Jeff Jarvis makes hundreds, if not thousands of great points in his book “What Would Google Do?”

Perhaps the most relevant point is about building a platform that others can build upon. It is what has created the seemingly unlimited success that Google has experienced through its “Maps” offering.  Consider this: Maps is free, well maintained, can be embedded within a site with relative ease, and can be expanded upon and tailored to one’s liking through mashups.  Marissa Mayer – Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience stated “we think of our geo technologies as building a mirror onto the world.”

Thinking aloud:

It is amazing how many SEO firms have popped up in the last few years.  Everyone seems to be claiming to deliver top 10 results – which is impossible.  In making a selection, remember one thing: a search engine builds its credibility and reputation upon the relevance of the results returned. Some of the best and brightest minds in the computing industry have helped to create the algorithms that drive the perpetual indexing of the World Wide Web, otherwise known as “crawling”.  The algorithms are commonly referred to as “spiders”… and the factors which effect change within this elaborate, complex engine are guarded like Fort Knox. This is understandable, as search engines have become so intertwined with commerce that high rankings on coveted terms can result in millions of dollars in revenue gains, or losses. See this article on some such instances where a removal from the search engine indexes of Google has caused a good deal of pain for some folks.

As noted in the title, it is easy to become enamored by the various synonyms and technical jargon that applies to the modern computing space.  ERP, ECM, CRM, SaaS, OnDemand, Cloud – help!