Stress, Load and Performance Testing in Quality Assurance

Next session is Stress, Load and Performance Testing in Quality Assurance by Goranka Bjedov of Google.

I have been wanting to hear Goranka for some time now as her sessions usually end up becoming the highlight of the event. For record, she passionately hates Power Point (I don't blame her).

I couldn't find a video of her Velocity talk but here is a video from her previous talk that's equally interesting.



Goranka spends all her time doing performance testing at Google. She tests Adwords, AdSense and hates any kinds of presentation tools.

• focus on the backend. Steve Souders is the client side performance guy.
• she works on the servers.
• what are the bottlenecks?
• QA people should be able to tell you what to expect.
• 2 purposes: what is going on in application? and monitor application for changes.
• a small code change can cause tremendous performance decline.
• first thing is if a mistake is made, everyone should know right away. Finding it later can cost a lot
• 80% of the performance problems can be worked out with one front end and one backend as long as you have the right database.
• figure out what is happenging with important transactions
• if you don't know what important transactions are, make a guess. it's better than nothing. don't be paralyzed, then worry about perfection
• there is nothing as perfection in performance testing. she cannot guarantee the exact results. All tests are run as statistical tests and run 5 times or so.
• big proponent of open source tools: jmeter, grinder and funkload. In Windows environment look at Open SDA.
• Vendor tools do reasonably job. (and solve the problem of having too much money)
• Open Source tools do exactly the same job. they are not free completely as time is required.
• if you're not willing to spend time on OS tool, then why even spend half a million dollars?
• she is happy that OS tools don't have monitoring built into it.
• monitoring is absolutely essential and must be done separately.
• for majority of things you can troubleshoot and benchmark within 3 weeks.
• check google blog for her posts: open source performance testing tools
  

Also see:

• Performance Testing: Blog post by Goranka Bjedov
• Google Testing Blog
• Optimizing Linux Performance by Ezolt
  

Seth MacFarlane and Google Strike a Deal

Five minutes after entering my office after a week long trip to CA, I learned that Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, and Google have struck a deal. Under the deal, Seth MacFarlane will create 50 two-minute episodes exclusively for the web. There will be a number of new characters introduced in this new web-only series which will be distributed through the AdSense network. There will be a four way revenue share.

Source(s):
- Google and Creator of 'Family Guy' strike a deal
- The Family Guy Strikes Deal with Google

The 6% of Internet that can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams

A new research study by SVM Group shows some very interesting statistics regarding the Internet population that generates a big percentage of overall clicks.

According to the study, only 6% of Internet users are responsible for generating 50% of "all display ad clicks." Interestingly enough, this 6% doesn't represent general Internet population. Most of the users represented in this population are from 25-44 age group and have household income of less than $40,000.

Could this be the reason for Google admitting the troubles they are having with being able to monetize on social networks such as MySpace?

What implications does this have as far as the click fraud issue is concerned?

If a majority of 50% of these clicks is made by those with household income of less than $40K, are they just clicking on ads for curiosity? Should the advertisers be paying for their curiosity?

Is Google's smart pricing justified then? Google slaps publishers with smart pricing when it determines that clicks generated on the publisher's site aren't resulting in conversions on the advertiser's site. This is what Google says about Smart Pricing (also see facts about smart pricing):

...if our data shows that a click is less likely to turn into business results (e.g. online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up), we may reduce the price you pay for that click. You may notice a reduction in the cost of clicks from content sites.

One site getting hit with smart pricing can affect all sites in the network of the publisher. It seems that if these statistics are in fact true, most sites will run the risk of being smart priced.

Google tests Ajax AdSense Ads

Today, I noticed something very interesting on my MySQL blog. Google has started using AJAX functionality in their AdSense ad units.

Notice the two blue arrows on bottom-left? Clicking on these buttons does an in-page refresh of ads so you can see more Google's ads. An excellent addition from publisher's point of view. However, as far as I am concerned, Google's attempt will be of no use to me. Are they serious? Do I browse so I can go from site to site clicking on these buttons to keep seeing an endless supply of ads just so Google can make more money.

So, let me ask you a question. Do you think you will be clicking on these buttons the next time you see them? Will they help publishers monetize better?