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Microsoft Hopes Prizes Will Attract New Searchers
BertieBaggio writes "Remember the long-running e-mail hoax that had Bill Gates testing an "e-mail tracing program" and offering to pay recipients big bucks if they passed his test e-mail along to all their friends? Well, the offer is true, sort of. Microsoft wants you to use its search engine, and it's got $1 million worth of prizes up for grabs for those who nibble at the offer. Following Yahoo's recent consideration of offering prizes to searchers, is this another tactic to lure users away from Google with candy and other shiny things?"
I ain't falling for this again. I've sent in about 20 of those damn e-mails and haven't got a thing from Bill.
You can fool me once, twice, heck.... even 20 times. But twenty-one? Heck no! I'm not as dumb as I look (and my mommy tells me I look pretty dumb).
Now, I have to get back to my e-mail and find out what funny, amazing thing will happen when I forward this e-mail to 18 of my closest friends... I only have 5 minutes to do it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Apple is doing something similar with the iTunes Music Store Billion Song Countdown, and I don't think they giving away prizes to try and lure users away from Napster.
What is the quality of MSN's search engine like? Does it rival that of Google?
Indeed, Microsoft does have the resources to create a very powerful product, but that is often not what is done, as shown by many of their past products.
Then again, I'll use whatever search engine returns the best results, regardless of what prizes they might be offering searchers. The prizes would have to be pretty significant for me to want to put up with what may be lower-quality searches.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
It's so useful they have to pay you to use it.
What we need is another search engine that isn't under the control of any one group. I'm not sure how this would be possible though, but with how these companies have caved in with censorship, we need a search engine that can't be controlled in such a way, like the internet can not be controlled effectively.
I really have no idea how this could be achieved but having the search engines under the control of these corporations has proven bad for the interests of the public, well the Chinese public at the moment, but there is nothing that would make it very difficult for other governments to have their countries search results censored.
There is mozdex which seems to be an open-source (I think it uses java though, so I wouldn't really say it's free-software) search engine project. But it's probably again open to the same form of abuse, being under the control of one entity, I believe.
I really hope that Google doesn't jump on this bandwagon. I'd much rather see them invest any prize money towards making their system better. $1 million isn't much to a company like Google, but that's still enough to pay a number of developers and researchers for even a year's worth of development and innovation.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
No details on how this works but can turn loose a perl/lwp script and let it run all night and wake up a winner! Something tells me they have thought of this angle.
Does google deliberately ignore links to other search engines?
It would be a riot to find a 'winning search' somewhere in Google's cached pages.....
you have to bribe people to use it instead of the competition.
The Microsoft mindset can be summed up in four words: You can buy anything.
It doesn't matter what it is you want; maybe you want to control a market, maybe you want to manufacture a quality video game console, maybe you want to create a public perception that you are a good company, maybe you want to be found innocent of breaking the law. For all problems, there is exactly one solution, and it always works: throw money at the problem. If this doesn't work, then increase the amount of money you throw.
Here we see the logical end conclusion of this kind of thinking. In this case, what Microsoft wants is users for its mediocre also-ran search engine. And the way they are attaining this is to simply buy some, by paying people to use their search engine.
Google isn't the only search engine?!?!?
I find that although many people are liberal in beliefs, they are conservative in actions.
I honestly wonder if the million in prizes makes up for the extra time collectively people spend trying to find the information they need instead of Googling it in the first place?
I ate your fish.
I'm an understanding fellow.
I understand fanatic thought.
I attributed roughly 90% of all 'slashvertisement' accusations as such. Fanatics who can't understand that sometime, yeah, its a sales pitch AND information...and even the more delicate nature of balancing financial interest versus blatant soul-less advertisting versus keeping the site alive. (they gotta pay for my favorite blog/news site somehow)
I never really saw it like this before. I just did, and it breaks my heart a little.
The most blatant astroturfing I have ever seen on slashdot.
Could that article summary have been worded any more loaded? Sure, a vast majority of us realize what it is and wouldn't waste our time...but out of the tens and tens of thousands that are on here regularly (hundreds of thousands occasionally)....perhaps much more than that even..... but...if only 10% of all people click on that link and sign up, well....that's stil a metric shit-ton of people....and with language like that I'm surely being conservative.
Sorry for the rant, mod me off into oblivion.... I just.... had to tell somebody... ~Dan
But I didn't win :(
This post patent pending.
A study was done in the last year on the typical users of the major search engines. Google had the bulk of intelligent, young, and wealthy, Yahoo and Google split the average person, and MSN followed it up with mostly uneducated and low income. I suspect that some of Yahoo's will go to MSN for the prize, but Google's? Not likely. They are a bit brighter than that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"I'm sorry but using prizes to get people to use your search engine means you obviously don't have the technology to lure people. When something can't become popular by word of mouth it probably isn't that great. When someone has to GIVE you something to use their service, then it must be pretty bad."
Actually, I am not too sure about that. Google is the market leader for search engines. My hdefault page is Google search and has been for years. If Microsoft has a better product, I wouldn't even know about it because I am satisfied with Google.
One thing about Microsoft, they know business. They know every clean and dirty trick in the book. This promotion is designed to get users using the search engine for a period of time. Getting them accustomed to it. This marketing campaign will only be effective if their product has some superior aspects to the Google search engine. I don't think Microsoft would be dumb enough to pull this if they had nothing to offer.
Word of mouth is not the most effective advertising method, and it is never sufficient to rapidly penetrate a market.
Baldy: (grumbling about killing google - off camera) .. uh .. Google's
Bill : Steve, we need a new innovation.
Baldy: (grumbles about google search.. and killing it)
Bill : That's a great idea, we need a search engine! Like
Baldy: (erupting in a maniacal tantrum) I'll fucking kill Google! (throws chair)
Bill : I guess this has already been done... hey wait a minute. Google isn't *paying* anyone to use their search engine!! We can pay people to use our search engine!! What do you think Steve?
Baldy: (chewing on shoelaces, mumbling)
Bill : I think it's a splendid Idea! Release the prize hounds immediately!
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
See the Flock browser: it works really well, faster than FF, and it's still Gecko-based. And it has a search-history feature that's quite nice. http://www.flock.com/
OK, I've exaggerated a little bit since this isn't a Google-sponsored thing, but Blingo provides prizes for using them as your search engine (and the search engine is of course run through Google).
;-)
Now if you'll excuse me, I've just gotten the facts and need to convert my server that I've been running on Linux the past year or so for absolutely nothing to Windows Server 2003, since it's less expensive in the long run
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Iwon is still alive and kicking. Just waiting for somebody to buy them up. I don't use MSN search, but I've noticed that most of the people that reach my blog from a search engine are coming from MSN. Them seem to index even little ol' me very quickly.
The problem is you actually do want control of the search engine by one group. The reason for this is that search engines are not about finding a source for information. Search engines are about finding an authoritative source for information. If you just want sites about "skiing", well, there are thirty thousand of those. When you search, you want to pick the ten most important. Which are those? Well, we don't want our search under the control of any one group, so let's solve this democratically. What groups might be able to tell us what skiing sites are important? Well, there's thirty thousand authoritative sources on the subject of skiing right here, the skiing sites themselves, and every single one of them thinks they are the most important one.
Wait, that doesn't work at all. We now have thirty thousand equally important answers to our query, where we only wanted ten. What now?
The internet itself serves the goal of information sources not under the control of any one group. This is not what you want out of a search engine. Search engines assume information sources are plentiful, and attempt to provide a single, authoritative source which provides a singular value judgement as to which sources are most important. This value judgement cannot work democratically, because the information sources have a vested interest in promoting their information sources over other information sources whether their value is greater or not.
The only way to reconcile the philosophical desire for decentralization with the inherently centralized nature of search engines is to create projects which exist to collaboratively rate many sources. This goal is currently served by projects like dmoz, digg or stumbleupon. They unfortunately are only able to catalog a very small portion of the internet, because the raters are human beings, not robots like those that create the google index.
You get a Pi/2 (1.57%) discount at Amazon.com if you use the A9 search engine. No competition, everyone who uses it regularly gets it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Any IT people try to search their knowledge base? Of course you have. Which means you probably know it's easier most of the time to type any error message in on Google, which usually finds the correct KB article.
Then again, hopefully their KB doesn't use the same engine as MSN.
Dear Bill,
I'd rather have my money back from my one purchase of Windows 95 for $80. I'd also like back my $300 purchase of Windows NT4. Microsoft owes me $160 on the two Windows 98 CDs I purchased, along with the $84 dollar Windows 98SE I bought which wiped out my OS/2 partition. I do have Windows 2000 PRO which I bought online for $120. Its OK for development, but it sucks at playing games.
I bought for $40, Windows 3.0. I have two original copies (twelve+ disks each) of Windows 3.11 at $45 apiece. When I had an ARCNET network here at home, I spent another $45 on Windows for Workgroups. I also own, all the original MS DOS floppys from 3.3 which I purchased legally (but I can't remember the price).
I spent $300 dollars on my copy of Office 6, and purchased the Office95 upgrade for $100. Now its worthless because you have changed the office formats.
Bill, Im not buying XP/Vista because I shouldn't have to ask your permission to install software I buy off the store shelf.
I'd like my money back. Stop giving prizes and give us what we paid for.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
I dont know what the big deal is. I win stuff while browsing the web all the time! IPods, ring tones, xbox 360's. Often to claim the prize I will need to guess my favorite color (which I never get wrong) or verify that the following box is indeed flashing (which it has always been). I am also frequently the millionth viewer of a webpage, making my time spent online even more lucrative. You're probably astounded by my good luck and find it hard to believe, but it's true!
It IS a dirty trick:
Quote from the Official Rules:
6) ELIGIBILITY: This Promotion is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, 18 years of age or older at the time of entry.
The prizes will be received only by Fat Old Americans - who - as anyone knows - cannot properly use a computer.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
About 10 years, in the browser war, Mr Microsoft was giving stuff free to custeromes, to beat Netscape. 10 years later, the same Mr Microsoft is giving prize to customers, to beat Google. I cannot image what will happen 10 years from now. Will they give out stocks to customers?