don’t know network effect (aka network externalities), just think about telephones … As more and more users get telephone connection, more beneficial it is for the customers … So the telephone company might struggle in the beginning, but once it reaches a critical mass (MBA jargon: Tipping point), the subscription explodes .. Now think why social networking is a good area for companies to concentrate …

Apart from network effects, these sites collect a lot of information about its members and this data itself is a pot of gold for data warehousing, e-marketing etc. In addition, Google doesn’t have customer info as yahoo, ebay or Amazon and this site could perfectly complement it …

PS: Well… I am thinking about these marketing concepts only when I am writing this blog … My thought process was more about fashion when I was browsing orkut … There were questions on whether I have strategically placed tattoo, pierced tongue, visible tattoo, other piercing, pierced ears, navel ring etc .. :)

Between Love and Marriage …

I think there could be three accidents that happen between a man and a woman – infatuation, love and marriage. Out of these, Love must be the most overused word.

Infatuation is defined as a foolish and extravagant love, according to wordweb (how long will you keep referring to Webster and oxford). So, I see a girl and blindly fall in love and that becomes infatuation (well…then…why do they say “Love is Blind”). Why does it become infatuation and why can’t it be love? Mmm… Love requires some more brainy work … Lets define Infatuation as 0% Brain and 100% Heart

Love happens when I like a girl and this doesn’t necessarily relate to my intention to marry. “Liking” is making it look very simple but infact … there could be a lot of stages in love … such as admiration, affection, and it could go till devotion … So love -> x% brain and y% heart and x,y > 0

No need to explain marriage … I think guys hate to read about that…simply said 100% brain and 0% heart (one married team mate corrected it to: 0% brain and 0% heart)

So lets come to the topic… What is love? Lets say I want to do a love marriage and ask my parents to find a girl for me and inform me without intimating the girl. Then I will go behind her and make her accept my love and marry without any opposition from parents. Will this become love?

Or whatever is happening in these IT service companies … You get a new girl to your team … She knows what you earn and you know that there won’t be any another easier way to get a girl friend … You both meet at coffee and decide to love after two meetings … Is this love?

I would say these are more closer to marriage than love … May be there is a lack of word for these, but I wouldn’t call these “Love”

PS: I am still looking for a girlfriend and this article has nothing to do with my own experiences