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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."
The top links are for 'featured sites' (~= 'ads') and 'sponsored sites' (~= 'ads') and after you get past the ads, the results are roughly similar to google's results, with linux.org and redhat.com being in the same #1 and #3 spots, and linuxjournal surpassing linux.com as the #2 spot.
My journal has hot
Not true! There are tons of people who hate Microsoft without even knowing what Slashdot is!
FLR
Is it just me, or has this been posted before? Or does Microsoft just do so amny stupid things that it all just blends together?
if(!cool) exit(-1);
And finally:
Just because you have a spine and refuse to do business with Microsoft and/or the mob, doesn't make you a "zealot".
A search from msn.ca on the term "linux" gave some reasonable results I think. There was Linux.com as the first, followed by sites like linuxcanada.com, some provincial/city linux organizations from places like Edmonton, BC and Alberta, some links to online linux certification classes.
Doesn't seem too unreasonable to me and it was interesting to see how tailored the results were given there were a lot of canadian sites up there and canadian area linux organization links. I have to say I was actually impressed given what I was ready to see from the headline of this article
I can only imagine the look on thier faces when they see how many times "Linux" has been queried on their search engine in a single day.
MSN Search: Linux -- More Useful Everyday
:)
so they got something right
Never attribute to malice what you can explain by stupidity.
Indian search on Windows. Only 10th result is good. First one is Windows Media Player, 2-6 are about Tablet PC with the same page for WinXP for Tablets appearing twice. There are also such wonders of relevance as Windows into the Soul of Satyajit Ray and Windows to the Universe - Jupiter.
Search for Windows at MSN is only marginally better. The poster of the story overlooked that first 4-6 results are "Featured sites", which (as well as "sponsored") is the marketese for "advertisements". Amazon will happily sell to MSN searchers practically everything. Heck, the second result for shit offers that I "Purchase Expensive Shit" on Amazon. I shit you not.
There are other gems at the MSN, like a "featured" result, suggesting that "MSN 8 offers a better browsing experience: Try it free for 60 days." when you search for netscape or gnu.org results starting after 12th position when you search for gnu. The first result, of course, being the famous E-gnu.com African Safari Travel...
MSN (despite their claims to the contrary) is a mix between marketing crap and inferior technology. Thanks, I will pass.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
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.
Linuxiso.org is a featured site. We even get a little MS butterfly.C HECKED&FORM= MSNH&v=1&q=linuxiso
http://search.msn.com/results.asp?RS=
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.
Look this 'google' seach in msn search. You will notice that below 'google' as first entry, is MSN Search...
Another interesing thing: A frind of mine tell me that the word 'Linux' doesn't exists in Encarta 2003 DVD :-D When you search for 'linux', it shows 2 non-related topics
And.. will you trust in a 'Microsoft Wallet'? :-D
drmad
A search on msn.com also brings up the rather amusing
http://tech.msn.com/software/OS/Linux/
section of the MSN website. Watch MS try and sell you boxed RedHat!
The domain www.linuxsucks.com is owned by a company called InfoSpace Inc. Microsoft has VERY strong ties to InfoSpace Inc. as Microsoft featured it as a company that saved money and improved reliability by using Microsoft's garbage... er... I mean software:
C as eStudy.asp?CaseStudyID=13920
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/
And there's more than that, do a search for "Infospace inc" and Microsoft on Google and you'll find many more connections between the companies.
So, don't let the amateurish appearance fool you, while linuxsucks.com appears to be written by ordinary people simply expressing a point of view, it's actually a well funded website with a clear agenda.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
There have been a couple attempts at it, and there are a few currently in development. The problem is, a search engine in an expensive thing to run. You need tons of processing power, storage space, and bandwidth. These things are not free, nor are they cheap. (well, maybe storage space is)
You'd also need to pay engineers to maintain it. It would be a full time job for several people, and you're not gonna get people doing THAT for free.
I think google does a pretty good job of balancing commercialism with a very functional fast search engine. I see no need for anything else right now.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Microsoft has been proven in court to be a monopoly, and this is how monopolies work.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
I bet the people who wrote that Apache->IIS migration page are pretty excited to see people actually reading it all of a sudden.
Latest News: microsoft
It cuts both ways :)
I was starting up an MS program today and came across the following error:
SoBigF is not your default worm
would you like to make this your
default worm?
click yes cancel
MoFscker
It's pretty obvious that the results on MSN are biased. Do a search for open source on MSN. You get back a bunch of results that don't really apply. That is, except for the first result, which is an article on Infoworld about how SCO is hurting the open source movement. Now do the same search on Google--the results are _much_ more appropriate.
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
Just for giggles, I did a search for "SCO" and you wouldn't believe what I found at the #1 "Featured Site":
# Santa Cruz Operation Top Pick
Long-time vendor of UNIX for PCs has made the transition to Linux. [emphasis mine] Learn about their consulting services and their software offerings.
www.sco.com
The dogcow says "Moof!"
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.
Don't overrate Microsoft. They have two huge monopolies, the OS and Office. Almost everything else they do loses money. They are powerful but they are not invincible.
They also have the problem that Google has some very broad patents. I don't see how Microsoft can build a better search engine without infringing; it would seem that they would have to attack the patents themselves as overbroad (which they arguably are -- Google patented the very idea that links are considered when scoring a result).
Just click the "Introducing Linux" link. It brings you to another msn page saying "Red Hat 9.0 is a boon for those who already use it, but it's too expensive to warrant a switch from Windows."
The following links aren't much better. They have this carefully hand-crafted look to them. "Alternatives to Linux", "Linux Training, only $2095 for 5 days", etc.
It's funny to see how far the world's biggest software company will go to bash free software rather than trying to beat them with better software. They've got enough spare cash to hire a hundred thousand programmers for ten years. They could basically write a new operating system from the ground up that runs almost anything on almost anything (assuming enough ram & hard disk space), and does it well, but instead they have probably under a thousand people developing their products and they're getting roughed up by dozens of open source teams of 1-20 active developers each. Not to mention that they sell a stripped down version of Windows to their main audience, when they could give everyone copies of their best version and only see a small drop in sales. Their licensing strategy is holding them back.
Searching search.msn.com for "linux" will really highlight the weakness of MSN's search features -- the results are actually supplied by three different companies, then stitched together.
MSN provides up to five "featured" sites for a search phrase, usually to companies that have marketing relationships with MSN (like Amazon or eBay).
Overture gets to throw three "sponsored" sites at the top of every page of results, so these are companies who bid to be shown for a particular search term.
LookSmart provides the "directory" results. Of course, you get into the LookSmart directory by paying a fee to have your URL(s) associated with certain (a) certain search phrase(s). In the case of a search for "linux", you have to wade through 400+ directory results before you get to...
"Web" results, which are provided by Inktomi. Inktomi's engine collects URLs in one of two ways: through a regular crawl of the Web (like any search engine), and through a fee-based "paid inclusion" program where companies can submit their sites through a direct XML feed into the Inktomi index.
At least, that's the way it works for now. Given that both Inktomi and Overture have been bought by Yahoo!, there's very little chance that Microsoft wants MSN to fatten a competitor's coffers. Microsoft's moving as fast as they can to get their own technology in shape to replace the outside vendors. But MSN Search isn't powered by Microsoft quite yet.
True, but version 5 and 6 still suck. It has something to do with their bizare goals. They are not in business to make a better browser, GUI, search engine or anything like that. They are in business to make money and they pervert their program's functionality to achieve that any way they can. So, M$'s GUI is sold like a billboard to the highest biders, their OS forces depencence on M$ servers, M$'s browser pushes whatever M$ feels like, Windoze updater breaks unix compatibility and their search engine delivers a message. Microsoft makes things do what it wants them to do, not what their custormers want.
A search for Linux cancer is instructive. Someone just reading the story summaries would conclude that The Register and O'Riely think Linux and the GPL are bad. Additionally, the casual reader would conclude that Linux vendors are going out of business and that Paladium is "clever". These quotes are so targeted and numerous that it must be intentional. I'll quote what it produced because, M$ is known to change things like this:
The more I look at that list, the more respect I have for the designers of that search engine. It's brilliantly able to force the Microsoft message into even the most hostile of mouths. Ha, they call me a troll and put atribute words to me I never wrote. Compare that to the results Google gives, which looks more like what the user would want to see. Microsoft is evil and this is what an evil search engine looks like. Oh well, thats one search engine I never used before and will never use again. I also don't read or watch MSNBC news, yes, they suck too.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Although MSN would have you believe that thier search feature is a service offered to users, it is clearly a marketing tool from end to end.
In order to be listed at MSN, you must deal with Looksmart, a company that touts itself as "the global leader in paid inclusions". In other words, Microsoft's MSN Search is not in the business of helping you find what you are looking for, but the business of making sure you go where thier customers want you to go.
Google, on the other hand is a search company, that specialized in search technologies, for your corporate intranet or for your web page before they added advertising, first, to thier search page and later to your own page.
While there is no doubt that Google Advertising is a large part of thier revenue, the success of Google Adverts is due to thier apropriateness to the viewer of the page. This appropriateness is only possible if there is an attempt to keep the pagerank formula somewhat objective.
IMHO, Google's business model is the stronger, because they are not attempting the impossible task of keeping the viewer while simultaneously attempting to manipulate him (like MSN is), and the advertising model that Google has created is the only advertising that I would allow on a page of my own.
Read, L
Nobody beats netscape in the area of objective search: try searching for 'hotmail' at netscape.com. First result is ... Netscape Mail. They claim it is 'powered by Google', but obviously they "tweak" google results to promote their own and probably other's paid services.
(I've discovered this recently when using internet kiosk with netscape browser).
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install