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How Objective Is Microsoft's Search?
bot writes "There have been a number of stories on Microsoft trying to do a 'Netscape' on Google.. what would a world in which Microsoft provides search look like? A search for 'linux' on msn.com give amazon and ebay as the top two results, and a microsoft site promoting migration from Linux to Windows as the fourth listing. A search on MSN India is even more amusing -- the top result is a dead link, and the second one is Linuxsucks.com."
linuxsucks.com pays for high msn search rankings?
Wow, some people really DO have an axe to grind.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Right you are. Interestingly, I would never have noticed that had you not pointed it out. Google, at least, does a much better job separating the sponsored links from the results (and the sponsored links are more appropriate to the search, too, I might add).
At this stage of the game, MSN doesn't look like much of a threat to the One True Search Engine.
If Microsoft wants to compete and beat Google then the results of a search will have to be relevant. If they are not, then people will continue to use Google.
Would you continue to use a particular phone book if it failed to supply you with accurate or consistent phone numbers? Of course not and you would tell your friends the same thing. Word of mouth is still the most powerful force the Internet has and if the Microsoft search engine supplies searches with "sponsored" links or sub-quality links that do fuck all for your search then that is going to get around.
End of story.
The main demographic for /. is people that are into high technology and understand it
It's only logical that the majority are going to hate what Microsoft is and does.
Well if MS does indeed out-Google Google, then good for them. But they obviously have long way to go if that's what they really are planning.
As far as resources go, MS may have 40B in the bank, but Google has the ENTIRE internet behind it and that's not something to take lightly. Outside of OS's, web browsers, and office suites, Microsoft hasn't exactly done well with every venture they've tried. Look at Smartphones,TVboxes,Consoles, etc. Beyond its desktop monopoly its not as successful a company as one would think. I guess we will see if they are able to leverage their OS to force users into making MS their default search engine. Up till now setting MSN to the homepage has ensured they can claim the page hit crown from Yahoo, but we all know when it comes to actually finding things on the Internet everyone goes elsewhere.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
This might take a bit, but bear with me. On google.com, you can search for how many times a site is linked from another site. You use the command (e.g.) link:www.websitehere.com This search is very cool to discern how popular a site is. For example, google.com itself is linked almost a half million times. Yahoo, well over a million times.
However, www.msn.com has a lot fewer than half million. Fewer than a thousand even! In fact, there are only 51 (yes, Fifty One) People in the world who link to www.msn.com. www.MSNBC fares even worse with 7 (SEVEN) links to it. Compare this to www.cnn.com with 74,000 links.
What does this mean? Well, if you consider these links as votes (which they are... if you like a site, you link it from your website or blog), it means that no one likes MSN or MSNBC at all. But, i wonder, why do people still go to these sites? The only answer i can give is this: Monopolistic practice. If you have almost a complete monopoly on the desktop, and you link your website on every one, of course you'll get some people to go to it. Could this example be used in a court case? Possibly, i guess (IANAL, but my bro-in law is
Do what you want with this info, i just thought the /. crowd would like to see this.