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Posts Tagged ‘Industry Analyst’

Google Index to Go Real Time

Google is developing a system that will enable web publishers of any size to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published. Search industry analyst Danny Sullivan told us today that this could be “the next chapter” for Google.

Last Fall we were told by Google’s Brett Slatkin, lead developer on the PubSubHubbub (PuSH) real time syndication protocol, that he hoped Google would some day use PuSH for indexing the web instead of the crawling of links that has been the way search engines have indexed the web for years. Google senior product manager Dylan Casey said yesterday at Sullivan’s Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California that the company plans to soon publish a standard way for site owners to participate in a program much like that.

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How The System Might Work

PuSH is a syndication system based on the ATOM format where a publisher tells the world about a Hub that it will notify every time new content is published. Subscribers then tell the Hub “when this Publisher posts new content, please deliver it to me right away.” So instead of the Subscriber checking back with the Publisher all the time to see if there’s new content, they just sit and wait to be told that there is by the Hub. The Publisher publishes something, then tells the Hub that it’s available, then the Hub goes and delivers it to all the Subscribers. This can take as little as a few seconds.

If Google can implement an Indexing by PuSH program, it would ask every website to implement the technology and declare which Hub they push to at the top of each document, just like they declare where the RSS feeds they publish can be found. Then Google would subscribe to those PuSH feeds to discover new content when it’s published.

PuSH wouldn’t likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google’s existing index.

As Danny Sullivan told us today, Google would have to implement some sort of spam control and not just let content be pushed live to the index unvetted. That was what happened in the earliest days of search and it was a real mess, he told us.

The Advantages of a Real Time Google Index

PuSH is much more computationally efficient for Google but Slatkin says that even more important is the impact of such a move for small publishers. Right now many small sites get visited by Google maybe once a week. With a PuSH system in place, they would be able to get their content to Google automatically right away.

A richer, faster, more efficient internet would be good for everyone, but the benefits in search wouldn’t be limited to Google, either. The PubSubHubbub is an open protocol and the feeds would be as visible to Yahoo and Bing as they would be to Google.

“I am being told by my engineering bosses to openly promote this open aproach even to our competitors,” Slatkin says. That’s a very good sign.

We expect this will be a very big deal and we’ll be covering it more extensively in the coming days, as well as whenever Google has something to announce more formally.

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US Tech Sector Growth Slowed Significantly in 2008

According to data released earlier this month by the US Census, the growth of the nation’s software and IT tech sectors dramatically slowed in 2008 – the first such drop since the dot-com crash. Overall, revenue still grew, just at a slower rate – 7.7% – than in 2007 when growth hit 13.2%. The 2008 numbers (PDF) are the agency’s most current figures, and they reveal an industry that earned significantly less on design and development work than it did just a year before. Revenue growth from other services, as well as exports, also slowed.

At least one industry analyst says that, based on antidotal evidence, the Census numbers are too low. But others say that it was clear that many sectors were changing their spending habits and feeling the pangs of the building recession. The question is, are we out of that dip or will 2010 produce similar numbers?

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2004 was the first time the tech sector saw positive revenue growth following the crash. After that, year-to-year growth hovered at between 7% and 8%. Then came 2007 when revenue boomed 13.2% to $229 million. In 2008, revenue topped $246 million, a 7.7% growth rate.

“I’m skeptical of that ‘08 number,” says Toan Tran, associate director of the technology team at the research firm Morningstar. “That’s not something that jives with what we saw.”

Drop Due to Spending Cycle, Recession

Steve Cakebread, former president and chief strategy officer of Salesforce.com not only thinks there was a drop, he says it’s part of a long-term cycle. Between 2005 and 2008 companies spent a lot on upgrades and replacements, which is similar to what happened at the end of the 1990s. Once the upgrades were made, companies stopped spending money.

“This [decrease in] spending thru mid-2008 also accounts for some of the slower growth in jobs, as tech spending does improve productivity,” Cakebread says.

2008 is also when tech first began having cash flow problems due the slowing global economy, says Anirban Dutta, a director of global strategic business development at the consulting firm CSC. Big contract deals – which drive significant growth in the IT services industry – as well as mid-market deals took a hit.

So What Happens in 2010?

The 2008 data is based on an annual survey of 60,000 businesses from 11 broad industry categories. The tech section of the survey covers companies that write, modify and support software, as well as those that design systems that integrate hardware, software and communication technologies. It also includes companies that do on-site management of computer systems and data processing facilities.

It isn’t likely any of those sectors will struggle this year. There are always risks. But if cloud computing may affect the companies that manage IT, then it opens up opportunities, too. That’s a point that Cakebread, Dutta and others make when talking about what will happen this year: Whether it’s cloud, SaaS, or mobile, the growth of cheaper, easier-to-use services and technology will have a decided impact on how tech grows. Cakebread goes so far as to predict that we’re on the doorstep of a “new decade of growth.”

“To be fair, not without its stops and starts,” he says, “but it is starting again.”

What do you think? Did 2008 mark the beginning of a slowdown in the US tech sector? Or did your company do better than ever? Let us know in the comments.

Photo credit: Sigurd Decroos.

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Rumor: Hypothetical hybrid GSM-CDMA iPhone for Verizon nowhere near production

Filed under: Rumors, iPhone

Last week we covered the possibility that the iPhone would get a hybrid chip allowing it to work on CDMA and UTMS carriers (like Verzion and AT&T) simultaneously. Today, Appleinsider is citing industry analyst Ashok Kumar who says that such a chip hasn’t reached field trial status, and that the lead time required for this type of device makes him think consumers won’t see it in 2010. Kumar goes on to suggest that this new “worldmode” chip would be more likely to show up in 2011.

While it would be ideal for Apple to have one model of iPhone that would work on nearly all wireless providers in the world, the technology just doesn’t appear to be there at this point. Kumar points out that even though the hardware is in development, the software necessary for the basebands of such devices doesn’t even exist yet but would get there eventually.

So that’s one vote against a 2010 debut for the Verizon iPhone, despite the corroborating rumors from other supply chain analysts. As eager as everyone is for an alternative to AT&T in the USA, I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear of the story.

TUAWRumor: Hypothetical hybrid GSM-CDMA iPhone for Verizon nowhere near production originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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