Web History - the story inside out

Every business has a 'Statement of Purpose' from two points - the Marketing view point and the Operation view point. The Marketing purpose is to look out for value to the customer, while the operation objective is to look out for how you achieve that, and what you, as a business are going to achieve. This whole concept is quite discernable through Google's latest Web History link that is available on their homepage. I have tried to present what Google claims to offer you from a marketing view point, and what it plans to get back. What You Get By enabling web history, you get to search all previous searches you made. So, you can also track all the previous webpages that you previously had visited through Google. You can perform a search on only those pages that you had visited through Google. However the most important is the personalized search. Say, you are a software programmer and your brother is a tourist operator in Asia. So, you search more on programming syntaxes while your brother searches on tourist attractions and places. The personalization part suggests that while your search on a keyword 'Java' might result in more weightage provided to the programming language, the same search performed by your brother might results in links to the Indonesian island. All the more reason why you should enable web search history on! What Google will get Computer Science students might have studied what is called data-mining. Enabling web search history might turn out to be Google's greatest attempt at gathering data about its users. Now, let us understand this with my own example. I search on a wide variety of subjects. I search on technology, MBA stuff, India related, etc. Till now, all these are discrete pieces of search which is of no use to Google. Now, I have a gmail account. I use this id to log onto Gmail, orkut, blogger, and also search. Using my information on orkut, Google knows I am a 23 year old student residing in India. Google also knows that I blog. Also, it now knows that I search for technology and MBA stuff. And well, it knows everything from my eye color to height to what kind of a person I am. So, Google knows almost everything about me that I possibly know about myself. Not just that, Google also knows who my friends are, and in quite sometime, when YouTube login is integrated with Gmail id, will also start learning my video preferences. What more needs to be studied to offer you the best product available. In fact, with such extensive data mining, I see the future of Adwords not just relying on the keyword relevance. Rather it will be based on more extensive profile analysis. Like the Adwords might depend not just on the keyword, but also on the age, income level, ethnicity, past searches, friend influence, etc. All this is simply a sign of exciting things to come!

David Vs. Goliath - Does it hold true?

Google recently launched MyMaps, which allows you to create custom maps with your own placemarks. This has sort of made websites such as Wikimapia and other mashups redundant. There is one another site called Picli, which is regarded the Digg for pictures. But, it shall not be too late before Digg introduce a pictures section as well, looking at the demand for a picture section on the Digg website. Then, there is one site I had talked of which helps in downloading YouTube videos. What if YouTube provides that functionality on their website itself? All these minnow websites have been treading on the thin line unattended by the major websites, and when one of these small sites start to get real numbers in traffic, these major websites crush the little threat that they hold by providing the very facility. It does look that the concept of David getting over Goliath is seemingly impossible in the case of internet. What's the strategy then? If you look closely, you will find some sites that have taken better to the idea of complementing big sites, and successful at that. What's the strategy here? Simple. Go through the Terms and Conditions of the site, and you shall know what areas the website does not and will not venture into. For example, YouTube does not feature porn. So, PornoTube makes a successful strategy. Most networking websites require you to be 18 and above. Maybe, a networking site for children should be a nice idea, though regulations and moderatorship are a gray area here. But, the point is that if you would want to replicate the success of major websites, dont clone them on a niche where the very site can be a competitor. Choose where they would not venture into and there is a nice chance that you hit the right spot.