About 10 years ago, I mused to my coworkers that all programming in the future is just going to be knowing APIs.

Here's what modern perl programming is like:

 use File::Slurp;
 use Email::Store "dbi:SQLite:dbname=mailstore.db";
 use File::Find::Rule;
    for (File::Find::Rule->file->name(qr/\d+/)->in("perl6-language")) {
        Email::Store::Mail->store(scalar read_file($_));
    }

What does that do? Simple, it reads a directory of mail archive files (numerical file names) into a database. Right? Obvious. 2mins to program! Great.

But it reminds me of the old joke about the $10,000 Furnace repair bill:

1) Hitting furnace with hammer: $2
2) Knowing where to hit:        $9,998

¶ 7/31/2005

Microsoft is irrelevant these days. David Bau reveals the cascade of logic:

• "Microsoft must protect the Windows franchise."
• They are a legacy company, and they stifle innovation.
• They can't act fast enough to handle Google.

Microsoft in 2004 (year ended June 30)
                                   Revenue (money in)  Profit (money made)
Client (Windows XP)                      11.2b              9.0b
Server and Tools (Server+SQL)             7.9b              2.2b
Information Worker (Office)              10.9b              8.1b
Microsoft Business Solution               0.7b             (0.2b)
MSN (homepage, Hotmail, search)           2.4b              0.3b
Mobile and Embedded Devices               0.2b             (0.1b)
Home and Entertainment (Xbox)             2.9b             (0.8b)
Reconciling amounts                       0.6b             (9.4b)
Totals                                   36.8b              9.0b

Without even talking about Google, David Bau supplies quite enough damning evidence.

¶ 7/31/2005

If you're into AdWords, and you don't read Andrew Goodman's 4 page article on the upcoming "Ad Quality" changes, you might as well being throwing your money away...

If you aren’t attuned to the concept of “search quality,” your campaigns will start to cost more than they should.

He describes better than anyone else what these AdWords changes will mean to the advertisers. Yet, you know this is all Google black magic when you read Andrew's conspicuously non-quantitive description of how it works. Samples of the hedging:

• appears to be
• could include the historical performance
• might see
• In that case
• if we could hear more detail

In short, I think CTR is as important as ever in the new regime. The change is more one of smoothing advertisers’ experience in dealing with essentially the same challenges.

I wonder what percent of the AdWords advertisers will understand these changes. Perhaps 5%? Even Andrew can't tell you exactly what to do about them. It seems to me that Google's opening up more lebensraum for the sophisticated ad arbitrageurs...

¶ 7/27/2005

Can you imagine Google at $1000 a share? What analyst would make such a Henry Blodgett-esque prediction? I don't know, but I am making that prediction myself.

Simply put, Google has more room to run. Here are the advantages:

• Google dominates a transformative market.
• They have a culture of extreme innovation.
• They have replaced Microsoft as the most important tech company.
• They have opportunities with large upside which they haven't begun to tap. E.g.
• Froogle connecting buyers to merchants thru Google
• Domination of the internet desktop
• Their data

Google already is the Microsoft of today. Any tech company has to think to themselves: "What could Google do to us?"

What are the threats to Google's ascendancy? Basically it's: managing the scaling, hiring, size, growth. Will they get too big, and not be able to move fast enough? Will the key people (most of whom are worth over $50M) stay interested?

My gut feel is that the founders will stay just crazy enough to keep throwing all of the balls in the air. Keeping Google ahead of the legacy monster that eats tech companies.

Don't let the high per-share price fool you. All it takes for Google to get to $1000sh is a valuation a bit south of Microsoft's today. It'll happen before 2006 is over.

And yes, I do own some shares in GOOG

¶ 7/26/2005

Fortune magazine is paying attention to Yahoo with a long article on how Yahoo's behavioural targeting products are appealing to big advertisers. Here's the key for Julie Roehm - who oversees Chrysler's $2B ad spend:

Roehm too spends the biggest chunk of her online dollars on Yahoo. She says that Yahoo gives her the most information about how the advertising performs, allowing her to slice and dice the effectiveness of every dollar she spends.

And later in the article, proof that Yahoo PR is on the job (which is obvious when they get such a laudatory article in Fortune in the first place):

Though he has been been at Yahoo less than a year, [ex-Hollywood honcho Lloyd] Braun has already shaken things up—to the consternation of some of Yahoo's old guard. ...
Asked to detail his strategy, Braun alternates between coy and expansive, but he is clear about his mission. Yahoo must create a venue that attracts so many viewers and creates so much buzz that no matter how disconcerted old media become over Yahoo's growing popularity, the money and attention it delivers to content suppliers will be too great to resist.

Right... Thank God Semel brought Braun in to clear up that strategy! Anyways, it's working.

¶ 7/25/2005

On Friday, I participated in a workshop to launch the AttentionTrust. The main goal was to get a non-profit organization launched that will help evangelize the following beliefs:

You Own:

• Yourself
• Your data
• Your attention

And you have basic rights - the ability to move your data and attention, to control how it's used, and to decide who profits from it.

Examples of your attention data:

• Your credit history
• Your search history
• Your amazon transactions
• Your connections on a social network, ie. your LinkedIn data
• Your click stream across various websites

Why?

The AttentionTrust is a Web2.0 type approach to your activity and how marketers interact with you. Instead of consumers being passive and trading their attention for "free" services, consumers can now say: "My attention is mine, and I'm aware of how much it's worth. If companies want to get it, they should respect my rights."

Upshot

To succeed, the AttentionTrust mainly needs to educate people about a new way to think about the data they create. Think of attention as a valuable resource, and since you create it, you own it. Over the next few years, that type of thinking will change the way internet marketing works.

¶ 7/23/2005

Did you know that Google will be lowering the minimum bid for an ad to just 1 penny? From the AdWords blog:

Increased Control: We’re replacing the static USD $0.05 minimum bid for all keywords with a minimum bid that varies based on the quality of your keyword and ad text. High quality keywords (determined by the Quality Score) will have minimum bids as low as $0.01, while keywords with a lower Quality Score will be assigned higher minimum bids. As long as the maximum CPC meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active. You no longer have to worry about on hold, in trial, or disabled keywords.

This is a good change. Advertisers who know their conversion rates will be able to bid for more inventory at low cost, as long as they can create good ads.

What's the downside of this? You have to know even more about how Google works. And it's not really getting easier to explain... Reading the freakin' manual carefully is becoming a must.

¶ 7/19/2005

Tech Crunch highlights A comment in a Fred Wilson post (ostensibly about RSS and Longhorn)

“RSS is starting to feel like television. I sit in front of the tv with a remote and click through 100 channels and then say “nothing is on.”

Heh. Reminds me of the "law of content conservation" I made up back in my interactive TV days.

So the law of content conservation is: No matter how many channels you have, total content is the same, and average content is:

At least it always feels that way.

¶ 7/18/2005

Perrymarshall.com sends email newsletters. The guy is prolific. Here's a gem of a summary talking about Google's latest changes in AdWords (dealing with how Google decides whether your keywords should be disabled).

Regardless of how the exact details play out, AdWords will continue to be a game where the dumb bloke who just walked in off the street pays through the nose... And the educated guys and gals get the sweet deals. The race goes to the swift - and to those who value education.

I don't think of the newbies to AdWords as dumb, but the fact is they are at a tremendous disadvantage... They also help create those fun arbitrage situations - a big market with a lot of "dumb" players.

¶ 7/18/2005

Salar Kamangar is the product manager who handled the press on the click fraud issue back in February. According to the WSJ, he's just one of many spending 7 figures in the Bay-Area enclave of Atherton. Omid Kordestani strikes it rich too - he gets his picture done in Wall St. Journal style.

Some Googlers are buying properties through trusts in an effort to remain anonymous, real-estate agents say. In February, a 12,400-square-foot Atherton estate sold for $10 million to a trust, according to the assessor's records. Behind the trust, says a person familiar with the matter, is Salar Kamangar, a 28-year-old Google product-management director. The property is now back on the market for $11.65 million.

Reading this article makes me a bit jealous. Not of the $10M homes, but the fact that more and more Googlers are getting their own "dot-picture" printed in the WSJ! Man, someday, I aspire to one of those little etched headshots...

¶ 7/15/2005

I have a question.

Why aren't Bayesian filters being used to minimize blog comment spam? And why are the 17 people who worry about tag spam (or "spag") not thinking Bayesian?

There's probably a good reason, but I can't think of it. If you know why, please let me know (in my non-filtered comments).

[ Ridiculous aside: Paul Graham wrote some influential stuff called "A Plan for Spam". Graham rhymes with spam... Instead of being eponymous, it's epono-rhyme-onomous... ]

¶ 7/11/2005

I went to read one of my favorite blogs, Infectious Greed, by Paul Kedrosky, only to discover a domain-parked search engine. The URL is: http://paul.kedrosky.com.

This got me thinking - losing your domain is rather drastic these days. Perhaps, Paul, who is a visionary, did it on purpose - maybe he's "faking his own death" on the internet?!? Who knows? In any case, I hope I can find it when he comes back online.

Update: It's back up. However the "faking your own internet death" idea could be handy someday...

¶ 7/11/2005

Read this transcipt if you put AdSense ads on your blog: Google AdSense employees discuss tips and tricks for new publishers.

"So the wider formats do best so specifically, the top three formats are the 336x280 that you see on the page; the 300x250 medium rectangle; and then the 160x600 wide skyscraper."

Also don't miss the info on color palettes, avoiding "ad blindness" and tracking.

¶ 7/11/2005

A good post at seochat on both sides of the clcik fraud argument.

Basically the two sides are:

• Click fraud is more prevalent than Google admits
• Click fraud detection companies are hyping inflated numbers just to get attention

Certainly there are a lot of "whisper numbers" from the click fraud detection outfits. Generally these estimates seem inflated and embellished, without any hard proof. The commenter at seochat who quipped "95% of statistics are made up" is probably on to something. Also, launching lawsuits to garner attention isn't proof of accuracy.

Google and Yahoo, of course haven't shared any significant statistics or proof on click fraud either. So until they or some credible, non-conflicted 3rd party does (like a university researcher), Google and Yahoo can't really complain about the hyped reports.

¶ 7/07/2005

MarketingSherpa is required reading for anyone doing eCommerce web sites. The latest newsletter has a case study on celebrity branded apparel and lifestyle sites. If you sell anything online, there are some great tips in here. (free access until July 15).

However, I'm shocked to read that the manager for sites such as Jennifer Lopez' ShopJLo.com says that site gets only 2% of traffic from search engines. That's way too low...

¶ 7/05/2005