WHITE PAPER- (unedited)
Posted By: Anthony Scaffeo, Decision Support Analyst
Addresses: follow on Twitter (iTbay) ; www.tbaypages.ca
Funded by: (C) 2009 Anthony Scaffeo (all rights reserved)
Draft Date: April 15, 2009 (unedited)
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Definitions:
Google Trends: Google Trends is a tool from Google Labs that shows the most popularly searched terms from the beginning of 2004 to now. It is encouraged that you test and understand Google Trends prior to examing this report - examine here
Cloud Computing: represents a new way to deploy computing technology to give users the ability to access, work on, share, and store information using the internet. The cloud itself is a network of data centers - each composed of many thousands of computers working together - that can perform the functions of software on a personal or business computer by providing users access to powerful applications, platforms, and services delivered over the internet. To obtain a better understanding and how it may reshape an economy, please examine here. Google, Ebay, Kijiji, Facebook etc, are cloud based web services.
Contents
- Introduction
- Overall Assessment
- Purpose of Study
- Questions
- Study
- Conclusion
- References
(i) Preliminary Assessments - unverified
(ii) Examination of Findings with Google Trends
(ii.1) Testing rules
(ii.2) Sch 1: Examining XYZ economies w/ Google Trends as at April 1, 2009
(ii.3) Sch 2: Other Findings for XYZ economies as at April 1, 2009 w/ Google Trends
(ii.4) Schedule 3: Examining ABC economies w/ Google Trends as at April 1, 2009
(ii. 5) Analysis of Schedule 1, 2, 3
(1) Introduction
Using Google Trends, the following cities in Canada were studied to assess the way in which Google searches were utilized for a board range of web services (eg. Facebook, Ebay, Kijiji, etc) and other categories like banking, weather - see Schedule 1 for full analysis):
1. Thunder Bay, Ontario* (2006, population, 109,140)
2. Sudbury, Ontario* (2006, population, 157,857)
3. Moncton, New Brunswick* (2006, population, 64,128)
4. St. John's, NFLD* (2006, population, 100,646)
5. Saint John, NS* (2006, population, 68,043)
6. Waterloo, Ontario** (2006, population, 97,475)
*economies studied and identified as the "XYZ economies"
**an economy in which its GDP is driven by technology (home of the Blackberry). This economy will be defined as an "ABC" economy.
(i) Raw Data
The raw data can be accessed here. Computations were made using basic excel functions (filtering, averages count - all entries were entered manually from Google Trends as at April 1, 2009); however, I have been studying these trends for the last 18 months.
(ii) XYZ economies and housing
The XYZ economies are resource based which focus on forestry, mining, and fishery as significant drivers of economic growth (GDP %). Housing for these economies have been impacted by the current and past economics. Given that housing is a measure of wealth and thus a reflection of an economy's tax base, according to the 5th Annual Demographic International Housing Affordability Survey 2009, which data was reported from the 3rd quarter of 2008 and thus does not take into account the significant declines in wealth from September 30, 2008 to April 1, 2009, 4 of the 5 XYZ economies ranked as a top affordable house in 2009:
2009 demograhica housing measures:
- Thunder Bay ranked (2 in Cdn, 12th in Cdn & US)
- Moncton ranked (5 in Cdn, 24th in Cdn & US)
- Saint John ranked (7 in Cdn, 48th in Cdn & US)
- St. John's ranked (8 in Cdn, 61th in Cdn & US)
- Sudbury and Waterloo were not included in the affordable or non-affordable housing index.
- Thunder Bay ranked (1 in Cdn, 1 in Cdn & US)
- Sudbury ranked (10 in Cdn, 37th in Cdn & US)
- Saint John, NFLD ranked (4 in Cdn, 5th in Cdn & US)
- St. John's NB ranked (4 in Cdn, 5th in Cdn & US)
- Moncton and Waterloo were not included in the affordable or non-affordable housing index.
Using 24 of the Top 100 Alexa Canadian websites along with related search variations as defined below in 5(ii-1), XYZ economies search Google similarly in terms of frequency (time series - all years, last 12 months etc.) and categories (leisure related, social networks & chats, banking, shopping related, computer software related, travel related, weather) as defined in (5)(ii) below. The searches performed by XYZ economies were different than those in the ABC economy which is located in southern Ontario and has a significant portion of its GDP generated from technology (the city where Blackberry originates from). The ABC economies will be those located in southern Ontario as there are cities that are close to Waterloo (Kitchner, Toronto etc. with search pattern that are not consistent with the XYZ economies and those economies in which housing are categorized as unaffordable housing. However, in the 5th annual housing index survey, Windsor, ON (pop. 2006 - 216, 173) and Chatham, ON (population pop. 2006 - 108,117) are included in the affordability index for southern Ontario cities. Chatham, ON Google Trends results were similar to those of North Vancouver, BC (pop. 2001 - 82,310) which focused on searches relating to blogging (Wordpress, Blogger), Google tools (calender, gmail) and other tools which may be used for productivity gains and cost zero dollars. Also, Chatham, ON, which is 2 hours and 22 minutes from Waterloo, ON, had similar search patterns. Therefore, as noted in Chatham, ON, cities that have housing that is affordable have search patterns which are similar to ABC economies. Also, cities that are affordable in southern Ontario (Windsor, ON) had the same consistency and extend of search patterns as XYZ economies - Chatham, ON and Windsor, ON will not be classified as ABC economies.
(2) Overall Assessment
Google Trends and Google Insights for Search was used to assess the way in which Google searches were utilized for a board range of web services (eg. Facebook, Ebay, Kijiji, etc. see Schedule 1 for analysis) and how this frequent and consistent use of Google may cause an impact on the future of XYZ's economies potential economic growth, productivity, and needed move to a cloud computing ecosystem. Without such a move, these XYZ economies may experience higher future levels of unemployment; a higher cost of capital given the riskiness of making investments in these economies given the loss of multiplier dollars and time productivity; a potential and increased out migration (loss of labour supply); a potential loss in the value of the usefulness of skills to compete in the global economy (ie. learning how to use software programs from a book compared to other alternatives such as video which may result in increased user uptake and execution - here - thus an overall decrease in growth and productivity overtime. As a result, fiscal policy alone may not stimulate these XYZ economies in the medium to long run given the nature of the global competitive landscape ability to utilize computing for productivity (computer and devices are getting cheaper, internet is becoming faster, the labour force that is uitlizing computing is larger than ever before (China and India).
The older, more experienced working generation must work with the younger generation since the younger generation's experience, extent, frequency, skill and use of cloud based technologies (using Facebook, Youtube, Gmail (Google's email service) are interoperable with business and productive applications that, with their employment contributions in the local economy away from the coffee and donuts like jobs (which are in there own right great jobs), may contribute to potential economic growth for these XYZ economies without fiscal policy contributions. For example, my 12 year old nephew is able to create a gmail account with Google on his own, have emails send to his iPhone, and perform an execution of certain tasks which assist me in my businesses. Also, the young generation, for example, may exhibit differences in completing task ( greater efficiences and costs savings may be achieved as there will be less printing of paper for reading resulting in energy saving costs, less use of office supplies like pens and staplers, less use of expensive printers and ink cartridges, and the potential for less reliance on computing service supports, the ability to education with certain tips and tricks). Therefore, given the access of information and low or no cost value of technology (cloud based services) near full employment may be achieved as the cost of labour and thus wages can be replaced with the current costs of computing resulting in the retention of multipler dollars for the XYZ economies to grow organicly.
Demand (consumption + investment + government spending + net exports) in the XYZ economies can be stimulated with minimal government spending and with investment in the young generation's ability to: (a) assist the more experienced generation with computing; (b) the ability to quickly access information on the internet. Also, with the utilization of cloud based services which are provided as a low or free cost entry service, minimal government intervention along with cloud based services may increase productivity, savings and investment in these XYZ economies thus increasing XYZ's economic growth without fiscal policy (Keynesian Economics).
With a projected Ontario budget deficit of over 14 billion and balanced budgets anticipated in the next 5 years, the Ontario Government must consider the impact of the cloud and the current labour force and current efficiencies in the local economies to assess new policy alternatives that will help achieve Ontario's balanced budget in the future.
(3) Purpose of the Study:
Some questions I have had in the past has sparked this study using Google Trends. Growing up and living in Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada, for the last five years, I would always hear people talking about eBay and how they purchased certain goods on there: sounds bits or tweets such as "just look on eBay", "check eBay", "buy it on eBay", "sell it on eBay" etc. eBay was a highly valued website in my town.
Discovering Google Trends about a year ago, I translated the verbal interest from those tweets into Google Trends refining my search to "eBay". What I discovered was that the city of Thunder Bay, ON was the top city in Canada, on a per capita basis (google trends help), to search eBay in Google. Using rank ave (as defined below) its value is 1.78 which takes into account searching "eBay", "eBay.com", and "eBay.ca". Therefore, I was able to translate those tweets of eBay from the community to a measure in terms of searches which shows Thunder Bay's interest in using eBay.
On April 2, 2009, Hal Varian and Hyunyoung Choi issued a paper entitled: Predicting the Present with Google Trends on Google Research Blog (please read the introduction of the paper here prior to diping into the paper). The paper shows how a "search variable" measure for Google Trends search volume can be utilized in predicting a company's sales in the present. For example, "Ford", the search term entered in Google Trends, will produce a query index (the search variable) which will provide less errors in predicting sales. Say were predicting Ford's July 2006 sales (st) using Ford's May 2006 sales (st-2) + Ford's June 2006 sales (st-1) + Ford's June 2006 search variable (gt-1) compared without using Ford's June 2006 search variable (gt-1). When predicting sales for (st) in the period n-1 (which would be June 2006), predicition errors are lower when the variable (gt-1) is included in the formula {(st-2)+(st-1)+(gt-1)} than {(st-2)+(st-1)}. Therefore, the search variable will help in reducing the prediction errors for the Ford July 2006 sales in June 2006. As stated on the Google Research Blog, Google Trends can help improve forecasts of the current level of activity for a number of different economic time series including automobile sales (as shown with Ford), home sales, retail sales, and travel behaviour (source). Also, (a) when CNN was broadcasting the pirate attacks regarding Capital Phillps along with other media outlets, this was one number 4 of the hot trends on April 12, 2009 and (b) when the pilot from Turkey stole the Cessana from Thunder Bay, when searching "thunder bay" in Google Trends, there was spike related to that news event - therefore, media such as television, radio, and news also has an impact on search and will cause an increase in interest for a related search term (in these cases "Captain Phillps and "Thunder Bay"). Therefore, these same principles can be associated with the eBay example presented above.
(4) Questions:
Given those initial eBay tweets while in Thunder Bay and the fact that the search volume variable for Google Trends a predictor of the present for economic variables and a real time predictor of media and related search terms, I commissioned this study and asked some questions:
Does the type of local economy (resource based vs technology based) have an impact on search patterns? The local economy is defined at the city level in Canada. In other words, does Thunder Bay, Ontario search the internet differently than Waterloo, Ontario given the differences in which these cities earn and grow - differences in GDP market shares?
If isolated economies search more on average than the rest of the world, are these residents more experienced at using search engines and thus cloud computing technologies?
Does Canada have the potential to host data centers to take on cloud computing?
Do isolated communities need to embrace cloud computing to achieve economic growth in the future?
· According to a study, The State of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Northern Ontario, a report funded by Fednor and completed by Laurentian University, "It was stated that wealth creation in an economy depends on the exploitation of natural resources as a starting point. The development of other products and services using inputs of labour, material, and capital follows". In this case, wealth creation may be difficult to obtain in the current economic environment given the computing power of the global economy. In other words, the definition of labour may not lead to wealth creation since the power, speed and quantity of computing cabilities in the world economy is significantly greater than only 5 years ago. There are 1.5 billion PC's, one billion labtops, and 3.8 billion mobile phones in use around the world. Many of these machines are more powerful than the mainframes of their earlier era (source).
(5) Study:
(i) Preliminary Assessments - unverified:
The economic and any other assertions made in this paper have not been verified by an independent provider - therefore, reliance of certain statements are encouraged to be verified independently and commented for further report refinement (for instance, the GDP of Moncton NB may consistent of elements other than resource based drivers - the preliminary assertions of resource based economics have been made for Thunder Bay and Sudbury Ontario which have a majority of their GDP fully comprised of resources (mining and forestry); projections have been made for Moncton, St. John's, and Saint John based on Google trends search patterns noted and the fact that these cities focus on fisheries and mining (resource based driven).
(ii) Examination of Findings with Google Trends:
The data from the Google Trends analysis commissioned for this report for the cities studied is located at the following address here.
Prior to understanding the testing rules, please obtain an understanding of Google Trends; I encourage one to review the following about Google Trends http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html and test Google Trends at http://www.google.com/trends to get an idea how to operate this amazing tool.
(ii.1) Testing Rules:
- Analysis: all analysis was performed in Canada for all sub regions (provinces) in Canada. Therefore, the XYZ economies searches were assessed compared to all cities located in Canada with search significance greater on a per capita type basis (please examine review the following about Google Trends
- Time Series: the time series analysis was performed for the "all years", "the last 12 months", "2008", and "2007" time series categories as at April 1, 2009. Therefore, search results from time series analysis may result in an insignificant change when averaged. Outlyers for a search term which had data counts for "2008" or "2007" alone and with no other "XYZ economies" included were not considered in the analysis and thus rank ave (discussed below).
- Aggregation: the position of a city for a respective search was tallied by time series period (for example, the search term "eBay" was tallied for the time series (last 12 months), city (thunder bay), ranking in Canada (1)). Aggregations were made for potential deviations (eg. face book, futureshop...etc) to the best of my ability as there is no way of knowing all potential search result combinations unless your Google.
- Alexa: websites from the Top 100 Canada Alexa websites were examined. For schedule 1 below, 24 top sites in Canada were examined; schedule 2 had 1; schedule 3 had 3. Google.com, Google.ca, Yahoo.com, Windows Live (search engines) which are in the top 5 websites in Alexa top 100 are not included in the below analysis. Other websites from Alexa were examined and tended to have similar search patterns with other citites located in Canada (for instance, Amazon.com and Craigslists.com was being searched more by cities located in the province of Bristish Columbia (BC); also blogging platforms such as Wordpress and related blogging searches was being searched by cities in BC and Ontario (Chatham) which are of similar size in terms of population size to the XYZ economies. Also, given that these XYZ economies are not French speaking, Google.fr, which is a Top Alexa 100 website in Canada, would likely not be included in the searches for the XYZ economies; therefore, many french and other websites from Alexa would not be applicable to the economies tested. Further investigation for the remainder of Alexa Top 100 Canadian websites should be examined (Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Espn.com etc. to see similar pattern such as those noted for the XYZ economies).
- Rank Ave: rankings were averaged by time series (for example, the search term "eBay" for the city of Sudbury's ranking was averaged by time series: so for "all years", "last 12 months", and "2008", a ranking of "1", "3", and "4" was assigned in Google Trends - therefore, with a count of 3 rankings, the rankings of 1,3, and 4 were averaged by 3 to provide a Rank Ave value. Therefore, a rank ave takes into account all years along with the 12 most recent months, 2008, and 2007 for the purpose of this analysis as at April 1, 2009. However, a ranking with 2007 and 2008 alone were not included alone - more weight on the rank ave was given to searches which had a value for the "last 12 months" and "all years" time series.
- Search Combinations: searches were combined in multiple variations; for instance, The Royal Bank of Canada, the largest bank in Canada, was searched as "rbc", "rbc.com", "royalbank", "royal bank", "royal bank canada", "rbc online banking". Therefore, searches were altered based on common related variations.
- Website interest: this study does not take into account the city level use of websites (for instance, data is not available to quantify the city interest level for Sudbury use of www.ebay.com; for the purpose of this study, the interest for the use of www.ebay.ca (Alexa Top 14) is being assessed based on Google searches for ebay, ebay.com. ebay.ca, ebay canada; however, there is data available for Canada's provincial regional interest website usage).
- Google's search trends were examined given that it's engine ranks 1 on Alexa for Google.ca and 6 on Alexa for Google.com in Canada. Also, Google's commands a 72% search share in the United States market.
(ii.2) Schedule 1: Examining XYZ economies with Google Trends as at April 1, 2009:
Leisure
- leisure related searches for Youtube (Alexa 5) , Tsn (Alexa 58), Party Poker (Alexa 20), NHL (Alexa 24), Disney related ("hannah montanna", "high school musical") "Discovery Channel", Pogo (Alexa 77), Redtube (Alexa 54), Olg, and pets related searches yielded a rank ave of for all cities of 4.64 with Thunder Bay (3.48), Sudbury (5.84), St. John's (4.71), Saint John (5.88), Moncton (3.87). Sample size of 98 used to calculate Rank ave.
Social Networks & Chat
- social network/chat related searches for Facebook (Alexa 2) Msn.ca & Msn.com (Alexa 7 & 8), Yahoo Messenger, Tagged (Alexa 66) yielded a rank ave for all cities of 4.34 with Thunder Bay (3.48), Sudbury (5.49), St. John's (4.48), Saint John (4.43), Moncton (3.76). Sample size of 48 used to calculate Rank ave. For example, Thunder Bay has a population density on Facebook of over 50%. Per the searches, Facebook was the most popular social network for the XYZ economies. Sample size of 41 used to calculate Rank ave.
Banking
- banking related searches for Royal Bank (Alexa 96), TD Canada Trust (Alexa 23) , BMO (Alexa 72), Scotia Bank (Alexa 75) , Investors Group, and CIBC (Alexa 61) yielded a rank ave for all cities of 4.92 with Thunder Bay (3.81), Sudbury (7.39), St. John's (4.09), Saint John (5.1), Moncton (5.20). Sample size of 66 used to calculate Rank ave.
Shopping
- shopping related searches for The Future Shop (Alexa 60), Sears (Alexa 88), Ebay.ca & Ebay.com (Alexa 14 & 18), Kijiji (Alexa 12), Dell (Alexa 98), yielded an rank ave for all cities of 3.27 with Thunder Bay (2.63), Sudbury (3.27), St. John's (3.44), Saint John (3.6), Moncton (3.71). Other shopping related within the rank ave of 3.27 included Canadian Tire, The Brick, Aeropostale, Coles, Abercrombie, West 49, American Eagle, Chapters. Sample size of 109 used to calculate Rank ave.
Computer Software (illegal)
- computer software related search for The Pirate Bay (Alexa 56), Mininova (Alexa 46), and other searches (word 2007, free Microsoft download, dell support) yielded a rank ave for all cities of 2.5 with Thunder Bay (1.8), Sudbury (2.25), St. John's (2.75), Saint John (3), Moncton (2.78). Sample size of 108 used to calculate Rank ave.
Travel
- travel related searches for Westjet, Air Canada, Carnival Cruise, Hotwire.com yielded a rank ave of 3.39 with Thunder Bay (3.35), Sudbury (5.33), St. John's (1.47), Saint John (3.06), Moncton (5.83). Westjet searches were for Thunder Bay only with WestJet and AirCanada searches of comparable scale. Sample size of 37 used to calculate Rank ave.
Weather
- weather related search for The Weather Network (Alexa 18) yielded a rank ave of 4.42 with Thunder Bay (5.69), Sudbury (4.35), St. John's (1.47), Saint John (1.44), Moncton (4.06). Sample size of 18 used to calculate Rank ave - lower given that there are not many weather related search combinations.
(ii.3) Schedule 2: Other findings for XYZ economies:
- beer related search for Coors Light and Molson Canadian yielded a rank ave of 4.22 for all cities
- dating related search for Plenty of Fish (Alexa 37) on Alexa yielded a rank ave of 4.98 for all cities
- drug related searches for "weed", "marijuana", "dope", "cocaine" yielded a rank ave of 4.46 for all cities with Thunder Bay (1.4), Sudbury (4.06), St. John's (6.33), Moncton (9.5)
- job related searches for "service Canada job bank" yielded a rank ave of 4.40 for all cities with Thunder bay (2.5), Moncton (8), St. John's (1.5), Saint John (5), Sudbury (5)
- service Canada related search yielded a rank ave of 5.80 for all cities with Thunder bay (6), Moncton (4.5), St. John's (3), Saint John (7.25), Sudbury (8.25)
- silver city related searches (for movie listings) yielded a rank ave of 3.5 with 2.25 for Thunder Bay and 4.75 for Sudbury
(ii. 4) Schedule 3: Examining Waterloo's economy with Google Trends as at April 1, 2009:
- social networks like Linkedin (Alexa 90) and Myspace (Alexa 16) had a rank ave of 3with Facebook and MSN not appearing
- google related searches like "igoogle", "google calender" "google apps", "google help, "gmail" "google mail" yieided a rank ave of 1.94. This is apparent given the jobs that Google has available in Canada (mostly in Waterloo which is likely given the Blackberry's headquarters. http://www.google.ca/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=intl.html&jobslc=canada
- apps related searches like "facebook apps", "facebook applications", "google apps" had a rank ave of 1.
- rss related searches like "rss" "rss feeds" "rss reader" yielded a rank ave of 3.33
- wikipedia (Alexa 9) yielded rank ave of 2.5
- twitter (Alexa 39) yield rank ave of 1
(ii. 5) Analysis of Schedule 1, 2, 3:
- Per Schedule 1, according to search patterns from Google Trends, the categories of leisure, social networking & chat, banking, shopping, computer software, travel, and weather, as defined in this study, all yielded a rank ave of under 5 which indicates that Thunder Bay, Sudbury, St. John's, Saint John and Moncton will likely appear in the top 5 ranked citites in Canada per capita using 1 in 4 of the top 95 websites in Canada according to Alexa Top 100 (search engine sites were not included as Google is used as the primary search engine).
- Given the statistical significance of Google Trends variable in lowering the prediction errors of future sales as noted with Ford in "Predicting the Present with Google Trends", it appears that these XYZ economies are being greatly impacted by the internet which may cause a potential decrease in overall economic growth (funds are being expended aboard and not being multiplied in the local economy; the computing power of the cloud aboard may be hurting local businesses ability to compete on a global scale) and productivity (residents may be spending a significant amount of time on the internet and thus not contributing to the overall economic growth of their economics). Therefore, these XYZ economies must continually investment in training and development and embrace the cloud and take on new investments in SaaS based services as the time efficiencies in terms of computing speed and low or no costs applications and services will contribute to economic growth and increased productivity.
- By altering the basic economies of access to computing and storage, the cloud has the potential to reshape XYZ , the US, and Canada's economy's oranization and operation: (a) companies would have lower capital requirements to get up and running (b) big companies would manage IT resources without tying up capital in IT capacity, while managing energy resources more efficiently (c) consumers would have access to an endless array of powerful applications at low cost (d) software developers could allocate more time and talent to innovation rather than to building and maintaining IT infrastructure (source). The benefits of the cloud have the potential to be able to sustain and compete with the computing and labour power houses of India and China.
- A paradigm shift and cloud ecosystem must be embraced to service the XYZ economies future generations. Currently, by adopting the current practises of stimulating the economy through fiscal policy, these XYZ economies will have a difficult if not impossible ability to growth through infrastructure spending alone - although these fiscal policy measures will provide a shock into the system and stabilize the current economy, to build capacity for the new economy and grow and prosper the future economy (as noted by Dr. Rosenhart in "Northwestern Ontario: Preparing for Change these XYZ economies must investment and build capacity within a cloud computing framework that undertakes a cloud based ecosystem (retail outlets targeting focusing on delivering cloud based retail goods and education (selling a Digg t-shirt while providing advice on using a particular feature on Gmail such as the Label's feature), knowledge based services (providing a service in which may learn effective ways to use there Google Calender's on there Blackberry mobile devices), technology based services, broadband infrastructure spending (agriculture professional in Northern Ontario had to utilize forms and other interest based applications as aspects of the value chain; without broadband infrastruture spending, rural and agricultural based businesses will not be able to take hold of the cloud and thus may have difficulties competing in the global economy). Above all, this new cloud based environment will in the XYZ economies given the consistency, frequency and extent which the XYZ economies search with Google and thus utilized cloud based technologies.
- The Ontario government has provided the ability for large technology companies who may be looking at placing their data centers in Canada given the passing of the Green Energy Act which can be used to power these centers thus contributing to the cloud ecosystem. More on data centers is discussed below.
- It appears that the XYZ economies are utilizing the internet more than the rest of Canada for necessity (banking, travel, weather) and pleasure (social networks, leisure, shopping). Facebook in Thunder Bay, for instance, has a population density on Facebook of 50% (Facebook members divided by total population). Therefore, given that Thunder Bay's search results are not in line with Waterloo's and other cities in southern Ontario, Facebook in Thunder Bay is potentially being used for pleasure and not for commercial purposes. However, there are a significant number commercial and non-for profit entities that may be creating Facebook groups - the information to make such an assertion is undeterminable. In terms of the future and economic growth, the labour supply and thus productivity and growth of these XYZ economies can be enhanced by working with and developing their social networks. For instance, LinkedIn which is being searched in the ABC economy may contribute to potential economic growth for those economies - therefore, the cloud based ecosystem must provide the necessary models to ensure that adequate training and support is in place to provide the XYZ economies with the ability to harness LinkedIn potential economic contribution. For instance, I am linked with a Biotechnology professional who went to the same university as me but is located in California and looking to work with businesses in the Northwest Ontario. Therefore, there are potential connections that people have in a local economy, that if a ecosystem is in place to harness these connections, may contribute to potential economic growth.
- It is undeterminable weather The Pirate Bay and Mininova are being used for pleasure (downloading movies etc or for the downloading of illegal software).
- When comparing the schedule 2 other findings, the XYZ economies are using the searches for movie times, job search and government services, to obtaining an understanding or knowledge of drugs, for dating and beer contests.
- The schedule 3 findings which examines the city of Waterloo shows that this city is developing professional networks on LinkedIn, searching for Google products, apps and Twitter. However, given the significant amount of data maintained by Google, Waterloo may have search results similar to the XYZ economies in a similar fashion. However, this was not apparent at a high level analysis - further investigation is required. Also, there are other cities such as Windsor, Fredericton etc which may have similar search patterns to the XYZ economies - future investigation is required.
(6) Conclusions:
Therefore, given the XYZ economies use of the internet in Canada based on search patterns from Google Trends, there is a potential paradigm shift that these economies can generate from embracing a technology based economy which focuses on cloud computing. By examining this paper located here the Government of Canada must address the fact that government stimulus will not help these smaller cities in Canada from achieving economic growth from the current method of computing. The current method of computing results in an increase in the use of electricity (each business maintains mainframes), increase in the cost of maintenance (patches), decrease in computing power (data centers in the cloud are powerful computing machines which lead to efficiencies in workflows) and more. The current labour in these economies can be reorganized in such a way that the computer professional performing maintenance on standalone servers may have the ability to create applications specific to a XYZ economy that may anticipate future risks to taxation bases. Also, an accounting or bookeeping professional's time can be used more efficiently and effectively in these economics given the availability of information and efficiency in which information can be computed, these professionals can assess new financial and non-financial measures computing and computing efficiencies has on an XYZ economy. As chief economist at Google, Hal Varian, professor of information sciences, business, and economics at the University of California at Berkeley, stated in "Hal Varian on how the web challenges manager"say's it's imperative for managers to gain a keener understanding of the potential for technology to reconfigure their industries. He also says that we are in a period of "combinatorial innovation"...meaning that there are internet components which are bits that never run out and can be produced or recombined to create new innovations without any shortages. Therefore, these accounting and other analytical professional can collaborate with other professionals and create new decision support variables that can be used in audit testing for a financial statement audit, assess the overall riskiness of XYZ economy tax revenue etc. For instance, using Google Insights for Search, as a trained accountant, for the Thunder Bay region, I noted the rising search results for "Kijiji thunder bay" and the popular search results for other top searches such a "thunder bay transit". These two searches have been rising for years. The first search, Kijiji thunder bay, will have a significant impact on certain businesses tax revenues (local newspapers and other media outlets etc). Therefore, by examining Google Insights for Search along with the work performed on Ford search volume and sales statistical analysis, Kijiji, a cloud based service, is having an impact on an XYZ's economies tax revenues (rates of advertising on Kijiji are thousands of a percent cheaper than local businesses and with a reach that is comparable). By examining Google Trends and Insights for search, an economy, business or city can assess what impacts these entities or cloud based services (even Facebook) will have on its tax base. Also, by noting that "thunder bay transit" is being searched significantly year over year, an XYZ economy may submit their transit information to Google under the Google Transit Partner Program. Therefore, given the rise and quantity of mobile devices and the increased competition in this market, people taking transit services may check there mobile devices for transit time instead of performing a Google search for times - this will result in increased time efficiencies for potential productivity. Overall, Google Insights for Search along with Google Trends can support policy decisions for local, provincial and federal governments in Canada and even aboard.
There is a significant lack of knowledge based industries in these XYZ economies - given the significant amount of time being spent on the internet for pleasure and necessity and the overall divide between the older generation (resource based industry) and the younger generation (technology based experience) there is the potential that these XYZ economies coupled with other cities in Canada which require further research (Windsor etc), will benefit from adopting cloud computing technologies and the predictive nature Google Trends and Insights for Search for analytical and decision making purposes.
Given the Ontario's Government move on the Green Energy Act along with the significant economic stimulus in the form of funding and tax cuts, the Government of Ontario should partner up with Tech companies and consider the implementation of data centers.
- These data centers in Canada will ensure the privacy of data and thus limit any scrutiny of data from the Patriot Act. Canadian government IT organizations were not permitted to use services which stored or hosted the government's data outside their sovereign territory. They especially could not use services where data was store in the United States because of fears over the Patriot Act (source).
- Given the available land, cool weather in Ontario and our proximity to the Great Lakes, and significant tax incentives for new business and green business, the Government of Ontario must investigate the cost/benefit of locating data centers in Ontario, the economic implications of infrastructure development and job creation, and the economic growth impact data centers will have on GDP (multiplier effects of time efficiencies, speed of processing) - the government must not just assess the initial economic inflows that data center development will provide on the current economy.
- A Gartner analyst thinks Canada's natural resources and cooler temperature can help it take advantage of the growing cloud computing trend to provide services and Web applications. The country has an estimated server installed base of more than one million units, and in the next five years, the market will demonstrate incremental growth typical of a mature market, said Jeffrey Hewitt, vice-president of research with Stamford, Conneticut-based Gartner Inc. (source). Jeff also thinks that the country's years of investment in hydro electric power facilities and ambient temperatures will enable data centres to be powered and subsequently cooled. And, he said, the concerns around power and cooling are only getting bigger as Web content grows with video sharing sites like YouTube. Therefore, the country can take its hydro electric infrastructure to "another level" and extend it to the Web, said Hewitt.
- The Government of Ontario must meet the needs of Northern Ontario's use of the internet for economic growth along with the need for necessity and pleasure. With Northern Ontario's use of the internet as indicated with Google Trends above, not considering the future use of the internet technology as a driver for economic growth for the future will result in significant loss of economic growth as may have been experienced in the past (spending unproductive time, competitors aboard using cloud services, inequalities in price (ad prices with cloud services vs newspapers), potential impact on tax base). Giants such as Facebook, Ebay, Kijiji are killing many businesses in Northern Ontario given the scale of their operations (advertising on Facebook is 1300% less expensive than newspaper advertising with a reach that is massive (no way of quantifying)). Also, these giants have the demographic information of the entire XYZ economies within their databases and thus have the intelligence to out compete many small to medium sized businesses given their ability to create effective marketing campaigns.
- More small to medium sized businesses must utilize their social networks as labour defined in economic models - my average friends along with many people in Thunder Bay's Facebook friend has on average 200 - >200 friends (based on a sample of 100 of my closest friends; the average for Facebook is 120). Therefore, the XYZ economies must find ways to work with and monetize from their social networks and enter other networks to build growth (Linkedin etc.). There is the potential that these networks have hidden gems which may be willing to invest in the XYZ economies. However, a model and system must be implemented to capture and service these potential investors. Given the XYZ economies available time and thus experience in using the internet compared to the rest of Canada, the future of computing will present many opportunities for residents in these communities to capture the growth potential of cloud computing.
- Envisioning the Cloud: The Next Computing Paradigm
- Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers
- Northwestern Ontario: Preparing For Change
- The State of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Northern Ontario
- Google Trends
- Google Insights for Search
- Alexa Top 100 Canadian Websites
- Techcrunch web 2.0 directory
- Canada primed for cloud computing
- Cloud Storage Divided by National Boundaries
- 5th Annual Demographic International Housing Affordability Survey 2009
- Jeff Jarvis: What would Google Do?
this paper is a work in progress and will be refinded based on comments, editorial suggestions and other - please comment on anything you believe can be challenged or can support this prediction.
a/\/th
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