Google: Giants and Pygmies

You may not have noticed, but I never did a blog posting last week. I was so busy that I never had time to sit down and contemplate the navel of the IT universe. I was in the UK doing some consultancy work. (This is always useful because I get some coal-face knowledge. For example, one very able developer I ran into was bitching about the Sonic ESB saying it was really difficult to use—and then sang the praises of the Cape Clear product. He also waxed lyrical about Andromeda and Eclipse.)

As it happens I wasn't the only visitor to the UK. Two of the not-particularly-evil guys from Google turned up to the European Google Zeitgeist conference, which I somehow managed to miss. It was almost attended by David Beckham (famous in the UK for playing soccer, but in America, famous for being famous) because the England soccer team was staying in the same hotel and (my sources inform me) he was wandering around in the foyer. The British media were there in numbers—probably confused about who to aim the cameras at. Anyway, both Eric Schmidt and Larry Page got their designated sound bite, and said nothing memorable.

Am I the only one that isn't yet impressed by Google? Let's be honest, Google designed a decent home page for search, and none of its competitors had the faintest clue that there was a fundamental signal/noise problem that Google was solving. (Google users realized this and voted with their mice! Doh!) So Google's competitors watched in wonder as their search traffic went bulimic and Google's put on weight like a fast food fanatic.

Google then did something clever by inventing context sensitive advertising. You have to admire that. Enough already. Microsoft did good stuff once.

Now Google suddenly finds itself in an enviable position because it has a big share (about 25%) of the web's advertising revenue and ad revenue on the web is growing at about 50%–70%. This is no different to Bill Gates looking through his Windows with dollars for eyeballs, while the PC market grew and the money rolled in. All Microsoft had to do was maintain market share, but actually it was well positioned to grow market share—which is what it did. That's how Bill became whatever he is. Yesterday's man?

Today's man is “Larry Page and Sergey Brin”, Google's Siamese intellects joined at the hypothalamus. A big deal is made of their mathematical prowess, and my guess is that in a mental math marathon they'd leave Bill Gates at the starting post, but who gives a damn. The game they all play is called Monopoly and if you own Mayfair (in the UK version) or Park Avenue (in the US version), the dice are on your side. Right now, these Siamese intellects, with a little bit of help from Smitty, are building hotels in all the right places. Bill (and the rest of Microsoft) seem so scared of this that they're doing their now-familiar IBM impersonation. (Mirror mirror, on the wall, I'm like my mother after all).

One day some author will write a definitive description of how and why IBM failed to stop Microsoft. The narrative will be interspersed with a generous number of Homer Simpson “Doh's”. The same author will be able to write a sequel about how Microsoft failed to stop Google. All the author will need to do is a few string “search and replace” operations and alter a few dates. The Homer Simpson “Doh's” will remain in exactly the same place.

But aside from the monopoly momentum, is Google really that formidable? I spent a few hours this week messing with the personalized home page that you can configure on Google. (I stumbled on this by accident, didn't even know it was a feature). Is it better than MyYahoo? Not much. You can add widgets, similar to the widgets that Apple introduced with the Tiger OS. It's a marginally better idea to have these in a web page. Is Google maps compelling? The maps are pretty much the same as other maps. The satellite images are fun, until they aren't. The linking from search to map is nice. Is Froogle good? I tried using it and gave up. Google's giving up on it too and reabsorbing it into normal search. Is Gmail a great email system—not really. Writely.com is compelling but Google never created it. Commentators talk about Google as though it were some great creative juggernaut. Not even close.

This is the world we live in. All our giants are pygmies.

SOA Rant: The Sequel

Being a blogger with a little experience, I was not surprised that my SOA Rant prompted some response—including a kind offer by Epicor to brief me on the capabilities of their product set. But, oh dear…

I also received an email from a long time associate, Dave Topping, who was once an IBMer of deep experience, and left IBM to join a software vendor named Scala, in a marketing role. I discover from Dave that Epicor acquired Scala and that Epicor's absurd 100% SOA claims may be based to some degree on the Scala products.

Responding to his email, I offered to include it in my blog, and attribute it to “Horrified Horace” from the quaint Suffolk village of Much-Binding-In-The-Threads. (Torture me all you want, I'll never reveal my sources, first amendment rights, etc. etc.) However, Dave was happy to be quoted directly. Here's what he says:

“Just in case I am tarred with the brush of having claimed 100% SOA I'd like to make it clear that I, along with Sergey Shvedov, am the proud inventor of the claim made by Scala (now Epicor) that iScala 2.1 was 100% web services enabled by virtue of building even the modules of the product as web services and using xml messages for internal processes.

We always went on to point out that this allowed us to open out individual modules to extra enterprise processes, but that these would need to be in an understood and pre-defined xml format, hopefully using one of the standards organisations' formats and namespaces. Further, we always saw this as being for limited and well understood processes. The first were things such as the simple interchange of orders and invoices, something that can be achieved with a wrapper but does work better if the receiving module works natively with XML. Others which we imagined, could have been for processes such as posting an invoice to the GL but using a web service to get a time stamped and agreed currency rate from an external service as part of the posting process.

We did a lot of very cool animated PowerPoints and built great demos to show this. We were also very clear that this was the type of application that could best take part in a company's service oriented architecture. We used to joke about the major vendors attempting to set standards for processes which are changing, my analogy being that there were mapping the Sahara's sand dunes. Great until the next wind comes along then you're back to chaos theory predictions.

My point is this: Epicor risks ridicule by making such a claim when ‘SOA ready’ or simply ‘Externally Integrated’ are equally powerful claims. This is really a failure of marketing to understand what the market actually wants. I honestly do not hear potential purchasers asking for SOAs. I hear them say that it would be a good thing, I hear them say “show me”, but most of all I hear them ask; ‘We have a process which needs to work this way, can you fix it reliably, quickly, and without costing the earth?’”

Quite so.

In a subsequent email, Dave rails mightily about the whole problem.

“From my point of view it comes back down to the problem all technology companies seem to face in what is laughingly called Marketing nowadays. They are hiring cheaper, less experienced people who know the techniques of marketing but know little of the product's or the real customer benefits. As such they are taking second hand information about what the technology can do and making up statements they think will please.”

That says most of what needs to be said—except for one thing. I note with some consternation that you marketing bad boys at Epicor have not handed in your lines, despite the fact that you were told, in no uncertain terms, what your punishment was and the reason for it. This is just not good enough. If your recalcitrant behaviour persists then the blessings of the Headmaster and his trusty but stern assistant Miss Cane will surely descend upon you. There will be tears before bed-time.

(I've a feeling that we're not done here.)