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Thursday, August 02, 2012

119 Billion Google Searches

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
I did not know that number. One would think it would approach infinity. But it's only 119 billion. Wait, that's a lot. That's a big, big number.

In many ways those searches are as if not more powerful than updates on Facebook and Twitter. These searches can be mined.

Search queries are real time. Google searches might be the biggest of Big Data.

Your 119 Billion Google Searches Now A Central Bank Tool
the Bank of Israel, which looks to searches like Sugarman’s to assess the state of the nation’s $243 billion economy..... The central bank stands at the forefront of the world’s hunt for new economic indicators, analyzing keyword counts for everything from aerobics classes to refrigerators -- reported by Google almost as soon as the queries take place -- to gauge consumer demand before official statistics are released. The Federal Reserve and the central banks of England, Italy, Spain and Chile have followed up with their own studies to see if search volumes track trends in the economies they oversee. .... “When central bankers were looking at traditional data, they were essentially looking out the rear-view mirror” ..... a 23-page paper he co-wrote in April 2009, demonstrating how data reported on the Google Trends service improved forecasts of auto and home sales and retail spending in the U.S. ...... Google makes its data available one to three days after users perform searches .... Using query volumes in place of government statistics that are not yet available ..... Searches predicted the inflow of British tourists into Spain with a lead of almost one month. ..... a “data revolution.” It’s “an enormous amount of information” that will better help “us understand in very real-time what’s going on.”
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Zynga Getting Hammered


Its IPO has not been good for Zynga, nor for Facebook. They have been hammered. Not long back Fred Wilson on the East Coast and John Doerr on the West Coast talked of Zynga as the fastest growing company they ever had in their portfolios. I guess there are ups and downs. Right now happens to be a down time. It is not that Zynga's user base has shrunk dramatically. This is more a case of Wall Street looking at cold, hard cash. If you don't have it, you don't have it.

Just like Facebook Zynga is also struggling with mobile.

Zynga COO Said To Lose Product Oversight As Growth Slows
Pincus embarked on the overhaul in early July, at the close of a quarter marked by slowing sales growth and a drop in demand for virtual goods. Schappert, lured away last year from Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) with a pay package worth $42.8 million, has lost support within the company and taken some of the blame for its underperformance ..... “The place is in utter meltdown mode” .... The stock has dropped 72 percent since the market debut. The decline accelerated last week after Zynga reported sales and profit that missed analysts’ predictions. ..... The reorganization was aimed in part at making mobile- software development more of a priority across Zynga

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Google Fiber To Google Wireless



Google Australia’s Engineering Director Explains Why We Don’t Need Google Fiber
Alan Noble is the engineering director of Google Australia, and he says that there’s absolutely no need for Google Fiber Down Under. .... Noble said that there was just no need for Google to become an ISP in Australia because eventually, everyone would have Gigabit speeds .... In theory, the NBN should fulfill that need in Australia. Restricting the NBN to 100Mbps speeds is purely a commercial decision, not a technical one. There is no technical reason the NBN could not run at Gbps speeds
When I read the headline I thought the guy might say there is no need for fiber, wireless is the better option. But he did not say that.
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A Google Fiber Impact

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
It is fair to say gigabit broadband will spawn new companies and industries.

Entrepreneurs Dream of Jumping on Super-Fast Network
the area's entrepreneurs are plotting how to capitalize on the one-gigabit communications network in creative ways. ..... "Google Fiber has gotten the whole city thinking about technology." ..... Google Fiber is so powerful that it will improve education technology and transform how businesses operate. .... enabling one-gigabit Internet speeds across the country .... the cost would eventually be tens of billions of dollars ..... some elderly patients aren't facile with computers and a TV set is thus a better way to monitor them at home. ..... He now pays $1,400 a month for a network that supports a fraction of the bandwidth Google will offer. ...... Some of the entrepreneurs building products and businesses that will capitalize on Google Fiber may have a tough time drawing major backing from venture capitalists. The Kansas City region is still considered fly-over country by investors
The Great Recession's outcome should have been gigabit broadband for every American. That is where at least half a trillion should have gone. But that perhaps was not meant to be.


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RIM's Options



"Getting it" is not enough. It is said the top people at Sony all "get it." They all know exactly what needs to be done. But the dysfunctional corporate culture gets in the way. When a company is on a downswing much damage gets done to its corporate culture. A turnaround is not just about "getting it."

I don't have any particular insight into where RIM's corporate culture stands today. But as for vision, there seem to be a few options.

The obvious one is to claw back into the smartphone space. How do you do that? Do you get rid of the physical keyboard? What do you do? How do you compete with the iPhone? Do you ditch the keyboard a-n-d jump onto the Android bandwagon? And become a hardware company? I don't think that is in the cards. RIM wants to continue doing both hardware and software. Well, first, it wants to survive.

Is there room? Is there room in the smartphone space for a Nokia? A Microsoft? A RIM? How do you differentiate? Those are hard questions I don't have answers for.

Another option would be to take RIM's resources and go into something else. Do a fundamental rethink and become a company that produces something else. Or break the company into a hundred different startups.

When Steve Jobs went back to Apple he did not try to win the PC war. He instead created the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. There is always that next big thing.


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