Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Wants to Take on Google
blenderking writes "We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience. That's something that we're actively looking at doing,", says Bob Visse, director of marketing for Microsoft's MSN Internet services division, said. Full article at: Yahoo. This could have fit in with yesterday's April Fool's stories..."
Google isn't competition for Microsoft. Google is a quality product that actually works. Totally different than anything Microsoft puts out.
If MSN want's a better search engine then Google then just make it and let the users judge it. Viewing Google as a competitor from the consumer viewpoint is a mistake. Google is a streamlined efficient search engine while MSN is a hodgepodge of Internet services for the masses.
Maybe Microsoft is disappointed that google will not have an IPO anytime soon, reducing possibility to easily buy Google and plug it into MSN.
If Microsoft wants to ensure their long term future they need to improve the server OS's and innovate in client software, not worry about being everything to everyone.
...but can they leave ANYTHING alone? What's next? I won't be surprised if they branch out into other markets...Oh, GM is selling a lot of cars, we view them as a competitor. Sheesh.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
Google is already so powerful and so popular that it's already a verb in most people's vocabulary. It is unlikely that Microsoft would be able to overcome this popularity so late in the game, especially since Google is totally platform independent.
In contrast, Microsoft is selling a world view -- theirs. I can't even imagine searching for gcc, or Java, or "Linus Torvalds" on Microogle and expecting to get useful information. You don't ask a plumber if your pipes need fixing.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
From past experience Microsoft's idea of better is more packed with features. I use Google because it is fast, efficient, and has unobtrusive advertising. Can you honestly see Microsoft competing on those terms?
...then it'll finally own the only decent way to navigate microsoft's own website
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I think I just died of laughter.... what are they going to run their search engine on? MSSQL ?!!!!
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Simple question: How could you beat Google?
If I knew I'd be rich.
If Steve "Uncle Fester" Balmy thinks he can produce a better product than Google, then I personally invite him to stick his neck out and do it!
However, he should bear in mind that whatever MS creates:
(1) Will have to have a noticeable lack of any sort of banner ads or popups.
(2) Will have to have a clean, simple, easy-to-use interface that's compatible with ANY BROWSER, from the text-based Lynx on up to the latest version of Opera, Netscape, or IE.
(3) Will have to be fully compatible with text-based screen readers, such as those used by vision-impaired folks.
(4) Will actually have to work as well as, or better than, Google if MS wants it to have a ghost of a chance.
Right now, Google completely fulfills requirements 1-3. I will be watching with great amusement as Uncle Steve and his Cronies try to add "value" to the search engine "experience," and most likely fall flat on their collective arses doing it.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
In many ways, I see this as a good thing. If MS wants to build a better search engine with a "better product and a better user experience", more power to them. They can't do anything to make me stop using Google, so why should I be worried if they see Google as a competitor?
Should MS, by some miracle, come up with a better search engine and a better interface, then I'll use it because it's the best for me. If they come up with a new feature that I like, I'll use it. I don't really care who's engine it is, so long as it finds the results I'm looking for. If it sucks (as I suspect it will), then that's a few million dollars less for Bill and Steve. Either way, we the users win.
Competition at work: may the best search engine win.
Cue The Sun...
i use google exclusively for my searching. i use google to search microsoft sites. I use google to help me search MSDN. The people that write MSDN work in the same building as I do.
I think google is the stuff and i rarely see a need to use anything else. it is -Exactly- the interface that i want and it is lightning fast with no distractions.
perhaps there is some breakthough in searching/indexing technology that MS thinks they can make. I'd buy that - there are lots of bright people here that really understand interesting problems with other approaches and can turn that understanding into solid products.
or perhaps someone decided google isn't "friendly" enough (i.e. not filled with crap, ads, marketing tie-ins, etc etc) and needs to be cluttered up and "popularized". maybe someone simply wants MS to have the #1 search and thats driving the whole story..
My worry is that whatever comes out of this, it will end up being 800kb of dhtml and popups and shitty ads. I don't think anything will ever replace google for what the majority of people use it for unless it is as simple and stripped down as google is, interface wise. i mean, i have a vested financial interest in MS products doing well but i still find myself using what i feel is the right tool for the job which fits my usage habits best, and for basically all searching tasks thats google.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I want to know why the hell I have a better chance of finding the microsoft support document I need with google then I do searching directly from support.microsoft.com...
A Google representative could not be immediately reached for comment.
The rep was too busy cleaning up the coffee that he'd laughed out of his nose.
Did you mean: Windows XP
Your search - linux "open source" - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "linux", "open source".
Suggestions:
- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.
Also, you can try Mooglesoft Answers for expert help with your search.
Everyone is missing the point here... Let's assume that Micro$oft could actually create a search engine 70% as good as Google. Then they bundle it into their OS and IE. Then market the crap out of it. Do you really think that the normal Windows user will continue to use Google? This is the whole problem with those bastards controlling the desktop OS which 90% of the world uses. They really can do this kind of stuff and get away with it. Remember Netscape, WordPerfect, etc. Be afraid. Be very afraid. And since I am in a good mood I will give a few suggestions for helping to change this situation:
1) Write a windows worm / virus
2) Contribute to the linux kernel, kde, gnome, etc.
3) Teach your friends and family how to actually use Linux.
Why is Google perceived by MS to be a competitor? Why does MS feel compelled to own everything? Why not admit that Google is excellent, that there's already lots of competition in the search engine niche, and get on with life?
:-), but they regularly come up with stuff like this, and it just disgusts me. They're like evil monkeys. Just can't stop fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting.
I try and try not to hate MS (I hate hating, and personally find it exhausting
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
"We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience."
I'd imagine that means having links to hotmail, articles on other MSN-related sites, advertisements, having to log in (and out for those using public computers), etc.
I seriously don't understand how anyone can actually think that these things provide a "better experience" for a search system than a box for entering search terms and a button to start the search, all resulting in a simple list of relevant results. How is this better than this?
Even as a "portal" (more so than before), Google still does a better job than the others.
how do you know that ?
is there some document that says so ? did some "reputable source" tell you ? are you just sure that BSD was doing such a better job ?
i've talked to the people involved at hotmail (and now at MS) about exactly how the transistion went. i have a good idea (from what internal documents i've read and conversations i've had) at what the old picture was and what the new picture was. i know a little bit about some of the problems and some of the successes, from essentially 1st hand sources
do you have this info ? care to share it with us all to justify your claim ?
i'll tell you what i can, and it may surprise you. the majority of freebsd front-door boxes were converted to win2k. the freebsd that was in use was essentially fully custom at that point, and not much like the stock freebsd (this would be the "special os" you mention). the w2k replacements are stock (perhaps settings tweaked) win2k servers, nothing "magic" about them. in general, the w2k boxes are outperforming the freebsd's they replaced by a statistically significant margin. not to mention other benefits (beleive it or not - reliability was one of them). note that this is on the same hardware - freebsd was replaced with w2k
some people will say "netcraft still says its freebsd!" and they're partially correct. there are still some freebsd boxes that remain at hotmail last time i talked to anybody about it. additionally, the Back end mailstore machines were neither windows or freebsd - they were giant sun boxes that were already purchased and too expensive to simply throw away only on the gorunds of doing it all "the windows way"... although i understand that converting them is now underway or coming soon..
initally, i didn't beleive it either when i read the documents. turns out the hotmail conversion really shaped a lot of w2k because they started working on it early. w2k is partially what it is today because it had to exceed freebsd enough to make the conversion not only possible, but worthwhile.
you should keep a few things in mind when making blanket statements about what windows can and cant do
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
For the last several weeks, my web server logs have shown that my sites have been crawled heavily by bots from Microsoft-owned IP addresses. (I know they're bots because, even though they don't identify themselves, they DO pick up robots.txt and obey it.)
This has been going on since, oh, about mid-February.
Aside from not identifying themselves, the bots are well-behaved: they pick up and obey robots.txt, and they only request a single page at a time and take a few minutes between requests so as to not overtax my servers.
So, yeah...this announcement is no big surprise to me.
I do. They make a better browser. The make a better word processor. They make the best mice and joysticks. They make great games. XP is an excellent OS. Not everything they make is great but no company has a perfect track record.
Back in grad school (starting in '93) I was anti-MS, for no good reason other than they were so big. When I bought a new computer I strongly considered geting OS/2 for it (phew...dodged that bullet). I bought the WordPerfect suite to write my thesis with. I used Navigator to surf the web on my PC. You know, a funny thing happened. WordPerfect was ok for small documents but for something like my modest thesis with images it sucked. I gave MS Office a go (I had never used it before then) and was sold...it got the job done. After I left grad school IE3 was released...the first version to exceed NN. IE has never looked back. For an OS, I have XP at work and home (in addition to an installation of Linux via VMWare for testing) and it works. It doesn't crash, runs fine. One of my Linux zealot coworkers seems to be forever downloading the latest build of something or looking for a better widget, all while Linux looks more and more like Windows on the desktop. I do use OpenOffice.org suite on my home computer, because I gave my wife my copy of Office XP to use on her computer. For simple spreadsheet work and basic letter writing it's fine. It's still no match for Office though.
So years ago I gave up the pro-this, anti-that stance and took one that's pro-me. I use what works best for me. Period. Best search engine? Google (which is not a verb, you trying-to-be-cool buzzword compliant geeks). If another search engine is better for me, than great, I'll use it. Same goes for other products. I don't have time to waste on half-assed products just to make a point. I want to spend less time wrestling with software and more time getting things done (which translates to more time with my family). I know it's sacrilege to say so here in the geek hive, but MS products generally are better than competing products.
Go to google.com and do a search for
:)
The best search engine
now go to google and do a search for
The worst search engine.
Fun
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
but MS products generally are better than competing products...
That's OK. It's not your fault that you've had limited exposure to quality products.
I guess if people don't use Mac OS X they can muddle along with M$ dreck and
homegrown Linux. I'm almost envious that you'll be able to visit an Apple Store
nearby and discover anew how wonderful computing can really be. It will be
a whole new enlightening experience. Come join us.
Put simply: they try to be everything and everyone. They are always trying to be the "next big thing", but not by putting all their efforts into making their current endeavours into quality results, but instead trying to spread their manpower (and therefore their streams of income) over the vast technology market.
Oh, sure other companies do this too, but not the way MS does. Apple, for example, doesn't have their own database software (anthough they do have their own browser now). Sun doesn't have their own search engine. Redhat doesn't have a special online service. And Google does not have their own OS.
Seriously, as the largest software company in the world, Microsoft could still make it to step three (if you've been under a rock for 2 years: "Profit!") without trying to be the one and only market leader for everything technology related. They need to make Windows, and perhaps their Office Suite, and make them good, and less expensive. They need to work with other developers, even if those developers aren't paying them top dollar to be part of the MSDN. Open Standards. Simplicity.
Quality.
And this is why we hate Microsoft. Greed before quality.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
google ads are NOT called 'placement'. The terms 'pay for placement' or 'paid placement' have very specific meanings in the search engine industry, and google does not use them.
I completely disagree. The pay-for-placement links are very obviously removed from the normal search results.
I did two quick searches. The first was for "linux". Below the Google header / navigation bar is our first sponsored link. This link is encased in a pink box and clearly labled "sponsored link". Below that is a category listing. Below that is a few lines of news items related to Linux from google news. Then comes the search results on the left flanked on the far right by two sponsored links in their own blue boxes and clearly labled "sponsored links".
I performed another search - this time for "athlon". Two seperately labled "sponsored links" encased in blue and orange boxes respectfully. A category listing. Then comes search results flanked on the far-right by four clearly labled "sponsored links" each in their own green box.
Google CLEARLY seperates their sponsored content from their normal search results. Other search engines selling placement have intermixed search results with sponsored content with the sponsored bits coming up earlier in the listing and no labeling or seperation. This is very different than what Google does.
Everybody I know at Microsoft, where I work as a contractor, uses Google as their primary search engine. Here's an example of why: recently at work I wanted the syntax for the VBScript SELECT CASE statement. I already had an MSDN window open for something else, so I typed in "vbscript select case" and here's what it found. Not wanting to wade through this mass of irrelevance I typed the exact same thing into Google and got this, a whole page of exactly what I was looking for.
Rock on.
As to why it is common, if you recall the anti-trust trial in the U.S. where Microsoft was found guilty and the appeal where the verdict of guilty was upheld, you'll find that among the records is the fact the MSIE gained market because it was bundled with MS-Windows.
If left to compete on technical merits, MSIE will fall out of the market place and disappear. MSIE has fallen so far behind in technology, usability and security that it's a marketing wonder that any corporate intranets allow it at all. Perhaps offering a Google-like competitor is the only way to keep from losing all ground to Mozilla, Opera and others.
Microsoft could easily shut out any normal search service by further leveraging their desktop monopoly. Simply add searching functions in MSIE that make it hard to use anything than their own service, much the same way that HTTP error messages have been co-opted in MSIE.
Makers of embedded devices and other systems are quite aware of this and have been turning to Mozilla and Opera.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.