Category Archives: Web Search

Why Google has to “Get” Platforms: It’s the Future of Search

First published October 27, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I shared portions of Steve Yegge’s post (from inside Google) about how Google doesn’t “get” platforms. But why, you may ask, does Google have to get better at platforms? Certainly, open platforms open greater levels of innovation, one reason why Facebook gained the critical mass needed to dominate social networking. That is certainly applicable given Google’s forays into the social space. But there’s another reason, one very germane to Google’s core business. Becoming a platform provider is likely the only way Google can compete in a new search ecosystem.

Consider this recent shot across the bow from Microsoft, which is opening the Bing backend as a service to be integrated into third-party apps. The company is making its search engine a platform. And, according to Yegge, Microsoft does “get” platforms:

“(Microsoft) understands platforms as a purely accidental outgrowth of having started life in the business of providing platforms. So they have thirty-plus years of learning in this space. And if you go to msdn.com, and spend some time browsing, and you’ve never seen it before, prepare to be amazed. Because it’s staggeringly huge. They have thousands, and thousands, and THOUSANDS of API calls. They have a HUGE platform.”

Now, by all competitive measures, Google is beating the Bejezus out of Bing, but pay close attention to this move, because it likely marks the future of Web search. Increasingly, we’re going to see a wider and wider gap between the back end algorithms and index of a search engine and the actual search interface. The days of a search engine being a destination are numbered. In this scenario, search becomes a utility, providing a portion of the functional underpinnings of thousands of specialized apps.  The search provider of the future will have to excel at three things:

A)   Indexing increasingly complex forms of content;

B)   Interpreting a user’s interests and intent — and then

C)   Delivering the best results given the optimum intersection between A and B.

The third part is critical, as the actual delivery point of the results moves outside the scope of the search provider and into the domain of independent developers, who will rely on robust platforms to accommodate this.

Google is the current leader in A and B, although recent work by Microsoft shows it closing the gap. But C may prove to be Google’s Achilles heel. Google will be reluctant to share its user’s eyeballs with third-party developers, because those eyeballs represent the vast majority of the company’s current revenue stream. There will be all kinds of internal pressure at Google not to head down this road. By contrast, Microsoft has nothing to lose by doing this. As Steve Yegge rightly points out, this strategy is actually a better fit for Microsoft’s corporate DNA, as the development of platforms is familiar territory for them. Being the end destination for users has never been Microsoft’s strong suit.  And Microsoft still has reams of cash coming in from other revenue channels, so it will be more likely to share the search revenue pie with other parties than will Google.

Some time ago, Steve Ballmer signaled the possibility of this shift of revenue streams coming from search.  Google was able to capitalize on a perfect storm of revenue opportunity, by tapping into the single biggest concentration of consumer demand in history. But the window of opportunity that has fueled Google’s growth to this point is rapidly closing. The new models will require search providers to slice up the revenue pie with an increasing number of partners.

It will also require those partners to wholeheartedly embrace platforms. Let’s see if Google can “get” that.

Amazon = Evolution, Google = Intelligent Design?

First published October 20, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Ironically, the hottest thing on Google+is a rant from a Google Insider about how Google+ is hopelessly limited because Google doesn’t get the importance of platforms.  Steve Yegge goes on at some length (over 4,000 words) contrasting his first six years at Amazon and his last six years at Google.

The media jumped on it, because Yegge spent some of his rant bashing Google+, which is rapidly collecting more holes than Bonnie and Clyde’s ill fated 1934 Ford sedan. But Yegge was simply using Google+ as an example of how badly Google has dropped the ball when it comes to building platforms to support external development. There are many, many things that Google does far better than Amazon (according to Yegge) but building out platforms is not one of them:

“Bezos realized long before the vast majority of Amazonians that Amazon needs to be a platform.”

In contrast, Google tends to keep their code base under internal lock and key to protect their IP. In fact, even their own Chinese developers didn’t have access to Google’s core code, for fear that IP would somehow leak out and end up on a Chinese competitor’s site. A valid concern, to be sure, but that approach runs directly counter to the open environment required to become a platform developer, something that Yegge says almost everyone does better than Google:

“That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is Platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t ‘get’ platforms.

What, Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it.”

What, then, is the advantage of being a platform developer?  For one thing, it leverages the power of Darwinian development. As long as development stays locked behind the corporate firewall, you simply can’t match the innovation that will come from an open ecosystem. This is especially true in a corporate environment where management tends towards micromanagement, true of both Amazon and Google. Bezos and Page both tend to run roughshod over internal developers, dismissing ideas out of hand and turning development into a political minefield. But Steve Bezos realized the limitations of this command and control approach.

“The other big realization he [Bezos] had was that he can’t always build the right thing.”

Every successful species evolves through a long and arduous process of trial and error. Evolution requires sheer volume, leaving the environment to be the eventual judge of success. Bezos has harnessed the same approach for Amazon. Google is instead taking an “intelligent design” approach. Personally, I much prefer Amazon’s odds for success. But they’re not the only one who has embraced Darwinian development.

In exploring the lack of momentum of Google Plus One, you have to compare against Facebook. One thing that Facebook did which helped build incredible momentum was to turn their site into a platform for social networking of all kinds.

“Facebook gets it. That’s what really worries me. That’s what got me off my lazy butt to write this thing.”

In looking at social, Google got that it was important, but what they didn’t get was that communities, whether online or in the real world, develop organically on top of required superstructures. They evolve, they aren’t created.  Facebook understands this, but Google hasn’t quite caught on yet.

“Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work.”

As luck would have it, Yegge also touched on the topic of last week’s column, the incredible intuition of Steve Jobs. I mentioned that I hadn’t seen the same “magic” in Larry Page. Yegge seems to agree:

“The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them. You can’t do that. Not really. Not reliably. There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. We don’t have a Steve Jobs here. I’m sorry, but we don’t.”

Yegge’s post is required reading, because it offers a startlingly frank and transparent view inside Google, and I applaud Google’s courage in allowing it to remain open to the public. What is really fascinating though, is what this means for the future of search and the role of Google in it. Unfortunately, I’m at my maximum word count, so I’ll explore that next week.

Is it Time to Relabel ” Marketing?

First published September 15, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I asked the question, “Is the word ‘search’ the right label for what we do on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other engines?” When Internet search debuted in the early 90s, it was probably pretty accurate. But today, the concept may have passed the label by.

And, if that is true, then the same is probably true for “search marketing.” The main gist of my argument last week was that the word “search” implies the expenditure of a significant effort with no guarantee of a successful outcome. But today, more than ever, we look to these engines to connect us with information and functionality. We want to “do” things when we click through to the other side of the search results.

I also said that it was difficult to find any one label that covers all our intentions when we turn to a “search” engine. In the beginning, when the Web was one large bucket of ill-formed data, “search” worked as a universal label. But that’s not true today. Now, the Web is becoming increasingly structured, and a search engine that excels at bringing order to unstructured data often falls disappointingly short when it comes to actually getting stuff done. In trying to be the universal Swiss Army Knife of the Web for many common tasks, Google (or Bing) doesn’t do any of them particularly well, we’re starting to find.  For many tasks, a dedicated and specialized app often does a far better job of meeting our expectations.

Again, this starts to define the conundrum currently facing search marketers. When the label we used was “search,” our job was simply to make sure our sites were “found.” Within the parameters defined by “searching” (to explore in order to discover), our job was straightforward: reduce the exploration effort required on the part of the searcher by moving our sites into a more “discoverable” position.

But what if we substitute some of the other labels I suggested last week for the word “search”? Suddenly, our job becomes much more complex.

Let’s start with “connection.” In this case, buyer s already have an idea that the right online destination exists, so they also have a preconceived notion of what they would find there. In game theory, this is called “expected utility.” In this case, our job is not simply to make the site easy to find, but also to make sure it’s a relevant match for our prospect’s expectations. If it isn’t, we may capture the click but miss the conversion. And that puts a whole new spin on search marketing. To understand how to create a “connection,” we have to understand what happens on both sides of the click: pre-connection and post-connection.

This requires us to delve into our prospect’s “frame of mind.” Again, the words used here provide a clue for what’s required as a marketer. A “frame” colors our entire view of things. There’s even a term for it in psychology: the “framing effect.” It’s categorized as a cognitive bias, which means that our frames determine our reality. To be successful “connection” marketers, we have to be familiar with our prospect’s “frame” of reference. When we are, we can provide a relevant and persuasive post-click path.

But “connection” wasn’t the only alternative label I proposed. What about “action” or “fulfillment?” Again, both ask us to substantially stretch our horizons as a marketer.

“Action” is an even more determinant label than connection. If we’re looking to take “action,” each step interposed between the end goal and the prospect is another level of frustration. Here, our job as “action” marketers is to remove as many of the steps as possible between intent and action. Actions are usually well defined and specific. We should be equally as specific in the alternatives we provide our prospects. Our calls to action should be a clear invitation to “do” things.

“Fulfillment” is a little tougher nut to crack. To be “fulfilled” can take several forms. Is there an emotional component? How would the prospect define “fulfillment”? Is the post-click result a step towards fulfillment, or does it take a prospect all the way there? A successful “fulfillment” marketer should be part psychologist and part clairvoyant.

Given the challenge we have in even attaching a label to what it is we do, it’s no wonder that recent analyst reports are all reporting a common theme: the best search marketers are expanding into other services. We’re expanding beyond “search” into “social,” “mobile,” “local,” “display” and other channels. It’s not so much that “search” is passé, rather it’s that “search” isn’t really the right label anymore. I’m not sure that “social” or “local” are any better. Personally, I think the perfect word, whatever it turns out to be, should clearly identify “why” people are online rather than “what” they’re doing online.

What’s in a Word?

First published September 8, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I served for six years as a director of the Search Engine Marketers Professional Organization. Every six months or so, we’d get together to talk about the future of the organization. As you can imagine, the future of an organization catering to industry professionals is inextricably linked to the future of the industry itself. So, our conversations weren’t so much about the future of SEMPO as they were about the future of search — and by extension, the future of search marketing.

Every time we embarked on this task of joint navel and crystal-ball gazing, we ran smack dab into the same dilemma: How do you define search? What is search? Should it even be called search any more? Esther Dyson, among others, thinks the term “search” may have outlived its usefulness. Perhaps “connection,” “fulfillment” or “action” has a better connotation. At least these words imply there’s something of substance on the other end of the search. They hint at successful outcomes. When Microsoft debuted Bing, the company sought to differentiate the product by calling it the “Decision” engine – “Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.”

For me, words are important, so in trying to define the future of our industry, the words we choose to represent the concept tell us something about our feelings towards it.

Let’s start with “search,” the generic label we currently use: to “search” is to attempt to discover something. We search for a needle in a haystack. We search for a missing child or a runaway fugitive. We search for the truth. All seem to indicate an expenditure of significant effort but no guarantee of success. Given the state of the Internet when search engines debuted, it was an apt moniker. But today, that’s no longer the case. Today, I suspect, we launch almost every search with a clear expectation that somewhere out there, the information we seek exists. All we need is the right connection to it.

Given that, perhaps a “connection” engine is a better choice. To “connect” is to link known entities. Unlike with “search,” when we use the term “connect” we know our objective exists and we’re just trying to find the shortest path between points A and B.  The word better captures the navigational usage of search, which accounts for a huge percentage of total queries. I’ve used the term myself in the past when I’ve said that search is the “connection” between intent and content.

But even “connection” implies a certain statelessness. While it better captures our intent than does the verb search, I don’t know if it adequately represents the dynamic and participatory nature of our online activities. Whereas the verbs we used to use to define what we did online implied passive observance — “look,” “browse” and “surf” (I never did get that one, but at one time using it made you sound uber-cool) —  we now “book,” “post,” “comment,” “”tweet,” “buy” and participate in dozens of much more active ways, using more active verbs. Where once we went online to seek and consume information, we now want to “do” things.  We expect to do things. And so we use Google or Bing to find the right tool to allow us to do those things. That’s the rationale behind suggestions like “fulfillment” (to carry out, to satisfy or to develop to full potential) and “action” (something done or performed). Certainly, for some search tasks, calling Google or Bing an “action” engine would be a more appropriate description.

For some tasks — but not all. And that’s the problem we kept running into when we tried to define what search is. It’s tough to keep in any one box. It tends to be squishy and amorphous. And it has the habit of expanding into the ever-developing niches and crevasses of the online landscape.

So, was Bing right to call itself a “decision” engine? Is that the missing label that encapsulates all we look for in an engine? Do we need something to help us make better decisions (to compare and choose between alternatives)? It’s at least as good as “search”, and probably better, because it takes it one step further. It makes the assumption that the information about the best alternatives will be served to us by the engine.

While you might think this is just a frivolous exercise in semantics, I disagree. I think this question speaks to something fundamental in the evolution of search. We use words to label concepts — and when the labels no longer fit, it’s because the concept itself has changed. If we have trouble applying a word to something, it’s probably because we think of it in a different way than we used to. I believe this is true of search. And if we think of “search” differently, it means we must also think of “search marketing” differently.

Until next week…

A Peek “In the Plex,” by Steven Levy

First published September 1, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

As promised, this week I’ll be doing a quick review of Steven Levy’s book “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.”

As a tech journalist, Levy had a perspective on Google that few others have enjoyed. John Battelle, who previous tackled Google in his book “The Search,” said, “I had limited access to folks at Google, and *really* limited access to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Levy had the opposite, spending more than two years inside the company and seeing any number of things that journalists would have killed to see in years past.”

Levy was first introduced to Page and Brin in 1999, when Google was just another Silicon Valley start-up, albeit one that was creating a ton of industry buzz. Because of that early advantage, Levy was able to observe Google’s subsequent stages of evolution — from start-up to search dominance, from an atmosphere that seemed more of a religious  “cause” than “company,” from “don’t be evil” to “evil may be in the eye of the beholder.”

Given the intimate viewpoint afforded Levy, I couldn’t help coming away somewhat disappointed with the end result. Levy approached this as a journalist, resisting  the temptation to put Google’s story in a larger context. In his book, Battelle did a much better job of pinpointing Google’s place in the social fabric of our lives.

One could argue that they’re two different books, with two different objectives, but Levy’s subtitle, “How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives” seems to promise more. The book does a good job delivering on the first two promises, but falls short on the third. Battelle managed to step back and give us a view of Google that, while admittedly awestruck, also intimated that we were on the cusp of a social change of immense importance that might not be positive in every way.  Battelle seemed much more comfortable with the bigger picture than Levy does, and the latter’s book suffers from this limited view.

The first half of “In the Plex” treads the same “Gee whiz, isn’t Google brilliant!” path that is rapidly becoming wearisome. We gain inside perspectives from some early Google employees, but find nothing that really adds to the Google canon here. I don’t disagree that Google was brilliant, especially in the early days, but that’s not particularly news to anyone at this point.

The book does begin to hit its stride in the second half when the shine wears off Google and it faces the bumps of dealing with a real world that doesn’t always align with Google’s admittedly naïve view of how things should be. The unexpected privacy backlash to Google’s attempt to monetize Gmail, the copyright battle sparked by Google Books, and the entire Google China debacle all paint a picture of a company that seems to shoot itself in the foot just as often as it shoots for the stars.

Levy also hints at some internal tension between Google’s triumvirate of Page, Brin and Eric Schmidt, or “LSE,” as Levy collectively refers to them. Page, in particular, never seemed to fully overcome his resentment of  the “adult supervision” forced upon Google in its formative years by early VC investors. Due to the timing of the book, we gain no insights into the behind-the-scenes story that led to Schmidt’s replacement as CEO by Page late last year. It seems there’s much more to the story than what we currently know, but you won’t be any the wiser by reading Levy’s book.

I also got the sense that just when things could have really become interesting, Levy stepped back. As Battelle noted in his review, “I was a bit disappointed with the book in that Steven didn’t take all that new knowledge and pull back to give us his own analysis of what it all meant. I asked him about this, and he said he made the conscious decision to not editorialize, but rather lay it all out there and let the reader draw his or her own conclusions.”

In my opinion, Levy’s decision not to editorialize diminishes the importance of the book. If you chart the tone of Google through Levy’s reportage, there is a definite arc, from naïve brilliance through world-dominating arrogance and back down to shock and disbelief that everything doesn’t always work out the way Google thinks it should.

I can’t help thinking that Google is at a critical point in its evolution, wondering what it will become in the future. As Levy states, Google is currently wrestling with “how it hopes to maintain its soul.” Levy could have provided unique insight into possible answers to that question, but he chose instead to leave it up to us.

Google and the Great Wall

First published August 25, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

“Have you heard of Google?”

This question was asked by a group of traveling Google product engineers who had just entered the rural Indian village of Ragihalli, thirty miles outside of Bangalore. It was a Google version of a “walkabout,” a 2007 foray out into the world to see firsthand how Google was wrapping its ever-extending tentacles around the globe.

This tour is also how Steven Levy starts his book “In the Plex,” a somewhat privileged view inside the world’s most successful start-up and an examination of “how Google thinks, works and shapes our lives.” Along with India, the gaggle of Googlers touched down in Tokyo, Beijing and Tel Aviv over 16 days in the summer of 2007.

I’ll do a quick review of Levy’s book in the next column, but today I wanted to share how my own path crossed that of the very same group of Googlers (I believe) on the Great Wall of China, about an hour north of Beijing in Badaling. I had just spoken at a search conference in Xiamen, China and added a few days of sightseeing in Beijing with Chris Sherman, the conference organizer.

We started scaling the wall — and for the better part of an hour, climbed too many stone steps to count, snaking up from rampart to rampart. Ahead of us was a group of fellow tourists that were obviously from the U.S. We were a little too far from them to pick up any snippets of their conversation, but in between numerous stops to catch our breath and ease our middle-aged joints (at which point we were usually passed by a sprightly Chinese octogenarian) Chris and I chatted about our mutual profession. At one point, Chris quipped, “There has to be a search analogy in here somewhere. Something about how tough it is to get to the top of Google.” He didn’t realize how prophetic his words would be.

We finally got to the top of the public section of the Wall, which ended at a guard outpost. We arrived there about the same time as the other group from the U.S. With no one else around, we offered to take each other’s group pictures. After we exchanged favors, one of the group asked us where we were from. Chris happens to hail from Boulder. Our anonymous photographer had attended university in Colorado.

“So, what do you guys do?” our new friend asked. My regular readers will remember I shudder with dread every time I hear that question. I was about to offer some vague and generic answer about being a marketing consultant when Chris piped up, “We’re search marketers.”

“Oh Puhleeze, Chris,” I thought to myself.  We’re zillions of miles from home, on the last outpost of the Great Wall of China, with the only other Westerners within sight being the handful of tourists we were sharing our particular viewpoint with. Could there be a less relevant way to start a conversation? What would be the odds that they would know what the hell a “search marketer” was?

Quite good, as it turned out. Our new friend got a wry smile on his face and replied, “Bet you can’t guess where we’re from!”

Yes, it was the same group of Google engineers on their world tour.

On the same trip, I also met U.S. journalist, author and expat James Fallows and had the opportunity to chat with him. He was offering a Western perspective (regularly published in The Atlantic) about the complex and often confounding emergence of China as a world power. Twelve of these reports were collected into a book called, “Postcards from Tomorrow Square.”

It’s next on my reading list.

In Defense of Google

First published August 18, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Michael Martinez and Jim Rudnick, you are both oh-so-wrong! Michael responded to Derek Gordon’s column on Tuesday about the Google “Dog pile” with this rejoinder: “No market-dominant company ever gets to the top through ‘quality of the service it provides’ — they get there through marketing, and Google has done PLENTY of that.”

Then, Jim Rudnick “piled on” with this addition:  “As Michael stated, Google has more ‘marketers’ IMHO, than engineers’!” (which he later qualified with a “well, not really.”)

This wasn’t even my column they were responding to, but I just couldn’t let those two obviously ill-informed comments go unanswered.

Mr. Martinez and Mr. Rudnick, it’s reality-check time. Anyone who has ever spent any time at Google, knows anyone at Google, has read anything on the history of Google, or has spent any time trying to understand the culture at Google, knows that engineers rule supreme there — and marketing is considered at least two rungs below, a necessary evil, which is somewhat ironic for a company whose revenues rely solely on… that’s right, marketing!

You can possibly hate Google for a number of things, but subjugating the quality of their results for a quick marketing win has never been, or never will be, one of them. I’ve been following this company pretty much since day one, and they are obsessive about the quality of their user’s experience. I may debate their approach to design or the aesthetic appeal of their interfaces. I may question their need to dominate everything. I may take exception to the intellectual arrogance that seems to occasionally seep out of Mountain View — but I have never, ever, questioned their priorities. Their domination in search comes squarely on the shoulders of their high regard for their user, and not one of their serious competitors would ever dispute that.

This Google “marketing” that Michael speaks of is a meager trickle compared to the millions that Microsoft pumped into the launch of Bing, or, lest we forget, the failed advertising campaigns of Ask.com, Yahoo or even Infoseek when it was bought by Disney and became Go.com. Tell me, when is the last time you launched a search on Go.com?

Marketing alone will never establish a dominant search player. Number one is established solely on the strength of its user’s experiences. You might want to do a comparison of market shares and marketing expenditures to get that point driven home more forcefully, Michael.

In fact, I would shudder to think that any dominant player in any industry got to where they are based on marketing alone, and not by adequately meeting or exceeding their customer’s expectations. I live by another adage, “Nothing ever killed a bad product faster than good advertising.” I talked about Jim Lecinski’s concept of the ZMOT a few columns back. Marketing provides just one input into the chain reaction that Lecinski chronicles. Let’s walk through this again. Because this is more than just a rebuttal, it’s an illustration for anyone who shares the same delusional view that marketing is all it takes to win a market.

Marketing provides a stimulus that can spark a buyer’s interest. After this stimulus, the buyer then researches to make sure the hyperbole of the marketing message bears at leas some passing resemblance to reality. This is Lecinski’s ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth). Then, there’s the FMOT (First Moment of Truth).  This is when a buyer actually picks a product off the proverbial “shelf.”  Finally, there’s the SMOT (Second Moment of Truth), which is the buyer’s actual experience with the product.

If marketing and the buyer’s reality are aligned, these elements create a virtuous cycle, where the promise of the ad matches the experience delivered. The result is ongoing brand loyalty.

But if all the company cares about is marketing, it all starts to fall apart in the ZMOT and the SMOT. The cycle is destroyed and you have a pissed-off customer telling anyone who will listen that they’ve been duped. That’s why Jim Lecinski (speaking on behalf of Google) rightly stresses the importance of the ZMOT for marketers. It’s where the rubber starts to hit the road.

I don’t care if Messrs. Rudnick and Martinez have a sore spot for Google. I do care when they imply those 13 years plus of producing high-quality search results and deeply caring about the user are irrelevant, and that Google bought its way to the top of the search engine heap through marketing. That’s dangerous thinking, for any industry. We have enough crap to fix in corporate America without letting offhand comments like these go unanswered. It’s this kind of thinking that got us into the mess we currently find ourselves.

Let’s appreciate quality when we see it, and not assume the whole world is a sucker for a quick pitch!

Is Google God?

First published August 11, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Seriously, there are “Googlists” behind www.thechurchofgoogle.org who offer incontrovertible proof that Google is God:

·     Google is the closest thing to an omniscient entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified
·     Google is everywhere at once
·     Google answers prayers
·     Google is potentially immortal
·     Google is infinite
·     Google remembers all
·     Google can “do no evil”
·     “Google” is searched for more than “God,” “Jesus,” “Allah,” “Buddha,” “Christianity,” Islam,” “Buddhism” and “Judaism” combined!
·     Evidence of Google’s existence is abundant.

Compelling evidence, and if you’ve read the many books on Google, it’s hard not to believe Larry and Sergey have just a touch of a Messiah Complex about them.

But is our faith in Google unshakable? A little while back I was talking to Jacqueline Krones, a senior product manager at Bing, who headed up a large-scale ethnographic study of search usage. Microsoft has repeated this study every three years, starting in 2004 and following up in 2007 and 2010. Over those three studies, Krones found an interesting shift in attitudes towards search in general, and, by extension, to Google specifically: “In 2004, people said that knowledge lives with experts and the experts help them make decisions. In 2007 people said that search engines actually had all of the knowledge in the world and it was just there for them to go out and pull it out. In 2010 people told us that they created their own knowledge – that even though the search engine never really had all the knowledge in the world, it was linked to information.”

That arc of our collective attitude adjustment toward search becomes interesting when you apply it to the parallel development of Google’s hubris. In 2004, Google filed for its IPO and was just getting used to being the world’s dominant search engine. The “start-up” glow was still very much alive,  and Google truly believed it could do no wrong.

In 2007 all indications were that Google really could do no wrong. While it wasn’t exactly the same collegial atmosphere of 2004, Google was rushing full speed ahead on multiple fronts.  Acquisitions were racking up at an impressive rate and it seemed that Google was assembling all the needed pieces for total online domination. In fact, it wasn’t only online that Google wanted to dominate. It was print, TV, radio, wireless, power, books, the earth and space. Corporate America was holding its collective breath, waiting to see which industry Google was going to set its attention-deficit sights on next.

By 2010, we had learned that Google was all too fallible, just like the rest of us.  Do you remember Google Catalog, Google Answers, Orkut or Google TV ? Well, with the exception of Google TV, where the wounds are still fresh and largely gouged on the back of Logitech, not many of us do. Many of the high-flying plans of 2007 had crashed back to earth.  Google retreated back to its core — making money in search.

If the trends in Krones’ research hold across the general population, it appears that while we once worshiped Google, we now regard it in a less remarkable light. It’s a search engine — a pretty good search engine — but hardly the answer to our loftier prayers.

I know this sounds sacrilegious to the ears of a Google-fearing Googlist. But guess when the Church of Google site was launched? That’s right, 2007. Given the euphoria of the time, perhaps you Googlists can be forgiven for your blind worship.

If it makes you feel better, click on the nearest Google ad and make a donation to Google on my behalf.

An Internet Marketer 50 Years in the Making

First published August 4, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This past weekend, I turned 50. In the deluge of smart-ass cards I received, there was one that was at least noteworthy for the twist it took in insulting me. It reminded me that when I was born, “cable” referred to something that held up bridges, a “cell” was something that contained criminals and the “net” was used to capture a fish.

As I paused to reflect (something you’re allowed to do more often when you cross the half century mark) I thought it would be interesting, given the ever-accelerating pace of technology, to look back and see just how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.

Perhaps it was coincidence, but the year I was born was one when America’s eyes were firmly focused on the future. Kennedy was in the White House and just that year had promised to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. As the decade dawned, futurists were working overtime imagining a glossy, if somewhat sterile future that involved flying cars, moon colonies, videophones and robot servants.

Imagine my surprise when, after a little research, I found that the seeds of what would eventually become my career were being sown before I ever emerged on the scene.

The year before I was born, in 1960, AT&T introduced the dataphone and the first known modem, Digital unveiled the PDP-1, the first minicomputer, and a gentleman by the name of Bob Bemer introduced the now ubiquitous backslash.

In 1961, Leonard Kleinrock started laying the groundwork for the Net in a paper entitled “Information Flow in Large Communication Nets,” published just 60 days before my birthday.

Eight years later, on Oct. 29, 1969 (just 96 days after the first moon landing), the Internet would be born in Kleinrock’s UCLA lab when his server became “Node 1” of the Internet and he sent the first online message.

I would be willing to bet you’ve heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin but until now had never heard the name Leonard Kleinrock.

The next year, Steve Russell created “SpaceWar!” — the world’s first computer game.

In 1961, Steve Jobs was in the first grade in Cupertino, Calif. and would soon start hanging around the after-school lectures at HP in Palo Alto. Seven hundred miles to the north, in the Haller Lake section of Seattle, little Billy Gates was also starting grade one and was just six years away from skipping math class at Lakeside School to write programs for the school’s new GE computer. Neither of these activities made them any more popular at school dances, but who’s laughing now?

This little trip down memory lane reminded me of a fabulous book by Kevin Kelly, “What Technology Wants.” In it, the Wired magazine co-founder posits that technology is a living, evolving force unto itself — one that relentlessly pushes forward, carried by the critical mass of cumulative discovery.

Technology wanted the double helix structure of DNA to be discovered, and if it weren’t Watson and Crick, it would have been someone else a few months or, at the most, a year or two later. The same is true for radios, electricity, the telegraph and the Internet. Although there are famous names associated with these discoveries, this isn’t a scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” If Edison, Marconi, Morse and Berners-Lee had never been born, we’d still have lightbulbs, radios, the telegraph and the Internet. The form and the timing might be a little different, but the discoveries themselves were inevitable. It was what technology wanted to happen.

And so, somehow, I feel a little better about the fact that even when a very, very young Gordie Hotchkiss entered the world on the evening of July 30, 1961 at Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary, technology was already making plans for me. It was making sure there would be an Internet so that someday, such a thing as Internet marketers could exist.

On second thought, maybe it really is a Wonderful Life!

The ZMOT Continued: More from Jim Lecinski

First published July 28, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I started my conversation with Jim Lecinski, author of the new ebook from Google: “ZMOT, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth.”  Yesterday, Fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman gave us his take on ZMOT. Today, I’ll wrap up by exploring with Jim the challenge that the ZMOT presents to organizations and some of the tips for success he covers in the book.

First of all, if we’re talking about what happens between stimulus and transaction, search has to play a big part in the activities of the consumer. Lecinski agreed, but was quick to point out that the online ZMOT extends well beyond search.

Jim Lecinski: Yes, Google or a search engine is a good place to look. But sometimes it’s a video, because I want to see [something] in use…Then [there’s] your social network. I might say, “Saw an ad for Bobby Flay’s new restaurant in Las Vegas. Anybody tried it?” That’s in between seeing the stimulus, but before… making a reservation or walking in the door.

We see consumers using… a broad set of things. In fact, 10.7 sources on average are what people are using to make these decisions between stimulus and shelf.

A few columns back, I shared the pinball model of marketing, where marketers have to be aware of the multiple touchpoints a buyer can pass through, potentially heading off in a new and unexpected direction at each point. This muddies the marketing waters to a significant degree, but it really lies at the heart of the ZMOT concept:

Lecinski: It is not intended to say, “Here’s how you can take control,” but you need to know what those touch points are. We quote the great marketer Woody Allen: “‘Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up.”

So if you’re in the makeup business, people are still seeing your ads in Cosmo and Modern Bride and Elle magazine, and they know where to buy your makeup. But if Makeupalley is now that place between stimulus and shelf where people are researching, learning, reading, reviewing, making decisions about your $5 makeup, you need to show up there.

Herein lies an inherent challenge for the organization looking to win the ZMOT: whose job is that? Our corporate org chart reflects marketplace realities that are at least a generation out of date. The ZMOT is virgin territory, which typically means it lies outside of one person’s job description. Even more challenging, it typically cuts across several departments.

Lecinski: We offer seven recommendations in the book, and the first one is “Who’s in charge?” If you and I were to go ask our marketer clients, “Okay, stimulus — the ad campaigns. Who’s in charge of that? Give me a name,” they could do that, right? “Here’s our VP of National Advertising.”

Shelf — if I say, “Who’s in charge of winning at the shelf?” “Oh. Well, that’s our VP of Sales” or “Shopper Marketing.” And if I say, “Product delivery,” – “well that’s our VP of Product Development” or “R&D” or whatever. So there’s someone in charge of those classic three moments. Obviously the brand manager’s job is to coordinate those. But when I say, “Who’s in charge of winning the ZMOT?” Well, usually I get blank stares back.

If you’re intent on winning the ZMOT, the first thing you have to do is make it somebody’s job. But you can’t stop there. Here are Jim’s other suggestions:

The second thing is, you need to identify what are those zero moments of truth in your category… Start to catalogue what those are and then you can start to say, “Alright. This is a place where we need to start to show up.”

The next is to ask, “Do we show up and answer the questions that people are asking?”

Then we talk about being fast and being alert, because up to now, stimulus has been characterized as an ad you control. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a study that’s released by an interest group. Sometimes it’s a product recall that you don’t control. Sometimes it’s a competitor’s move. Sometimes it’s Colbert on his show poking a little fun at Miracle Whip from Kraft. That wasn’t in your annual plan, but now there’s a ZMOT because, guess what happens — everybody types in “Colbert Miracle Whip video.” Are you there, and what do people see? Because that’s how they’re going to start making up their mind before they get to Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up their Miracle Whip.

Winning the ZMOT is not a cakewalk. But it lies at the crux of the new marketing reality. We’ve begun to incorporate the ZMOT into the analysis we do for clients. If you don’t, you’re leaving a huge gap between the stimulus and shelf — and literally anything could happen in that gap.