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How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

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Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#101

Post by new299 »

Sven7 wrote: post #14
rsync wrote: post #11

All grand plans indeed ... but a higher priority should be making search even work at all. Google search returns approximate results, related results, results with your words split (or joined) and other nonsense to drive ad views. Even using the so-called "power tools" like allinsite: and the (barely functional) quotation marks, you still get very shoddy results. Anyone who ever searches for very specific groups of t…

Google needs to create a search market place around that index of theirs. They need to open it up. Search is too big a problem for just a couple people at Mountain View to be working on. And at this stage with the amount of data being generated, no one really has the infrastructure to compete. Hope they do it before the regulators make them. If Apple has succeeded at building a market place around their closed platfo…

Perhaps, but the model as also been tried and failed (Inktomi).

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#102

Post by [deleted] »

michaelochurch wrote: post #91

Every time I read about machine learning work that is being done at Google, that's available if you're a Real Googler, and then compare that to the closed-allocation nightmare the other 90% face, it makes me want to fucking rage out and fly a plane into Mountain View... ... land, get off that plane, take a cab, and have a polite but blunt conversation with the founders about how to fix their company. (What did you th…

[deleted]

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#103

Post by yuhong »

michaelochurch wrote: post #91

Every time I read about machine learning work that is being done at Google, that's available if you're a Real Googler, and then compare that to the closed-allocation nightmare the other 90% face, it makes me want to fucking rage out and fly a plane into Mountain View... ... land, get off that plane, take a cab, and have a polite but blunt conversation with the founders about how to fix their company. (What did you th…

>... land, get off that plane, take a cab, and have a polite but blunt conversation with the founders about how to fix their company.

I wonder how easy would it be to actually do so?

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#104

Post by J_ »

coldtea wrote: post #45

> How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google By rigorous hand-waving, as he mostly does things the last 1-2 decades?

Haters gonna hate. Larry Page obviously didn't hire him and let him take up Google's resources for his "rigorous hand-waving".

How does this one-liner contribute to the conversation at all? Your negativity is unenlightening and obnoxious.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#105

Post by magicalist »

OGinparadise wrote: post #97
magicalist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the quarterly earnings reports, it's typically 20-30% year over year, not quarter over quarter. Keep in mind that the population of internet users is estimated to be growing about 10% year over year alone (though not always in places where Google is dominant), google's usage rate is still increasing in many places outside of the US, and then there's the fact that we all use the internet more every year…

A lot can be attributed to more ads on pages, true. But do people go there to see a page full of ads or "most relevant" and "unbiased results"? How many know ads from content? But growth in places where Google makes its real money (US, EU, Canada etc) has plateaued for a while, IIRC. Growth in ad clicks mirrors growth in revenue and we know a click from Guatemala is not the same as one from NYC. >>Besides, without an…

> But growth in places where Google makes its real money (US, EU, Canada etc) has plateaued for a while, IIRC. Growth in ad clicks mirrors growth in revenue and we know a click from Guatemala is not the same as one from NYC.

Actually, average cost per click has been going down for a while now. I don't see any breakdown by geography, and wall street had been all worried about what that means for an ever-more-mobile world, but, again, the data isn't there to back up your supposition. A large part of it could be growth in regions that bring in lower ad revenue.

> Maybe, but if you read the comments, people are accusing Google of making results worst to boost the ad click rate. That's wrong on so many levels.

Er, what is wrong on so many levels? I can't tell what you mean from that sentence construction. You say, "maybe", so you don't disagree with me, but you backed up the only other "accuser" in your post above, so I don't think you disagree with him...

In any case, the considerably more obvious and likely explanation is the one I think most people have tended to assume: google disambiguates terms automatically because it's what works in the 90% case. It's annoying for power users, yes (even back when it was less of an issue, at least we could +terms, so I miss +ing terms like crazy with today's google), but it makes no sense to attempt to optimize for ad revenue that way. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence...or in this case, any evidence.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#106

Post by kbenson »

StavrosK wrote: post #95
aswanson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Henry Ford or Steve Jobs. So, the discovery of the nature of cognition, a scientific endeavor that has stumped tens of thousands of the most brilliant people who ever lived for thousands of years, is on the order of setting up assembly lines and setting up shiny packaging for other people's engineering work. I learn new things here everyday.

Heh, not only that, but it implies that discovering the fundamental secrets of the universe isn't "sufficiently ambitious" compared to making things more efficiently or making easier-to-use gadgets.

It depends. If that discovery is a logical next step in the continuation of our current understanding, then yes, it may be less ambitious than something that positing something a few steps removed from what is currently provable, and attempting to fill in those gaps, whether it be a discovery in the scientific sense, or just achieving something heretofore thought impossible.

It's easy to forget that sometimes a discovery will languish for a long time (or even be forgotten and rediscovered) before someone invests time and effort in determining how it can usefully be exploited.

Who deserved credit "discovering" the assembly line? Adam Smith, who wrote about division of labor in 1776, or Eli Whitney, who implemented it manufacture muskets, or Henry Ford for using it to such great effect that he changed how industry operated? Or maybe the first Chinese Emperor, who's creation of a terracotta army is said to have used techniques reminiscent of assembly lines? Or perhaps the Venetian Arsenal? How many times in history was it discovered again, but never put into practice?

Another example, I really don't care who discovered it was possible to go to the moon, I do care about the people that acted on that discovery and actually did it.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#107

Post by OGinparadise »

magicalist wrote: post #105
OGinparadise wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot can be attributed to more ads on pages, true. But do people go there to see a page full of ads or "most relevant" and "unbiased results"? How many know ads from content? But growth in places where Google makes its real money (US, EU, Canada etc) has plateaued for a while, IIRC. Growth in ad clicks mirrors growth in revenue and we know a click from Guatemala is not the same as one from NYC. >>Besides, without an…

> But growth in places where Google makes its real money (US, EU, Canada etc) has plateaued for a while, IIRC. Growth in ad clicks mirrors growth in revenue and we know a click from Guatemala is not the same as one from NYC. Actually, average cost per click has been going down for a while now. I don't see any breakdown by geography, and wall street had been all worried about what that means for an ever-more-mobile wo…

Let's go back to step one:

Google's revenue is rising by what % a year?

Google's user base or searches are increasing by what % a year?

Is there a difference and what makes that difference?

Google's recent stock growth and revenue also match Google's highly publicizes Panda and Penguin updates. Or supposedly fighting "spam" but in reality also ruined a lot of small businesses. My educated guess is that Google is sending a lot less "free clicks" to other sites.

Cost per click can be brought down by a supply gut or a poor ROI for the advertiser.

>> In any case, the considerably more obvious and likely explanation is the one I think most people have tended to assume: google disambiguates terms automatically because it's what works in the 90% case.

In any case, the considerably more obvious and likely explanation is the one I think most people have tended to assume: Google makes sure that any algorithm changes (at least) don't hurt their Adwords business. That's their bread, butter and dessert.

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#108

Post by michaelochurch »

nostrademons wrote: post #94
michaelochurch wrote: post #91

Every time I read about machine learning work that is being done at Google, that's available if you're a Real Googler, and then compare that to the closed-allocation nightmare the other 90% face, it makes me want to fucking rage out and fly a plane into Mountain View... ... land, get off that plane, take a cab, and have a polite but blunt conversation with the founders about how to fix their company. (What did you th…

I'm a little curious - have you done machine learning work that's made it into a real product? I tried doing it a bit with my last project. My results were basically terrible. It turns out that getting useful results out of heterogenous, vague, fuzzily-specified real world data is really hard. I'm tight with a few folks in Search Quality whose job is that sort of data-scientist machine-learning work, and they're real…

I can only speak for myself here, but I find a lot of what you described as "grunt work" to be fun. Yes, it's true that when you work with real world data, you don't only work on the mathematical modeling, and you spend a lot of time just setting yourself up to be able to do what is typically called the "fun" part. For me, personally, I find all of the work involved to be fun-- even setting up a data pipeline and figuring out how to distribute a computation. Automating away grunt work and setup process is fun, too.

Part of what makes data science fun is the machine learning itself. And an equally interesting part of it is is that it involves so many other parts of computer science that a typical corporate job would call "too hard" and isolate you from.

At least based on what I've seen, data scientists are respected and this means they get dibs on the most interesting projects. However, the interesting projects themselves involve a lot of detailed work (that's the nature of technology) and if you're that interested, you're going to want to do it yourself, at least until you really understand the problem (at which point, you'll automate the dull stuff).

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#109

Post by sixQuarks »

raldi wrote: post #93
sixQuarks wrote: post #26

Is it just me, or does Ray Kurzweil seem to be getting younger? I remember seeing a speech of his a few years ago, he had a nervous tick where he was blinking his eyes constantly. He also looked a lot older. Now, he doesn't have that tick, seems to have more hair, etc. I know he takes like 100 pills every day

The photo in the article is from Wikipedia, where the date is listed as "before 2005".

OK, that explains it

Re: How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google

#110

Post by josephkern »

J_ wrote: post #104
coldtea wrote: post #45

> How Ray Kurzweil Plans To Revolutionize Search At Google By rigorous hand-waving, as he mostly does things the last 1-2 decades?

Haters gonna hate. Larry Page obviously didn't hire him and let him take up Google's resources for his "rigorous hand-waving". How does this one-liner contribute to the conversation at all? Your negativity is unenlightening and obnoxious.

It did get Google into Forbes ...
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