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Microsoft Workers Prefer Google
dhollist writes "A story just released by the Inquirer shows that 80% of incoming search requests from Microsoft's domain arrived via Google's search engine. In contrast, 64% of Yahoo! staff and 100% of Google staff use their own company's search engine.
How's that for a product endorsement? I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet."
Film at 11.
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free flying chair screensaver
over to ask.com and haven't looked back. While ask.com may have a smaller catalog of indexed sites, the signal-to-noise ratio is far and away better.
I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet.
Personally, I would keep the floodgates open. What better metric do you have than if you own employees use your product? If they shut it they'll have a harder time estimating how successful they are at capturing the search market.
Generally, there are three components to a successful marketing campaign: Awareness, Trial, and Repurchase. MS has the benefits of Awareness and Trial at with their own employee base and are just sucking at the last portion. Once they get that right internally, they've got the pockets to tackle the first two.
There are a handful of pages that proxy to google... for example.
Specmanship at its finest.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Google, unlike Microsoft, is a company which found success by providing the best product.
Usually it's Microsoft employees who are drinking the coolaid.
How we know is more important than what we know.
While it would fit with human nature if Microsoft blocked Google on their intranet, it makes more sense for Microsoft to use this in-house as a barometer of their own performance: if Google use falls, and Microsearch use rises, then they're succeding; if the opposite happens, then they're doing something wrong.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
The sample size, for this single person's site, is around ~500.
Hardly statistically adequate.
This is an attention grabbing fluff piece.
... visiting via a search engine.
For a company with what about 50000 worldwide employees?
Hmm.
... even if I had the chance to work in Microsoft. I know I don't!
http://blog.enrii.com - a web tech blog
Why Slashdot would link an Inquirer story is beyond me. Maybe Slashdot is for entertainment purposes only, but "News for Nerds" ought to be supported by some attempt at Fact. The Inquirer is just a machine meant to cause a ruckus for the purpose of page hits... any ounce of partiality or balance of truth be damned if it detracts from the hit count.
Linking stories from the front page is just feeding it. It's not news.
Given the VisitorVille's error margins (e.g. +192.08%) their sample size is crap. Can I hotlink here? http://intelligence.visitorville.com/images/vvi-fr ont-tn.gif if not, just see their site.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
"I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet"
That would reduce productivity.
Let's see, a tiny sample size and a web site that refers to Microsoft as "the Vole" isn't enough to derail this bad boy from its trip to the front page. After all, it's anti-MS so it MUST be true!
Wait... I have an idea!
1.) Write anti MS blog entry with lots of unsubstantiated or specious claims.
2.) Place tons of AdSense ads on it.
3.) Submit it to Slashdot.
4.) Sit back and watch the cash flow in!
Maybe Slashdot would like to release its server logs of the past five years so we can see what operating system the open source community uses?
Here's a standard template:
blah blah blah chair blah blah blah fucking kill Google blah blah blah
Task Mangler
I would be interested to see the stats for Firefox versus IE coming from Microsoft...
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
probably because it's the default search engine for Firefox :P
Why do I get the feeling "microsofts domain" included MSN.com, and the reviewer failed to point out that msn is actually an ISP as well. It's real easy for google to attain 100% when they don't actually serve any end users. The results just reek of setup to me.
Apparently you haven't been on Slashdot too long. There's not much fact here; just entertainment for fanboys of LUNIX...err, Linux and The Simpsons.
If you're looking for facts, turn to USA Today. If you're looking at venting some immature prepubescent frustration, come to Slashdot. You'll be welcomed with open arms.
"Vole" insider here...
.NET (CreateProcess):
.ru, discussing C. #7 cppreference.com, C. #8 more PHP. #9 MATLAB. and #10, more CPP.
I've used Google for ages now (6 or 7 years?). In my pre-"Vole" days I worked at a web startup and was constantly recommending Google to our customers - as well as working hard to make sure we showed up on Google.
But recently I've found Google to be doing a worse job when I'm searching for things I care about at work. It used to be the exact opposite. MSN used to never return anything close to what I wanted. Instead it gave me a bunch of jibber-jabber that I didn't care about. Today Google is the one full of jibber-jabber, and MSN is right on.
I'll give you an example. Now, if you're not an MS employee YMMV (FileSystemWatcher).
Google
MSN
Google: MSDN shows up #6
MSN: It's #1
Another example - if you're more into win32 vs
Google
MSN
Google: The MSDN documentation isn't even on the first page
MSN: It's #1
Ok, maybe it's just MS documenation where MSN is excelling... Let's try something else (fwrite):
Google
MSN
Ok, #1 is PHP for both, not what I expected, but hey, they're equal.
Google #2 is also PHO. #3 is opengroup, discussing C. So is #4. #5 is cplusplus.com, discussing C. #6, some
MSN gets PHP (as mentioned) for #1, C++ (cplusplus.com) as #2, and MATLAB as #3. From there on out it's a mixed bag of C and PHP, but most likely what you wanted was in the top 3.
It's a strange shift, but it seems like Google is starting to lose its edge.
all we need to know now is what % of google employees use a windows OS at google HQ. Merely to balance out the level of asinine statistics/articles in the world, naturally.
I've had the opportunity to work with several Microsoft groups over the years in development projects and one thing that always impressed me about the insight that I got about the culture there is that they are always allowed to use the best tools available. Regardless of whether it's a Microsoft tool or one of their competitors, management doesn't care. The objective is always to empower their employees with the best tools available. Of course, this also allows them better insight into what their competition is doing and helps them focus on the tools that they need to improve upon. I seriously doubt that you'll see MS blocking google.com anytime soon...
I recently visited a Microsoft facility in Redmond when the subject of search engines came up. One employee told me that they were "supposed to try MSN search first, but..." in a tone of voice that implied that they all just go straight to Google.
Come on. Can you blame them?
it's not strange at all, all the spammers are targetting google. As with all things, when the brilliant people who are on the "dark side" attack something, they win. Thi sis just another backup tot he poitn that linux/OSX would have just as many exploits as winblows if they were as popular.
warning, I am currently drunk, but I did figure out br so I am apparently not THAT drunk. That is all.
"Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet"
Microsoft is big, but I don't think they're big enough for google.com to be located on their intranet...?
If you RTFA and follow the links all the way to the data you will see that the conclusion is based on a whopping total of 105 hits from Microsoft, over 7 months. That is one hit every 2 days folks.
The disclaimer, "Note: My website gets limited traffic, so this data has a large margin for error. The data was taken from my website traffic between 2005-11-14 and 2006-06-17." doesn't even come close to cover it.
Google employees probably use Microsoft's Operating Systems more than they do Google's ;)
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
If you had read TFA you would have found the link to the real article which links to the original source, and found this:
http://andrewhitchcock.org/companystats/
Firefox has just under 10% from Microsoft, and about 80% from Google.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
MSN used to return "jibber-jabber" because they didn't have their own search engine. I think the engine they used was licensed from Yahoo, but I'm not sure. Only in the last two years, did MSN search start using a Microsoft-developed search engine.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
There is a really obvious flaw in the way these statistics are being interpreted that everyone seems to be ignoring. There are other flaws too, which have been mentioned, but the most important flaw is that the sample selection is not random nor representative of employees of the companies.
The site owner openly admits that 80% of the hits come from Google. This could be because his site is rated highly in Google. That's fine.
But if most of the sites visitors are using Google, it is hardly a surprise that the percentage of people in Microsoft using Google as their preferred search engine is estimated too high. The employees that do not use Google are not getting counted because their preferred search engine rates his site lower.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Just did a search on "Australia's laws on pedophilia"
The actual text of the message is:
"This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service"
But, without Google... how would they be able to find them!?
*slams head against wall* I'm so stupid!
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
So first it's iPods being the preferred mp3 player and now Google is the preferred search engine. Do they want PS3s and OpenOffice also?!
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet."
I'd guess that you're an idiot then. There's no way that MS would block the most useful search tool on the internet just because they are trying to compete with it. I know its typical slashdot to believe in the MS culture of only their products are good, but I know plenty of MS employees that have Gmail accounts and was even contacted for recruiting through a Gmail account. And, another reason to keep searches open to google is to compare results from google to those obtained with Live.
I use to use Yahoo all the time until 5 years ago. I moved over to Google for the fact its faster and more search results. I tried ask.com but eh don't care for it nor like it. Google will always be with me 3333
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
I didn't know Microsoft even had a search engine and I've been using the internet since 1995. I first used HotBot, then AltaVista now almost exclusively use Google (mainly because Google caches are available)
"I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet" Is microsoft really that blunt? What do you think the work philosophy around microsoft is like you? Are you trying to appeal to the anti-microsoft attitude around slashdot nowadays or do you believe this literally? To each there own -- not every microsoft employee needs to eat their own dog food. Let's take a peak of how many google and yahoo computers use windows maybe?
Insightful++
Microsoft's stated goal is to beat Google at the search game. It seems pretty logical to me that they would be using Google's and Yahoo's search engines in order to generate competitive intelligence and understand what they are doing wrong. I work at a mobile search startup, and I use Google's and Yahoo's products that compete with ours everyday. While Googlers are busy staring at their own reflection in the mirror, Microsoft just might catch up. If I were Steve Ballmer, I'd be pleased with this.
In Communist China, Google Censors You!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Why would they block a search engine? Just because people liked using Google over MSN, doesn't mean they will block it. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot, since it would reduce productivity until (if) they can improve MSN search.
So, 80% of search requests from Microsoft's network go to Google. On the surface, one might assume that this is entirely MS employees (ie, humans) generating this traffic.
But, how much of it could be MSN Search servers mining Google for content?
This is about using something that JUST WORKS.
Seriously, Microsoft simply doesn't have the infrastructure that Google has. They're SPECIALIZED in searching. Microsoft can't just beat that. They have to accept it.
But look at it this way. If Google helps Microsoft be more efficient, is there any problem with that? Rejecting a very useful tool JUST BECAUSE it's the competition, is simply ridiculuous.
Additionally, Google is allowed to crawl more of my site than MSN or Yahoo. However, based on the search terms used, I don't think this made that big of a difference (the majority of visitors from all these companies came looking for my BigTable article, which ranks highly in the big three search engines).
This is a moot point, because The Inquirer should have done their job and mentioned Philipp Lenssen's blog post where he uses a much larger sample set and gets similar results.
This is, after all, Slashdot.
I always thought it was about drinking the special kool-aid that happens to be laced with LSD, c.f: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
It will happen about the same time Linux takes over the desktop. Isn't that predicted every 6 months too?
With Microsoft, I wouldn't be surpised if they're downloading content off Google's servers.
According to http://andrewhitchcock.org/ (which seems to be the source) the search for "Britney Spears" is well above the search for "porn", and I just dont buy it.
Oh wait, now that I think about it he did not include the search for "lesbians caught in the act while I was walking my ferret". Which Specifically does not include the word "porn". I begin to see the issue...
Anyhow, this Andrew guy has articles dateing back to 2001. Its mostly trivial stuff relating to his life until recently. And then it relates to google. So my guess is that people who do a search on google sift through the pages of results and end up on his site. The way I figure it you pretty much have to be interested in google or Andrew before you could wind up there. So his statistics are probably correct. However, the test is screwed to begin with.
So in the end there are two flaws. The fact that Nick Farrell does not seem to care about what he writes as long as its antagonistic (I use this one sample only as evidence) and the second flaw is that we are talking about it.
Besides, I didnt see my searches for "lesbians" anywhere in the statistics, which doesn't seem quite right.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I've noticed that my website (with low traffic) also gets hits from IP addresses that resolve to microsoft.com from a search on Google. However, if you look at what they searched for, it looks like they are really students looking for the answer to some 2nd year university level homework problems. (OK so you can refrain from the jokes about Microsoft employees searching for these things.) My guess is that somehow the IP addresses are either being reported wrong by accident or are being spoofed (at least to the reporting tool). In other words, I'd be willing to bet that these are not really hits from inside Microsoft (at least not most of them).
is the trash tabloid of IT. There is no fucking place for it on sites that claim to be somewhat respectable.
"While the Voles may be disinterested in their own browsers"
that says it all.. The Inquirer is a fucking waste of space.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Nearly anyone at Google who wants to write a long document uses Word. If they want to work on a spreadsheet, they launch Excel. And a presentation? PowerPoint.
And the predominant Google laptop? An IBM ThinkPad running Windows, with Office pre-installed.
(sig) The last bug isn't fixed until the last user is dead. (/sig)
Thanks for the extra information about the search terms used to reach your site. People interested in your page on might also be interested in Google and therefore likely to be Google users themselves. Again this could mean that the sample is not representative.
;)
The second source helps confirm the conclusions though.
I think it's great that you made these statistics, it's just a shame that Slashdot linked to such a poor article which doesn't explain how the figures were calculated and what the errors margins are. I guess that's what Slashdot's 'Comments' section is for.
Thanks again for replying!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Think of how do you search. You type in a keyword, hope to find information about it, whatever the source from. However you count on the site you hope for. For example, your first try on FileSystemWatcher on Google does return valid result from asp.net... Isn't that a useful piece of information about it? Why that is uncounted?
Ask.com is worse than MSN or Yahoo. We once recently got an email from the higher-ups expressing their disapointment that something to the effect of 90% of all searches in the company were to Google.com and not Ask.com.
I say this as an Ask employee and post this anonymously for this reason.
Aww, come on! If anything, it's off-topic, but it's also insightfull, funny, and incredibly sad.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Mr. Hitchcock speaks for himself about sample sizes and what not. How nice of him.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Google has the best search results. Microsoft employees know that. They use the best tool for the job. So?
Wasn't there a Slashdot story in the past on how a lot of the Microsoft researchers use Linux machines for their daily work? If it makes them do their job better (because they come from a Unix background), why would anyone forbid that?
Besides, does every secretary working at Microsoft have to know they do search as well and are in some competition with Google? Microsoft is much bigger than Google and does a lot more.
See parent post.
What will really make me laugh is when the majority start using Linux. Right now "Microsoft Linux Users Group" only turns up three results. It's close to being a Google whack but the results are fun to look at: freedompc.com and a Microsoft Boycot site. Ha ha.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
to make the problem go away!
Executive Summary : Microsoft employees searching via Google.
Affected platforms: All Windows versions, ALL Microsoft employees, Credibility, Quality, Public Image, Self-Respect.
Workarounds A new Service Pack will be sent to you. This will forward all external queries via Anonymiser. Microsoft Domain stats will be protected.
Mitigating factors 1. Mainstream media hasn't picked it up yet.
2. Slashdot readers don't care much... infact, a majority of the Slashdot crowd use Windows.
3. We don't care.
Full solution: A new search engine is being built. This will get it's results from Google and display it as an MSN offering, with our ads. Beta for this expected in a week's time!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The reason google has 100% google use is because they prohibit using the competition's product. So much for their don't be evil! Yahoo messenger is banned, only their half assed GTalk is allowed!
-ItsME
Ask and you shall receive . . .just made it =)
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~cfenton/flyingchairs.zip
I'm perfect in every way, except for my humility.
It's obvious what's going on. All the MS techs are merely using Firefox, and the built-in Google alliance.
They're not showing party disloyalty, they're just using firefox... wait a second.
I was thinking about switching to Ask from Google. Now I'm not going to.
From the above, it's obvious that Ask is one of these companies that has either taken it upon itself to decide what is and what is not suitable information, or has simply kow-towed to hysterical tabloid pressure. In either case, its results are now all tainted with reasonable doubt.
Today the red flag word is pedophilia. What will it be tomorrow? Terrorism, drugs, abortion, homosexuality, evolution? What else are they censoring? Slippery slope 101. What happens when the next moral panic sweeps the American Bible Belt and the rest of us, the world over, have to put up with legitimate searches crippled by Ask's obsequious panderings to the whims of the mogul led ochlocrats?
Screw their search engine! A random site selection is of more use to me now. At least it indexes more pages.
May the Maths Be with you!
--> http://www.slashdot.org/ article --> some random slashdot poster's comments.
I'll admit to not having RTFA.
No problem, I'm just happy to get the more accurate information out there :). I made the page in a few hours the other day (with some feedback from a friend) and I had no idea how many articles this would spawn. My friend at Google IMed me today and said his coworkers were talking about it :).
I think it's worth pointing out, purely for accuracy, that you're talking about "paedophiles" (with an "ae" ligature) rather than "pedophiles". One likes children, the other likes feet. Hence "pedometer" refers to how many footsteps you have taken, not how many kiddies you have fiddled. Use of "pedo" rather than "paedo" is a fairly recent corruption.
Just thought I'd make the point. I worry about all those poor innocent(-ish) foot fetishists getting lynched. The have a hell of a time already... remember the great patent leather famine of '03?
A story just released by the Inquirer shows that 80% of incoming search requests from Microsoft's domain arrived via Google's search engine.
So, Google's search engine is just forwarding search requests? To where? Who is the real search king, then?Before the quality of search results I Think the main problem with both MSN and Yahoo! is all the crap on their site. Google is plain and simple, when people to go a site with the specific intent of searching why would they want to look at all that junk?
Are you sure the feds aren't after you now?
What a great surveilance tool, ye olde interweb...
I'm sure MS employees know how to use quotes, operators, and boolean logic to find the answers to their questions through Google, and given that Google is reported to have the largest catalog of results, it can be safely assumed that they're only using Google because they know how to retrieve the information they're searching quickly.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet."
Says someone who knows squat about Microsoft.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Google is better than the MS search engine (which I think most people would agree is getting better rapidly, whatever your views on MS might be). /.
So unless MS cajoles their employees to use their own engine over google, I'd expect the majority of them to use google - much as you would with any other randomly chosen company.
The vast majority of MS employees just want to find information to help them with whatever they're trying to do. I'm not entirely sure whether the point of this article is that 'Google is better than MS Search' or 'MS doesn't hobble their employees by restricting them to their own engine'. Either way, not quite sure why this got picked up on
*rubs crystal ball*
I foresee in the future as the MS search engine improves further, the share of MS employees (and the rest of the planet for that matter) using MS Search will also improve.
Microsoft's search engine is similar to most of their software - it's bloatware. Google's interface is simple, clean, and efficient. Micrsoft's search.msn.com (and live.com) is not clean nor efficient. Pages take much longer to load in my Internet Exploder 6.0. In addition, I've found the search results to be generally lackluster. I try different search engines just to test them and I always seem to go back to Google if I'm serious about finding something.
I would hate it if my name was Andre Whichcock. It's as if he has more than one.
And what browser do they use to access a concurent website ?
:) .
Just for the sake of this question burning my lips
..You're from the Vatican, right?
I assumed that MSN search proxied *all* requests through to Google.
:)
Perhaps the MSN servers serve a cached response 20% of the time
I tried all sorts of things, but keep getting this message, without any results: Your search - Australia's laws on pedophilia site:ask.com - did not match any documents. Suggestions: Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different keywords. Try more general keywords. Try fewer keywords.
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
What, you mean every single MS employee works on their search engine? Could have fooled me. Here I was living in my fantasy world, imagining that some were coding Vista, some were coding IE7, some were coding MS Office, some were in their compilers division, some were making games for the XBox 360, and so on.
And that's not even counting that a lot just aren't programmers at all. MS employs one helluva lot of usability experts, lawyers, designers (both web and industrial, see their physical products), artists, marketting people, managers, accountants, secretaries, PR staff, IT people, hardware engineers (see their physical products again), etc, etc, etc.
So you propose... what? To kick all those in the nuts so they'll leave whatever they're doing and start working on a search engine? I'm sure it's sooo productive if your lawyers can't search for some legal precedent on Google, and even more productive if they stop doing their actual job and learn programming to fix the search engine.
A tool is just a tool, and the smart boss lets people use whatever damn tools they're familiar with. If they're better at using CorelDraw or Photoshop than MS Paint to paint the toolbar images or web graphics, only the dumbest of PHBs would insist that everyone uses MS Paint. Not that it doesn't happen lots, but it's still dumb. Equally if some guy from the compiler division is more productive using Google to find more info about an optimization technique, or to find a book about it, by which metric it's good to make him eat dog food instead?
All the secretaries, lawyers, marketters, tech writers, etc, however aren't. It's a pretty good metric if those prefer Google, since they do represent a huge chunk of the USA population.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What he actually said was "In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy" (first article) and "I think we will have passed Google in terms of the relevance of the answers we give to people's searches over the next six months, at least in the U.S. and Canada, not necessarily in all markets" (second article).
I don't think that's the same as what you seemed to be implying (at least to me), which was that he was promising to catch their market share.
Youre clearly wrong here. You obviusly eat dogfood to be dogmatic and drink koolaid to be koolmatic. Man, what are they teaching you at school these days?
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Well, yes. I understood the intended meaning, but was trying to draw attention to the inaccurate wording by using sarcasm. Now, it could be that you understood what I was trying to say and are being sarcastic yourself, and I just didn't get that. In that case, I apologize.
From an interview I found with a guy from Yahoo about his own search habits (full interview here was here).
HD: So do you use GOOG at work?
SS: For search? Or in general?
HD: For search.
SS: Not too often. Probably 1 [out of] 10 times I will use them. I've been a Yahoo! user almost since its inception.
HD: I've tried to force myself to at least try other engines recently, just for comparison's sake.
SS: So it is now more of a habit just to use our companion tool, our search box in the upper right hand side of all of our pages. I don't do too many deep searches that either engine will return such radically different results.
HD: So it's not like the Yahoo! campus has a filter on Google on all its machines.
SS: No, not at all. For me it is just a tool. I've got 5 hammers in my garage, most times I will grab which ever is on the end. But if I have a specific need I will grab the right tool. Same with search. I do think that they have a much better blog searching tool. So I use that a lot.
prefer google?
(unless you are paranoid of course)
They're a very convenient way to make part of this complete breakfast.
Do you have a problem with that? Do you?!
Both of them are evil. Both assist the evil Red Chinese government.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
The thing about Microsoft's search engine, is that it still uses meta tags to index web pages. Google on the other hand, uses a creative and original way of indexing, by listing sites by how many active websites are linking to it. MSN Search, like Yahoo, is an older way of searching for websites because just anyone can throw some meta tags into the HTML code of their website and get it to list on the first page in the general search. Take for example: I went to MSN Search and typed in "Music" and what do I get? Music.com... people's blogs... etc. When I go to Google and type it, I get the more popular Yahoo Music, Lycos Music, Apple iTunes, etc. When it comes down to general searches, I'm all for Google.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
According to the article this number is based on access statistics on one single web site ... how is this significant in any way? Is /. turning into a tabloid?
Never underestimate the power of idiots in large groups
None of the modern search engines are meta tag based any longer.
...is that this had to start from someone playing with the progress bar on the original video.
"Hey honey, look. I can make Steve Ballmer dance."
I remember about three years ago I was on a call with Microsoft support. As the tech is looking for support documentation to help me, he whispers after five minutes of fruitless searching with the MS search engine, "Let me Google this." Soon thereafter he had the answers I needed. In this case what would Microsoft have wanted the tech to do? I paid a flat rate for the support so the sooner I got my answers the sooner the tech could move on to help another paying customer. I have a feeling that unless it is a coporate mandate closely monitored, 80% Googling at MS is a low number.
Our long documents are in html or Wiki. Most engineers are running Linux, so Word is out of the question. We do use OpenOffice, and also Writely. There is amazing adoption of our online spreadsheet internally.
I think there are some product managers who might use Office, but Google is a company of engineers, and no engineer would be caught dead using Word.
Personally, I like xemacs.
Besides, supporting Microsoft comflicts with our corporate motto: "Do no evil."
You are an idiot.
Slashdot +1 funny -4 Insightful +1 informative -2 Redundant
Karma: Somewhere between SCO and Microsoft
I use google because of its clean, lite, un-cluddered interface just as much as because it 'searches well'.
Geeks don't want all the flashy adds and extra horseshit that occumpany most other search sites. Since MS is a bunch of nerds, I could see why they'd pick the most stream-line search engine available.
I was programming with just the ten digits and the letters A, B, C, D, E and F. Anything that would fit into FOUR bits.
Or, by turning the display upside down, we could spell "SHELL OIL" in Leetspeak.
Maybe they are just doing competitive analysis. In the search engine war, this is just recon before the kill :-)
Create a website and throw some meta tags in it and watch how fast it jumps up on the search pages. I've tested this.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Back in my day the Pharaoh got really ticked one time and all we had was the mud!
Try building the Sphinx and the Pyramids with just mud and get back to me about how hard you had it with all your fancy shmanshy straw!
Have any of you tried using Windows Live? It sucks in so many ways, I stopped counting long ago. There's no saving grace at all, Windows Live Search sucks, Windows Live Mail sucks, Windows Live Office sucks, the list goes on people. If they don't start improving Live soon, it could be the biggest failure they've ever experienced (and I'm including ME in that)
God is real unless declared integer.
This isn't going to affect microsoft in the least bit, you have to remember that the real world doesn't read slashdot, and most of these articles will never make it out of tech forums, and blogs etc. The real world (the market that microsoft is selling to) isn't worried about which search engine MS employees are using, so Microsoft really doesn't need to take any action. they are fine letting their employess use a search engine that produces results, hey mabye some of the google influence (you know for quality software) will leak right on in.
Did someone say cake?
Is that most of the searches are "jobs+open+Google"
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
Why is this newsworthy??? And why would anyone suspect otherwise?????
Made me laugh.
The "fact" that 100% of Google employee's use their own product is simply not true. I've seen hits on my site from Google employees, where they came from the Yahoo search engine. I even blogged about it here.
Lately MSN search has been getting better. Reason being, the Microsoft in understanding there competition better.
In My time, there was no, well, time.
There was just Me and the void.
So I said Let There Be Light. And it was good.
My children took it from there.
You kids really need to learn to delegate.
Does all MS web traffic originate from IP's labeled Microsoft.com? should they route employees web requests through the same pipes as their web site? do they want to be obviously tracked in detail? remember, Microsoft was a little slow to get started on the web, didn't support it fully until 1995, but there were already on the internet long before that.
(Historial Note, The Internet is much, much older than The Web, other services existed before the web, like Gopher, WAIS, and such. HTML over HTTP becoming the defacto standard was NOT obvious back in the very early 1990's. NCSA Mosaic was cool, but so was the 3DO.
The other implication is that Microsoft not only 'allows' its workers to use the services they choose, maybe they encourage it? maybe the IE team is testing to be sure Google's services work on IE? There was a major change in the way Windows 95 allocated memory, just to keep AOL's client from crashing. Imagine the outcry if G-Mail didn't work in Vista for some reason. Obviously Microsoft HAS to access Google often.
I'd also wager that a large number of web access from Google actually uses Internet Explorer (*gasp!*) for the same reason, compatibility testing, heck, Google even publishes add-ins for Windows and Internet Explorer!
Google may be activly disallowing it's employees from accessing other services from their connection, 100% sounds artifical, you'd think they at least see how well the competition works.
This is all assuming these statistics are accurate. and even if they are, are the web sites being analysed purchasing Google ads, but not MSN ads? Does it accuratly count the referalls?
In sum: slow news day.
The total percentage of Microsoft employees who use the Microsoft search engine isn't a fair comparison, since Microsoft's flagship product isn't their search engine. (I'm not so sure what it is, but it's not their search engine.) On the other hand, Google and Yahoo are both defined by their search engine. Only a fraction of Microsoft Employees are at work on the search engine, and the search engine isn't a deeply ingrained part of their corporate culture. Not so with Yahoo and Google. And, even ignoring this, who cares what the people at the company use? That's like assuming that the haircutters which people who are haircutters use are the best haircutters. Preferences are idiosyncratic. I would much prefer to see an article assessing the objective strengths of the different search engines directly, instead of this corporate-interest story.
The Inquirer. Surely this information is accurate!
During one of many frustrating support calls to microsoft to fix an exchange bug one of their techs tipped me off to http://www.google.com/microsoft/ it is apparently a custom search page that returns results for microsoft related tech issues.
This is not surprising at all as Google has the better product. Not to mention How else is Micosoft going to steal google's ideas unless they get familiar with Google's online programs. I can see Ballmer now, "click on F*^%#*! Google labs, we gotta see what they are up to so we can copy them and spin it like we make it first and better"
Why did you have to publicize this? I work at Microsoft, and now they are going to be whining that we have to use msn search. stupid !@#$
I imagine they published it because its amusing. I certainly found it so. Notice that the lads and lassies at Yahoo are going to have a similar problem - if this consoles you. But their problem is only going to be similar to yours - since they have no problem with flying chairs.
On a lighter note, do you really think that Mr. Gates and/or Mr. Ballmer read /. . It doesn't seem all that likely, but if they do then it's three chairs for you:-
- The first would be for using Google.
- The second would be for reading
/. outside of company time, one hopes.
- The third would be for posting to
/. - and not anonymously either
You are bringing trouble on your own head; chair number three will probably be a really heavy one. Good luck with the ducks !How many beans make five, anyhow ?
I couldn't help noticing:
and couldn't help asking myself what difference does that make ? Above all when Mr. Ballmer wanders across the world telling how his children are forbidden to use Google.Then there was this bit:
and I'd like to ask, as a favour, when and if you have the definition of Microsoft's "flagship" product could you make this definition known ? Quite a few people are curious, and not a few of them work at Microsoft !Then you have the gall to serve us this bit:
and I have to say that you are more than correct. The corporate culture at Microsoft is founded on throwing and breaking chairs - this is well known. However, if we are to believe what we read, a goodly number of those chairs seem to be sacrificed on the alter of Google - to say nothing of the Ballmer extension to potty training. If I am up-to-date Mr. Steve Ballmer seems to have very strong views (or very weak chairs) on this subject. I forget - perhaps someone could remind me - what might be his position at Microsoft. Was it CEO ? Was it chief potty trainer ? Chief chair breaker ?Then you fall upon us with the following
and, you know, you ain't wrong. Professionals do have a tendency - if only by trial and error - to find and use the best tools around at any given moment.Then you have a bald statement, positively intransigent in it's brevity
That there are preferences which are idiosyncratic goes without saying ; love makes the world go round, etc. Professionals however, in the work environment, tend to have a pronounced preference towards the efficient, rapid methods for getting the work done. You seem to forget this in your intransigence - to be as polite as possible.You conclude with what can only be termed as a piece of colossal impertinence
to which I will (giving sway to a bad impulsion) reply SHITHEAD !. Apart from the obvious comment about the grammar in "an article assessing the objective strengths of the different search engines directly," , I suggest you leave it to theHow many beans make five, anyhow ?
What do you want, a refund?
It's not censorship when it's a free service. With your huge words and libertarian stance, it's sad you've taken the easy rhetorical expediency of piling on a minority you don't like, like Bible Belt Christians. But then, with slashdot becoming a mob, where the majority are small-minded bigots with no time for dissent, imposing their own democratic rating censorship on the few people left here with actual deeply-held beliefs, it's an easy trap to fall into.
I'm sure Ask.com doesn't have enough money to get sued. Big deal. Another victim of American legalism, where libertarians hate censorship but laugh when companies get sued.
Google is run by West coast style libertarians/liberals, and also, naturally, their technical abilities and stance allow them to have a broader appeal. So they appeal to most Microsoft employees. Even without vicious lawsuits from selfish trolls and bad parents, Ask.com has to appeal to a difference audience, one that doesn't want pedophilia searches to be successful. So take your overspent moral indignation somewhere else.
Wow, you're a complete tool.
You're probably right - look at all the time I spent on your idiotic maundering.
You first have to be one in order to recognize one, so you're surely qualified to make such a pronouncement.
You have yourself a really good day now, and do try to stop drooling on the rest of us - even if it does cost a fortune in hankies (and it will).
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Censorship has nothing to do if you are charged or not for a service, censorship has to do with what you decide to offer with a service and the policies you follow to make this service available.
A website intending to provide a search engine that decides, based on their own biases, assumptions and preconceptions, to filter some of the findings, is in effect censoring.
If anybody is trying to impose their mores and views of the world are this minority you are mentioning. People with liberal view have to always accomodate to the wishes and whims of this vocal minority in issues as far ranging from nipples in a super bowl to abortion in third world countries. Liberal people don't take offense at the world view of these people, but have always to cowtow to the views of religious people, even if in many issues they are a minority.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
MS People are busy people, need to meat deadlines, and releases to release. They cannot afford to use the sloooooooooooow MSN. Or any thing else but Google for that matter.
Free Life
Boaz
Lexxe is an internet search engine that uses Natural language processing for queries. Searches can be made with "natural" questions, such as "How old is Google?" (or "How old is Wikipedia?")
n a+smell%3F&clickcluster=fmclk&sstringtemp=fmstr
[edit]
References
* Xu, Fugang. "A Search Engine that Answers Questions", China, 10 October 2005.[1] (accessed 08 November 2005)
[edit]
External link
* http://www.lexxe.com
For example: Why does a vagina smell?
http://lexxe.com/main.cfm?sstring=why+does+a+vagi