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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."

40 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket by ClamIAm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Film at 11.

    1. Re:Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      "CHAIRS CHAIRS CHAIRS!"

    2. Re:Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket by entropy123 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Microsoft has a search engine?

    3. Re:Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket by Valcoramizer · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well, there being approximately 3 chair vendors in Redmond, I'd say this shall be interesting.

      --
      We raise our slide-rules high.
    4. Re:Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      The traffic is generated by Microsoft employees benchmarking the MSN search engine against Google. What's the big deal!

    5. Re:Chair sales in Redmond skyrocket by indifferent+children · · Score: 2, Funny

      It is not politically correct to refer to H1B workers as 'bots'. The term 'drones' is more popular, and barely acceptable.

      --
      Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
  2. Steve Ballmer is going to bury google... by Donniedarkness · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...in search queries!!

    ....and chairs. Sorry, couldn't resist.

    --
    Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
  3. Most common search phrase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    free flying chair screensaver

    1. Re:Most common search phrase by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Finally, I can replace my "Bill Gates Does Windows" screensaver.

    2. Re:Most common search phrase by phreakv6 · · Score: 5, Funny

      well.. dont worry about the screensaver because someone on the internet has made this

      --
      fifteen jugglers, five believers
    3. Re:Most common search phrase by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 2, Funny

      awesome. i'm glad i had smoked a fat bowl before i watched that.

      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
  4. duh by Alien+Being · · Score: 3, Funny

    Google, unlike Microsoft, is a company which found success by providing the best product.

  5. Wow, that's surprising... by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Funny

    Usually it's Microsoft employees who are drinking the coolaid.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Wow, that's surprising... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      > Usually it's Microsoft employees who are drinking the coolaid.

      In Redmond, they don't call it coolaid. They call it dogfood. And for good reason.

    2. Re:Wow, that's surprising... by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Um, I always thought drinking the koolaid refers to the cult mass suicide...

  6. the reason is by arbi · · Score: 5, Funny

    probably because it's the default search engine for Firefox :P

  7. Re:I would still be using Google by SpectreHiro · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... even if I had the chance to work in Microsoft. I know I don't!

    Come on, little trooper... Don't be so hard on yourself. There's always janitorial positions.

    --
    You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
  8. On the other hand... by Sathias · · Score: 5, Funny

    Google employees probably use Microsoft's Operating Systems more than they do Google's ;)

    --
    Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
  9. Re:Grain of salt by Fordiman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow. A Standard deviation of 192% means the results are meaningless for a range of 0-100% (the range itself is < 3x the std dev, the basic measure of 'significance' in statistics).

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    110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
  10. Re:I've switched by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny
    ... after I tried hunting for info on Australia's laws on pedophilia ...


    So, you were searching for info on Australia's laws on pedophilia, were you?
    Well, why WERE you doing that?

    Hmmm, it's a little suspicious. ... Wait, are you some kind of ... lawyer???!!!
  11. iPods and Google. Do they prefer PS3 too? by cmoney · · Score: 2, Funny

    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?!

  12. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by SleepyHappyDoc · · Score: 3, Funny

    So, what this article is really saying is, MSN Search isn't even worth feeding to the dogs.

    --
    Stasis is death. Embrace change.
  13. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny
    What? You don't like results along the lines of:

    Query: printf

    1. Windows CE toaster edition v1.0: ActiveDataSourceExchangeObject.printf()

    2. Windows CE toaster edition v1.1: ActiveDataSourceExchangeObject.printf()

    3. Windows CE.NET beta cellphone edition: ActiveDataSourceExchangeObject.printf()

    4. Windows CE.NET beta microwave oven edition: ActiveDataSourceExchangeObject.printf()

    ...

    87. Visual C/C++ Library Reference: printf()

  14. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by plover · · Score: 5, Funny
    My dad, for example, writes e-mails in all capital letters. He doesn't know not to, and I figure he's old enough to have the right to e-mail people however the hell he wants. A programmer would never write an e-mail like that.

    Speak for yourself, young'n. I was programming before you were an itch in your daddy's pants. And back when I was a kid, we only HAD capital letters. Yes, sir, a six-bit character set was all we had, and we liked it! We were grateful for every one of the six bits we were given, thankful that we had a character set that supported both letters AND numbers.

    Who needed those fancy-schmancy lower case letters, anyway? They were for show-offs, them and their lah-dee-dah eight-bit character sets. "Oooh, look at me, Mater, I've got both UPPER and lower case in my EBCDIC character set! I'm off to punch cards by the Grand Piano!" Well, we didn't have that rich-kid kind of money. Even if our terminal controllers did send us seven bits, we only had an upper case font cylinder in our Model 33 TeleType. And it was good enough for us! And we sent our email to real names, like SWEETHEART and PILOT and POET, not to any of these special character leet-speeking punks, them and their hoity-toity "domains"....

    ... zzzZZZzzz ...

    Wha? What are you doing here? Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

    --
    John
  15. How to get the NSA at your door in 24 hours ? by this+great+guy · · Score: 5, Funny

    See parent post.

    1. Re:How to get the NSA at your door in 24 hours ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      See parent post.

      I looked at the parent post...
      . ...waiting for the knock on the door...
      .
      .
      . ...waiting..
      . .ah, forget it. *goes back to searching for pr0n (not kiddie one).*
    2. Re:How to get the NSA at your door in 24 hours ? by kalirion · · Score: 3, Funny

      I am appalled at your ignorance. The parent (well, grandparent for me) post will only succeed at getting the FBI at the door. The NSA doesn't care what you say online as long as you don't mention that you know someone who's a Muslim. And in that case they'll likely still let the FBI come get you. You know that whole information sharing deal and all that.

  16. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by spongman · · Score: 5, Funny

    yeah, they'll just patch their proxies to rewrite the 'Referrer:' headers...

  17. Some things MS can do... by jkrise · · Score: 5, Funny

    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....
    1. Re:Some things MS can do... by Jaruzel · · Score: 5, Funny
      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!

      Update: The beta is now available at http://www.live.com/

      --
      Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
  18. ask and you shall receive by Brietech · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:ask and you shall receive by TheDreadSlashdotterD · · Score: 2, Funny

      Thank you for your wonderful gift to humanity.

      --
      I have nothing to say.
  19. It's not sinister by TadZimas · · Score: 1, Funny

    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.

  20. Re:the actual response... by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hehe... Copulation Kids... That sounds like a new movie introducing Michael Jackson. :-p

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  21. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by 10Ghz · · Score: 3, Funny

    You had a character-set? Damn you were lucky! Back in MY day all we had was a bunch of rocks, and we communicated by banging the rocks together. And what is this "programming" you talk about? All we could do wast to make a big pile of rocks, and smash it with even bigger rocks, hoping that something useful came from it. And we LIKED it that way!

    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  22. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Funny

    Rocks!! Do you know what we would have done for rocks! A good honest rock could get you places.

    No Sir. All we had was mud. Mud and straw. We used to pile the mud up into segments to make registers and then use the straw to represent numbers. We didn't have any of your holier than thou binary formats. No Sir. We had unary and we liked it. Our ALU was just Andy, Larry and Upton. Andy would do the addin', Larry the subtractin', and Upton would move the straw around. He was a good kid.

    And if you wanted "memory", huh!, memory, well sir you could just pile up some more mud for fifteen miles to get about a kilobyte. Can't say that Upton would thank you for it, mind. Course in those days all our algorithims only needed about twelve bits of memory, so you could get by with only two fields or so of mud segments.

    Capital letters! Huh! We didn't even have letters. We just sent and recieved the datastreams as raw numbers. You had to figure out yourself what was going on. The straws were floated to us down small rivers. Pretty bad packet loss, and in those days if you lost a packet, well sir, you had to go upstream and danm well find it again, or there'd be no mud supper for you! Great days.

    Rocks! Some people don't know what honest labour is anymore.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!
  23. Re:Point of order... by AfroTrance · · Score: 2, Funny

    Pedology is the study of soils, logically pedophiles would be soil lovers too. Dirty pedophiles...

  24. Only 80%? by mpcooke3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I assumed that MSN search proxied *all* requests through to Google.

    Perhaps the MSN servers serve a cached response 20% of the time :)

  25. Re:I wouldn't do it.. by aymanh · · Score: 3, Funny

    I know your comment is a joke, but the article suggests that the study in question checked for IP addresses originating from Microsoft, not the Referrer header.

    --
    python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
  26. What the article doesn't say by palndron · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is that most of the searches are "jobs+open+Google"

    --
    a man, a plan, a canal, panama