This quote surfaced by umair is almost as sad as the historical event it references.
No disrespect, but Custer lost the battle, but the Sioux nation lost the war. (again, no disrespect) The point is, for better or worse, Custer was on the winning side. So, yeah Google is like Custer.
This quote [Thanks Doc] from the academic paper written by the founders of Google is interesting for more than one reason.
The first and obvious is that it seems to stand in stark contrast to Google’s most lucrative intitiative, AdWords.
The second is that search itself is a VRMish RFP (request for proposal) at its most embryonic level.
The question, then, is whether Google sold out, or has just laid the groundwork for a new era.
The Starbury is a basketabll shoe endorsed by NBA All Star Stephon Marbury.
It doesn’t retail for $200, but $14.98.
I’m getting a pair.
The idea was partly started to try to eliminate any reason for “getting jumped” for your valuable sneakers.
It looks like the idea has legs, and NBA player Ben Wallace will also be sporting the brand on the court.
We’ve all known for some time how much markup there was on these sneakers, and I’m thinking this is indicative of a greater trend.
In this case, it might just be a marketing gimic, or an actual good gesture to help the community, but it begs the question of whether goods of all kinds can close the gap between price and cost, since most of that is controlled by the brands and the distribution channels.
With the fact that distribution of all kinds is bringing the manufacturer and the consumer closer together, whether it be news, or basketball shoes, we all know that this phenomenon is being actualized.
The next logical step is the consumers creating their own brands, wrought out of the demand side either supplying itself, or leveraging their collective demand to have the manufacturer create a product to their specs.
Enter VRM.
One aspect of VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the ability of ad hoc groups to create a collective demand, and influence the suppliers to meet that demand.
In such a case, it’s hard to see what a brand has to offer, if they are anything but an enabler in the process, much in the same way that the Wordpress brand enables me to blog, though it gets no immediate revenue from me.
The Wordpress brand however, will or might generate revenue from ancillary services, in and around the actual product.
Could it be, that in the future, Nike or Microsoft might only exist, not to sell their products, but to aggregate attention from the demand side, and facilitate a transaction.
That would seem to be where Google is headed. Wise companies might just follow.
Scott Anderson points to this Search Engine Land post about Google moving the news sources into the search results themselves, instead of in a box on top of the results.
My reaction is that this is an unprecedented integration of the “live web,” as Doc Searls would say, into the formerly “static web search.”
It would seemingly raise the “noise level” to open this up to blogs, but then again, maybe the algorithm is smart enough to give different weight to links to blog posts versus links to static resources.
That concept of weighted links sounds a lot like heading toward a gesture-driven environment, so Steve Gillmor was probably right to say that “links are dead.”
Links, at least, are seemingly entering an era of relativity.
Richard MacManus asks whether Google is being genuine when they say their Web Office is not in competition with google.
Well, I think they are genuine because this is a completely new market, and definedly different than the one Microsoft controlled. This is an Attention market, not a software market.
That said, they are in competition with Microsoft, since Microsoft realizes that they need to convert their business model to this new market as well. If they don’t adapt their Office strategy, they will fail.
It seems to me that everyone that is relevant on the web is competing for a new type of market. The Office aspect is just one sector.
James Corbett asks where the integrated read/write web tool is, and claims Google Reader will morph into it.
He also claims comments are dead this year. I don’t like them either but I think that’s aggressive.
James, if you and Tom Morris want to eliminate comments, I think we could do it with SSE, like I showed at OPML camp.
We are blogging on three distinct platforms (Wordpress, Typepad, OPML community) so it would be a great start if we could get it to work between the three of us. Then we can widgetize it with Grazr ; ).
I’m hoping part two of the latest Gillmor Gang will prove more interesting.
If you remember the Jason and the Argonauts tale, you might know how Jason succeeded in conquest over the Seed men by casting a stone at one, who thought it was his neighbor, and letting them all kill each other.
That’s what Steve Gillmor seems to do by letting the fellas discuss the importance of Google algorithms and whether site owners can get a cut by having search engines bid for their site search.
If Steve would have put the “knockoff” Cheerios down for a sec I know what he would have said.
It’s not whether Google’s algorithms hold up, it’s whether they can garner more stock in the conversation with all their attention data.
The winners of the future are not the best technologies. We’ll all be able to plug into those the same way we plug into an electrical outlet.
The winners are the services which add value to the conversations happening throughout distributed web networks.
These networks and conversations are fluid and changing constantly in response to our gestures.
Those who don’t get this are either thinking too hard or just not enough.
In a similar way that facial and hand gestures are a meaningful supplement to spoken conversations, the gestures which we talk about with attention are the metadata of the conversations happening on the web.
That equates to economic power because markets are conversations.
I agree with Jason Calacanis that many in the SEO business are trying to game this system, but I disagree when he says the system works. People are trying to game the system because it does not work. It just works better than the previous systems.
I can prove it Jason. I’ll write a better piece on a new cell phone than Engadget and see which shows up higher on Google.
No. Those dynamics are only part of the game.
The richer system envelops us with answers using our data and our network’s data in a chameleon like fashion, never static like Google. That’s child’s play.
Jason(Argonaut) succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece but was fickle and left Medea for another Princess.
Likewise, in the shorter term companies may succeed by amassing link attention.
The true winners won’t be seeking the Golden Fleece at all. They will be removing the barriers and letting the crystal waters flow in, filtered and clean, Pure Conversation.
GestureBank, as many of you have probably heard is an interesting new project being evangelized by Steve Gillmor.
I’m contributing my clickstream as of moments ago. Still not sure how the recorder can contribute to Root.net as well. I’ll have to take a second look at that.
Where all of this will take us, we shall see.
My guess: The way GTalk’s jabber based open architecture will slowly melt down the IM silos, projects like GestureBank will melt down the silos of marketing data.
I don’t even think Steve fully realizes what potential that holds for individuals of the world.
This will spawn unforseen applications and networks,. I even have a few in mind already. ; )
Ah well, not all post headlines can be winners . . .
Frank Gruber poses an interesting question about whether Google would buy Sun Microsystems. If that happened, I wonder how Steve Gillmor would interpret it.
Why would Google need this if everthing is going to be distributed?
Possible Answer: If everthing is distributed, then the dependency on Windows declines leaving more market for the free and open source Solaris. At that point, it could be used as a distribution model for the edge applications that Google has that work on this model.
You gotta love when Gillmor scoffs at the idea of anyone needing an online word processing tool and praising Google, practically in the same breath.
Then his favorite attention company acquires that same tool.
Can’t win ‘em all Steve.
Update: In all fairness, I rarely use a word processing tool anymore, so maybe he’s got it right and Google is starting to slip.
Update 2:Google is slipping maybe because they are obsessed with beating Microsoft and not focusing on where the puck will be