Showing posts with label Bing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bing. Show all posts

Thursday, March 09, 2023

9: News Bulletin

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's big bet on A.I. is paying off as his core technology powers ChatGPT
Spotify is revamping its podcaster tools, including Anchor, and is partnering with Patreon
The New Bing and Edge – Progress from Our First Month
Apple to Shake Up International Sales Operations to Make India Its Own Region
Google One brings VPN to $1.99/month plan, adding dark web info monitoring

Chinese AI groups use cloud services to evade US chip export controls
Uber Is Considering Spinning Off Freight Logistics Division
New Low: Monthly Funding Dips Below $20B As Funds Continue Record Raises
Consensus raises $110M to inject automation into SaaS product demos
Microsoft, Google-Backed Group Wants to Boost AI Education in Low-Income Schools

Coinbase announces Wallet-as-a-Service product to simplify web3 onboarding
DuckDuckGo Releases Its Own ChatGPT-Powered Search Tool, DuckAssist

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Thursday, February 09, 2023

9: Satya Nadella

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Friday, February 07, 2014

Microsoft’s New Indian Face




In case you did not notice, Microsoft now has a black Chairperson and an Indian CEO, and Bill Gates will now be reporting to Satya Nadella three days a week. Bill is back! Someday Sundar Pichai might end up CEO of Google, and Bobby Jindal might end up President Of The United States. And Nitish might wipe out poverty from India. And Jayalalita might help architect genuine federalism for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. And India is already on its way to Mars. Jupiter is not far.

Amitabh is the most recognized face on the planet. 




Bill Gates is the ultimate Maoist, if you ask me. I only got to “know” the guy after he launched his global war on poverty. Computers only became interesting to me because of the Internet, and Bill was a PC guy. My company to love is Google.

My tribute to Satya Nadella was a blog post bit.ly/1lGw3Cs An Opening For Microsoft: Supercheap Smartphones.

I think the biggest new opening for Microsoft to get back on the tech map is for it to cash on its Nokia acquisition and a CEO who grew up in India, a country that has more poor people than any other, and to offer the cheapest smartphones across the Global South. That steep price gradient is the only hope Microsoft might have to become a significant third force in the mobile space where Android is the new Windows. If it were to move fast enough I think there is a slim chance that Microsoft might end up with Apple like global market shares.

The large number of Android manufacturers are tough competition though. Android is free. And those hardware makers are doing their best to offer cheap phones. But I have a feeling Nokia knows a thing or two about cheap.




And to think Nadella is not an IIT guy. He claims pretty much everything he learned about leadership and teams he learned playing cricket. That is a true Indian! This is no lost Desi. He is true to the roots.

If India were the Al Qaeda the recent humiliation of the Indian diplomat would have ignited a call for jihad. That organization has a simplistic two dimensional cartoon idea of what America is. It is a large, complex country that can also put Nadella on the top. For every Nadella there is also a Pichai, waiting in the wings, ready to take over.

I think Bill Gates’ comeback cannot be overlooked. That is a big story in its own right. Gates will still give the majority of his time to his foundation, and I think that is awesome because I am a huge fan of his foundation. But this time away from Microsoft has been good for him. He now has new, global, non-Microsoft perspectives. This is not a Personal Computer world we live in, not anymore. But then he was thinking tablets a full half decade before Steve Jobs, only Gates’ tablet had an accompanying pen, and it never took off, not even inside Microsoft. So don’t think the guy is behind.

How would you design super cheap smartphones? I say, ask Nokia. But smartphones are no good without data. How do you bring wireless broadband to vast swaths of the Global South (that is like saying African American) also known as the Third World (that is nigger)? Google is throwing balloons up into the upper parts of the atmosphere. Microsoft might try satellites and cheap antennas on the ground. My point being, it’s got to compete in the space of taking internet to the masses, the left out billions. A smartphone with internet access is the 21st century voting right. If you don’t have it, you are disenfranchised.

So imagine a $20 Nokia smartphone that someone in Darbhanga, Bihar, buys on the roadside, that immediately connects to wireless broadband beamed down by a Microsoft satellite for free. The phone runs Windows Mobile, which is free. It has the Bing search engine by default, and Hotmail Mobile, and Office Mobile. And Skype comes preloaded. And every Skype account gets a free phone number too. As in, calls are free. Skype gives you unlimited free SMS. And of course the keyboard can be in English or Hindi.

How does Microsoft make money? $20 for the phone, and ads served on the phone through the various services. Ads that are super relevant, because your usage of the phone builds a rich profile of you at some Microsoft data center. And Microsoft ends up rich, and we all end up happy.

This part is obvious. Steve Jobs gave us the Graphical User Interface, or the mouse. He stole it from Xerox, but then Picasso was also known to steal. Jobs also gave us the touch interface. But I think Microsoft gave us the next big thing before Jobs gave us the touch. Gestures are more natural than touch. And Microsoft’s Kinect is master of the gesture universe.

There is something called the Natural User Interface. I think there is so much more Microsoft could do in that space.

Supercheap smartphones with the accompanying wireless broadband and the Natural User Interface fully scaled together can easily take Microsoft past a 500 billion valuation. And Nadella could stay busy for a decade. And that is enough time before another Indian takes over. Maybe Pichai? And Vivek Wadhwa perhaps is Mayor of Silicon Valley by then, or is it Vinod Khosla? Khosla is already Dean.




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Saturday, December 29, 2012

Facebook Search Can't Be Bing

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase
That is the obvious point. Facebook search necessarily has to be social, relying on data Facebook already has. Of course.

Why Facebook's Search Engine Won't Be Anything Like Google's
By mining users’ updates about vacations, music listening interests, online habits, and more, Facebook Search could be better at answering subjective questions, about what products, experiences, and businesses you might be interested in, than a traditional search engine. ..... “Because Google is so big,” says Gerasoulis, “they have data for the long tail”—the uncommon queries for which relatively few pages are a match. .... Since 2009, the Redmond company has spent more than $5 billion on Bing ..... serves only 15 percent of U.S. searches, compared with Google’s 65 percent. .... answering queries about the things that people share and discuss on Facebook, such as vacations, movies, recipes, and more. “When you go to specific subjects, the signals Facebook and other social networks have are amazing,” says Gerasoulis. ...... Mining users’ comments could help Facebook unlock even more useful data ..... “Facebook and Twitter both have teams working on search” ..... Digging deep into social data can uncover a wealth of information and forgotten content related to things people care about ... most of it not accessible by conventional search engines. ...... “Search is about what you want right now,” says Gerasoulis. “You go to Facebook and hang out; it doesn’t currently have the same directness.”

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Sunday, November 18, 2012

Off Season April Fool Joke On Yahoo Facebook Search Deal


This is not the first time respectable media got it wrong. Actually the media routinely gets it wrong. But flat out wrong is a little rare.

Yahoo Facebook Search Alliance Would Be Interesting
Yahoo and Facebook Not in Search Alliance Discussions
(Speaking of movies, I am sorry it took me so long to get to this, but I was seeing the final “Twilight” movie with some All Things Digital staffers. I can report that the sparkly vampires of the film are also not in search alliance talks with Facebook.)
I guess the implausible part is that it perhaps is truly hard for Yahoo to walk away from Microsoft on search, and if the idea is to compete with Google, Bing is not a bad ally, it is number two. Heck, Facebook teamed up with that very Bing.

Yahoo wanting to go back to fight the search wars would be like Steve Jobs wanting to go back and fight the PC wars.

"The PC wars are over. Microsoft won!" is what Steve Jobs wisely said when he took over Apple. Marissa Mayer is better off looking in the mobile direction. That is raw territory.

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Yahoo Facebook Search Alliance Would Be Interesting

I think this is the most intriguing move by Marissa Mayer since she took up leadership at Yahoo. But so far this is just a meeting between two powerful women in tech.

I have long advocated Facebook should go into search. And I thought from day one Yahoo outsourcing search to Microsoft was a mistake.

Facebook's Search Option
The Facebook Search Engine
Facebook Could Do Well In Search

This move is audacious. I'd be interested to know what kind of timeline we might be talking about.

But it would be a mistake to think of this in terms of a political alliance. When Yahoo and Microsoft teamed up, two plus two did not equal four. They together lost share to Google.

This is about if you can innovate. I think these two might be able to.

Marissa Mayer: Biographical Details
Marissa Mayer's Gameplan
Marissa Mayer: Photos
Sheryl Sandberg: New Yorker Profile

Yahoo! plots alliance with Facebook in new search deal
Facebook has already said it plans to boost its web search facility, with founder Mark Zuckerberg noting that the social network is “pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have”. ...... Yahoo!, which started life as one the first major search engines but is now dwarfed by rival Google, would benefit from Facebook’s vast army of more than 1bn users. ..... Working with Facebook would also allow Yahoo! to piggyback on the social network’s brand cachet to help it recruit top-tier computer programmers ..... An alliance between Facebook and Yahoo! will pose a major threat to Google and stands to reorder the hierarchy of the world’s biggest technology companies. A senior figure likened Yahoo!’s position to that of a minority party in a hung parliament, with the power to act as kingmaker by choosing another party with which to align itself. ..... she and Ms Sandberg, who is also a former Google executive, are expected to use their combined might to launch a serious competitor. ..... Google dominates the market with around a 66pc share. Bing has had some effect at the edges, with just under 16pc of all searches taking place on the platform.

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