You know it’s interesting how information has an intrinsic desire to be free. Kind of like the same way life is described in Jurasic Park.
Life finds a way to survive, as does information. I’m currently working in a completely different industry than search engine marketing, yet the search engine industry information always finds it’s way to me.
I just got back from SpeechTek in NYC early this morning and found out some really interesting information. I didn’t want to post anything about it and then today I read a post on Om Malik’s blog regarding Yahoo’s audio search tool that Google and MSN don’t currently have. Well, Google may not have it yet but I know they’re going after certain ASR (automated speech response) or should I call it Automated Search Response technology. Not only has Google hired on a couple key linguistics folks but they’re stalking at least one audio search company based in Atlanta, Georgia and trying to acquire speech recognition technology from another.
That company is Nexidia. Let’s just say a little birdie told me about Google’s interest in their proprietary audio search technolgy they’re currently using to provide search results in CRM systems and other enterprise level applications. The key differentiator of Nexidia is that their search is phonetically based and doesn’t rely on ASR [converting the audio to text] before the data is indexed. Rather it actually indexes audio content phonetically on the fly. This results in unparalleled search result quality and increased performance. Add to that the fact that none of Nexidia’s competition utilizes this type of methodology, 20 or 30 patents and some good revenue figures and you’ve got a company that’s ripe for acquiring.
From Om’s post
Yahoo has Audio Search, Google and MSN dont. Its more like comparison shopping engine for music. Good thing – they also have iTunes in their results. I threw some obscure artists at it, and well the results were pretty good. The tiny two minute review says – this one is usable.
Isn’t it funny how information finds it’s way out into the open? It’s one reason open source will never die. It’s another reason there’s no such thing as a secret. Especially in this day and time.
Jason Dowdell is a technology entrepreneur and operates the Marketing Shift blog.
