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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?
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.
For example... Beer.
Google versus MSN
Or how about... trucks?
Google versus MSN
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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.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."
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
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Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
They wont understand either...
Sure *we* can see past this and get facts, but *we* dont line their pockets either...
Did you ever stop to think that one of the reasons people don't support or take the time to learn about the various OSS movements is because of high-brow, elitist comments such as yours?
Instead of alienating the "average consumer", perhaps we should be working as hard as possible to present a viable alternative without all the attitude. If we perpetuate an image that Linux users are different from the "average consumer", then guess what, we will be the only ones using it.
Linux, as many OSS projects, is not too dissimilar from a business in many ways, except that instead of a highly trained marketing department, it has us. That is a greatly simplified statement, but I think it stands to reason.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
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.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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.
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.
Much akin to the progress indicator for transferring this file has been saying 30seconds for more than an hour.
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