Why Microsoft Wants to Buy Google

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."

General Public

[nurb432]

They wont understand either, they will take what they see first as 'results' and move on with that. By controlling the first 10% of what the average consumer sees, they can manipulate consumer opinion and knoledge. Sure *we* can see past this and get facts, but *we* dont line their pockets either...

I do not think this is the right motive.

[aepervius]

Because if they did that they would create market doubt and user doubt on the verracity of google. They are whatthey are now not because people like the "google" word but because they offer the most correct result up to now, without a vendor/advertising bias. Should they switch to the same result than MSN the outcry would be enormous and rightfully the monopoly comision could again look at such practice of supressing concurrence by borderline legal means.

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.

BUT...

[Anonymous Coward]

As you pointed out, you must go to the NEXT PAGE, which is unacceptable. If someone just looks at the first page, they only get the 16 'sponsered' results of LINUX->MS migration techiniques and biased spec sheets.

wasn't it

[dlockamy]

always clear why Microsoft wanted Google

"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

[pvt_medic]

In this day and time no one would argue that information equals power. and while microsoft may be filtering results that a user may acquire, its all marketing. Microsoft has tried to bust into the search engine business and failed. Search engines are powerful portals to a world we dont know anything about. the simple truth is if they control the most popular search engine then they have an incredibly powerful marketing tool. And while granted there biggest treat is Linux. there are other treats out there and if they control ones access to that information then they have power.

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.

But what about... Beer?

[Chmcginn]

This is yellow journalism at its finest. Try searching for anything on MSN.com - you'll never find anywhere near as many results as you will on Google. It's got nothing to do with linux, it's got everything to do with the type of search being done.

For example... Beer.

Google [google.com] versus MSN [msn.com]

Or how about... trucks?

Google [google.com] versus MSN [msn.com]

Call me crazy, but...

[COBOL/MVS]

Could Microsoft's desire to buy Google have to do with Google actually making a profit? Seriously, Fletcher's claims of Microsoft trying to censor web content is preposterous. MSN search results are "limited" is because sites that want to be "found" on MSN have to pay. No one has to pay to be on Google. Google makes money because advertisers know that's the first place anyone will go to find anything on anything. With that kind of audience, Google can ask a lot for page space.

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?

Re:Know The Alternatives

[the_2nd_coming]

when you IPO, you do not have to sell more than 50% share to the public. the Founder of Google can retain 51% of shares and still allow public trading of the other 49% of stock. Why do you think the Ford Family is still in control over the company?

Re:Not so fast

[Arker]

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.

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

[twiddlingbits]

I got 9.3M in 0.11 secs at Google, did someone add 1.2M links this morning? ;) MSN says 8,900,562. That's within 5% of Google. Pretty good for a search engine owned by those who wish to kill Lunix. Lycos/HotBot says 8,948,296. So, everyone is about the same. But Lycos/HotBot SAY the first page is only sponsored links. In other words the author is VERY biased. I don't like biased towards either side in the Windows/Linux fight. But Microsoft has made a lot of enemies so you gotta take all the anti-MS press with some amount of skepticism. I'm NOT a MS fan, only a fan of the facts.

Other technical terms

[RT Alec]

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:Microsoft Biased? Never!

[Ianoo]

It seems that MSN sucks generally. It only gets 2500 hits when you search for "Windows"!

Googles real asset

[mpn14tech]

Google's best asset is the trust that people have in them to return useful unbiased results.

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?

[Deathlizard]

Does anyone here think that Microsoft, just maybe, Wanted Google because it works better?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as a test I did a search for something obscure: rutabaga windows. I got the following:

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."

Could Microsoft purchase Google?

[BobTheLawyer]

It's possible such a takeover could be blocked by European competition law (yes, I appreciate neither is a European company, but it's hardly viable to have google separately owned in Europe but owned by Microsoft in the States).

Does anybody know or has anybody read anything on what the US anti-trust position would be?

Re:Look at it more broadly

[freeweed]

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.

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.

More likely a test of their own search product

[threemile]

Actually I don't think that first page is sponsored listings, as the sponsored listings are called out in the right sidebar. If you look at the page source, you see that there are no redirects on that first page of main results (redirects are needed to track the clicks for revenue since MSN does not yet implement their own pay per click search product).

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.

Re:Not so fast

[Reziac]

In my observation, a lot of such problems in M$ stuff aren't "designed that way", but rather, "no one thought/tested it beyond the obvious" (which is a definitely drawback to eating only your own dog food). Such problems can wind up being very convenient to M$'s interests, and I'm sure are subsequently exploited by said interests, but aren't *necessarily* intentional in origin.

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:General Public

[bogie]

That's the same thought I had. At first glance its just a bunch of ads. Who want's to use a search engine where the Entire first page has been manipulated? I could see most people not even bothering to hit the tiny "next" arrows or even understanding that there the first page is a giant fake just pretending to do what a Real search engine does. What a crappy search engine.

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.

General Public - is a reality.

[nurb432]

Then you can go out and market OSS for 'us'.

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:Why corporations must be stopped.

[the_mad_poster]

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:But wait! There's more...

[stfvon007]

The number changes on every page too after a while.

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:Why corporations must be stopped.

[Arker]

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:Try "apache server"

[GreyWolf3000]

Apache and Windows are different. There are Apache Indians, knives, helicopters, etc. There are window sills, frames, opportunity, etc.

Re:General Public

[Bob9113]

I'm a more passionate critic of Microsoft than even most of the people in this focused community, but this is not justified.

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:But wait! There's more...

[arkanes]

It would be a good choice if the "featured sites" weren't the paid ones. MSN not only shows you the paid listings first, they're intentionally making it difficult to see beyond them. Thats borderline unethical, imo.

Re:Microsoft Biased? Never!

[sheimers]

Strange, if you search for macos there are 708495 hits on msn. So msn is biased, it favours alternatives over Microsoft Windows.

Ugh, People... Invalid Result Counts

[sabNetwork]

Give up comparing the number of results by query! It's NOT ACCURATE. The MSN search is buggy, which should be apparent to anyone who hits the "NEXT >>" button a few times.

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.

Search for Linux Windows:

[Anonymous Coward]

Results 16-30 of about 8661564 containing "linux windows"

I think Microsoft really just wanted to buy Google because Microsoft's own search engine can't count very well. It would be cheaper for MS to invest in someone elses technology to implement this feature than to try to wrangle their own exotic technology to return "number of results found." Or so I speculate...

Re:Microsoft Biased? Never!

[God! Awful 2]

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:Not so fast

[fireman sam]

Quoth the poster: "God, does everything that MS does need to have some ulterior motive?"

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.