Topic 2 : Navigating the Web

1) Listen to the podcast on Navigation which can be found on the Digital Enterprise Page (Google - the digital enterprise).

a) FOUR  MAIN POINTS MICHAEL RAPPA MAKES ABOUT SEARCH.

Michael Rappa started his speech with the issues in handling vast amount of data and problems associated with it he has highlighted that we are living in the world where data has overwhelmed us. Then Firstly, Michal Rappa has highlighted the fact that search has become very important for people to search for the information regarding different goods and services , search is most convenient and quick way for people to go to web and search for the things they want to find. it helps people to categories books on web and much more.

Secondly Michael Rappa gives his opinion that with the advancement of search and to provide the related search results to the searchers the fashion of interconnectedness of web emerged which helped the people to explore different webs relevant to their search results. This connected the different webs businesses, individuals to each other.

Thirdly search has become a big business on internet, like paid placements is a multibillion dollar business and Michael Rappa is of the opinion that it is expected to grow in future. With the popularity of using web for search thousands and millions of companies have emerged to automate the storm of database available and to algorithm the search results.

Fourthly emergence of paid placement in the context of search helped the people in adopting inexpensive and effective campaign of their valuables on the other hand helped search engines to give value to their core competency of search business.

He highlighted the history and process of progress of the most popular search engine most extensively being used now a day i.e. ‘Google’. He said that search is focal point for every major key player like Google yahoo, Microsoft etc.

b) Watch or read the Marissa Mayer interview. Write a paragraph or two, on four points made by Marissa Mayer, that you think were the most interesting or significant for business. There is no right or wrong answers here; I just want your opinion.
Answer:

Marissa Mayer was the vice president of search products and user experience at Google currently she is associated with Yahoo. Previously she helped decide which of Google engineers’ new ideas get presented to the company’s founders. Gmail, Google maps, Google news and many other applications all went through her. Charlie Rose interviewed her while she was associated with Google. Her interview was very interesting and informative; some important points of her interview are highlighted below,

·         Marrisa told about their future projects which involve voice search she said that’’ we’re going to have really good voice search, really good speech to text on YouTube videos so you’ll be able to search it, that will happen sooner than you’ll be able to say give Google an image and say find other images like this or find me images of a monkey, those types of things. I think that the voice breakthrough will probably happen in the next five years, maybe 10, and I think that — and then I think the vision will probably happen in more than a 10-year time frame, maybe 15. 

·         Another innovation which would be of enormous benefit and interest for businesses as well as individual users involve further advancement in Google latitude which is a prototype of the idea explained by the Marrisa in below paragraph,

Marissa Mayer: ‘’Well, there’s a lot of I think big ideas. One thing that we’ve been talking about for a while is really involving cell phones. If you take the cell phone technology, the GPS style technology we’ve worked on with wireless networks and cell phone towers and you combine that with a social network, you can find out where your friends are. In fact, we just released data of that product last week called Google Lattitude.It’s a very early prototype but it’s a really interesting idea. Can these cell phones we have with us help us connect better with our friends and find out where people are and what they’re doing? Well, I think that you know in terms of trying to understand you know someone, are they on their way to the meeting or not, are they you know, like are they in the coffee shop, you just happen to walk by, do they happen to be in the same airport you’re in? Those types of questions are really interesting. I think that’s an interesting application for a cell phone.’’

·         On a question on ‘reason of why yahoo lost its place’ Marissa highlighted important things for technology companies, she said ‘’ what drives technology companies is the people, right? Because in a technology company, it’s always about what are you going to do next. So then it comes down to, well, who is going to build that thing that you do next. So if you have the best people, that’s a huge benefit. And I do think that some of what happened with Yahoo! was a little bit of that lost focus, but I also think that over the events of recent years, they’ve lost a lot of their good people. There are still a lot of good people there, and we definitely are cheering for Yahoo because we really think that the web is better off.’’

·         Another interesting part of the interview was the reference of the article made by Marrisa which said ‘’your credit card company knows two years beforehand that you’re going to get divorced with 98 percent likelihood’’.On the question from Charlie that how is that possible Marrisa said it might be from the kind of purchases, stuff like that.Marrissa actually was defending the point that they are not alone to have enormous amount of data  about people about what they buy, their email, who their friends are rather ISP’s and even credit card company’s also hold so much personal information of users but she exclaimed that Google has very strict privacy policy. They try to be very up front with their users, what information we have and how we’ll use it

Part 2 - History of the Internet

2) Please watch the Bill Joy video, From the video - please answer

a) So what are the 6 webs?

Bill Joy, the inventor of Berkeley Unix, the founder of Sun Microsystems, and now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, that most blue-blooded of venture capital firms, has described a taxonomy for the Internet. He calls it "the six Webs.

Bill Joy's six Webs are:

1. The Near Web: This is the Internet that you see when you lean over a screen - like a laptop.

2. The Here Web. This is the Internet that is always with you because you access it through a device you always carry - like a cell phone.

3. The Far Web. This is the Internet you see when you sit back from a big screen - like a television or a kiosk.

4. The Weird Web. This is the Internet you access through your voice and which you listen to - say when you are in your car, or when you talk to an intelligent system on your phone, or when you ask your camera a question. Joy concedes that this Web does not yet fully exist.

5. B2B. This is an Internet which does not possess a consumer interface, where business machines talk to other business machines. It is chatter of corporations amongst themselves when they do not care about their human drones.

6. D2D. This is the Internet of sensors deployed in meshes networks, adjusting urban systems for maximum efficiency. This Web also does not yet exist. Joy says that it will embed machine intelligence in ordinary, daily life.

(http://www.technologyreview.com/view/404694/etc-bill-joys-six-webs/)

b) Could there be more?

There could definitely be more webs as there is no limit on research and explorations so yes  some more webs might  still  be explored but whose ideas are still to be developed , further as weird web idea presented by Joy he said in his video that this does not fully exist yet.

c) What does it mean for business?

Internet and digital technologies have become inevitable for success of any business. With the advancement of technologies ,their manifold advantages have enabled businesses to increase their business margins .the introduction of technologies like six webs introduced by bill joy helps businesses to yield benefits like,

ü  Attracting more and more customers by facilitating them in daily life

ü  Helps reduce costs of doing business

ü  Helps reduce time of doing business activities

ü  Helps businesses grow faster and do innovations

ü  Helps businesses to manage their supply chain. Etc.