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."

Comments

But what about... Beer?

[Chmcginn]

This is yellow journalism at its finest. Try searching for anything on MSN.com - you'll never find anywhere near as many results as you will on Google. It's got nothing to do with linux, it's got everything to do with the type of search being done.

For example... Beer.

Google versus MSN

Or how about... trucks?

Google versus MSN

Other technical terms

[RT Alec]

Searched from MSN (listed by number of results):

• Results 1-15 of about 1136552 containing "freebsd"
• Results 1-15 of about 341343 containing "openbsd"
• Results 1-15 of about 200091 containing "ipsec"
• Results 1-15 of about 96796 containing "postgres"
• Results 1-15 of about 9641 containing "plan9"
• Results 1-15 of about 408 containing "OS/2"
• Results 1-15 of about 365 containing "linux"
• Results 1-15 of about 113 containing "apache"
• Results 1-15 of about 76 containing "php"
• Results 1-15 of about 40 containing "mysql"

Clearly, those platforms that MS does not like are treated differently than less popular (and less threatening?) technologies. Or maybe Plan9 is finaly picking up steam.

MSN is clearly lying in their search page

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as a test I did a search for something obscure: rutabaga windows. I got the following:

Results 1-15 of about 738 containing "rutabaga windows"
{Results follow}

Doing the same with "linux windows" I get:

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."

Re:Look at it more broadly

[freeweed]

well its not microsofts fault you use their website. Its hard to make antitrust case against them when no one forces you to use that search engine.

Actually, it is. msn.com has been the default search engine and homepage for years in IE, which is the default browser on the default operating system on 95% of computers sold out there.

So yes, it is 100% Microsoft's fault that people use their website. The antitrust angle comes in when they use their near-monopoly (Windows) to squash competition unfairly, whether it be Netscape, Google, or what have you.

The supreme court of the USA agrees with me, I'd be curious why you find their decisions wrong.

More likely a test of their own search product

[threemile]

Actually I don't think that first page is sponsored listings, as the sponsored listings are called out in the right sidebar. If you look at the page source, you see that there are no redirects on that first page of main results (redirects are needed to track the clicks for revenue since MSN does not yet implement their own pay per click search product).

What we are probably seeing is a beta of Microsoft' s search product, followed by backfill from Inktomi (this is why the search counts differ).

This only seems to happen on "popular" search queries, like open source (74 msn, 8,013,904 backfill, 11,700,000 google), and baseball (1974 msn, , 20,500,000 google), and linux (365 msn, 16,291,540 backfill, 92,000,000 google). "Unpopular" terms like wax museum just get backfill (151,414 msn backfill, 282,000 google). By only appearing on select popular terms it gives them a chance to test their product on search queries that an immature search product is likely to have results on (or maybe all search queries go through this new search first, and terms like wax museum just don't have any hits yet forcing the backfill to page one).

However, you assertion that the author has no idea how MSN Search works is probably spot on (both the submitter to Slashdot and the referenced author). Whatever Microsoft's feelings are about open source solutions, they're smart enough to know that surpressing information in the free portion of search is a PR disaster waiting to happen.

Re:But wait! There's more...

[stfvon007]

The number changes on every page too after a while.

Results 1-15 of about 365 containing "linux"
Results 76-90 of about 344 containing "linux"
Results 211-225 of about 262 containing "linux"
Results 226-240 of about 253 containing "linux"
Results 241-255 of about 16242034 containing "linux"

Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
Results 16-30 of about 8897867 containing "linux windows"
Results 31-45 of about 8897853 containing "linux windows"

I dont think this has anything to do with an ulterior motive by microsoft. I think its just a shoddy search engine made by them with their usual incompetence.

This post was spellchecked by google.