Shifting to Wordpress.com

I am shifting my blog to nirav.wordpress.com, so from now on I'll be posting there.

Holy Shit Moment - Google Base

Google Base went live for some time yesterday I don't know if anybody sees this but they just bulldozered a couple dozen web services. It's basically a generalized database where people can put up their data (real estate listings, used car sale details, job openings, etc) which would be indexed by Google made available in their primary search interface or one of their vertical search engines (local.google.com, froogle.google.com, maybe classifieds.google.com, jobs.google.com etc) . I am pretty sure they would come up with an api to let people automate the process of uploading several entries at a time. I am guessing they are using the recently described BigTable storage system to enable this. Lets look at this from the perspective of a web service like HotJobs. They have a database of jobs and they provide several services on top of it. The most important of the services is to be able to search for job listings based on requirements, place, company, etc. Other services like storing your resume online, applying directly through the website are trivial and maybe not as famous as the search. Now, Google already has a great search engine. And they just added the ability to put in any kind of data in there. So, the primary features(storing data and making it search able) of several sites just became a commodity. How would Google make money from this? Just like they do from Froogle.com. Merchants can upload their product feeds to Froogle.com for free and have it indexed and available for search. But if they want premier listings (on the top of the page or side) they have to pay for it. Job posting sites, classifieds, travel engines, etc are all going to die a slow and painful death. Advice - don't even think of starting a web-service with the only primary features of database back-end and ability to search.

Google Classifieds

Just came across this interesting patent from Google - System and method for providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising. This could be very big assuming that Google also comes up with a payment solution for this. Currenty, there are two ways of selling items for individual sellers - Craigslist and Ebay (also Amazon for used books and stuff but their model is similar to Ebay's Half.com). Ofcourse they can have individual websites and E-Commerce engines but I don't think a lot of the people would opt for that. Ebay is based on on auctioning paradigm and Craigslist is basically an online version of news paper classifieds. Ebay has a payment option in the form of Paypal for individuals to sell items. Craigslist doesn't have any payment option. What Google seems to be doing is basically a median between the two. It's a classified that would have payment options. It would advertise to not only people coming to one particular website (like Ebay.com or Craiglist.com) but globally to a very focussed group of users interested in similar items using "Adwords" and "Adsense". It would be easier to set up compared to Ebay. From reading the patent, I understand that they would be automatically classifying the item specified in a group and also providing item description based on stored data. This is one of the problems I face when using Ebay. Most of the people ignore to include the specs of a particular item because it is tedious to find and put it in the item description. What Google could do is associate item specs automatically to an item description on the generated advertisement page. When entering the item name, Google could also provide the "Google Suggest" funcationality to reduce the errors in specifying the name of the item. On the generated advertisement page, Google could put links to reviews for that particular item. These item descriptions could be also fed to Froogle.com and users could have a price comparision engine to find the cheapest item on sale. It's just like the "Buy Now" option on Ebay with one major difference. People would see the item when they go to Ebay.com and search for it whereas with Google they'll see it on the search results page and also many other related websites using "Adsense". This is widen the potential market of sellers. Ofcourse there are items in which the autioning model of sale is viable but there are also a lot of items selling on Ebay that could be better off with the Google model because their price is basically fixed (or doesn't vary much).

Worth of Ideas

Worth of Ideas Excellent summary of the worth of ideas by Derek Sivers :

It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
Explanation:
AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I am not interested until I see their execution.

Web Vs. Desktop Applications - Change in Perspective

Developing Web applications requires a different perspective compared to the desktop applications:

1) Web applications are used by a lot more people since there is no installing. It's easy to try things out.

2) It is very easy for people to switch services since there is minimal or no lock-in. For e.g., Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest - easy to switch.

3) It is important to build a community around the product - because that is the only way to have a lock-in.

4) It is important to provide access to data and an option to delete all account information.    

Bring it to the front

Maps are usually implemented as a destination instead of an inline service; Look for the data you're looking for, then get the map of where it is at the end.
--Kevin Fox

Kevin is addressing the new Google Maps interface which a guy hacked to provide house listing from Craigslist right on the Maps interface. It is an interesting perspective. The entry page on almost all of the web sites providing mapping services requests the start and end address or the address to be mapped. Then the web service would come up with the rendered image and the user is given options to zoom in and move around but this was not very interactive. What Google did different was they brought maps to the front. When you go to Google Maps you see most part of the screen occupied by a map and they have excellent navigational features and a unique DHTML approach to load the map files asynchronously. This encourages users to explore. Users can then go ahead and look for directions by typing the entire address in one box contrary to previous approaches in which the user had to fill out seperate boxes for street address, state and zipcode. Apart from all the usability benefits the more important phenomenon is the exposure of the API because of the DHTML approach. This can be used to inline Google Maps at various places. So, now maps are not just for getting driving directions but with this simple change in perspective they would be used for many more purposes like the new ride finder feature by Google.

Search box size

Interesting observation: Comparing the search box size on the three popular search engines they can be ranked 1) Yahoo 2) Google 3) MSN (on the search sites - not on the home pages) in decreasing order. It might not be a big consideration but typing more than 2-3 words on MSN search you lose track of what you've written. It's also inconvenient to go back and edit something where you have no choice but to use the arrow keys. Although in theory the search box can be made the size of the page itself but there could be lot of usability reasons for not doing so. An optimum size of the box does have some impact on the overall usability and I think it would depend on the average size of the queries an engine receives and also the overall aesthetics of the page.