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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."
Even funnier is a search for 'Linux' on MSN. Amazon, eBay, and two Microsoft sites, one of them about 'Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP', come up before Linux.org does. According to MSN there are only 365 sites about Linux on the Web. Google says there are 92,000,000.
Biased? Microsoft? Never!
- 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?
Microsoft just wants to correct them. Linux doesn't exist, darn it.
They wont understand either, they will take what they see first as 'results' and move on with that. By controlling the first 10% of what the average consumer sees, they can manipulate consumer opinion and knoledge. Sure *we* can see past this and get facts, but *we* dont line their pockets either...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
Because if they did that they would create market doubt and user doubt on the verracity of google. They are whatthey are now not because people like the "google" word but because they offer the most correct result up to now, without a vendor/advertising bias. Should they switch to the same result than MSN the outcry would be enormous and rightfully the monopoly comision could again look at such practice of supressing concurrence by borderline legal means.
In the first case (market/user doubt) a new search engine would quickly birth. Whether he could replace google is a matter but i forsee million of geek switching imemdiatly to the new search engine.
In the second case in the US and in EU a lot of outcry on unfair competition would rise, and that is quite not what they need at them moment especially with the EU inquiries. Even more I suspect if they shunt down the link then the Eu would quickly raise a brow even quicker than with the media player.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
As you pointed out, you must go to the NEXT PAGE, which is unacceptable. If someone just looks at the first page, they only get the 16 'sponsered' results of LINUX->MS migration techiniques and biased spec sheets.
always clear why Microsoft wanted Google
"he who controls the spice controls the universe"
or i guess in this case
he who controls the search controls the product placement
In this day and time no one would argue that information equals power. and while microsoft may be filtering results that a user may acquire, its all marketing. Microsoft has tried to bust into the search engine business and failed. Search engines are powerful portals to a world we dont know anything about. the simple truth is if they control the most popular search engine then they have an incredibly powerful marketing tool. And while granted there biggest treat is Linux. there are other treats out there and if they control ones access to that information then they have power.
and when people try to cry foul, 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.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Search google and msn for "linux advantages"
I got 450k hits on msn and only 350k hits from google.
The first page on msn were positive articles... not links to MS sites saying there were none.
Clearly someone at MSN has screwed up!
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
For example... Beer.
Google versus MSN
Or how about... trucks?
Google versus MSN
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
No it isn't. Did you *actually* go to the MSN site or are you just trolling.
The MSN search clearly states:
Results 1-15 of about 16 containing "linux windows"
OTOH...
Results 1-15 of about 126572 containing "microsoft sucks"
Bill!! Save us! We actually have weirdos who wade through 9 million hits! Save us, please! 16 is all we need!
When I put an incomplete term into the address bar of Windows Explorer on my Winxp workstation, I am often redirected to the MSN search page.
Apparently, IE isn't the only MS program that defaults to using MSN search.
Just tested it on win2k, not only did I get MSN Search, I even get a popup!
Where's my tinfoil hat?!?
Just for fun, I tried a few other searches. In order of relevance:
linux windows - 16 results
microsoft is a fundamentally evil monopolist - 115 results
windows - 2373 results
microsoft ate my balls - 6207 results
so we can all see where their heads are at...
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
Could Microsoft's desire to buy Google have to do with Google actually making a profit? Seriously, Fletcher's claims of Microsoft trying to censor web content is preposterous. MSN search results are "limited" is because sites that want to be "found" on MSN have to pay. No one has to pay to be on Google. Google makes money because advertisers know that's the first place anyone will go to find anything on anything. With that kind of audience, Google can ask a lot for page space.
I think you all need to take a step back and look at the big picture. It isn't about censorship. It's about profit, pure and simple. Would you take over a competitor that was failing and had absolutely no potential to turn itself around?
GOBACK.
Searched the web for Linux.
Did you mean: Windows
Searched the web for Free Software.
Did you mean: Capitalism
Searched the web for speaker bracelets
Did you mean: Microsoft Windows
Searched the web for candle trucks
Did you mean: Microsoft Windows
...And, it returns a pop-under for your trouble. So, I get sponsered links, and then a pop under, and then another click, and I can get the results I was looking for.
Wow, the mind boggles.
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.Google's best asset is the trust that people have in them to return useful unbiased results.
The moment that trust is lost, another search engine will gladly step forward to fill the void.
It would be a sad day indeed to see Google fall to Microsoft or other greedy commercial interests, but it would not be the end of the world.
Does anyone here think that Microsoft, just maybe, Wanted Google because it works better?
Does Everything MS do have to have some Ulterior "Lets do X to screw Linux today!" Motive behind it?
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
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."
I hear that during a Google company meeting a couple weeks ago, the crowd was asked if they'd heard the rumor about Microsoft buying Google. Then they were asked to raise their hands if they believed the rumor. Only one person raised his hand - founder Larry Page. I like his sense of humor. ;)
That little exercise showed no bias at all! Let me try my own experiment... I'll search for "powerpoint":
Google: 6,260,000 hits
MSN: 14 hits
I conclude that Microsoft is trying to kill their own PowerPoint product (even more than they want to kill Linux!). Thankfully, the people at Google must rely on PowerPoint so much, they want to make sure to keep the word out there.
Or... stay with me here... maybe Google has a more powerful and capable search engine that can harvest more results. I suppose its possible THAT could explain why Microsoft would want to buy them.
It's possible such a takeover could be blocked by European competition law (yes, I appreciate neither is a European company, but it's hardly viable to have google separately owned in Europe but owned by Microsoft in the States).
Does anybody know or has anybody read anything on what the US anti-trust position would be?
Actually, most people asked a tech to disable it for them the first time the computer went into the shop for anything. I can't tell you how many times I've turned that thing off for people... along with changing their homepage (my internet is provided by Yahoo!), removing some bookmarks (but I've never BEEN to hotteenlesbians.com!), and "installing Google.com" (I can't use Google, I told you my internet is from Yahoo!).
I guarantee you these people and others like them have racked up plenty of hits for MSN's advertisers because they don't even know they're "allowed" to use another search engine!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
MSN:
34 pancakes
41 waffles
232 frogs
695 sky
3117 tree
Goooooogle - said "...about xxx,xxx"
791,000 pancakes
412,000 waffles
640,000 frogs
20,700,000 sky
37,600,000 tree
Which proves Microsoft hates pancakes, waffles, frogs, the sky and trees. Bastards!
Click the "Next" button a few times on that "Linux Windows" search.
You'll see:
Results 31-45 of about 8897853
Would hate to Slashdot Google
Mirror
--
Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
Try "evil empire microsoft" ... www.microsoft.com
The first result on MSN is
I'm pretty sure that I've heard of a few virii or worms going around that, among other things, blocked google. What an amazing coincidence... Anyways, here goes M$ with more anticompetitive behavior, maybe if we all get really pissed and make a big deal of it they'll get fined $500k. Nothing we can do about it. Oh well, shit happens, at least they're losing customers to apache. That's a start, all we need is to get linux more popular as an os for all those aol users out there
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
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.
Results 1-15 of about 50 containing ""charles dickens""
Going to the next page gives 16-30 and so on.
It is only the patient searcher who will discover that after all 45 of the 50 hits are seen that there are 151383 results left to go.
So I agree, its not that MSN Search is biased against Linux. It is that MSN Search is biased toward those willing to spend money to be listed. And (as a direct effect of that) MSN Search is biased against those trying to find information.
They're not being dishonest for ideological reasons - they're just not interested in honesty or usefulness so much as they're interested in selling themselves. (I'll resist direct comparisons with the kind of prostitutes who are honest about what they're doing.) (OK, so my resistance crumbled.)
And of course, they'll never go broke underestimating the american public.
I'd wager a bet that most of us replying to this thread use the internet for research purposes daily. The fact that I just searched for linux on http://search.msn.com and came up with roughly 350+ hits shows that the owner of that search engine wants to limit my access to content on that topic. I think it's time for legislation involving search engines providing information on how they provide their results. Microsoft is obviously either blocking results that pertain to Linux or they need to state exactly how their search engine works if this is not the case.
Perhaps someone needs to explain how capitalism is supposed to work to the clueless Google management team. Looks like they still think that offering a better product/service translates into financial gain for the company.
Don't they know anything about changing a horizontal market into a vertical one, locking users in with Digital Restrictions Management, absolving all sense of responsibility with a EULA, and ensuring product obsolescence?
Amazing that these guys could even find funding with their cluelessness. Must've occurred during the irrational dot-com business-model era in the 90's.
MSN results (yes, I read about sponsored links):
office - 5204
windows - 2373
server - 2121
money - 982
terrorism - 249
osama - 103
bill gates - 63
linus torvalds - 323738
Then you can go out and market OSS for 'us'.
.
You seem to misunderstand what i was saying. The average citizen reads and believes what he sees in the media, this includes places such as Google.
If all they see is one thing ( in this case, Microsoft ) then they will believe this is the only option. That is just human behavior.
While I agree we need to educate people ( and I do my part, do you? ) this does nothing for the *rest* of the world that doesn't get exposure except via the mass media, which 'teach your friend' doesn't qualify.. This is where things such as controlling search engine content come into play.. Or control of content on TV ( MSNBC as an example )
How do you propose to solve that, since you seem to think you know so much?
Calling them 'average consumer' isn't a insult, its f-ing reality.. Its how the mass consumer world works.. MOST people are 'average consumers'. And they could really care less about this.. all they care about is what they are spoon fed.. You should read up about basic marketing techniques before you spout off again..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, if I understand you - which I probably don't - Microsoft is a Bad, Evil Thing for being biased.... in favor of it's own products? So... they own a search engine and that bias shows. But, nobody has to actually use that site. But that doesn't matter because Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to act in its own best interests to reach its stated goal of making money when people actively choose to get information from them or remain willfully ignorant of alternative sources? So, it's Microsoft's fault that people are stupid and easily leveraged for cash flow?
Christ man... if you're going to bash Microsoft for being the Evil Empire go ahead, but at least pick one of the 82 million things that they actually ought to be blamed for. Funny thing about owning your own informational sources - you can be as bloody biased as you want. I don't see anything on MSN that says they're Fair and Balanced like good old Fox news.... er... wait.. I mean.. they ARE fair and balanced exactly the way Fox News is, they just don't lie about it like Fox does. Hell.. if they weren't biased in favor of their own products they'd just be idiots.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
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.
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.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
They can do whatever they want with their own search engine.
But what's happened is that, in part because they use it as an ad channel rather than a straightforward search engine, users don't find it very useful and tend to use the competition (primarily google) instead. Now, MS has a captive market consisting of those people who don't realise they can change browsers and use other search sites, but that's far from the whole market, and the rest of us don't typically use MSN - we use google. So far, so good, this is the way the market is supposed to operate. If MSN wants to stick with their captives and push ads, so be it. If they want to become attractive to the rest of us, though, they'll have to give that ad channel up.
So, MicroSoft thinking at it's best, what they want to do instead is just buy Google and turn it into an MSN clone, removing that choice and making the whole market captive again! THIS is what upsets people.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Linux is more popular than Jesus.
Linux
Alta Vista 12,435,923
Google 96,900,000
msn 365
Yahoo 55,200,000
Dog Pile (Infospace) 102
Lycos 26,838,236
Excite 111
Alltheweb 17,082,765
Jesus
Alta Vista 6,377,521
Google 23,800,000
msn 432
Yahoo 15,900,000
Dog Pile (Infospace) 114
Lycos 34,032,913
Excite 107
Alltheweb 26,131,824
Interesting to note, a search of Infospace and Microsoft on Google comes up with 35,000 hits. Further reading indicates a large number of partnering going on.
Conspiracy or just bad search engines?
WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL.
Much akin to the progress indicator for transferring this file has been saying 30seconds for more than an hour.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Ah yes, searching on google for xxx. We've all been there.
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
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
It would be a good choice if the "featured sites" weren't the paid ones. MSN not only shows you the paid listings first, they're intentionally making it difficult to see beyond them. Thats borderline unethical, imo.
Give up comparing the number of results by query! It's NOT ACCURATE. The MSN search is buggy, which should be apparent to anyone who hits the "NEXT >>" button a few times.
The number of results changes frequently (but not always), and you never reach the suggested limit. For example, "waffles" is only supposed to have 41 matches, but continues long past 100.
This is really a silly exercise and not a great measure of bias.
Um, Linux is Jesus, where have you been? You know, right? It saves us?
We can't find "127.0.0.1"
You can try again by typing the URL in the address bar above.
Or, search the Web:
Go to MSN Search to see complete results for "127.0.0.1".
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Wow. Now that's a comprehensive search if I ever saw one.
I don't know if this was mentioned already but while "Windows" only gets around 2,300 hits "Windows Sucks" gets around 211,000 hits.
I was going to compare this to the number of Mac vs Mac sucks hits, but I had to stop when I did the Mac sucks search and the first entry was "Why Microsoft sucks".
Results 16-30 of about 8661564 containing "linux windows"
I think Microsoft really just wanted to buy Google because Microsoft's own search engine can't count very well. It would be cheaper for MS to invest in someone elses technology to implement this feature than to try to wrangle their own exotic technology to return "number of results found." Or so I speculate...
I am too; stylistically I wouldn't choose to state it as above, but I am a fan of accountability for individuals and corporations alike. If your position were a machievellian one that rationalizes doing something because it's possible to do then I wouldn't agree, but if I understand correctly then perhaps you and I simply have a different threshhold of what we'd consider "stupid" in this particular case. It seems your position that when people don't have an awareness of how search results may be skewed in favor of a given business, then they deserve to be taken advantage of and critics should be silent.
I think there's a component of untruthful advertising to this issue. Microsoft may not actually commit themselves to objectivity by saying "our search results are unbiased with regard to any commercial interests" but it's not an unreasonable expectation of a search engine; after all, google has set the precedent of making money via advertisements, not by covert manipulation of results.
If I drive past a gas station and ask to have my engine checked, the station may well try to bilk me out of money by claiming I need more work done than is the case. There are ways for the station to claim this without technically breaking the law, but I don't regard myself as stupid for not knowing enough about cars to certify the station's results; at least not stupid in a perjorative way. And, I wouldn't regard the station as on uncriticizable moral ground for doing so. This may all come down to my world vision, where I'd like to steer the world towards honest exchanges without people stabbing each other in the back at every opportunity. I realize that not everybody wants to live in such a world.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Webcrawler- 116 hits for "porn", but only 36 for "nuclear fusion".
I sense a pro-pornography, anti-nuclear bias in Webcrawler!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The maximum number of hits a particular search can sustain is between 5 and 100.
:) So there's some really smart AI there.
This was a great surprise to the engineers building search engines -- the original problem was, how do we find particular keywords across hundreds of millions of documents? This was solved relatively trivially -- index by keyword, and distribute the search space across the memory of many, many machines. All of the sudden, it became apparent that search had much less to do with how much you could search and much more to do with which results came up first.
That's a much harder problem -- fundamentally, without the user telling you what he wants, how can you figure out what he's most likely to desire? This actually uses artificial intelligence techniques, much to the consternation of the eternally discredited AI folk who point out that "the moment AI becomes useful, it ceases to be called AI" (which is true). It's AI because you effectively need to programmatically derive what an intelligent surfer is most interested in, as an abstract subject instead of a concrete phrase. Google gets alot of credit for their Pagerank algorithm, which uses links from other sites to weigh which links are more "authoritative" than others, but interestingly enough their system is noticably robust even without outside links. Corporate websites all tend to run 1998-era search engines -- all quantity, no quality (and in this case, quantity has no quality all its own). Some time ago, I worked at a massive company that was testing Google for internal searches. Corporate web pages are far less cross-linked than the web itself. But Google-internal worked just like...well, Google
Anyway, as I've said before, MS can't buy Google; they'd just create the market segment of "what Google used to be". Speaking as someone who has a healthy respect for MS as a company, they've simply burned through too much goodwill for people to trust their search results as authoritative. Yes, mysql only gets a few hits on MSN search. So does pancakes, and I doubt MS is part of the great Waffle Iron Conspiracy.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Google would be a great deal if Microsoft could purchase it. Look at all that white space on the main search page. Just think how many Microsoft ads could fill that space. It would be better ad space the MSN messenger is. .net technology to the pages and Google would only work with a Windows PC running IE.
With googles technology MS could weed out redundant and taboo topics like Linux, UNIX, Mac, Opera, Quicken and the like. Add MS
Of course right now Google is designed to be quick loading, simple and efficient which pretty much goes against Microsoft software guidelines. Then again it might be better if Google had a search wizard and a paper clip avatar showing you how to search the net.
Much akin to the progress indicator for transferring this file has been saying 30seconds for more than an hour.
Hey, give them some credit where credit is due. They have made some tremendous speed boosts when it comes to progress bars. That first 99% goes by in only 1% of the time. You can't get that kind of performance under Linux.
Here are the results for different OSes:
OS: Google vs. MSN
aix: 3,550,000 vs. 40
solaris: 8,340,000 vs. 87
tru64: 676,000 vs. 93,433
hp-ux: 1,890,000 vs. 287,294
ms windows: 6,650,000 vs. 291
vms: 1,770,000 vs. 22
os2: 702,000 vs. 118,273
linux: 96,800,000 vs. 365
freebsd: 8,810,000 vs. 1,136,552
openbsd: 3,500,000 vs. 341,343
netbsd: 4,750,000 vs. 223,075
unix: 23,700,000 vs. 164
symbian: 1,400,000 vs. 420,701
"windows 2000": 6,750,000 vs. 315
"windows xp": 970,000 vs. 297
"windows server 2003": 4,170,000 vs. 30
Here's an interesting one... try searching for 'Linux' on msn. 300 odd hits, right? Now try searching for 'Linux sucks'... Whoa....!
The Enquirer completely missed the real story. Try searching on more specific terms:
:)
google.com.au:
'Microsoft Windows' ~= 7,560,000
'Debian Linux' ~= 3,900,000
search.msn.com:
'Debian Linux' ~= 793,659
'Microsoft Windows' ~= 713 (!)
This demonstrates the opposite of the kind of bias The Enquirer was alleging...
Is Microsoft limiting Windows search results to only 'approved pages'? How can there be only 700 pages dealing with Microsoft Windows? Unless they're truly *ridiculously* incompetent, which I don't buy. Or unless they are losing some serious market share to Debian!
Now there's a happy thought.
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...