Why Microsoft Wants to Buy Google 500
xihr writes "Harry Fletcher writes in The Inquirer about an obvious discrepancy between searches for "linux windows" on Google and MSN; the former comes up with almost 9 million hits, but the latter only comes up with -- wait for it -- 16. The author then speculates on Microsoft's ulterior motives for their attempted (and failed) purchase of Google."
Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:5, Funny)
Biased? Microsoft? Never!
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that some "searches" on MSN don't actually return a search, but rather a pre-selected set of results.
Results 1-15 of about 98 containing "cats dogs"
Results 31-45 of about 87 containing "cats dogs"
Results 61-75 of about 80 containing "cats dogs"
Results 76-90 of about 1219983 containing "cats dogs"
Methinks their "estimation" algorithm is just a bit off.
-a
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks like if there is biasing going on, it's just to try and prevent people hitting 'next'. Don't forget MSN don't provide a nice goooooooooooogle style page index, just next/prev links. Ick.
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:5, Funny)
But from the Google cache [google.ca] remembers, and what does it say?
Red Hat remains a solid Linux contender, but Windows switchers or dual-booters should stick with SuSE for easier installation.
LoL!
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft provides alternatives for most open source products.
Well, until they can provide alternatives for all of the open-source products I use, I don't think Windows is ready for the desktop.
Other technical terms (Score:5, Insightful)
Searched from MSN (listed by number of results):
- Results 1-15 of about 1136552 containing "freebsd"
- Results 1-15 of about 341343 containing "openbsd"
- Results 1-15 of about 200091 containing "ipsec"
- Results 1-15 of about 96796 containing "postgres"
- Results 1-15 of about 9641 containing "plan9"
- Results 1-15 of about 408 containing "OS/2"
- Results 1-15 of about 365 containing "linux"
- Results 1-15 of about 113 containing "apache"
- Results 1-15 of about 76 containing "php"
- Results 1-15 of about 40 containing "mysql"
Clearly, those platforms that MS does not like are treated differently than less popular (and less threatening?) technologies. Or maybe Plan9 is finaly picking up steam.Re: Other technical terms (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, those platforms that MS does not like are treated differently than less popular (and less threatening?) technologies.
Clearly, they find some topics more offensive than others!
Try "apache server" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Try "apache server" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Try "apache server" (Score:3, Informative)
1. hit: SuSE Linux 9.0 at Amazon.com
2. hit: rather useless link to ebay.com
3. hit: Introducing Linux on tech.msn.com (thankfully, this link doesn't even work)
4. hit: Alternatives to Linux-A
Re:Try "apache server" (Score:3, Informative)
Biased? How about apathetic? (Score:3, Funny)
Webcrawler- 116 hits for "porn", but only 36 for "nuclear fusion".
I sense a pro-pornography, anti-nuclear bias in Webcrawler!
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:2)
But wait! There's more... (Score:5, Funny)
34 pancakes
41 waffles
232 frogs
695 sky
3117 tree
Goooooogle - said "...about xxx,xxx"
791,000 pancakes
412,000 waffles
640,000 frogs
20,700,000 sky
37,600,000 tree
Which proves Microsoft hates pancakes, waffles, frogs, the sky and trees. Bastards!
Re:But wait! There's more... (Score:5, Insightful)
Results 1-15 of about 365 containing "linux"
Results 76-90 of about 344 containing "linux"
Results 211-225 of about 262 containing "linux"
Results 226-240 of about 253 containing "linux"
Results 241-255 of about 16242034 containing "linux"
Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
Results 16-30 of about 8897867 containing "linux windows"
Results 31-45 of about 8897853 containing "linux windows"
I dont think this has anything to do with an ulterior motive by microsoft. I think its just a shoddy search engine made by them with their usual incompetence.
This post was spellchecked by google.
Re:But wait! There's more... (Score:5, Funny)
Let's be fair now... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, give them some credit where credit is due. They have made some tremendous speed boosts when it comes to progress bars. That first 99% goes by in only 1% of the time. You can't get that kind of performance under Linux.
Re:But wait! There's more... (Score:3, Informative)
Once you pass those pages, you have "Web Pages" (in light gray, after the last web-directory sites link) which has approximately 15 989 646 pages.
"I think its just a shoddy search engine made by them with their usual incompetence. "
They approximate, just like Google. They may be biases but the difference in numbers you mentionned isn't incompetent programming; they just chose to show the number of "featured sites" instead of all of the
Re:But wait! There's more... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But wait! There's even more... (Score:4, Funny)
Linux
Alta Vista 12,435,923
Google 96,900,000
msn 365
Yahoo 55,200,000
Dog Pile (Infospace) 102
Lycos 26,838,236
Excite 111
Alltheweb 17,082,765
Jesus
Alta Vista 6,377,521
Google 23,800,000
msn 432
Yahoo 15,900,000
Dog Pile (Infospace) 114
Lycos 34,032,913
Excite 107
Alltheweb 26,131,824
Interesting to note, a search of Infospace and Microsoft on Google comes up with 35,000 hits. Further reading indicates a large number of partnering going on.
Conspiracy or just bad search engines?
Re:But wait! There's more... (Score:4, Funny)
Ah yes, searching on google for xxx. We've all been there.
Re:Microsoft Biased? Never! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it's the only 2500 cases when the word "Windows" was used on the Web without anything like "sucks", "destroyed my data", "has yet another virus to worry about" etc?
Re:Why corporations must be stopped. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if I understand you - which I probably don't - Microsoft is a Bad, Evil Thing for being biased.... in favor of it's own products? So... they own a search engine and that bias shows. But, nobody has to actually use that site. But that doesn't matter because Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to act in its own best interests to reach its stated goal of making money when people actively choose to get information from them or remain willfully ignorant of alternative sources? So, it's Microsoft's fault that people are stupid and easily leveraged for cash flow?
Christ man... if you're going to bash Microsoft for being the Evil Empire go ahead, but at least pick one of the 82 million things that they actually ought to be blamed for. Funny thing about owning your own informational sources - you can be as bloody biased as you want. I don't see anything on MSN that says they're Fair and Balanced like good old Fox news.... er... wait.. I mean.. they ARE fair and balanced exactly the way Fox News is, they just don't lie about it like Fox does. Hell.. if they weren't biased in favor of their own products they'd just be idiots.
Re:Why corporations must be stopped. (Score:5, Insightful)
They can do whatever they want with their own search engine.
But what's happened is that, in part because they use it as an ad channel rather than a straightforward search engine, users don't find it very useful and tend to use the competition (primarily google) instead. Now, MS has a captive market consisting of those people who don't realise they can change browsers and use other search sites, but that's far from the whole market, and the rest of us don't typically use MSN - we use google. So far, so good, this is the way the market is supposed to operate. If MSN wants to stick with their captives and push ads, so be it. If they want to become attractive to the rest of us, though, they'll have to give that ad channel up.
So, MicroSoft thinking at it's best, what they want to do instead is just buy Google and turn it into an MSN clone, removing that choice and making the whole market captive again! THIS is what upsets people.
Re:Why corporations must be stopped. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am too; stylistically I wouldn't choose to state it as above, but I am a fan of accountability for individuals and corporations alike. If your position were a machievellian one that rationalizes doing something because it's possible to do then I wouldn't agree, but if I understand correctly then perhaps you and I simply have a different threshhold of what we'd consider "stupid" in this particular case. It seems your position that when people don't have an awareness of how search results may be skewed in favor of a given business, then they deserve to be taken advantage of and critics should be silent.
I think there's a component of untruthful advertising to this issue. Microsoft may not actually commit themselves to objectivity by saying "our search results are unbiased with regard to any commercial interests" but it's not an unreasonable expectation of a search engine; after all, google has set the precedent of making money via advertisements, not by covert manipulation of results.
If I drive past a gas station and ask to have my engine checked, the station may well try to bilk me out of money by claiming I need more work done than is the case. There are ways for the station to claim this without technically breaking the law, but I don't regard myself as stupid for not knowing enough about cars to certify the station's results; at least not stupid in a perjorative way. And, I wouldn't regard the station as on uncriticizable moral ground for doing so. This may all come down to my world vision, where I'd like to steer the world towards honest exchanges without people stabbing each other in the back at every opportunity. I realize that not everybody wants to live in such a world.
Not so fast (Score:5, Informative)
- Wine Development HQ
- Linux Online
- freshmeat.net
- WinLinux 2003
- Red Hat
- Linux.com
- XChat
- NeTraverse
- Opera Software
- Cygwin
- Microsoft Linux
- Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
- Linux + Windows 95 mini-HOWTO
- Download Opera
The list looks like a pretty good list of top sites.The fact that MSN Search is willing to whore their entire first page of search results to the top bidder is another matter altogether. It makes their search hard to use, it confuses people, it is dihonest, and I'm sure glad that there are other alternatives. They get people to use MSN search because it is the default search engine for the Internet Explorer browser. Many people use it becasue they don't know about the alternatives. Sound like their other anti-competative behavior?
General Public (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:General Public (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure *we* can see past this and get facts, but *we* dont line their pockets either...
Did you ever stop to think that one of the reasons people don't support or take the time to learn about the various OSS movements is because of high-brow, elitist comments such as yours?
Instead of alienating the "average consumer", perhaps we should be working as hard as possible to present a viable alternative without all the attitude. If we perpetuate an image that Linux users are different from the "average consumer", then guess what, we will be the only ones using it.
Linux, as many OSS projects, is not too dissimilar from a business in many ways, except that instead of a highly trained marketing department, it has us. That is a greatly simplified statement, but I think it stands to reason.
General Public - is a reality. (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to misunderstand what i was saying. The average citizen reads and believes what he sees in the media, this includes places such as Google.
If all they see is one thing ( in this case, Microsoft ) then they will believe this is the only option. That is just human behavior.
While I agree we need to educate people ( and I do my part, do you? ) this does nothing for the *rest* of the world that doesn't get exposure except via the mass media, which 'teach your friend' doesn't qualify.. This is where things such as controlling search engine content come into play.. Or control of content on TV ( MSNBC as an example )
How do you propose to solve that, since you seem to think you know so much?
Calling them 'average consumer' isn't a insult, its f-ing reality.. Its how the mass consumer world works.. MOST people are 'average consumers'. And they could really care less about this.. all they care about is what they are spoon fed.. You should read up about basic marketing techniques before you spout off again..
Re:General Public (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent article was right, Microsoft just wants to trick people into visiting their fake search results page. The less people know outside of products which make MS money the better off MS is. This of course includes all of those paid for fake search listings.
Re:General Public (Score:4, Insightful)
By controlling the first 10% of what the average consumer sees, they can manipulate consumer opinion and knoledge.
The sponsored links page (the front page, if indeed it is sponsored links) includes:
1. A Linux and Windows Dedicated Server Host
2. Another Lin & Win Host
3. Another Lin & Win Host
4. Backup Software For Lin, Win, Nix
5. Another Lin & Win Host
6. Security Software For Lin, Win, Nix
7. CNet Downloads for Lin, Win, Nix
8. Another Win & Lin Host
9. Barnes & Noble Book on DB2 for Win, Lin, Nix
10. Amazon Book on Linux for Windows Users
11. Amazon Book on X Windows (nothing about MS Win)
12. Cross Platform Virus Story
13 - 15. Three WINE Links
16. - doesn't appear? Perhaps they forgot to subtract one from the size of the array
I'm all for bashing Microsoft. I even think a certain amount of propaganda is appropriate, along the lines of fighting fire with fire, but this is just flat out FUD. Even a tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorist could only possibly point to item 12 as remotely anti-Linux (it could be taken to imply that Linux is as vulnerable as Windows), and even that would require a stupendous amount of blind credulity. 10, 11, and 13-15 are clearly in favor of Linux.
Re:General Public-Active Desktop. (Score:5, Interesting)
I guarantee you these people and others like them have racked up plenty of hits for MSN's advertisers because they don't even know they're "allowed" to use another search engine!
Re:General Public-Active Desktop. (Score:3, Informative)
That may not be as stupid as it sounds.. for the longest time IE had a function were a site could just add itself or another site to your bookmarks.
A noted example of this was 2kservices a coupple of years ago.. on a visit to one of it's top100 sites it would add itself and a coupple of casinos before adding an entry to C:\windows\hosts to redirect search.msn.com to 2ksearch's ip address.
They only stopped after MS disabled the function and Norton started pop
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Informative)
Google search for: linux windows [google.com] - Results 1 - 30 of about 8,140,000. Search took 0.15 seconds.
MSN search for: linux windows [msn.com] - Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
MSN search for: linux windows (page 2) [msn.com] - Results 16-30 of about 8898820 containing "linux windows"
Re:Not so fast (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on the country you're viewing from [harvard.edu]
The google results can vary depending on per-country censorship rules (French and German laws are the ones discussed here, but other examples include China [clearharmony.net]and the US [google.com] where the results may be less than expected)
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Interesting)
True, but it doesn't actually say that anywhere - it just says "Results 1-15 of about 16 containing linux windows". Also, there is a 'sponsored links' section on the right of the page, separate to these 15. You need to click on the 'next' button to see "Results 16-30 of about 8898833". Which is an abysmal design decision, if nothing else.
Re:Not so fast (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly the reason all of us old-timers hate MicroSoft so much - this is a perfect example of the sort of thing they've been pulling for decades. Little things, individually, but annoying to folks that know better, but all carefully designed to create a 'network affect' to keep all the noobies from getting better, to keep them penned up in the little MS sandbox and paying the rent.
Re:Not so fast (Score:4, Insightful)
Frex, my favourite dumb-assed bug, the "backspacing over text inside table cells in WYSIWYG mode clobbers adjacent table tags TOO" bug that was in Frontpage from the very beginning. The resulting open tags crashed early versions of IE, but were conveniently ignored by later IE, while being rendered as blank by Netscape. Obviously no one wants to crash their own product, so the original FP bug can't have been intentional; but I'm sure when IE was updated, it was indeed coded around the bad FP output with malice aforethought. (Which likely explains why the FP bug managed to survive 3 major revisions despite being fairly obvious.)
BTW this bug was fixed as of FP2000 (about the same time FP got tired of being the laughingstock of the HTML world, and began cleaning up its act).
Re:Not so fast (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing Microsoft does has an ulterior motive. Their motive is to make as much money as possible. Their methods can sometimes be questioned, but never their motive.
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
This has got to be the first time I've heard the number 8898833 called "about 16". Somebody get the people at search.msn.com a ticket on the clue train.
BUT... (Score:2, Insightful)
For the Record (Score:2)
Apparently, IE isn't the only MS program that defaults to using MSN search.
Just tested it on win2k, not only did I get MSN Search, I even get a popup!
Where's my tinfoil hat?!?
Re:For the Record (Score:2)
Typing a url into the address bar of Windows Explorer will get you to a website, it's no suprise that a search term in that box behaves the same way that IE does.
Re:For the Record (Score:2, Informative)
Netscape defaults to Netscape search too, y'know
Re:For the Record (Score:2)
Netscape defaults to Netscape search too, y'know ;)
Yes, but it doesn't go searching for advertisments if you make a typo.
But assume that people actually want to do a search every time they mistype something. Would they like to get a page of search results or a page of advertisments?
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
I think you're on to part of their game, yes. They whore out their first page, as you put it, and this makes their site a lot less useful to folk, who turn to google. Typical MicroSoft response, of course, is to buy google and do the same thing with it.
There was a discussion of this same story awhile back on Groklaw [groklaw.net] and there are some interesting observations made there. There is a huge difference in hits between the MSN main search and the MSN UK search, I wonder if the UK site is just not 'whoring' the
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
They have a tiny light grey "WEB DIRECTORY SITES" label which isn't really telling me anything useful.
Also most people won't go past the first page.
Re:Not so fast (Score:4, Interesting)
Having run a search engine for a major banking internet portal, i know from experience that less than 50% of your users are going to move to a second page of results...more often than not, if they don't find what they're looking for in the first 20 results, users are just going to abort, or chose the closest looking link.
Re:Not so fast (Score:4, Interesting)
More likely a test of their own search product (Score:5, Insightful)
What we are probably seeing is a beta of Microsoft' s search product, followed by backfill from Inktomi (this is why the search counts differ).
This only seems to happen on "popular" search queries, like open source (74 msn, 8,013,904 backfill, 11,700,000 google), and baseball (1974 msn, , 20,500,000 google), and linux (365 msn, 16,291,540 backfill, 92,000,000 google). "Unpopular" terms like wax museum just get backfill (151,414 msn backfill, 282,000 google). By only appearing on select popular terms it gives them a chance to test their product on search queries that an immature search product is likely to have results on (or maybe all search queries go through this new search first, and terms like wax museum just don't have any hits yet forcing the backfill to page one).
However, you assertion that the author has no idea how MSN Search works is probably spot on (both the submitter to Slashdot and the referenced author). Whatever Microsoft's feelings are about open source solutions, they're smart enough to know that surpressing information in the free portion of search is a PR disaster waiting to happen.
Bah Humbug! (Score:3, Interesting)
Results 1-15 of about 50 containing ""charles dickens""
Going to the next page gives 16-30 and so on.
It is only the patient searcher who will discover that after all 45 of the 50 hits are seen that there are 151383 results left to go.
So I agree, its not that MSN Search is biased against Linux. It is that MSN Search is biased toward those willing to spend money to be listed. And (as a direct effect of that) MSN Search is biased against those
Web Directory, not Sponsored links (Score:3, Informative)
No, Google is lying! (Score:4, Funny)
Know The Alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
For a while, I've been looking at alternative search engines. I still use Google as my primary engine, but I hate having such a strong reliance on a single tool. Any tool I don't own and keep locally could go away at any point or change and become useless to me.
The closest thing to Google I've found to date is AllTheWeb.com [alltheweb.com]. AllTheWeb started out as an experimental second site by Lycos, with the apparent goal of being a Google clone. The thing matured quickly, being an objective and statistics-driven search site, unlike Lycos' own site where sites buy placement. AllTheWeb was later purchased from Lycos by Overture, even more famous for paid placement and (IMHO) slimy advertising tactics. But for the six months or so since they made the purchase, they seem to have left it alone. They may well also be trying to clone Google completely. And if Google suddenly sours as a search tool, this may well finally pay off big for them.
Give AllTheWeb a try. I'm not petitioning anyone to switch over and start using ATW as their only engine, but make sure you know that alternative is there and - more importantly - make sure Google's new owners know that you're aware of an alternative. It just may be enough to keep them honest.
Re:Know The Alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Know The Alternatives (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Know The Alternatives (Score:2)
With not even a third in their hands, the public investors would be really hard pressed to file suit over any decisions.
-T
I do not think this is the right motive. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the first case (market/user doubt) a new search engine would quickly birth. Whether he could replace google is a matter but i forsee million of geek switching imemdiatly to the new search engine.
In the second case in the US and in EU a lot of outcry on unfair competition would rise, and that is quite not what they need at them moment especially with the EU inquiries. Even more I suspect if they shunt down the link then the Eu would quickly raise a brow even quicker than with the media player.
wasn't it (Score:3, Insightful)
"he who controls the spice controls the universe"
or i guess in this case
he who controls the search controls the product placement
Look at it more broadly (Score:4, Insightful)
and when people try to cry foul, well its not microsofts fault you use their website. Its hard to make antitrust case against them when no one forces you to use that search engine.
Re:Look at it more broadly (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it is. msn.com has been the default search engine and homepage for years in IE, which is the default browser on the default operating system on 95% of computers sold out there.
So yes, it is 100% Microsoft's fault that people use their website. The antitrust angle comes in when they use their near-monopoly (Windows) to squash competition unfairly, whether it be Netscape, Google, or what have you.
The supreme court of the USA agrees with me, I'd be curious why you find their decisions wrong.
MSN censoring messed up! (Score:4, Funny)
I got 450k hits on msn and only 350k hits from google.
The first page on msn were positive articles... not links to MS sites saying there were none.
Clearly someone at MSN has screwed up!
But what about... Beer? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example... Beer.
Google [google.com] versus MSN [msn.com]
Or how about... trucks?
Google [google.com] versus MSN [msn.com]
Re:But what about... Beer? (Score:3, Funny)
The first result on MSN is
Oh! (Score:3, Funny)
or (Score:2)
some other fun searches (Score:4, Funny)
linux windows - 16 results
microsoft is a fundamentally evil monopolist - 115 results
windows - 2373 results
microsoft ate my balls - 6207 results
so we can all see where their heads are at...
Call me crazy, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you all need to take a step back and look at the big picture. It isn't about censorship. It's about profit, pure and simple. Would you take over a competitor that was failing and had absolutely no potential to turn itself around?
google under mircrosoft simulation (Score:2, Funny)
Did you mean: Windows
Searched the web for Free Software.
Did you mean: Capitalism
Searched the web for speaker bracelets
Did you mean: Microsoft Windows
Searched the web for candle trucks
Did you mean: Microsoft Windows
And... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, the mind boggles.
Googles real asset (Score:2, Insightful)
The moment that trust is lost, another search engine will gladly step forward to fill the void.
It would be a sad day indeed to see Google fall to Microsoft or other greedy commercial interests, but it would not be the end of the world.
What about the obvious reason? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does Everything MS do have to have some Ulterior "Lets do X to screw Linux today!" Motive behind it?
MSN is clearly lying in their search page (Score:5, Insightful)
Results 1-15 of about 738 containing "rutabaga windows"
{Results follow}
Doing the same with "linux windows" I get:
Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
{Results follow}
It's basically saying "There may be another page to look at, but hey, it's only one item so why bother? Maybe you should search for a nice Microsoft product instead." Only if you click the "next" button do you get:
Results 16-30 of about 8898833 containing "linux windows"
Does Microsoft have more than 16 results for "linux windows?" Absolutely. Do they lie on the first page of the search? The answer to that is yes as well, unless you really believe 8,898,833 pages is "about 16."
Re:MSN is clearly lying in their search page (Score:3, Informative)
{Results follow}
It's basically saying "There may be another page to look at, but hey, it's only one item so why bother? Maybe you should search for a nice Microsoft product instead." Only if you click the "next" button do you get:
Results 16-30 of about 8898833 containing "linux windows"
Does Microsoft have more than 16 results for "linux windows?" Absolutely. Do they lie on the first page of the search? The answer to that is yes as well, unless you really
Google company meeting (Score:3, Interesting)
where is your proof? (Score:2)
1) MS's search engine sucks.
2) Google's search engine is good.
3) MS wanted to buy Google
4) therefor MS wanted to run google into the ground and let thisr own service pimp for MS.
Once he assumes this important bit, he can make fun of MS, thus pulling in more readers. Man, I wish I could wrte garbage and get paid for it.
How Scientific! (Score:5, Funny)
Google: 6,260,000 hits
MSN: 14 hits
I conclude that Microsoft is trying to kill their own PowerPoint product (even more than they want to kill Linux!). Thankfully, the people at Google must rely on PowerPoint so much, they want to make sure to keep the word out there.
Or... stay with me here... maybe Google has a more powerful and capable search engine that can harvest more results. I suppose its possible THAT could explain why Microsoft would want to buy them.
Could Microsoft purchase Google? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anybody know or has anybody read anything on what the US anti-trust position would be?
Discrepency (Score:2)
linux on MSN: 365
linux on google: 65,100,000
windows on msn: 2373
windows on google: 67,900,000
This is contrary to the 95,000,000 search results for linux that are reported in the article. What's the deal? Maybe an ISP cache of google that's outdated?
Also, there's roughly a:
(using the 95 million figure)
260274/1 search ratio on linux for google/msn
28614/1 search ratio on windows for google/msn
WRONG! MSG has plenty of hits (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll see:
Results 31-45 of about 8897853
Re:WRONG! MSG has plenty of hits (Score:4, Interesting)
A Mirror Just in Case (Score:5, Funny)
Mirror [216.239.41.104]
--
Re:A Mirror Just in Case (Score:5, Funny)
Hurrah for small print:
Re:A Mirror Just in Case (Score:3, Funny)
Makes me wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
controlling access to information (Score:2, Interesting)
Google's idea of Capitalism (Score:3, Funny)
Don't they know anything about changing a horizontal market into a vertical one, locking users in with Digital Restrictions Management, absolving all sense of responsibility with a EULA, and ensuring product obsolescence?
Amazing that these guys could even find funding with their cluelessness. Must've occurred during the irrational dot-com business-model era in the 90's.
Linus. (Score:4, Interesting)
office - 5204
windows - 2373
server - 2121
money - 982
terrorism - 249
osama - 103
bill gates - 63
linus torvalds - 323738
MSN search doesn't return huge numbers of hits (Score:3, Informative)
MSN's paid search hits ("featured sites") are clearly pro-Microsoft. It's less clear that the real search results are. MSN's search results aren't as useful as Google's, but that may just be inferior technology. MSN tends to return far more outdated pages.
Re:MSN search doesn't return huge numbers of hits (Score:4, Interesting)
Ugh, People... Invalid Result Counts (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of results changes frequently (but not always), and you never reach the suggested limit. For example, "waffles" is only supposed to have 41 matches, but continues long past 100.
This is really a silly exercise and not a great measure of bias.
Here's why I like MSN search! (Score:3, Funny)
You can try again by typing the URL in the address bar above.
Or, search the Web:
Go to MSN Search to see complete results for "127.0.0.1".
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Check availability or register the domain name '127.0.0.1'.
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Wow. Now that's a comprehensive search if I ever saw one.
There's No Such Thing As 9 Million Hits (Score:3, Interesting)
This was a great surprise to the engineers building search engines -- the original problem was, how do we find particular keywords across hundreds of millions of documents? This was solved relatively trivially -- index by keyword, and distribute the search space across the memory of many, many machines. All of the sudden, it became apparent that search had much less to do with how much you could search and much more to do with which results came up first.
That's a much harder problem -- fundamentally, without the user telling you what he wants, how can you figure out what he's most likely to desire? This actually uses artificial intelligence techniques, much to the consternation of the eternally discredited AI folk who point out that "the moment AI becomes useful, it ceases to be called AI" (which is true). It's AI because you effectively need to programmatically derive what an intelligent surfer is most interested in, as an abstract subject instead of a concrete phrase. Google gets alot of credit for their Pagerank algorithm, which uses links from other sites to weigh which links are more "authoritative" than others, but interestingly enough their system is noticably robust even without outside links. Corporate websites all tend to run 1998-era search engines -- all quantity, no quality (and in this case, quantity has no quality all its own). Some time ago, I worked at a massive company that was testing Google for internal searches. Corporate web pages are far less cross-linked than the web itself. But Google-internal worked just like...well, Google
Anyway, as I've said before [slashdot.org], MS can't buy Google; they'd just create the market segment of "what Google used to be". Speaking as someone who has a healthy respect for MS as a company, they've simply burned through too much goodwill for people to trust their search results as authoritative. Yes, mysql only gets a few hits on MSN search. So does pancakes, and I doubt MS is part of the great Waffle Iron Conspiracy.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Maybe you are giving MS too much credit... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are the results for different OSes:
OS: Google vs. MSN
aix: 3,550,000 vs. 40
solaris: 8,340,000 vs. 87
tru64: 676,000 vs. 93,433
hp-ux: 1,890,000 vs. 287,294
ms windows: 6,650,000 vs. 291
vms: 1,770,000 vs. 22
os2: 702,000 vs. 118,273
linux: 96,800,000 vs. 365
freebsd: 8,810,000 vs. 1,136,552
openbsd: 3,500,000 vs. 341,343
netbsd: 4,750,000 vs. 223,075
unix: 23,700,000 vs. 164
symbian: 1,400,000 vs. 420,701
"windows 2000": 6,750,000 vs. 315
"windows xp": 970,000 vs. 297
"windows server 2003": 4,170,000 vs. 30
Re:This is a lie! (Score:3, Funny)
The MSN search clearly states:
Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
OTOH...
Results 1-15 of about 126572 containing "microsoft sucks"
Re:This is a lie! (Score:2)
Re:FCC perhaps should hear this... (Score:2)
Why? Many people above have pointed out this article is not correct. The first results you get from MSN searches are sponsored links. Then if you hit next (or if there are no sponsored links) then you get the real search results.