Ours at Stanford, the sixth and seventh day
On the sixth and seventh day, the last days of our stay at Stanford (previous issues here: first , second , third , fourth and fifth ), we intensively helped the guys from Stanford Business School to work on the presentation of our project as part of their classroom and were able to communicate only with representatives from Yahoo Research and Microsoft Research.
We spoke with a former student of Garcia-Molina, who works at Microsoft Research, and who previously did research that is very similar to ours. He told us a lot of what is being done and done on the topic of our work, and when we told him about our results, he said that, they say, yes - we are on the right track. Then I had a logical question for him: if we are on the right path, it means that he too was on the right path, and why then does he sit at MS Research and deal with a very narrow topic instead of creating a new search engine? We did not receive a direct answer to this question. There was a feeling that very talented people work at MS, but at the same time their salaries and bonuses are too good for them to tense up and try to do something revolutionary.
Communication with a representative of Yahoo Research was more productive in terms of a common understanding of the market. The essence of the conversation was as follows.
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Yes, many small IT projects have managed to bypass the established market leaders, but these were not only technical skills, but also a general understanding of the strategic situation. Large corporations wage wars with each other in the way that they used to wage with each other in the country, he explained. And a small player, entering the market with his product, will be able to effectively participate in the battle only if he is able to bypass the hot spots where the interests of corporations collide, and in some small battles to win victories, helping some of the coprorations to participate in their struggle , gradually increasing its own power.
For example, now, in his view, a fierce battle is taking place in the market between Google and Microsoft. Its essence lies in the long-standing idea of Larry Ellison that Microsoft’s main source of revenue is MS Office, and that Microsoft can be defeated only by offering an alternative to the office. Accordingly, in fact, now Google’s efforts, which are very eager for a victory over MS, are primarily aimed at undermining revenue from the office, and not at all on search (that's why we don’t see much of Google’s search engine improvements), but the Google Docs project for Google is now the highest priority. In turn, MS fiercely defends itself from Google and tries to do everything to undermine Google’s advertising revenues - although, as we see, it is not very successful. Given this situation - for example, joining the alliance with one of the major players - a small player has a chance to achieve significant success.
So, the overall results from the trip we have are:
We spoke with a former student of Garcia-Molina, who works at Microsoft Research, and who previously did research that is very similar to ours. He told us a lot of what is being done and done on the topic of our work, and when we told him about our results, he said that, they say, yes - we are on the right track. Then I had a logical question for him: if we are on the right path, it means that he too was on the right path, and why then does he sit at MS Research and deal with a very narrow topic instead of creating a new search engine? We did not receive a direct answer to this question. There was a feeling that very talented people work at MS, but at the same time their salaries and bonuses are too good for them to tense up and try to do something revolutionary.
Communication with a representative of Yahoo Research was more productive in terms of a common understanding of the market. The essence of the conversation was as follows.
')
Yes, many small IT projects have managed to bypass the established market leaders, but these were not only technical skills, but also a general understanding of the strategic situation. Large corporations wage wars with each other in the way that they used to wage with each other in the country, he explained. And a small player, entering the market with his product, will be able to effectively participate in the battle only if he is able to bypass the hot spots where the interests of corporations collide, and in some small battles to win victories, helping some of the coprorations to participate in their struggle , gradually increasing its own power.
For example, now, in his view, a fierce battle is taking place in the market between Google and Microsoft. Its essence lies in the long-standing idea of Larry Ellison that Microsoft’s main source of revenue is MS Office, and that Microsoft can be defeated only by offering an alternative to the office. Accordingly, in fact, now Google’s efforts, which are very eager for a victory over MS, are primarily aimed at undermining revenue from the office, and not at all on search (that's why we don’t see much of Google’s search engine improvements), but the Google Docs project for Google is now the highest priority. In turn, MS fiercely defends itself from Google and tries to do everything to undermine Google’s advertising revenues - although, as we see, it is not very successful. Given this situation - for example, joining the alliance with one of the major players - a small player has a chance to achieve significant success.
So, the overall results from the trip we have are:
- As numerous investors and representatives of large corporations have convinced us, there is nothing unreal in making a new search engine and successfully launching it on the state market, and there is no need for big (own) money for this — there are so many investors who understand that as a company - Google will most likely continue to be very successful, but Google’s domination in the search is not forever, and in the future of 10 years one or several successful alternative projects will surely appear
We are on the right track, and an important outcome of our trip is our own motivation. Therefore, we decided to hire more people to work on Nigma in our Moscow office (by the way, we are waiting for a resume from programmers at jobs@nigma.ru , details are here , but for full-time programmers salaries will, of course, be higher than those indicated by this link ), and we will concentrate even more on our American search engine
We reached an agreement with Stanford to conduct joint research to develop a new search engine, and with investors to finance them, when we are ready for the commercial launch of the project in the states
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/17261/
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