Digging Holes in Google

Kurt LoVerde writes "Though google has become synonymous with searching, the folks over at MSN have written up an interesting article on our favorite search engine's pitfalls. Included among these are a tendency to skew results toward shopping, a lack of diversity for searches containing synonyms and its impact on research."

Comments

MSN hates shopping

[gokubi]

a tendency to skew results toward shopping

Real links on the www.msn.com home page today:

• 2 months of free MSN 8 dial up - offer ends 7/31
  
• 12 autos that sip gas
  
• Win $1,000 in cash
  
• Is your credit a joke? Find out for free
  
• 13 best cars in the US
  
• Swanky hotels from $56
  
• Home fixes you shouldn't ignore this month
  
• Pretty, popular necklaces
  
• 25% off backpacks
  
• Discovery Summer Sale
  
• New Canon 5 MP digital
  
• Contact lens save 70%
  
• 800tc sheets 80% off
  

And they show their socialist bent away from shopping with their hardhitting piece:

• A pill for shopaholics?
  

Bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, sounds like those Google guys AND the MSN guys are biased. For shame! We at Slashdot poke fun at you!

Google cache

[iamthemoog]

In case it gets slashdotted, here's the google cache of the page (heh)

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fslate.msn.com %2Fid%2F2085668%2F

Stifling Innovation

[Foofoobar]

Gee... Microsoft complaining about the competition beating them? When does THAT ever happen?

Wow...

[JoeLinux]

Can you spell F-U-D? I knew that you could.

I think we will see this go the way of MS Bob, "Trusted Computing", MSN as a popular ISP, etc.

You ever notice that with the exception of hardware, most people only use Microsoft products as they are forced to?

The only reason people in the outside world use it is because even they feel like they HAVE to use Word, Windows, Excel, etc. When it comes to options in other parts of life, most people recognize that MS sucks donkey balls.

(Interesting side note: I used to work for Blue Cross of California. This was back in the NT 4.0 days. BCC has a support contract with MS.

A co-worker of mine took an NT server, set it up professionally to interface with the network as a real server, then installed MS Bob on it.

He promptly called Microsoft for tech support, and used the "Bob" terminology: "Yes, I'm having trouble getting the IP stack up. I keep telling the dog inside the living room to connect to the outside world, but he just keeps barking at me and asking if I want to make a document." My friend played dumb, only referring to MS Bob jargon as if it were the operating system

Needless to say, the call lasted many hours while the MS tech tried to trouble-shoot the problem using as much of the MS Bob terminology as possible.)

JoeLinux

Re:What sort of BS is this

[American AC in Paris]

Heck, even in grade school when we had to use CD encyclopedia's we were taught to use more than one keyword.

That settles it. I'm officially old.

*sniff*

(Google!=Oracle) == Trinity

[GillBates0]

So you're telling me Google is not an oracle. Duh!

Ofcourse Google is not the Oracle. Anybody who's seen the Matrix Reloaded knows that the Oracle was actually an evil program in cahoots with the machines.

Google is not like that. Google is more like...um...Trinity: smart, beautiful, intelligent and always there for you when you need it.