Orlowski mis-reports it again
You have to wonder about any publication that employs a fact challenged guy like Andrew Orlowski. Have a look at the latest article he has, which made it to Digg today. In a discussion about supposedly bad search results from Google (I hadn't noticed, and this is the first I've seen anyone talk about it), he says this:
Recently, we featured a software tool that can create 100 Blogger weblogs in 24 minutes, called Blog Mass Installer. A subterranean industry of sites providing "private label articles," or PLAs exists to flesh out "content" for these freshly minted sites. And as a result, legitimate sites are often caught in the cross fire.
But the new algorithms may not be solely to blame. Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt has hinted at another reason for the recent chaos. In Google's earnings conference call last month, Schmidt was frank about the extent of the problem.
"Those machines are full," he said. "We have a huge machine crisis."
And there's at least some anecdotal evidence to support the theory that hardware limitations are to blame.
That's a fairly nasty bit of selective quoting. Orlowski leaves the impression that "full" machines are causing search problems. Follow the link though - that comment came in reference to the huge capital infrastructure spending that Google is engaged in:
Google continued to make substantial capital investments, mainly in computer servers, networking equipment and its data centers. It spent $345 million on such items in the first quarter, more than double the level of last year. Yahoo, its closest rival, spent $142 million on capital expenses in the first quarter.
Referring to the sheer volume of Web site information, video and e-mail that Google's servers hold, Schmidt said: "Those machines are full. We have a huge machine crisis."
Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets called Google's capital spending "unfathomably high," noting that it spent the same percentage of its revenue on equipment as a wire-line phone company.
Boy, it sure sounds different when you actually put it in context, doesn't it? This seems to be Orlowski's stock in trade though - pulling stuff out of context and making wild assumptions - sometimes he just makes crap up.
The stupid thing is, you could write a worried sounding article about Google and their capital spending from the source he links to - heck, one paragraph down from what I quoted above, Rohan says the following:
"If Google's market share continues to increase, and its position as the central hub of the Internet is reinforced, an extra $1 billion is a worthwhile investment," Rohan said. "The day market share peaks, we have a problem."
Now there's potential grist for a story. Orlowski seems to be blind to actual stories though, even when he links right to them.
Comments
Huzzah for the open forum!
[Nick Thomas] May 4, 2006 18:40:44.437
I thank my lucky stars every day that we have a news reporting medium where people who are spewing bullshit are swiftly called out on it.
google getting faster
[cyb0rg] May 4, 2006 18:53:29.470
If anything, google's services seem to be running faster lately. The response times from their search and web service API's are amazingly fast. I've also noticed an increase in the frequency of their crawling and indexing. There isn't a google dance anymore, where it was a big deal when the whole search was indexed and reloaded.. now it seems to just happen continually. While future capacity might be an issue with their growth, they seem to be managing well at the moment on the technology and infratructure front.
[Vincent Foley] May 4, 2006 21:18:07.906
Ooh, you made Digg's front page. Hopefully a few people will be interested in Smalltalk.
It sounds worse when you put it in context.
[tommy] May 4, 2006 21:35:07.713
Your attempt to straighten things out actually makes them seem worse and more plausible. The chance that spam blogs are filling up google's computers too rapidly is a little light standing alone. Add your info about video and audio to the fact that google spent more than twice as much as the nearest competitor on infrastructure upgrades and ... bingo, sound like Orlowski was right on the money.
Wire-line telephone company
[Andrew N. Gray] May 4, 2006 22:32:39.712
Spending at the level of the wire-line phone companies, wow. The wire line phone company has made so much money over the years, I would say that is a prudent move. If google can make at much money at AT+T has then they would have good return on their stock. Google is to AT+T and 1998 is to 1920, Andrew
[me] May 4, 2006 23:19:37.542
I thank my lucky stars every day that we have a news reporting medium where people who are spewing bullshit are swiftly called out on it.
Well, allow me to call you out on it. The context of the quote doesn't change anything. We know that yahoo actually indexes more pages than google, and that yahoo has more mail users, and more ancillary sites and services than google, so why is google spending more than double on infrastructure?
Anyone bothering to ask that question? OR are you simply assuming that google plans to do something "great" with it.
There's so much cheerleading of this company its ridiculous. Just tell us up front if you own stock in google so we can have full disclosure, sheesh.
Google investment vs Yahoo's
[Jan Schmidt] May 4, 2006 23:43:59.896
Doesn't Google serve more a lot more search queries than Yahoo? It seems to have more than 2x Yahoo's search market share. Assuming the indexes are comparable in size wouldn't that mean they need 2x the machines?
[It's true there's a lot of hype on this stock - but James' post doesn't seem so to me.]
not much diference
[me2] May 5, 2006 2:32:43.303
How does it sound any different in "context"? It sounds the same.
I see no discrepancy
[SynaptiX] May 5, 2006 3:26:18.028
It sounds essentially the same to me in both contexts. Perhaps the problem is your own understanding/interpretation?
The Reg in general
[zap] May 5, 2006 11:10:21.183
Anyone who has paid much attention to The Reg knows there is tons of spin and bias in almost every story. That's part of the draw. If people wanted the objectivity of every other news organization, they would probably get their news elsewhere.
I have noticed big changes in the rankings.
[Tom Chambers] May 5, 2006 17:30:54.635
You say that you haven't noticed any change in the rankings but i can tell you it is true. Our site www.licenseprofessor.com has been the number 1 ranking for all my keywords such are real estate license and real estate exam, etc and then January came by and we couldn't even be found. We are not a spam site nor are we using nepharious SEO tactics yet our bottom line has been completely affected by this change.
Different Infrastructure Approaches
[EP] May 5, 2006 18:30:37.950
I wonder if the seemingly large discrepancy in infrastructure spending has anything to do with the different approaches Yahoo! and Google take. As I understand it, Yahoo! has large consolidated storage whereas Google went with incredibly decentralized (redundant) servers.
Could it be that at a certain level of information handling the decentralized approach was superior, but that the information reached a critical mass where the decentralized servers and their meshing introduces a level of complexity that makes it much more expensive?
should we Google for an answer?
:-P
Hey license professor dude.
[] May 5, 2006 19:54:19.793
I compared your web page to several of the top pages listed by google.
Your web page is even uglier then the top scoring web pages.
You have 233 HTML errors on your page compared to aboute 40 HTML errors on each of the top scoring pages.
Fix your HTML so Google's robots can read the damn thing.
Learn how to use an HTML validator.
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.licenseprofessor.com%2F
Hey license professor dude.
[Mike] May 5, 2006 20:04:50.732
I compared your web page to several of the top pages listed by google.
Your web page is even uglier then the top scoring web pages.
You have 233 HTML errors on your page compared to aboute 40 HTML errors on each of the top scoring pages.
Fix your HTML so Google's robots can read the damn thing.
Learn how to use an HTML validator.
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.licenseprofessor.com%2F
RE: Well, allow me to call you out on it
[timhorton] May 5, 2006 21:07:17.145
There's so much cheerleading of this company its ridiculous. Just tell us up front if you own stock in google so we can have full disclosure, sheesh.
Yeah, Sheesh! You are in big, big trouble mister.
I think James is like me: Sick of hearing how Google is now a turd. Yeah they are the Wall Street Darlings du ans. It has to be somebody.
I think they are good. The searches don't try hard enough sometimes I think. They have got their algorithms right for the lowest common denominator. Reality show fans have invaded the internet, Gawd help us all. Google understands Americans better than the IRS, that is for sure. I wonder how it feels to have Joe America as your market? Welcome to being the CBS of the internet.
So their searches are getting more frustrating for me, there is no longer tons of space for holding lots of technical elite material. The net is starting to represent our population better. As it should.
Nice comment editor by the way, although I had to crank up my CPU speed to use it...
Re: [me]'s response
[crlf] May 5, 2006 22:32:54.866
How do we *know* that yahoo indexes more data?
huh? or should it be... duh?
[JTKinchen] May 5, 2006 23:45:30.714
Are you seriously saying that you read an article from the register and took it as something other than comedy and/or satire?
Wait, is this satire?
^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_
Re: [crlf]'s response
[Balaji Dutt] May 6, 2006 1:10:31.316
Here is a detailed article on the behavior of the various search engine bots. It appears that Yahoo is most aggressive in searching, which again makes you wonder about which search engine should be investing more in hardware.