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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.
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visit randi.org
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?
Bill!! Save us! We actually have weirdos who wade through 9 million hits! Save us, please! 16 is all we need!
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.
...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.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."
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.
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!
Would hate to Slashdot Google
Mirror
--
Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
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.
Yes, but the question is: why would you have to hit Next a few times to see the actual number of results?
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...
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
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.
Try George W. Bush. I just did. It'll say something on the order of 301 hits. Scroll through the pages to the last hit. Suddenly, the number jumps through the roof. I find it hard to believe that the first 300 hits are all sponsored links. I think something else is going on here: MSN has not only sponsored links, but some kind of edited directory scheme going here, and it doesn't care to let you know that the first number it quoted is of those links which are sponsored or added editorial, and the second number is a raw search result.
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 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.
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