Microsoft Workers Prefer Google 378
dhollist writes "A story just released by the Inquirer shows that 80% of incoming search requests from Microsoft's domain arrived via Google's search engine. In contrast, 64% of Yahoo! staff and 100% of Google staff use their own company's search engine.
How's that for a product endorsement? I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet."
Grain of salt (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sample size of 45 users... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm indeed.
Bad, even for Slashdot... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait... I have an idea!
1.) Write anti MS blog entry with lots of unsubstantiated or specious claims.
2.) Place tons of AdSense ads on it.
3.) Submit it to Slashdot.
4.) Sit back and watch the cash flow in!
As a counterpoint (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I've switched (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've switched (Score:1, Interesting)
What they left out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As a counterpoint (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Most common search phrase (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Stats (Score:5, Interesting)
http://andrewhitchcock.org/companystats/ [andrewhitchcock.org]
Firefox has just under 10% from Microsoft, and about 80% from Google.
Re:I've switched (Score:1, Interesting)
Looks like I won't be using them any time soon.
Re:I've recently been finding google to be worse (Score:4, Interesting)
No they don't (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:check the sample size (Score:3, Interesting)
What one may find surprising is that it takes maybe only 100 people depending on other issues to make a determination. In fact, as few as only a handful of people can be a good sized sample given random selection, in a few cases.
It has to do with standard deviation more than sample size. If one has a sample where 99% of the sample was one way, a sample size of 100 is pretty much all one needs. There's also the fact that sometimes, one doesn't need to find a fact, rather, to contest one. If one takes 20 random people who are at a certain value of a certain attribute, then a claim that people in general are near a certain height with a certain deviation, then one can conclude that's a phoney lie, or that there's evidence supporting it. Statistics is a rather magical mathematical feild. It pays to know it.
Re:I would still be using Google (Score:4, Interesting)
So would I. I would still use google even if given a chance to work at Microsoft. Of course, that probably has something to do with the fact that, if they offered me a job, I wouldn't take it.
You can call me dogmatic, but I have a very practical reason for not wanting to work at Microsoft: I've spent the last week or so reading up on SMB and NetBIOS. Egads this stuff is messed up. I had almost come to believe that the stuff about Microsoft software being crap was just bias from open source advocates, but the more I learn about it, the more I realize how truly aweful and stupid it is. And how does this relate to my practical reason for not wanting to work at Microsoft? The reason is, if I worked at Microsoft, there's a reasonable chance I'd end up having to maintain some of this crap. No thank you. They made the bed, and I think I'll leave them to lie in it.
Google FTW! (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft has a search engine? (Score:1, Interesting)
Use Your Competitors' Products (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wouldn't do it.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wouldn't do it.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:duh (Score:3, Interesting)
Say a Microsoft employee performs a search on both Google and MSN/Live.com. They compare the search results, and see which one is better. I'm guessing this happens relatively often. Now, the MSN search may or may not have what they're looking for... maybe they click a couple links, maybe they don't. But Google's pre-fetching mechanism starts downloading the top 3 or so pages. They automatically get hits, whether the user clicks on them or not. If you decide the search terms you used were wrong, and re-search on both without clicking anything, Google just generated 3 hits "coming from their search results". I'm not saying they're trying to inflate leads -- pre-fetching is a valid technique -- but you have to take it into account when you look at these numbers.
They purposfully left out the obvious statistic (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh wait, now that I think about it he did not include the search for "lesbians caught in the act while I was walking my ferret". Which Specifically does not include the word "porn". I begin to see the issue...
Anyhow, this Andrew guy has articles dateing back to 2001. Its mostly trivial stuff relating to his life until recently. And then it relates to google. So my guess is that people who do a search on google sift through the pages of results and end up on his site. The way I figure it you pretty much have to be interested in google or Andrew before you could wind up there. So his statistics are probably correct. However, the test is screwed to begin with.
So in the end there are two flaws. The fact that Nick Farrell does not seem to care about what he writes as long as its antagonistic (I use this one sample only as evidence) and the second flaw is that we are talking about it.
Besides, I didnt see my searches for "lesbians" anywhere in the statistics, which doesn't seem quite right.
Probably not from Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Most important flaw (Score:3, Interesting)
The second source [outer-court.com] helps confirm the conclusions though.
I think it's great that you made these statistics, it's just a shame that Slashdot linked to such a poor article which doesn't explain how the figures were calculated and what the errors margins are. I guess that's what Slashdot's 'Comments' section is for.
Thanks again for replying!
Ask.com (Ask Jeeves) is the same. (Score:4, Interesting)
I say this as an Ask employee and post this anonymously for this reason.
Re:block it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this surprising? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wasn't there a Slashdot story in the past on how a lot of the Microsoft researchers use Linux machines for their daily work? If it makes them do their job better (because they come from a Unix background), why would anyone forbid that?
Besides, does every secretary working at Microsoft have to know they do search as well and are in some competition with Google? Microsoft is much bigger than Google and does a lot more.
Re:duh (Score:4, Interesting)
Last I checked, IE didn't.
What else would Microsoft employees be using? Firefox? If so that's as funny as Google.
Re:I wouldn't do it.. (Score:4, Interesting)
part of the problem.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Oviously efficiency is the reason. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:the actual response... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Google MSN (Score:3, Interesting)