Talk to almost any marketing executive about search engine marketing (or SEM) and soon after their eyes will glaze over and stifle a yawn and then start talking enthusiastically about the weather.

I suppose, on a general level, this is perfectly normal as it’s not exactly a topic of conversation you’d bring up in a social context like a bar. But, on a business level, it’s somehow a strange phenomenon when you’re trying to educate them on how to expand their business model.

The industry itself, of course, talks incessantly about its benefits and the best practices, but unless you’re a party to this cosseted cabal, the concept somehow eludes outsiders. Perhaps it’s just far too too dense a subject.

According to a recent article by Search Engine Watch: “Quality SEM is a significantly undervalued service and yet it has the potential to transform the profitability of any business. Its cost-effectiveness as a marketing tool is far superior if compared to more traditional marketing methods and yet, in spite of this, many management team executives, sometimes wholly ignorant of its advances, refuse to acknowledge it. The article goes on to suggest that SEM might even be the “largest change management project in history”.

“Educating people…is part of changing the industry’s image, and quality SEOs share responsibility in creating this reality. However, since this value proposition is not yet understood by many management team executives, it often lacks the executive support it requires both in terms of financial resources and supporting needed operational changes.”

V9 Design and Build agrees. The trick is to convinve executives that, going forward, search engine marketing is the online key, using article writing, press releases, professional blogging, blog commenting, podcasting, social bookmarking and all other related Web 2.0 methods to achieve extended marketing exposure to their products and services.

See SEM podcast

Search Engine Marketing podcast

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Source: AFP

Google on Tuesday synched applications available online as services with Outlook email programs, continuing a push into workplaces historically dominated by Microsoft software.

Google Apps Sync for Microft Outlook lets Web-based programs by the California Internet colossus work with its rival’s email, contacts, and calendars.

“Over the last year, we’ve had a razor-sharp focus on making it as easy as possible for businesses to deploy Google Apps,” Google engineer Eric Orth wrote in a posting at the firm’s website.

“Today we’re excited to remove another key barrier to enterprise adoption of Google Apps with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.”

The move comes in the wake of Google enabling people to use its Gmail web-based email service offline and making software interoperable with Blackberry smart phones popular with business users.

Google Apps Sync for Outlook is included in Premier online application packages available for 50 dollars per year per business user. It is free in online services that Google provides for education or nonprofit groups.

“Many business users prefer Gmail’s interface and features to products they’ve used in the past,” Orth wrote, indicating the company is not giving up on convincing businesses to switch to its web-based email service.

“But, sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we’ve developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.”

Google Apps synch to Microsoft Outlook email

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Source: The Guardian

Microsoft has unveiled its latest effort to take on its internet rival Google – a new search engine called Bing.

Described as a “decision engine”, Bing is the latest attempt by the Seattle software giant to gain popularity in the search market and wrestle some momentum back from its Californian adversary.

While the site, Bing.com, is not live yet, it is expected to begin rolling out today, and will be available around the world by next week.

The site’s basic approach may seem familiar: a page featuring single empty box that, when text is entered, provides a list of useful web pages in response. But Microsoft executives hope that the new website, which has been in development for several years, can chip away at the dominance Google exerts on the lucrative web search market.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft.

“Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found.”

Among the features that he hopes will turn internet users on to Bing is “guided search”, which categorises searches and attempts to get users to useful information speedily. The system also integrates with a number of other technologies, bringing news and maps straight to searchers, as well as linking in to the company’s Cashback scheme – which effectively pays users a small dividend every time they buy a product through the site.

“The major search engines were developed over a decade ago, and we believe the category is still in its infancy,” said Paul Stoddart, Microsoft’s UK search lead. “It’s important to challenge and evolve the search market … there is much more that people can and should expect.”

It remains to be seen, however, whether Bing can really succeed where a series of earlier revamps and rebranding attempts have failed – despite Microsoft’s eagerness to gain a serious position in the lucrative search engine market.

According to data from ComScore, Google leads the US Search market with 64%, while Yahoo has 20% and Microsoft trails in third with an 8% share. Worldwide, the figures are even worse. An analysis from Net Applications suggests that Microsoft currently has just 3% of the global market, trailing Yahoo’s 9.6% and Google’s commanding 81%.

After losing the initiative to internet rivals who have built enormous businesses out of web search, Microsoft has spent the past few years retooling in an attempt to push itself forwards.

The company lured a stream of executives away from Yahoo to run its search business, including its new president of online services, Qi Lu – described by some as a “tech star”. Microsoft also bought in expensive new technologies to try and give it an edge, spending an estimated $100m (£63m) buying Powerset, a much-hyped San Francisco startup that promised intelligent web search, but has so far failed to live up to initial expectations.

The company has also tried to market its products in a variety of different ways to convince users to switch away from rival engines.

Bing is the fourth name change for the product in just a few years. It has previously been called MSN Search, Windows Live Search and Live Search – and even the new version went through several different identities before arriving at its current monicker.

But although the site’s name is meant to evoke the sound of getting the right answer, experts were still left asking more questions after the launch.

“If you’re expecting Bing to be a Google-killer, reset your expectations,” said Danny Sullivan, the editor of the SearchEngineLand website. “The most dramatic change, in my view, remains the name itself.”

Some suggest that Microsoft will never be able to make serious inroads without making a radical departure from the system pioneered by Google. Recently, the most interesting potential challengers to the Silicon Valley giant have come from new areas, not simply trying to best Google on its own territory.

Many observers are betting heavily on the future of what they call “real-time search” – the ability to find data instantly, as soon as it is published online, and bring new information and news to the surface before it reaches the mainstream.

Among the websites active in this area are Twitter, the fast-growing social messaging service, and Facebook, which is able to filter information through its 250 million users.

Elsewhere, some newcomers are focusing on bringing more utility to people – and offering up information that does not exist on the web itself. The British physicist Stephen Wolfram recently took the lid off his own effort in this area, the “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram Alpha.

The site compiles of approved information and offers users answers to their questions, and was warmly received, although it is not yet clear whether it has long-term staying power.

In the end, say some experts, Microsoft may end up turning, once again, to Yahoo, the rival it tried to buy last year in a failed $44bn takeover bid.

Indeed, Yahoo’s chief executive, Carol Bartz, said yesterday that she was not against selling her company’s search business to Microsoft – as long as the price was right.

“If there’s boatloads of money and the right technology involved, we’d do a deal, sure,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

Microsoft gets into search – with a Bing

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Source: Andrew Lehman, The Public Record

I’ve been running a web development firm since January 1999. Google and my firm were born a few months from each other. By chance, I began tracking Google’s rise shortly after its appearance, noting the efficacy of its search perimeters along with that of its competition.

Though Google was a very powerful tool early in its career, that muscular efficiency has diminished. That seems due to several factors.

Those folks whose job it is to figure out how Google works to achieve higher rankings often performed their job well, depreciating the searches that Google offered. Corporations able to pay the most money for professional optimizers tended to get the highest rankings. Google’s results often showed which firms had the most resources to pay for position. Google’s algorithms could not distinguish value from money.

Still, if you typed in “Chicago photographer,” you got a list of Chicago photographers on the first page, individuals seeking to sell their services to searchers looking for what photographers had to offer. That is not the case now.

Google decided to go public in 2004. On November 15, 2004, they enacted the first of several major algorithm changes, pushing many of the optimized sites from top positions, penalizing websites for using techniques that gamed Google’s evaluation algorithm. The result was an overnight tripling of Google revenues. Corporations and businesses formerly paying optimizers for high rankings to appear on the first page of a search were forced to pay Google for their ranking, on the right side of the screen, where Google sold ads.

It became in Google’s best interest that searchers looking for commercial products or services NOT find what they were looking for so that the Google advertising section would profit from the click.

It was clear to me that in preparation for going public, Google was actually seeding its searches with inefficiencies in order to encourage profits. Regarding commercial searches, it’s only got worse with time. By embedding top 10 positions with Wikipedia entries, videos and other tangentially related content, commercial businesses continue to be pushed into the second page, forced to pay Google for ad space.

I recently read that Google has decided to place a heavier emphasis on “brand” or conventional corporate websites when deciding how to rank. It is adjusting its algorithm to make it even more difficult for those businesses without deep pockets to achieve rankings. One could call this the new oligarchic algorithm.

As a small web developer seeking rankings for small, local businesses, I find the decisions that Google has made over the years have been sometimes fair, sometimes selfish, sometimes in between. The trend has been toward depreciating its mission of providing useful searches in order to make money while encouraging the corporate status quo.

This has been a particular problem for local businesses seeking business using the Google Ad Words program, where Google derives most of its revenue.

The company that would do no evil has little heart. Google’s attention continues to focus on those larger “brands” or corporations that it sees as peers in a global economic landscape dominated by corporate, controlling interests. Google encourages the status quo in several ways, using conventions that concentrate wealth with the very few.

Google’s famous algorithm encourages those sites with the most incoming links to rise to the top of rankings. Google has difficulty judging value outside a context of popularity or the simulated popularity that comes with businesses buying links to their sites to get high rankings. Google theoretically ranks respect. What it often only ranks is how much money a business is willing to spend to appear to be getting respect. Or, it ranks how large a corporation has become, presupposing that respect comes with size.

In the Google universe, each planet or business has size and gravity that can be determined by measuring mass. Google’s algorithm presupposes that mass, respect as determined by incoming links or established brand, is the only variable that determines gravity. There is more to respect than popularity or power. Google has no algorithm for measuring integrity.

Google is losing integrity in the process.

Before Google, the local yellow pages served local businesses by being the place where potential customers would seek local products and services. The Internet has destroyed the yellow pages. Local businesses are furious at the costs and poor results with yellow pages. Local firms are moving over to Google Ad Words as one of the few alternatives that approximates what the yellow pages used to offer. Some of those local businesses are using the services that some of the yellow pages companies are offering whereby the yellow pages becomes the broker for a local business with Google Ad Words.

Google works out agreements with the yellow pages to allow the yellow pages to act as an agent for a local firm, managing what the local firm spends with Google. The yellow pages drives traffic to a business’s website off of a Google Ad Words listing managed by the yellow pages.

Typically, a store contracts with the yellow pages for $500 a month to bring it traffic from Google. Usually that traffic goes to a special page created by the yellow pages that allows it to track exact traffic patterns, even noting the number of phone calls if a dedicated phone line is assigned to appear on that page. There is no transparency. The store is not allowed to know how much it is spending on any particular visitor.

It doesn’t know how much money went to Google or how much to the yellow pages. The store can form its own division and figure out how much it is paying for each person that showed up on the page, but it has no idea which search phrases are performing and which are not. It also has no idea what percentage of the $500 is going toward the yellow pages. Typically, an Ad Words specialist receives 10-20 percent. There is no transparency.

In addition, the yellow pages often brokers or handles the account for literally all competitors in a region. Google bases its Ad Words rates on several factors, the most important being how much money is being spent by the business. With the yellow pages handling many and sometimes all competitor bids, it is not acting in the best interest of the stores it represents by controlling bids to keep the rates low, but the yellow pages is behaving in its own best interest by pushing bids higher to beef up advertising expenditures.

It is a devastating conflict of interest for the yellow pages to be managing several competitors in a market. In addition, any local business seeking to buy positions in the Ad Words programs on its own, in those areas that compete with several businesses managed by the yellow pages, ends up paying fees inflated by the yellow pages interventions.

Google, working with the yellow pages to manage this program, takes the low integrity position of siding with the large corporation against the local businesses. Google and the yellow pages end up making enormous profits because they control the system. Small business gets screwed.

Will Google be seen as the bad guy when this corporate scam becomes widely known? I’m thinking likely not. Most stores I know loathe the yellow pages. There are several types of yellow pages in many markets. Not all engage in this practice. But they’ll all probably be associated with this scandal when it blows.

Google’s Oligarchic Algorithm

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Source: New York Times

Writing can be solitary work, but not when you write a tech column. Feedback pours in so quickly — by e-mail, on blogs, in online comments — that it’s almost real-time performance art.

For the longest time, my readers kept nagging me to check out this thing called Twitter. I’d been avoiding it, because it sounded like yet another one of those trendy internet time drains. E-mail, blogs, chat, RSS, Facebook … Who has time to tune in to yet another stream of internet chatter?

True, there’s nothing quite like Twitter. It’s a website where you can broadcast very short messages — 140 characters, max — to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. It’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room. Your “followers” might include six friends from high school, or, if you’re Barack Obama, 254,484 of your most tech-savvy fans. (Incidentally, he hasn’t sent out a single Twitter message since taking office. Where are his priorities?)

Meanwhile, you sign up to receive the utterances of other people. Eventually, your screen fills with a scrolling display of their quips — jokes, recommended links, thoughts for the day, and a lot of “what I’m doing right now” stuff.

Even so, I was turned off by the whole ego thing. Your profile displays how many followers you have, as if it’s some kind of worthiness tally. (See also: Facebook friend counter.)

Then one day, I saw Twitter in action.

I was serving on a grant proposal committee, and I watched as a fellow judge asked his Twitter followers if a certain project had been tried before. In 15 seconds, his followers replied with web links to the information he needed. No e-mail message, phone call or web site could have achieved the same effect. (It’s only a matter of time before some “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” contestant uses Twitter as one of his lifelines.)

So I signed up for a free account name (pogue) and stepped in.

It’s not easy to figure out what’s going on. Most people are supportive and happy to help you out. There is, however, such a thing as Twitter snobbery.

One guy took me to task for asking “dopey questions.” Others criticized me for various infractions, like not following enough other people, writing too much about nontech topics or sending too many or too few messages.

Determined to get the hang of it, I searched Google for “Twitter for beginners.” There were 927,000 search results.

(Of course, you get a staggering number of results when you search for anything on Google, which is why it’s such a lame trick when journalists use Google tallies to prove their points. But I digress.)

Most of these articles are lists of rules. One says to use Twitter to market your business; another says never to use Twitter to market your business. One recommends writing about what you’re doing right now (after all, the typing box is labeled, “What are you doing?”); another says not to.

One of these rule sheets even says, “Add value. Build relationships. Think LONG term.” Are we talking about Twitter, or running for Congress?

My confusion continued until, at a conference, I met Evan Williams, chief executive and co-founder of Twitter. I told him about all the rules, all the advice, all the “you’re not doing it right” gripers. I told him that the technology was exciting, but that all the naysayers and rule-makers were dampening my enthusiasm.

He shook his head apologetically — clearly, he’s heard all this before — and told me the truth about Twitter: that they’re all wrong.

Or, put another way, that they’re all right.

Twitter, in other words, is precisely what you want it to be. It can be a business tool, a teenage time-killer, a research assistant, a news source — whatever. There are no rules, or at least none that apply equally well to everyone.

In fact, Mr. Williams said that a huge chunk of Twitter lore, etiquette and even terminology has sprouted up from Twitter users without any input from the company. For example, the people came up with the term “tweets” (what everyone calls the messages). The crowd began referring to fellow Twitterers by name like this: @pogue. Soon, that notation became a standard shorthand that the Twitter software now recognizes. The masses also came up with conventions like “RT,” meaning re-tweet — you’re passing along what someone else said on Twitter.

Twitter? It’s What You Make It

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It seems that even Google has fallen sway to the Twitterocalypse that is shattering preconceptions about social activity on the web. I mean, who knew that people would not only broadcast their every move, but that other people would want to read about it?

Who knew that microblogging would grow into something for everyone — as a pool for market research, as sources for analysts and reporters, and even as a possible replacement for the emergency broadcast system.

Well, it turns out that Google co-founder Larry Page “always” knew, telling Loic LeMeur that people laughed at him when he talked about realtime search, but now they know the bitter truth. “Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about realtime,” he said.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who not too long ago dismissed Twitter as a “poor man’s e-mail system,” also now admits that Twitter does a “great job” at doing realtime search. (By the way, do Page and Schmidt really say realtime as one word, just like New York Post gossip columnists talk about canoodling stars being “thisclose?”)

Schmidt’s comments will undoubtedly lead to more speculation that Google will acquire Twitter — a notion Schmidt immediately tried to snuff in the cradle by saying that Google doesn’t have to buy a company to work with it, since “the whole principle of the web is people can talk to each other.”

The “talk to each other” in Schmidt’s comment referred to the possibility of Google negotiating a partnership with Twitter, but “talk to each other” is also the whole point about Twitter. It’s not just about broadcasting — it’s also about listening, and if you take those two elements, what you get is a conversation. And conversation is the one thing you can’t do on Google search.

Google is not about conversation — it’s about searching for information. Now, the wonderful thing about Twitter is the speed with which you can find certain kinds of information, but the awful thing about Twitter is the speed with which you can find certain kinds of misinformation.

So how will Google and Twitter resolve those philosophical differences?

I think Google will soon announce a deal allowing it to index Twitter — it certainly has the firepower to do so — but will display results on a separate page, like it does for News, Finance and other categories. This would allow users to decide for themselves whether they want to find out what people are saying about the iPhone right now, or news about the iPhone, or simply product information.

Nicholas Carr took a tough shot at Google today with regards to Google’s arrogance — and it is breathtaking. But Carr’s point was that Google boasted about the speed of its search results (and the life-saving qualities of that speed) when that suited its corporate narrative, and then dumped the rules that created that speed when its business model changed. Its regard for the lives it was supposed to be saving took a back seat to financial imperatives.

Indexing Twitter will give Google back the speed it lost when it started serving graphical ads — and then some. But Twitter searches are unlikely to provide solutions to life-threatening issues, nor will a deal to index Twitter do anything to diminish the sense that Google is turning out to be a company like any other, only much, much bigger.

How Fast Will Google Index Twitter?

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Sole surviving browser patches same bug used to make money off Safari flaw

Source: Computerworld (US)

Although Google’s Chrome was the only browser left standing after March’s Pwn2Own hacking contest, it was vulnerable to the same bug that a German college student used to bring down Apple’s Safari, Google acknowledged this week.

Although Google patched the Chrome vulnerability May 7, it waited until last Wednesday to reveal that the bug was the same WebKit flaw that Apple patched the day before.

“[We are] disclosing that this release contains the fix for CVE-2009-0945, an issue in WebKit code that also affects Apple’s Safari,” Mark Larson, the program manager for Chrome, said in a May 13 post.

“We did not want to disclose this until Apple’s fix for Safari users was released.”

Apple patched the WebKit vulnerability Tuesday as part of a massive security update for both Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.4, or Tiger.

Last March, Nils, a German computer science student who would give only his first name, hacked three browsers in quick succession — a then-unfinished version of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Firefox and Safari — at the Pwn2Own challenge, walking away with $15,000 in cash. Chrome was the only browser up for grabs that Nils didn’t break.

Chrome and Safari both rely on the open-source WebKit rendering engine to power their browsers.

According to Larson, the bug is in WebKit’s handling of SVGList objects, and could be exploited by hackers able to dupe users into visiting a malicious site. But because Chrome runs in a “sandbox,” a security technology that blocks access to the system, even if a hacker managed to hijack the browser, he could only run attack code in that sandbox surrounding the browser. Microsoft’s IE7 and IE8, when running on Vista or Windows 7, offer a similar defense.

Chrome’s bug database first noted the vulnerability March 19, the same day Nils hacked IE8, Firefox and Safari. By the next day, developers were talking about keeping the bug under wraps.

“Apple wants to carefully coordinate disclosure because this bug has a high profile,” wrote one developer, identified only as “abarth” on the database thread. “Apple is also concerned about patches appearing in public source trees.” Chrome developers had a patch ready by March 22.

Mozilla patched the Firefox flaw Nils exploited on March 27, while Microsoft’s final build of IE8, which was released shortly after the contest, was safe from Nils’ hack when run in Vista SP1 or Windows 7. Microsoft has not, however, actually patched IE8 or IE7; some believe the latter is also vulnerable to Nils’ exploit.

Google automatically updates Chrome behind the scenes, so users running the so-called “stable” builds need take no additional action.

Google’s Chrome was ‘hackable’ at Pwn2Own contest

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Source: PC World (US online)

I noticed something interesting in the Google outage and its aftermath on Thursday. Google’s sites, in case you were hiding in a cave yesterday, were unreachable around the world for a good hour and a half. Gmail, YouTube, Google News, even the google.com home page were inaccessible to scores of people.

Yet, despite the initial frustrations — Twitter users dubbed the event #googlefail and rightly ranted for some time about the disruption — there doesn’t appear to be the same lasting hostility and call-to-arms that often follows such incidents. Heck, Gmail outages far more limited in scope have seemed to ruffle more feathers in the past.

Why, then, would an unprecedented Google-wide glitch not cause an ongoing uproar? I have a theory. And I think it’s one many tech companies, Google included, would be wise to consider.

Google Outage: A Timeline

Thursday’s Google outage started like most other service failures: People realized things weren’t working. They realized the problem was limited to Google-based services. They realized they weren’t the only ones experiencing the issues. (Officially, Google says 14 percent of its global userbase was affected. Based on personal conversations on Twitter, I can tell you people on all sides of the U.S. and in numerous other nations were left Googleless and confused.)

That, however, is where things took a different direction than what we’ve come to expect. When the problem was resolved at about 12:20 p.m. EDT, we were all still wondering what the hell was going on. And usually, that’s where we’re left.

Within about 20 minutes, though, Google made a statement: “We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We’re looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon.” Nothing earth-shattering, but an slightly cracked-open door of communication from a company that usually keeps 57 padlocks on its virtual entryway.

An hour later, another statement came in: “The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we’ll share more details soon.” Still no full explanation — but, in a surprising move, a sign of ongoing communiqué and a promise of information.

Here’s where the good part comes in: Google actually kept the promise. With a couple of hours, representatives offered a full explanation of what happened. And an apology. And an assurance that steps were being taken to prevent a meltdown like that from ever happening again.

Talking Transparency

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m on a Google soapbox here — typically, trying to get answers from that place is tougher than resisting regurgitation at the sight of Paris Hilton’s face. Google is not known for its transparency or accessibility to anyone (ever tried to get someone from the company on the phone?). That’s why I’m hoping it, and other major players we rely on for our online needs, will learn a lesson from what happened this week.

Google screwed up. No question about it. My morning was a mess because of its error, and countless other people were equally peeved. But the company actually communicated with us. They told us what was going on. They apologized and promised they were taking action. (Whether that action ends up being effective, to be fair, is yet to be seen — but it’s a start.)

Compare the whole thing to Gmail outages of the past, where often, no explanation has ever been given. Worse yet, compare it to Amazon’s now-infamous gay book glitch from last month. That little mishap directly affected far fewer people than the Google outage, yet the outrage was enormous and anything but fast-fading.

Why the contrast? Consider the fact that Amazon avoided contact with the media and the public for a full 36 hours, then proceeded to release only wishy-washy, vaguely worded statements that didn’t answer questions as to what actually had happened. When pressed for further details, the company’s representatives went as far as directly ignore inquiries from me and other reporters, instead just reiterating their vaguely worded and rather nonsensical statement. (The phrase “ham-fisted,” I can only hope, has now been permanently retired from the company’s dictionary.)

Customer service in the online tech world has a long way to go, and Google is far from a model of perfection. But its steps this week moved in the right direction, and for a company shrouded in mystery, that’s something I’m happy to see. I can only hope that Google, Amazon, and others notice what a difference it can make to treat their valued customers like valued customers — and, little by little, move toward becoming even more open and honest with us all in the future.

Why Google’s outage wasn’t a complete failure

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Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

How long would it take an auctioneer to speak 6000 words? What was the weather in Beijing on the day Kevin Rudd was born? How many Americans are named Andrew?

Google and Wikipedia flounder with such questions, but a new search engine called Wolfram Alpha has the tech world abuzz with the promise of more than linking to countless web pages or canvassing a broad topic.

Named after its creator, the British physicist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram, the free site went public at the weekend and will be launched tonight amid high expectations. What separates it from everything else is an ability to interpret complex questions in everyday language and answer those questions by consulting disparate pieces of information.

A Sydney technology author and futurist, Mark Pesce, is among those who have been awaiting the debut. “It could take the way we think of the internet in a new direction,” he said. For example, while Google can identify the nearest place for pizza, Wolfram Alpha is designed to tell you where to get the best pizza, Mr Pesce said.

It may be some time before wolframalpha.com tackles culinary debates, but the example reflects its ability to interpret data from unrelated sources. “It’s going to have enough natural language guts to be able to look at a whole bunch of articles and judge them,” Mr Pesce said.

The fledgling site is biased towards the sciences but its ability to infer conclusions from data is where the potential lies.

An expert in human-computer interaction at the University of Sydney, Professor Judy Kay, said the fact that Wolfram Alpha’s sources were vetted by humans put it into a different league from Google or Wikipedia.

“Google searches are really dumb,” Dr Kay said. “They’re using simple words without knowing what they mean.” Wikipedia lists facts but can’t do anything with them. He [Dr Wolfram] can answer queries that take combinations of things across his data, which means he can answer more complex sets of questions than Google can.”

Mr Pesce says Dr Wolfram can be taken seriously because of his computer program Mathematica, which is capable of symbolic maths. “In engineering circles, he’s a bit of a god,” Mr Pesce said.

For the record, Wolfram Alpha’s answers to the questions posed are: 24 minutes; 21 degrees and clear skies; and 1.06 million.

Answer to absolutely everything gets closer

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Google has gone on a charm offensive to convince law makers, academics and the media that it is not anti-competitive.

The firm came under the scrutiny of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week after it emerged that chief executive Eric Schmidt, who also sits on the Apple board, could be breaching FTC laws which prevent competing companies from having common directors.

An FTC investigation is currently trying to determine the extent to which Google and Apple are competitors.

But in a posting on the firm’s Public Policy blog senior manager for global comms and public affairs, Adam Kovacevich, said the web giant had been meeting recently with policymakers, think tank representatives, academics, journalists, ad agencies, and trade associations worldwide to explain Google’s “six principles of competition and openness”.

“As Google has grown, the company has naturally faced more scrutiny about our business principles and practices,” he wrote.

“We believe that Google promotes competition and openness online, but we haven’t always done a good job telling our story.”

The six principles are as follows:

1. Help other businesses be more competitive.
2. Make it easy for users to change.
3. Open is better than closed.
4. Competition is just one click away.
5. Advertisers pay what a click is worth to them.
6. Advertisers have many choices in a dynamic market

However, Google will have to do a lot to convince certain quarters of its good intentions.

There is still a growing perception that it has the capcity to become a monopoly, and the firm is also being sued over rights to the Android name.

Google has also been in trouble with the FTC before over accusations that its proposed non-exclusive advertising deal with Yahoo breached competition laws.

Google goes on charm offensive

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