Planet Google gets some Fresh Air

NYT columnist and SJSU Prof. Randy Stross was interviewed Wednesday† on Fresh Air, the NPR talk show. The topic (of course) was his book, Planet Google.

† Technically he was interviewed earlier for the show that was broadcast on Wednesday. I was sitting next to Randy at a department meeting while the interview was airing on radio station KQED.

Monitoring Google's self-regulation

The converse side of Google providing targeting information for foreign terrorists (or militaries) is the question of Google censoring information that’s politically objectionable to host governments, rather than have its search (or YouTube) banned nationwide.

Today law professor Jeffrey Rosen has a long (5200 word) article in the New York Times Magazine entitled “Google’s Gatekeepers.” (Yes, I know, “long” is redundant in this context). Both Frank Pasquale and Mike Madison commented on the article in the Madisonian blog, which is where I saw it. 

Rosen highlighs government objections from China, Turkey, Thailand, France, Indian, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The crux of the issues is summed up in these two paragraphs from Rosen’s article:

Voluntary self-regulation means that, for the foreseeable future, [Google associate counsel] Wong and her colleagues will continue to exercise extraordinary power over global speech online. Which raises a perennial but increasingly urgent question: Can we trust a corporation to be good — even a corporation whose informal motto is “Don’t be evil”?

“To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king,” Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor and a former scholar in residence at Google, told me recently. “One reason they’re good at the moment is they live and die on trust, and as soon as you lose trust in Google, it’s over for them.” Google’s claim on our trust is a fragile thing. After all, it’s hard to be a company whose mission is to give people all the information they want and to insist at the same time on deciding what information they get.

This reminds me of what Prof. Randy Stross said during his Sept 30 talk at SJSU about his book Planet Google. From the transcript:

The only time I am going to be most worried about what Google is doing is when they offer bland reassurances. [I’m not worried] when they agonize publicly — here are the issues for us, here [is why we] are agonizing — which is what they did when they confronted the question about what to do with the Chinese government’s demand that they censor results for certain search terms.
…
As long as they do that, I think they can hold to “don’t be evil” but if they revert to standard corporate speak with the rote reassurances, this is a company that as I fear will know more about us than any entity — private or public — in the world. I don’t want to hear reassurances; I want to see them worry about my worries.

One thing I found comforting in the NYT article is that search engine censorship is being reported. Today, it’s to ChillingEffects.com, a website run by the EFF and various law schools. Under the proposed Global Online Freedom Act, it would also be to the US government. (Rosen makes it clear that Google et al want to change some of the provisions).

It’s wrong to have the EFF or DOJ (or other USG) tell Google what they can and cannot censor to keep Google legal in China or Turkey or Thailand or France. But government (or voluntary agreement) can absolutely play a role in assuring full disclosure, so that the public can see how Google (or Microsoft or Yahoo) are balancing the trade-offs that rightly worry Prof. Rosen and Prof. Stross.

iPhonetics

Note to readers: iPhonetics should not be confused with iPhonatics.

A regular reader — noticing my raft of recent iPhone postings — offered a pointer to this story published in London’s Daily Telegraph.

Google voice search baffled by accents
From correspondents in London
November 19, 2008 11:30pm

A NEW voice-recognition search tool for the iPhone has problems understanding British accents, leading to some bizarre answers to spoken queries.

The free application, which allows iPhone owners to use the Google search engine with their voice, mistook the word iPhone for "sex'', "Einstein'' and "kitchen sink,'' said the Daily Telegraph.

Comments left by users on the application's website seemed to confirm the problem.

"Awesome job google. only problem is every time I say the word 'fish' it registers as sex,'' wrote one, identified as Kevin.

The Yahoo version headlines it “iPhone sex: Google application baffled by British accents,” but the text makes it clear this is more of a Google story than an iPhone story.

This makes a nice segue to my next raft of postings — offering observations from Prof. Randy Stross’ book Planet Google. On page 87, Stross makes it clear that the free voice search offered by Google in the US is a datamining experiment — filling a codex of phonemes — rather than yet another failed business model. Quoting Google exec Marissa Mayer

Google’s speech recognition experts told her, “If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes … people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that.”

As with other examples in Stross’ book, Google runs its business by algorithmically data mining terabytes of data. It can find billions (trillions) of pages of text off the Internet, but for a wide ranges of human voices, it offers a free beta services in hopes of enlisting millions of volunteers.

Presumably, once Google has its fill of (North) American, it can graduate to British, Scottish, Irish and perhaps someday even Aussie.

Google knows everything

One of the major fears about Google’s march towards total world domination is that it increasingly knows everything. As SJSU professor (and Google chronicler) Randy Stross wrote on page 10 of his recent book,

In 2006, an unknown person at Google prepared a PowerPoint presentation that included an offhand remark in the slide’s comments that Google at that point had collected only 5 percent of the information it seeks. Another slide’s comments emphatically added: “We plan to … get all the world’s information, not just some.”

(Although the slides were quickly removed, Stross’s footnotes helpfully note where the slides were archived by blogger Paul Kedrosky.)

Or, as Stross put it a month ago, “ this is a company that will know more about us than any entity — public or private — in the world.”

Normally we think about this information gathering in a personal sense, i.e., that of consumer privacy. So when I edit this (or another blog), I have to log on with my Gmail ID, and Google keeps me logged in — matching my searches to my personal ID — long after I’ve finished editing. (In fact, after a while I’m logged in for search but must re-login for blogging).

There’s another way that Google’s all-knowing is scary: its unlimited ability to gather market research in a way that no firm ever has — research where the data is all free, and also is entirely proprietary to Google. Data is not only addictive for business researchers, but academic ones, which is why economist Hal Varian left Berkeley for Google to become their chief economist and data miner.

On Friday, my friend David Wood of Symbian blogged about a presentation by Google manager Sumit Agarwal last week at a mobile phone conference in San Diego. A Google search suggests that Wood has the only coverage of Agarwal’s talk on the web, by either a journalist or a blogger.

The upshot? From its search and maps and other applications, Google knows what mobile users want — even better than the carriers. This is consistent with Google’s empirical, data-driven approach recounted in Stross’s book, the Varian interview, and many public speeches by Google managers and researchers.

For mobile phones, consumer wants and desires are not yet clear — handsets and mobile web browsers are just becoming good enough to provide (unlike in the WAP days) a good quality web experience. Thus, information about where mobile phone products and services are going is very scarce and valuable.

Google has all the data, and has concluded (according Agarwal via Wood) that mobile users seem to want pretty much the same information (at least in search) as static users.

However, through reverse IP lookup, Google knows how the wants of consumers differ by carriers, allowing it to observe the relative effects of the competing carriers strategies in a way that the carriers never could. One example was that when one operator instituted free data weekends, Google saw a huge spike in mobile search engine usage (that gradually increased weekday usage).

Wood summarizes other aspects of the information that Google shared on mobile phone users, and its implications for the industry. This is obviously only the tip of the iceberg, since Google has information that only it has — and will largely keep private for competitive reasons. Perhaps Google is willing to institute a commercial market research division to sell some of this information to the rest of us peons.

For someone who worries about Total World Domination, it seems like there are two bright spots. First, Yahoo got to mobile before Google and it still should have enough information to draw similar conclusions. Because that information is valuable, it could develop the same information — even if it only has 30% as many mobile users. What it would need is a smart, research-driven partner (not worrying about layoffs) of which only one company comes to mind.

The second encouraging tidbit was that Agarwal did his demo on an iPhone and a BlackBerry in addition to an HTC G1, even though he’s the product manager for Google’s mobile division. Even though the gPhone is shipping, Google remains client platform agnostic. (Wood obviously would have liked to have seen a Nokia N95 running Symbian OS 9.1, the preferred smartphone for much of Europe.

If Google will continue to emphasize the use of its services by all web-capable clients, that means that it is less interested in “tying” across its value chain than previous IT monopolists like Microsoft and IBM.

Google's rites of passage

Last month, author Randy Stross presented a talk at San José State based on his new book, Planet Google. Randy is not only an experienced author, but also a fellow (and considerably more senior) faculty member in the Department of Organization & Management where I work.

The video and audio of his presentation has now been posted to College of Business pages within SJSU’s content area at iTunes U. Due to size limits, the talk is posted in two parts: the prepared presentation and the Q&A. The quality of the video is remarkably good (and with the rest of iTunes U, the price is right).

Randy’s talk was about Google growing up — or at least, Google learning that the world expected it to grow up rather than act like a small insignificant startup anymore. This has obvious parallels to Microsoft a decade earlier, just as Nick Carr observed in other aspects of Google’s strategy and market influence.

In fact, Randy opened his talk by saying this “is not just a business story, but a business and society story — a company that I would argue that is far more powerful than Microsoft was at its apogee in the 1990s.” He presented three ministories — rites of passage — as Google learned to go beyond search to become the diversified Internet conglomerate that it is today. In each case, Google had to deal with unexpected controversy.

The first was Google books. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and books are usually of better quality and not available in digital form. Some of this is out of copyright stuff in university libraries, in which a human being turns pages in front of a digital camera. He also commented on Google’s plans — particularly for current books — ran headlong into the expectations and IP rights of established book publishers. The result was a lawsuit (which, as it turns out, was settled earlier this week).

The second example was Google Maps. The mapping solution had too much data to run entirely as a web app, so Google needed a client-side application. It bought startup Keyhole (also in Mountain View), which had trouble monetizing the digital mapping technology it created almost 20 years ago. Maps also forced Google to confront US regulations on spy satellite data and to eventually launch its own satellites (while conforming to those regulations). Tied into Maps was the controversial decision to provide street view images, and the unexpected uproar over what many saw as an invasion of the “privacy by obscurity” that they previous enjoyed in public spaces.

The third story was about Google Apps, its SaaS challenge to Microsoft Office that includes e-mail and documents. Randy went to a 2006 pitch that Google and Microsoft made to the entire 23-campus Cal State University system, where Microsoft sought to emphasize all the risks and uncertainties of Google’s (free to universities) application package. Google had to realize that if it wanted people to upload their data to Google’s servers, it had to provide a higher level of reliability, data integrity and privacy than it had ever promised before.

Together, the three stories suggest to me a Google that has the arrogance to assume it always has the right answer. It wants the rest of the world to give it free reign (again, like the Beast of Redmond). After all, they’ve promised “to do no evil”: what other reassurance do we need?

After studying Google for several years, Randy believes he can trust Google when it’s openly talking about the privacy (or other) tradeoffs it faces when trying to make its billions while living up to its mantra. What gets him worried is when they don’t publicly acknowledge the ethical or moral issues that it faces. As he concluded:

But if they revert to corporatespeak with rote reassurance, this is a company that will know more about us than any entity — public or private — in the world. I don’t want rote reassurances.

Overall, it was a clear and stimulating talk that provided fresh insight into the secretive Monster of Mountain View — one that I might have hoped from someone who devoted two years of his life to providing a definitive account. I recommend the talk to those who have not bought the book or are debating whether to do so. (My copy of the book arrived from Amazon and I hope to read it in the coming week).

I encouraged our media staff to record and post the talk, and I wish we did it more often. Being here in Silicon Valley, we often have speakers like this whose talks would be of great interest to the outside world, such as the ongoing speaker series of the Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship.

However, SJSU (like some other CSU campuses is adopting a very strict interpretation of Federal accessibility guidelines that requires a written transcript to be posted for any oral presentation. Such a bureaucratic imperative from the state (and ultimately the Feds, i.e. the ADA) increases the cost of posting, delays its availability (as it did here) and limits what we post to a small number of talks where we can identify funding to cover the transcription cost. In the name of being fair to a few, we severely limit the information we provide to all.

Don't mess with Eric

Tuesday my fellow SJSU management professor Randy Stross gave his talk on his new book, Planet Google. I plan to summarize the talk later in the week, but one snippet stood out.

Another faculty colleague, Iris Quan, asked Randy if researching Google posed any difficulties (given their legendary secrecy). Randy started by saying his previous books helped, but his New York Times column hurt.

Randy recalled the July 2005 story by a CNET reporter that really got Google’s CEO mad. The famous story by staff writer Elinor Mills began

Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't reveal much about himself on his home page.

But spending 30 minutes on the Google search engine lets one discover that Schmidt, 50, was worth an estimated $1.5 billion last year. Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.

He and his wife Wendy live in the affluent town of Atherton, Calif., where, at a $10,000-a-plate political fund-raiser five years ago, presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife Tipper danced as Elton John belted out "Bennie and the Jets."

Schmidt has also roamed the desert at the Burning Man art festival in Nevada, and is an avid amateur pilot.

That such detailed personal information is so readily available on public Web sites makes most people uncomfortable. But it's nothing compared with the information Google collects and doesn't make public.

The result? Schmidt dictated that Google blacklist CNET from news coverage, i.e. that no Google employee talk to a CNET employee for a year.

As Stross told the SJSU audience Tuesday:

When this came out, Eric Schmidt was not amused. He felt this was a gross breach of his privacy. (audience laughter) I wrote a column about this, and my editors put the headline “Google Anything, So Long as It's Not Google.” (more laughter).

Randy mentioned that when he finally interviewed Schmidt for the book, Schmidt “mentioned this in the first 30 seconds.”

Still, Randy got cooperation from Google and got the book published. Obviously he learned a lot: I hope to share more of the talk later this week (and it will hopefully be posted online), but the best way to learn is to buy the book (also available on CD and Audible download).

Inside the Googleplex

Attempts by mere mortals to understand Google’s march towards Total World Domination has been hindered by its legendary secrecy. At trade events, Google reps make sure not to tell the audience anything that isn’t already announced, and all employees (my friends tell me) are under strict orders not to divulge real numbers.

Naturally this secretive juggernaut attracts journalists and other authors like moths to a flame. One book is out this month, two are due in 2010, and I’ve been corresponding with the author for a fourth.

First out of the chute is my coworker Randy Stross, whose new book Planet Google went on sale today. In addition to the audiobook versions of PG, Randy is also the author of six other books, including his biography of Thomas Edison published only 18 months ago.

Planet Google has already won favorable reviews by Fortune and the Wall Street Journal. Subtitled “One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know,” Publisher’s Weekly describes it this way:

In this spellbinding behind-the-scenes look at Google, New York Times columnist Stross (The Microsoft Way) provides an intimate portrait of the company’s massively ambitious aim to “organize the world’s information.” Drawing on extensive interviews with top management and the author’s astonishingly open access to the famed Googleplex, Stross leads readers through Google’s evolution from its humble beginnings as the decidedly nonbusiness-oriented brainchild of Stanford Ph.D. students Sergey Brin and Larry Page, through the company’s early growing pains and multiple acquisitions, on to its current position as global digital behemoth.

For Bay Area readers, Randy is doing a 1-hour talk on his book next week (Sept 30) here at SJSU. The one hour talk will begin at noon Tuesday, and will be held on the second floor of the MLK Library. Parking is available at street parking meters or at the 4th street municipal garage.

Update Sept 29: For readers that miss that talk, he’ll be presenting his book at the Google Author Series (inside the Googleplex) on Oct. 7 but the talk is only for Googlers (Google employees). He will present again in Menlo Park on Oct. 15.