How can Microsoft overtake Google in search? Is search a winner-take-all business?

For my executive MBA we had to write short blog post, this is a adaptation of one such:

How can Microsoft overtake Google in search? Is search a winner-take-all business?

These are two interesting questions from a users perspective. It is in Google’s interest to keep Microsoft focused on them as well, because Google have an advantage in the search business. I believe that the questions are the incorrect question to ask both from Google and Microsoft’s perspective. The correct questions are (IMHO): How can Microsoft overtake Google in the advertisement market? Is the (online-)advertisement market a winner-take-all market?

Search is just a means to an end. The end goal is to tap into the revenue potential of advertisement. To capture revenue in this market Microsoft can try to capture a larger portion of the search and this is what they have tried for some time. They can conceivably compete with Google as long as they manage to deliver the same perceived quality and are able to also capture the advertisement revenues. In the straight forward “googeling” business Google has several advantages: They are the market leader, the are better able to capture advertisement revenue, “googelig” is their core business and they have significant resources they can use to defend their position, and finally they are good at innovation. 

An option for Microsoft is to try to redefine search in order to level the playing field, or maybe even capture the high ground. Or they could attempt to carve out a niche market in search that they are better able to serve than Google.

In the end both these alternatives boils down to how can Microsoft capture advertisement revenue from Google. It begs the question; is search the correct arena? Can Microsoft in the future redefine the advertisement market to something better suited to their core competencies? It will not be easy and some will say it is impossible. Predicting what will happen in the technology arena has countless examples that some people have done what most people thought impossible. The question that remains to see if Microsoft is some people or if they are just like most people.

Slicehost

People always write long blog posts when they are angry or dissatisfied with the service received. So I though I should do the opposite.

I had lost my root password at my slicehost. Thinking this would be a lot of hassle getting it back. I contacted suport 11pm on a friday (my local time). Assuming this would take a while. 2 minutes later I had an e-mail in my inbox. I figured it was just an autoreplay telling me they had received my support request. That was not the case. It contained instructions on how to recover it.

Yet again I'm a happy customer of slicehost.com

Upgrading APEX to 4.0 on XE

No point in writing what other have written perfectly. http://www.webxpert.ro/andrei/2010/09/09/upgrade-oracle-apex-3-2-1-to-4-0-1-on-oracle-database-10g-express-edition-xe/

Following this guide works with my apex on slicehost guide: http://mfro.blogspot.com/2010/04/xe-and-apex-on-slicehost.html

OBIEE 11g: Import metadata, connection problems.

Importing metadata aught to be a simple: Hit File - > Import Metadata, punching in db and user name and finish it of with password then select what you want to import. It is if your lucky. The pitfall that got me was that OBIEE 11g install it's own Oracle client.
Fine, so what? It is in this clients tnsnames.ora that it looks up servicenames. Which means that you have to have the correct tnsnames entries in {Oracle_BI1}\network\admin\tnsnames.ora and not that of your database.

OBIEE 11g the first disappointment.

After about an hour of fiddling about and reading documentation I finally got the OBIEE 11g image to work. Even before I log into analytics I meet my first disappointment. Really it is a very small thing, but still annoying that they haven't fixed it.

So here it goes. When you come to the login page, you naturally start filling it from the top towards the bottom. So you enter user id and password. Then you notice that the server has a different default language than what you prefere. So you switch from default to what ever your preference is. The problem is that this trigger a reload of the page, so that your user id and password field is empty and you have to fill it out again. This is the kind of things that annoy user, and it is a bad first meeting with a product.

Deployment errror in Work Flow

RPE-02012: Internal error: Function P83_NAME_OF_SOME_MAPPING cannot be created or updated. Please try again. If the problem persists then please contact Oracle Support with the stack trace and details on how to reproduce it.

- ORA-00001: unique constraint (OWF_MGR.WF_ACTIVITIES_TL_U2) violated

ORA-06512: at "OWF_MGR.WF_LOAD", line 1402

ORA-06512: at line 1

This seems to be nothing more than a error telling that the workflow name i too long and when it is truncated it causues a name that is not unique

XE and Apex on a Slicehost

For a while I have considered getting a hosting service for my apex applications. The community have made a list of some of the providers. All of them charge depending on the amount of storage capacity that you need. They have a fairly high monthly rate compared to the amount of storage. For instance htmldb-hosting.com charges $32/month for 50MB and $140/month for 500MB.

Previously I have looked into just renting a server and installing a oracle express edition on it. In the past I have had some trouble with it, as the OS provided was not the easiest to install XE on. However, Slicehost have now upgraded their selection of OS and I give it another go.

I chose to get a 15GB storage, and 384MB of memory slice. It will cost me $25/month. In order to avoid any unplesant experienced a I added a backup for $7.5. When this is installed I'll be able to use up to 4GB of storage in Apex (limited by the XE edition), and I'll still have 5-10GB left on the server that I can use for other purposes.

Installation process.

Get a slicehost, chose Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit OS. Shortly after this is done you'll get an e-mail with the root password and the IP of your new server. You can log in using a web console on slicehost page or use ssh.

After logging in to the new server:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swap.img bs=1M count=780
mkswap /mnt/swap.img
swapon /mnt/swap.img

vi /etc/fstab
add the following line
/mnt/swap.img   none        swap    sw          0 0      

vi /etc/apt/sources.list
add the following line:
deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian unstable main non-free 
Run
wget http://oss.oracle.com/el4/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle  -O-
 | sudo apt-key add -
apt-get update
apt-get install  oracle-xe
You now got a oracle user and a running XE database. If you need to upgrade apex you can use the following guide.