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Inspecting MSN Search
ins0maniac writes "I compared Yahoo, Google and MSN's image search. I noticed that, MSN's search had images from only a few sites. I searched for keywords britney spears and randomly checked few pages upto page number 20 and found that the 400 images were only from 3 domains :| 5in9.com, celebritypicturesarchive.com and nabou.com. This is totally weird as it doesn't seem like a search engine, but a collection of few online galleries." There's a number of other interesting notes in the entry about the new search engine. Also, Britney.
I already have all 400 of those.
... that's why I love science. You can find the best reasons to do the weirdest things ... ;-)
..Is a revenue stream. The galleries in question probably pay for dominance. Yeah, this seems contrary to a full free search, but at least the results are on subject.
The real task, it would seem, would be to find a way to have the engine return the proper pictures for the proper searches (so typing in Daddy's birthday doesn't result in pictures of some 50 something dude banging some barely legal chick with a party hat on.)
Stuff like that.
Other searches don't appear to be similar. I'm guessing that perhaps these companies have paid for higher placement on the example used in the article?
I searched for "britney spears nude goat dildo sparcstation" and didn't find a single thing.
discussions that- if google put adwords on the image search results, they were potentially crossing the line of using copyrighted works without permission- to turn a profit - perhaps MSN is only image searching/displaying where they have been given permission to display copyrighted images...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
http://mirrordot.com/stories/5defdb2c0e9cac7c89624 a2594f96717/index.html
mirrordot doesn't seem to have archived all the images yet though...
For research, I checked out some of those pictures returned by the Britney search.
Many of the thumbnails displayed aren't the same picture that's retrieved when you click on the link. So, their cache must be outdated already. When I'm browsing thumbnails, I expect...no I demand...my search engine to return the appropriate photos!
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
I don't really expect anything from MSN search at this point, it will require some major fine-tuning to become really powerful.
On the other hand, I don't expect any reviews of MSN search to be any good so early on either. Simply because, if you're a googler or some other search engine user, you like what that one offers for a reason; switching is hard.
I'm no MS supporter, but do you think this might be because the new search engine has been crawling the web for a fraction of the length of time Yahoo and Google have been crawling the web?
"Also, Britney" is an indirect reference to the amusement one feels due to the relevance of Britney Spears in this story. It also serves as a masculine form of code-speech in the form of silence, the silent element which follows "Also, Britney" best interpreted as "You know what I mean? She's hot, right?"
I think I'll stop here.
...and the very first link on the page (under "sponsored sites") is:
www.microsoft.com
Windows outperforms Linux: Industry case studies and test lab results provide insight into the advantages of the Microsoft®...
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The original article has been /.'ed already, but there's a cogent point to be made:
Unless the images are titled, tagged, annotated, etc., there's no good way to index them.
If I just throws a bunch of images up on a web site, there's not good technology, other than some pretty advanced facial recognition stuff, that can determine who, or what, a particular picture represents.
Change the resolution, color depth, etc. and I change the checksum for the image, so the index fails to recognize that one picture is the "same" as another, just resized, etc.
I see a lot of that on Google's image search - but can't find a way around it, either.
this is contrary to google image search where it's not simply searching for filenames. google search seems to understand that images of britney spears need not have "britney" and "spears" in the filename.
The MSN Search right now is too new to get an accurate reading on how it is going to ultimately perform.
Google has been around for years spidering sites where MSN Search has only been around for a few months.
The real test is going to be a year from now, when it's had more than enough time to spider a good portion of the web. Even Google's search paled in comparison to Altavista at first until at least 6 months passed. After a year passed its searches were much better since a good portion of the web was spidered by it.
At this point in the game, It would have to be an absoletly amazing site to take Google out, and I don't think MSN Search is the site thats going to do it.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Would you rather the author did an image search on RMS?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Searching for 'bill gates' in MSN returns the page Bill Gates As Mabus. Apparently this project is dedicated to finding the human manifestation of the anti-Christ.
None of the first 10 results (searching from the uk) return his homepage.
Searching with Google turns up Bill Gates' Web Site - Home Page.
Which means: Stick to Google.
Treo + Kaffi = Traffi
Your logic is true for more than just webpages. It spans basically Microsoft's entire software library. Balmer's arrogantly stated that it "one mistake" was that it didn't get involved in the 'search' industry earlier, but anyone who has followed Microsoft's trail can tell you that thier late to the table more often than not. And even when they are on time, the product is often a faulty or damaged good that doesn't operate at the level of other competitor products.
Ex.
-IE debacle, where Microsoft played catch-up to Netscape and other existing browsers after failing to neglect thier need in earlier years.
-Direct3D, which played second fiddle to OpenGL for years in usability and features till Microsoft finally began adopting parts of OpenGL's paradigm for computer graphics.
-The modern desktop GUI. A product of Apple in many respects, but later was adopted by Microsoft.
-Powerpoint, Visio and other 'Office' products. They were created by other companies, and then consumed by Microsoft.
And the list goes on and on. Today thier trying to same with hand-held media players (derived from the success of iPods), search technologies (coming from Yahoo, Google, and other succesfull search/advertisement ventures), spyware detection and many other Microsoft 'Innovations' that are soon to hit the market.
Perhaps this guy didn't know the default setting on MSN search is to group results by domain. Maybe he should try agian with this setting off if he wants to see more variety of domains providing Britney pics.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Well, I think this demonstrates that in order to be successful you don't need to be the first to do something, but the first to do it successfully. They might not have come up with a lot of their leading products, but in the end they came up with something that beat the competition in the market, i.e.:
Internet Explorer: Played catch-up to Netscape, caught it up, then overtook it. Now it's the world's widest-used and most well-known browser and Netscape was beaten into obscurity.
Direct3D: Might have been behind OpenGL, but they took the qualities of OpenGL and made a product that at least matches it on features and blows it out of the water in regards to market share.
Modern Desktop GUI: Yes they were playing catch-up with Apple, who in turn got the concept from Xerox, but they worked on the idea and now they have practically the whole desktop market saturated so much that even a possibly technically-superior free operating system struggles to get a foothold.
Office products? Yes they may have been created by other companies, but Microsoft took them, and all 'Clippy' jokes aside, they turned it into a very decent product and it's dominated the market, and the 'other companies' are languishing on the sidelines.
You may like to bash Microsoft for taking on other people's ideas, but what company only sells things they've entirely invented from scratch? Apple didn't invent MP3 players, Google didn't invent search engines, I don't see you bashing them, the originators of most technologies are dead and buried because they didn't do anything with them.
In the real world, if you invent something, unless you patent it or implement it successfully, no-one cares that you invented it.
> what about "natalie portman naked petrified hot grits"?
It's really odd you mention that. That's exactly how I got *here*.
However,
It would be ok if microsofts success with "borrowed" ideas was because they implemented them better than anyone else. But they don't. They're successful because they abuse their monopoly status. And that's worthy of bashing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Finally, MS has never really been known as an industry leader. They are a huge marketing machine. There's nothing wrong with that, you just have to realize that you don't have to be a market leader to be a success. I think that classic "tech" people often forget this.