Microsoft Looks At Other Search Engines 363
ZuperDee writes "It looks like Microsoft is now looking for another search engine to buy. They are looking at Ask Jeeves and Looksmart, but they recently dumped Looksmart, after deciding that its results don't stack up well. So would anyone be surprised if they bought Ask Jeeves? It can't hurt that according to Netcraft, they already run Microsoft IIS."
But does anyone use them? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:4, Informative)
As for the text/background idea, what about running the page through something similar to SpamAssassin. Not all tests are applicable for websites, but a new ruleset shouldn't be too hard for them to write.
Also, do they keep all pages for their cache, or just ones with a high enough PageRank? How difficult would it be for them to compare two pages for similarity, and lowering the rank for identical pages? Or for pages that have the exact same set of links (to reduce the effectiveness of link farms).
Due to the nature of the PageRank algorithm, lowering the score on the referring pages will have a result on the target page, while ensuring that it's difficult to get someone dropped completely (since other, high-ranking sites may also be pointing there).
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2, Informative)
They do. Search for google penalty redirect [google.com], google penalty hidden [google.com].
Redirects (with a meta refresh tag) are penalized if they happen within 10 seconds. However, Google probably won't catch redirects implemented with javascript. To parse javascripts that potentially end up in infinite loops is not an easy task.
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
So, are you saying that Google is "beleagured"?
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2, Funny)
If you're gonna be pretentious, spell correctly.
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2, Insightful)
THis will never work for Microsoft. You have to pay them for money to get anywhere in the listings they have now. How will that change? All you will get is a list of high paying advertisers. Microsoft is to greedy they will never make it in the search engine business.
Sure MS will be able to (Score:2)
Try it, you can find anything you want. Maybe not.
some random thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
If MS actually succeeds in getting anywhere, they will neatly trash Google's main problem, as it will no longer make quite as much sense to base entire business plans around tricking PageRank.
Moreover: Yeah, Google's having problems. However, Google's goal at this point is solely based around trying to circumvent cheaters. They have lots of time and energy to focus on that. They don't really have anything else to focus on. MS's goal is just to catch up with Google. And once they do that, do you honestly think that they will not have people creating huge numbers of sites just to trick their search engine too?
Any advantage MS would have due to Google abuse would be rediculously short lived. Now, given, this would still allow MS to get a pretty strong beachhead and a strong start, which could be helpful, but MS is historically not good at strong starts. What they're good at is weak starts, a few failed versions, a version 3 that is "good enough", and a version 4 which actually finally starts to cause big problems for their enemies. The abuse&bitrot problems would start to set in for MS-Search at about the time of that firstly-acceptable version 3..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
At work, I use solaris, and have downloaded a build from the contrib area, It is not quite fast, but rock solid stable, sometimes I can go for months without restarting it. At home I have Firebird Windows build for Athlon and it is quite fast but not as fast as IE at times. Also on my linux partition I compile firebird from CVS and is extremely fast, but not very stable, it doesn't crash but hangs often, but its a CVS build so I am not complaining.
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:3, Insightful)
While I wouldn't put it past MS to cheat by breaking functionality of another application (*cough* Netscape *cough*), I think it'd be pretty obvious if they tried to do it to Google.
How would you break Google functionality? By corrupting IE's CGI support? That'd be pretty obvious (as well as damning to other sites).
While I wouldn't undere
MSN search is already integrated into the OS (Score:2)
uhm MS already has their search engine integrated into the OS yet everyone seems to forget
open IE and press the search button, see that page on the left [msn.com] ? thats MSN search (complete with encrypted scripts to prevent you from looking at whatever evil they are up to, why else would you encrypt your javascript even though Joe user isnt likly to view source on a page that prohibits right click ?)
Ok now open a folder in explorer and type a word in the address bar, and hey presto you are redirected again to MSN [msn.com]
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
(And yeah, it sure as hell is geeky and slick)
Kartoo is nifty! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
Google's still got competition, more or less.
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:3, Funny)
I was using Verisign's Sitefinder for a little bit there but all you guys bitched up a storm and they shut it down. Boo hoo. :-)
Re:But does anyone use them? (Score:2)
It's a bad thing because it means Microsoft would have yet another monopoly and stranglehold on the Internet community. What happens if they drive all the other useful search engines out of business and then decide that only IE browsers can use the search engine? Besides that, do you really think they will have a nice, slick, clean interface like Google (or even the old Yahoo)? No, it's much
Now... In Longhorn, I wonder (Score:2)
I use win2k and stay away from XP so I don't have any idea if they have done something like that with it or not, so forgive my ignorance.
Ahhh... (Score:2, Funny)
Not the first time (Score:2)
This isn't the first time an organization has conquered the world without any significant original ideas. Conquest is a skill unto itself. Often those skilled at conquest are poor at innovation, and vice versa. Just think of all the engineers who have gotten screwed by selling the rights to world-changing inventions for next to nothing. On the other side, hell, think of the Roman empire -- they basically stole all their good ideas from the Greeks. Can you name a sing
BS based on rumors (Score:5, Informative)
Re:BS based on rumors (Score:2)
Re:BS based on rumors (Score:2)
What about that disqualifies it as a Slashdot story?
Re:BS based on rumors (Score:5, Insightful)
This is particularly important now that Overture is a wholly owned part of Yahoo. It is also important because Overture has partnered with Gator (er, Claria [slashdot.org]) to pop Overture ads by snooping on users who are using other search engines like Google.
If you want to talk about scary, think what would happen if Microsoft put a Gator-like ad engine in Longhorn and tied it to their own home grown pay-per-click search engine. Come to think of it, every day at the computer would be like watching a Nascar race. All those pretty logos.
Re:BS based on rumors (Score:3, Interesting)
MS isn't stupid, it knows the desktop is a stagnant market. I think they'd want a search engine for, and heavily optimize it for:
Ask Jeeves would make sense (Score:2)
Tip to MS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tip to MS (Score:2)
Jeeves (Score:5, Funny)
Best Jeeves Answers: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jeeves (Score:3, Funny)
Is it just me or does anybody else think that Jeeves is just a repackaged Eliza?
I have never had a useful search result from Jeeves. The results it gives are always part of some party game: guess how this result relates to your question.
Re:Jeeves (Score:2)
ask Clippy?
Ask Jeeves?! (Score:2)
Just as good (Score:2)
Why buy, when you can build? (Score:5, Interesting)
I built a small one and there only seems to be two major components of a search engine service (yes I realize this is very simplistic). The spidering of content (done with sheer horespower) and an indexing and the search algorithm. Seems fairly straightforward to me. What I learned was that the algorithm and indexing was not the problem but the processing power needed to spider the entire net efficiently.
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:2)
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:5, Insightful)
I belive the answer lays more in "Who would MS be removing from the existing market?" MS seems more interested in elbowing their way to the table, whatever table that be, than they do in really creating something new. When they do this, they remove the competition and become the defacto leader. Where have we seen this behavior before?
That seems to be their strategy overall. Simply wait until a new technology starts to catch on, and after the first movers have failed, then swoop in and purchase up everything that's left, forcing their way to "innovator" status....who's gonna say that they are not?...all those companies have been assimilated.
I'm pleased that google rebuffed them.... I can't imagine MS doing better than Google. They can't under-cut Google on price either!....I think that the only avenue they have open is to force their own site as the default for IE. That would be another anti-trust violation, and easy for even dumb judges to spot as obvious.
Their options seem pretty limited now, purchase a second rate search engine or develop on their own. Either way, "it's going to be a long hard slog" as Donald Rumsfield would say.
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, they've been doing that for ages. Apparently it's not working well enough...
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:2, Interesting)
They are trying to buy a brand name (Score:2)
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:2, Informative)
They tried this. I have been contacted no less than three times over the past year by headhunters from Microsoft looking for somebody to architect a new search engine for them. Given the timespan it would seem that they aren't having much luck finding qualified people. I told them to bugger off myself because I wouldn't want to work for Microsoft
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:2)
So... are you still unemployed?
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:4, Insightful)
> would probably cost less and could be done failry
> quickly.
Building one wouldn't remove a potential competitor though.
If you can get a search engine AND make it easier to dominate the market, AND the price difference between the two is within reason.. why not just assimilate someone?
Algorithms are why Google wins (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason Google rocks is that Pagerank does a half-decent job of understanding what pages to show people in what order based on their queries, and that's because of a lot of Deep Thought and Experimentation by the Google folks. Another reason they're pleasant to use is that Google doesn't waste page space on clutter - other than a friendly low-res non-animated logo at the top, it's basically just a box for your query, a few links to extra features, and your answers when they come back. (Remember Hotbot, the Wired MegaCluttery Singing Dancing Search Engine?) The initial core of the PageRank algorithm was pretty simple - the concept was that if people build links to a page, it's probably interesting to them, and if lots of people build links to a page, it's more likely to be very interesting than a page that not many people bother linking to. Getting much beyond that is where the Rocket Science happens, and also where they run into occasional algorithm clashes (e.g. Blogger as an edge case), and into conflicts with site promoters who take sites that aren't inherently interesting and try to get Google to rank it higher by trying to put in features Google's robots look for rather than by putting in content that actual people find interesting. (Remember that Search King guy with the link farms?)
Re:Algorithms are why Google wins (Score:2)
Um, google for them?
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:2)
If they can't own or steal the IP, Microsoft isn't interested. This has always been their business practice.
You sound like a manager (Score:3, Insightful)
A simple search engine is simple to create. If it has one user, it only has to contend with one user. Hell, you could even write in VB or Delphi and plug it into a lovely Access database.
Try scaling your search engine up to thousands or millions of users and millions of pages and see if it still holds up. I'm sure you may come across the con
Re:You sound like a manager (Score:2)
They went after the best and google told them to shove it. Now they're looking to see what else they can swoop up.
Re:You sound like a manager (Score:2)
Maybe they will...?
Re:Why buy, when you can build? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I agree that the two major components of a search engine are hardware and the algorithm, but hardware is the easy part, IMHO. Think about it. Google simply throws away broken hardware instead of trying to fix it, that's how cheap it is. And on balance, how much hardware do you really need? A cluster of supercheap computers doesn't sound like a tall order. They don't even have to be really, 100% reliable. With the dot com crash, there are tons of empty buildings designed to do nothing but hold v
Welp... (Score:2)
Microsoft to purchase (Score:3, Funny)
kung fu skills (Score:2)
lynx -dump kungfunix.net/shaolin|sed -n '1!G;h;$p' & echo fear
That cheesey butler... (Score:2)
Business Philosophy (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes it is better to focus on one thing and make a killing at it. Instead they are making a little profit here, a little profit there.. I guess it keeps the government off your back for being an OS monopoly, though. But do they really think that is a problem as Apple and RedHat stock and market share keep rising?
Re:Business Philosophy (Score:2)
Oh, they're already making a killing. Microsoft made 13 billion [yahoo.com] (with a b) on on 32 billion in revenue in the last 12 months.
I interviewed with Ask Jeeves years ago.. (Score:2)
Odd company, never use their site... I think they only exist for a takeover bid.
--D
Let's get realistic (Score:2, Interesting)
I love Google, but realistically speaking, it sounds as if investors are setting themselves up for another Dot com bust. There is no way on the planet Google is worth 1 billion US dollars. Sure they provide an excellent service, but to think that it's worth anything more than a couple of million is a farce.
Google has around US$700-million in annual revenues, and it makes about US$100-million a year in profits. Google is growing better than 20% every 12 months. source [nationalpost.com]
They (Google) should have taken what
Re:Let's get realistic (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine what would happen if Google were to vanish tomorrow. It would drastically reduce productivity of organizations the world over, and not necessarily those that are related to computers.
Today, Google is almost a crutch for a lot of people. Right from Universities to workplaces, its almost like the defacto tool. Don't know an answer? Can't find something? Google it.
Are companies willing to let this happen? Sure, you have a million other search engines. But it sure as hell would hurt (and hurt badly) if Google were to go.
This is something that could be leveraged to investors' benefit> Here you have, a *very* large chunk of the Internet being dependent on *one* tool. Who's willing to make sure that it does not go away? Think about it.
Let's get even MORE realistic (Score:2)
Imagine what would happen if Google were to vanish tomorrow. It would drastically reduce productivity of organizations the world over, and not necessarily those that are related to computers.
Same has been said about dozens of other companies, and that argument is null0. You're taking it to the extreme. Sure Google is fine, but their are other alternatives. People will bitch and moan but life will go on.
Today, Google is almost a crutch for a lot of people. Right from Universities to workplaces, its almo
Ummmmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Google has around US$700-million in annual revenues, and it makes about US$100-million a year in profits. Google is growing better than 20% every 12.
If that's correct, then Google is worth a lot more than $1 billion. Nitpick: And this is finance, not economics.
But yeah, that Buffet guy not only picks great stocks, he makes a mean marguerita.
It seems that maybe... (Score:3, Funny)
relation that would certainly prove to be something undeterminate with uncertain effect on
search engines and potentially the internet.
I'm not sure, though.
If Microsoft is so innovative... (Score:2)
Microsoft COULD Make it Work!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Not only that, but Microsoft has a world-class research arm with Microsoft Research [microsoft.com]. With Microsoft Research's world-class research, and Microsoft's deep pockets, you can bet that any improvements Teoma would need to compete with Google WILL be made.
Re:Microsoft COULD Make it Work!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
i just hate this trend.... (Score:2)
someone needs to take MS to court for antitrust. oh wait....
Ask Jeeves uses better CYC Tehcnology (Score:2, Informative)
Taoma? (Score:2)
for some reason... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think it's something other than a search engine that they have in mind, for which they need the search engine technology as a component, but i'm not entirely sure what that is. Their recent announcement that they're going to use IBM's PowerPC chips instead of intel for their next generation xbox makes their purchase of VirtualPC's connectix more than just a strategic takeover to threaten apple, as it'll enable them to emulate intel on the powerPC so their next Xbox will be backward compatible with curren
What exactly does Microsoft want? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see why they'd want Google (name recognition + superior software technology). But why would they go after a who-dat like Looksmart? Has it really gotten to the point where 'innovation' in Redmond means 'wait for someone else to invent, then by them out'?
Re:What exactly does Microsoft want? (Score:2, Informative)
Any way you slice it, this isn't good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if this is nothing more than a collection of rumors, as has been postulated elsewhere, the mere possibility that a purchase like this could happen tends to make me think that another DoJ action is long overdue. Although it would be nice to see a decision -- and penalty -- with some teeth in it, this time.
Here's hoping that someone at the FTC has the sense to say "You've got to be kidding..."
Damn. (Score:5, Funny)
Bad Clippy (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanies.
Just like kids... (Score:2)
It's not what, it really is who (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, Google is something different. 75% of web referrals come from it. 75%.
This is sort of sad in one interesting way -- The Internet Archive is complete. Without the State of Google at any given time, the archive is incomplete. Archiving the state of Google...
Now that's a hard problem.
Google's success did come from their ease of use and their several-order-of-magnitude improvement over their predecessors (Altavista, mainly, but Hotbot too). The Google challenge really was incredible -- "Put in what you're looking for. It'll be one of the top links. Be as obscure as you want." And they won the challenge.
I'm Feeling Lucky really is an amusingly cocky creation -- "our top link is likely enough to be the right one that we don't even need to show you a list."
It works.
Anyway, adoption was driven by the order of magnitude improvement, and is now very hard to clone -- going from 10 to 1000 is easier than 1000 to 1000000, by far. It's not enough to be equal - - you need to be better, at a degree than is actually possible for search to provide.
But once Google was adopted, it needed to stay in a position of power. Here's where the "niceness" of Google -- "don't do anything evil" -- won. Combine a Stanford Geek lackadasiacal attitude to all corrupting influences, no details about financial hardship, and massive street cred, and you get the snowball that brought us to 75% today.
Google was even allowed to sell ad space, given the "reluctance" and "geekily targeted" (has anyone else made targeting not seem like a privacy violation?) nature of their system. It's very interesting the nature of identity for a particular behavior -- basically, we assign motive to all actions that we see, as a mechanism for predicting future behavior. Google has motives that align with our interests -- a high quality, stable, authoritative source for what we're looking for. So it gets away with things that...say...Microsoft can't.
Microsoft would destroy the Google brand. They can't even donate money to schools without people thinking they're trying to brainwash kids! Meanwhile, Apple's been donating systems to grade schools since all of us were in them. The idea of a non-independent Google is fundamentally uninteresting, and really does create a new market segment:
What Google Used To Be.
Obviously, this is in nobody's interest, except maybe for other search engines. So shockingly enough, no sale.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Umm.. MSN? (Score:2)
I know you own a lot of stuff, so it may be simply lost in the pile somewhere... but, you already own a search engine! It's called MSN, and its search functionality is already incorporated in Internet Explorer, your widely used web browser, remember?
If you can't pull decent marketshare with that setup, I doubt you'll be able to do it with another service!
Jeeves might run IIS on the front end (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jeeves might run IIS on the front end (Score:2)
If they had bought Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Ironic isnt it. Course I'd love for them to try getting all those google servers to run IIS
Microsoft does more "innovating" (Score:2)
Netcraft (Score:2)
Alternative strategy: recruit Google employees (Score:2)
Use Google for Microsoft KB articles (Score:2)
I worry about conflict-of-interest (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I worry about Microsoft entering the search engine market more than it has. I see a strong conflict of interest between providing good search results and shilling for their company and/or those who pay them.
There's some evidence that Microsoft is already being tainted by this conflict of interest. On a lark, I went to www.msn.com and used their "Search the Web" option... and searched for information on Microsoft competitors. I found several cases where Microsoft's search engine gave higher priority to what would make Microsoft more money (as opposed to what the user probably wanted to see), such as Microsoft's official position on the matter:
This didn't happen all the time. Searches for specific company names ("Red Hat", "Oracle") did okay. But this happened often enough to make it appear that their search engine intentionally returns Microsoft's "message" first, even if it's not what the user wanted. It smacks dangerously close to censorship. This certainly raises the concern that the conflict of interest might impact what users could see; this suggests that this impact is already occurring. And conflict of interest is always something worth considering.
If Microsoft was simply one of many search engines that might not matter, but there's a good chance they'd use their dominant desktop marketshare position to inhibit competition by other search engines. Look what Microsoft did with Netscape, integrating a product to make it difficult to use a competing product. Microsoft was convicted, but that conviction did not restore competition in the marketplace (or cause any other real change). If Microsoft became the near-dominant search engine, then this conflict of interest could result in people being unable to speak out or sell a competing product ... because there
would be no way for people to learn of the
dissent or an alternative product.
Re:Ask Clippy (Score:5, Funny)
- Repeatedly hit head against wall
- Remember to preview before posting
- Log Off
Re:Ask Clippy (Score:3, Funny)
You also appear to need a spellchecker. Would you like to
- Repeatedly hit head against wall
- Remember to preview before posting
- Log Off
Re:Ask Clippy (Score:2)
Re:Why not ask Jeeves (Score:3, Informative)
so is this a marketing hype to keep Google stocks cheap for a hostile takeover??
Re:Jeeves??? (Score:2)
Re:slashdot sux0rs!! (Score:2)
So which is is? "full" or "stupid liberals"?