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Why Microsoft Wants to Buy Google
xihr writes "Harry Fletcher writes in The Inquirer about an obvious discrepancy between searches for "linux windows" on Google and MSN; the former comes up with almost 9 million hits, but the latter only comes up with -- wait for it -- 16. The author then speculates on Microsoft's ulterior motives for their attempted (and failed) purchase of Google."
- Wine Development HQ
- Linux Online
- freshmeat.net
- WinLinux 2003
- Red Hat
- Linux.com
- XChat
- NeTraverse
- Opera Software
- Cygwin
- Microsoft Linux
- Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
- Linux + Windows 95 mini-HOWTO
- Download Opera
The list looks like a pretty good list of top sites.The fact that MSN Search is willing to whore their entire first page of search results to the top bidder is another matter altogether. It makes their search hard to use, it confuses people, it is dihonest, and I'm sure glad that there are other alternatives. They get people to use MSN search because it is the default search engine for the Internet Explorer browser. Many people use it becasue they don't know about the alternatives. Sound like their other anti-competative behavior?
I think it is more a result of MSN having such a smaller index to search from. Search for 'Windows' on MSN, and you only get 2373 results.
For a while, I've been looking at alternative search engines. I still use Google as my primary engine, but I hate having such a strong reliance on a single tool. Any tool I don't own and keep locally could go away at any point or change and become useless to me.
The closest thing to Google I've found to date is AllTheWeb.com. AllTheWeb started out as an experimental second site by Lycos, with the apparent goal of being a Google clone. The thing matured quickly, being an objective and statistics-driven search site, unlike Lycos' own site where sites buy placement. AllTheWeb was later purchased from Lycos by Overture, even more famous for paid placement and (IMHO) slimy advertising tactics. But for the six months or so since they made the purchase, they seem to have left it alone. They may well also be trying to clone Google completely. And if Google suddenly sours as a search tool, this may well finally pay off big for them.
Give AllTheWeb a try. I'm not petitioning anyone to switch over and start using ATW as their only engine, but make sure you know that alternative is there and - more importantly - make sure Google's new owners know that you're aware of an alternative. It just may be enough to keep them honest.
You need to turn off "search from the address bar" and change your default search engine.
;)
Netscape defaults to Netscape search too, y'know
Strange. I certainly don't want to defend MSN search, but it seems to intentionally limit the response set for common words. Hence, low numbers of responses for "linux", "apache", and "windows". But if you search for "apache server", there's about 5 million responses on MSN search.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
"(but I've never BEEN to hotteenlesbians.com!)"
That may not be as stupid as it sounds.. for the longest time IE had a function were a site could just add itself or another site to your bookmarks.
A noted example of this was 2kservices a coupple of years ago.. on a visit to one of it's top100 sites it would add itself and a coupple of casinos before adding an entry to C:\windows\hosts to redirect search.msn.com to 2ksearch's ip address.
They only stopped after MS disabled the function and Norton started poping up hostile site warnings.
MSN's paid search hits ("featured sites") are clearly pro-Microsoft. It's less clear that the real search results are. MSN's search results aren't as useful as Google's, but that may just be inferior technology. MSN tends to return far more outdated pages.
If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
The "1 - 365" results are "Featured sites" and "Web Directory Sites";
Once you pass those pages, you have "Web Pages" (in light gray, after the last web-directory sites link) which has approximately 15 989 646 pages.
"I think its just a shoddy search engine made by them with their usual incompetence. "
They approximate, just like Google. They may be biases but the difference in numbers you mentionned isn't incompetent programming; they just chose to show the number of "featured sites" instead of all of the web pages.
And since the average windows/Msn user probably never looks beyond page 5, it's a good choice [IMO]
Al
Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
{Results follow}
It's basically saying "There may be another page to look at, but hey, it's only one item so why bother? Maybe you should search for a nice Microsoft product instead." Only if you click the "next" button do you get:
Results 16-30 of about 8898833 containing "linux windows"
Does Microsoft have more than 16 results for "linux windows?" Absolutely. Do they lie on the first page of the search? The answer to that is yes as well, unless you really believe 8,898,833 pages is "about 16."
And funny, doing a search for "Microsoft office windows" also returns the first page with 1-15 of about 16 containing "Microsoft office windows"
Maybe MSN and Microsoft is also trying to hide the world from Microsoft Office and Windows itself. - Geesh.
It is in how the query engine of MSN works... Instead of keywords, it is expecting questions (like ask jeeves became so popular for).
So if you type in "Microsoft office for windows" (notice the extra natural language word in the search here, and the first page displays: Results 1-15 of about 2210194 containing "Microsoft office for windows"
Just like searching for "windows on linux" returns: Results 1-15 of about 8898110 containing "windows on linux"
With articles on the first page listing sites and subjects like WINE and other things that the conspiracy theorists would have you believe Microsoft is trying to hide from people.
It doesn't shock me that people are dense, it just surprises me that their voice gets used to propagate mass ignorance.
Geesh....
Reading the above and looking at some of the searches I was leaning towards thinking that the search results were just bad, NOT intentionally misrepresented. But then I did an MSN search for "internet search" and "search engine" and in both cases had to go through to the 3rd or 4th page before I got a link to google. That was well past the "featured sites" list. But at least google made it to the top of the list when I searched "google"! I guess they decided they could only hide so much...