This is Twitterish review of Outlier by Malcom Gladwell

"Super stars success story is equally attributed to opportunity, economic, community and social system factors as to genius and hard work. "

Why blog this than twit it? My supposed-to-be blog post needed good graphic skill and I wasn't able to do justice to it. To save my blog from rusting I'm blogging.

May be this is the reason behind twitter's super success. It so easy to twitt! A decent blog post sucks lots of time and energy.

Pre Internet era:

Your local Newspaper covered International News mostly by sourcing the News article from News agencies, Newspapers and other publications by paying small fee.

This service was valuable, even if they printed the News verbatim without any change, as one did not have any easy option to access such News article. Of course you can fly down to place or get the publication couriered, but for most this simple re-printing service was valuable.

Now coming to Internet era:

Explanation with an example - Check the original article: Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008 from Wired Magazine.

This same article has been syndicated to an Indian publication Indiatimes and re-published in this article titled: Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008

Now the key question: What value has Indiatimes added by re-publishing this article in Indian website?

- The original article was presented well and better photographs.
- The original article loaded much faster in my browser

So the "value add" by Indiatimes is none!

Wait. May be "The brand awareness". How many Indians (as Indiatimes' target customer base is India) know wired magazine?

Well it fails here too.

I found the article link through Slashdot and other online feed aggregators (Google readers). I'm an Indian - TG of Indiatimes.

In online World the "power of sharing" through feed aggregators and search engine is bigger than brand.

Update: After a good friend made valid points in the comments:

• 2008's Top gift. Link 1, Link 2 (you might have to scroll down)
  

You have just launched "add on" service/facility/function to your flagship product and your job is to entice user with this just launched "add on".

Just launched means you can't make tall claims such as "Number 1", "Fastest selling", "Most sold", etc.

Here is what Apple does : -


This advertisement was for newly launched 'gift card' facility for iPhone 3G. I've underlined the interesting part in 'RED' in the advertisements = "Talked-about".

Now, how can anyone dispute 'Most talked-about' claim?

Lesson: When you can't make objective claims, make subjective claims that no one can dispute!

iPhone- surely has the buzz, but not the 'Gift card'. So you try to steal the buzz of iPhone and pass it on to the 'add on'. By reading this adverstisement you don't know - 'Much talked about' is about the iPhone or the 'Gift card'. I'm sure not many talk about the 'Gift card' - Pleazzze...there is never a buzz about 'Gift cards'.

Isn't very smart and simple communication? At the same time making 'indisputable' tall claims which most users don't realize.

Thank you, Terrorist!

For waking me up, for kindling the anger in me!

But, where was this anger?

...When thousands of Indian farmers commit suicide every year, when I know proper support would have saved their lives.

...When thousands of Indian lives are taken by floods year after year, when I know that proper town/city planning would save these lives.

...When lakhs of Indians get killed in road accidents, when I know that proper roads, road safety and first aid would have saved accident.

...When in spite of having world's costliest (42,000 crore) child care scheme, India still has 40% of world's malnourished children, when I know that corruption is the main reason for this failure.

...When thousands of Indians perish in regional, communal and caste based violence every year, when I know its been created by politicians for votes.

...When India is growing slums, making millions live in extreme poverty and neglecting the failing urban infrastructure, when I know the way to create sustainable cities and villages.

Where was the anger all this while? When I did not care for India.

Thank you, Terrorist. It is in you we Indians see a common enemy!
Thank you, Terrorist. It is in you we Indians see our failed and uninspiring politicians!
Thank you, Terrorist, it is in you we Indians see the ill effects of corruptions!
Thank you, Terrorist, it is because of you we Indians have risen from our passive and voice-less lives.
Thank you, Terrorist, it is because of you we Indians are seeking change!

You have awaken my brothers and sisters. Thank you, Terrorist.

I don't know what your ultimate goal is, but you have made India stronger and more vibrant. Thank you, Terrorist.

Jai Hind

Much delayed post. I wanted to support this post with graphical animation. As of now I will stick to just text until my graphic design skills improve!

It amazes that how companies change so much, that they become completely opposite of what made them an initially success. In an interview George Lucas said "He fought big studios and started independent production but his new little company grew and eventually become like a big studio, just like the Dark Vader character who initially fights the dark side but eventually moves to dark side"

During 80s and 90s Microsoft followed the following strategy. (Warning, this post is not a result of research work, its just based on my casual reading of various web article, forum and books, over period of time. I don't have the time or inclination to give detailed reference)

- Embrace and Extend
- Avoid NIH (not invented here) syndrome
- Build 'ecosystem' of partners and Developers

Here is an example that describe Microsoft's above strategy:

MSDOS: Based on QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS)

Yes, Microsoft's most successful product (OS) wasn't an in-house innovation.

In 70s and 80s computer industries biggest competitor was IBM. Everyone wanted to be or beat IBM. However it was very difficult to survive competing against IBM. IBM was the dark side. Microsoft did not directly fight but leveraged IBM, it tricked IBM with clever license agreement.

For all the criticism from the open source world, the early days of Microsoft was actually very Open. MS wanted MSDOS and Windows OS to be more open than Mac, the word "Open" had different connotation, 'open' as in 'open' to many hardware and not tied to one specific hardware.

So, in early days, Microsoft's clear focus was to develop large network of hardware and software companies that will make Microsoft OS the platform of choice.

All that has changed. Now its seems to have developed a huge chain of competitors that its fiercely fighting.

• Apple - ipod, iphone, home entertainment
• Google - Search, Advertisement
• IBM - Enterprise
• Adobe - Rich internet Application and Creative works
• Salesforce - Application on Demand
• Wii/Sony - Gaming and home entertainment
• Amazon - Cloud computing
• Developers - Open source web platforms - Rails, Django, Java stack, AJAX, etc. The worst situation is majority of this open source developers hate Microsoft. Frustration with IE has been single most reason to develop this animosity. Most developers are OS agnostic, however development experience of making application work with IE has left a bad taste.
  
• OS- Linux, Mac OSX
• Nokia - Mobile OS
  

Microsoft is now building following (not an exhaustive list) product in-house. What happened to NIH?

• Search engine- live
• Gaming- Xbox
• Music Player- Zune
• Cloud computing - Azure
  
• Rich Internet Application - Sliverlight

From being a company that thrived in building partners and developers it has become a company that competes with any new innovation that comes up in the computing arena.

I didn't want to put the following statement at end of post, wanted to get the message out first.

"I'd complete control over the personal data storage settings in Google's products and still trust Google more than any other company to store my personal information."

With that statement out of the way, now to the main topic.

Google has released so many products that it's really tough to keep rack of all of them, even if you are an ardent Google fanboy. These products are feature rich and knowing all the features of all the products of Google is next to impossible for one individual.

This post is about one such feature: "Search History" (not sure if it's a product).

Like any Google fanboy I tried out "Search history" immediately when it was launched, played with it and after sometime completely forgot about it. The "Search history" has been renamed as "Web History".

To access /activate "Web History" you need to visit this page. Google account owners can access through 'My Account" after "Sign in". "Web History" is listed under "My Products".

Recently I was checking some other stuff in "My Accounts" and accidentally checked "Web History". I was accessing "Web history" after a period of 3 1/2 years!. Though "Web history" was released only on 4/19/2007, I'd data since 2005 as I'd previously signed up for "Search History".

Here are some of my personal data as recorded by "Web Hisory"

• I'd done 3,040 Google searches in 3.5 years. I expected the numbers to be high as I'm hooked to internet most of the time and Google is my default search engine.

So, I started to dig into the data. I picked a month (September) and checked number of searches done over last 4 years. The following graphs shows the trend line.


What do you notice?

• Sudden jump in 2008. In fact ~1500 out of total 3,040 searches were done in 2008 and still 3 more months go!

What is the Inference?
Does it mean I've become more clueless in 2008 and need Google to figure things out?

NOPE! My cluelessness is constant :-)

The unarguable reasons are : -

• "Web history" can record data only if I'm logged in. Its only in 2008 I've started to use "Gmail" more regularly (logged into it most of the time).
• Nobody will exclusively log in (Sign in) to do searches.
  
• However if you are already logged into one of the Google services, cookies are set to automatically sign in users to search service.
• Being signed in is very important. (I'll come back to this point)

The coolest and scariest feature within "Web History" is the "trend" feature. This feature gives information like : -

• Shows My top 10 queries, top clicks, sites in last 1 year, 30 days and 7 days.
• Tells me that I've searched more during week days, however this is changing, even during weekend my search usage is increasing.
• I've done search during all hours of a day, from 0 to 24hrs. Semi insomniac!
  

Other information about me that surprised me.

• I've just clicked only 4 advertisements (Google Ads). Certainly not a profitable customer!
  
• Shows all videos I've seen
• Lists News that I've followed in last 3 1/2 years
• Traces Routes and Map searches I've done
• Books I checked out.
  
• Blogs that I've followed

I know about the popular Google's disclaimer "No human at Google, ever reads user data". So, I can't blame that a Google engineer might know about me. However Google's code (Algorithm) does surely know more about me than I've cared for.

With this data and advanced algorithm, Google's code will surely know : -

• What is the best time to connect with me?
• What is the best time to sell?
• And what to sell to me?

User relevant Data is important, without this data, no matter how advanced the algorithm is, intelligent and useful services can't built.

Relevant user data can be collected only if the user is logged in. The personal data collected is the insurance against any new algorithm or massive data center.

The relevant user data is the 'positive network effect" similar to platform network effect that made Microsoft so powerful.

That is why Gmail is very important and central to Google's service. It enables automatic "sign in" for all its service. It is also equally important to have users always logged in so that user specific information can be collected all the time. That means user should not close Gmail, but let it run in the background.

Lets look at some of recent Google's initiative.

• Gtalk in Gmail. It makes sense to have Gtalk built into Gmail. Always logged in users.
  
• Google Chrome makes running rich application as long as needed without the browser hanging. This enables running "logged in" applications like Gmail as long as needed. If Gmail is logged in most of the time, more user specific information can be collected. (Can you guess why Chrome was built? ofcourse there can be many more reasons)

I'm not sure if there is any method to Google's product or feature release madness. All I can say is that Google power is growing greater than normal users or business can imagine.

Only one company can compete with Google - Microsoft. However the "Window" of opportunity is closing faster ;-)