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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."
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.
There are a handful of pages that proxy to google... for example.
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.
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.
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?
Dammit, I actually checked that.
Amazing that no one on the internet has actually made such a screensaver.
yes.............. and they're commiting suicide for what? To show that they have dogmatic belief in their leader.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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"
There was actually a poll a few years back asking people what OS they used and another asking about browsers. I believe at one point the editors did break out the numbers and showed that something like a bit more than half of all hits came from Windows machines. Some observers said that they don't get a choice of OS from work. Others said that /. has, despite its origins, actually become a polytheistic site WRT to OSes.
I couldn't agree more. Microsoft has frequently been a user of its competitors' products. Its webpages are full of Flash and PDF files, despite having competing technologies. And I highly doubt that their marketing department is forced to use Paint (or Photo Draw) and Publisher.
While I can see the need to require employees to use Outlook, Word, and Excel for collaboration, I highly doubt they would go much further than that.
-David
Eating dogfood properly doesn't require doing it every day. I'm a Microsoft employee and I've used Live search exactly enough to report all the important bugs I feel exist. The number one thing that bugs me is that Live results don't appear instantly if you hit "back" from a clicked-on page to return to search results; the JavaScript appears to load it again from the server.
:)
Beyond important feedback of that sort, one should always return to the product one prefers for development. My experience at MS is that employees use whatever they prefer: VIM, Emacs, Visual Studio are all in force. We encourage dogfooding to a great extent, but it's obviously never more important than having other teams legitimately get their work done. I work on Visual Studio, and while it disheartens me to hear some people might rather use VIM as their editor, one must be realistic and assume one's product cannot cater to all people. The best we can do is learn from existing software and how our clients (internal and external) want it to work and improve.
I have not heard anything about coolaid. Dogfood is a very different story.
Note: I am a Microsoft summer intern, so my views don't reflect those of MSFT and such. However, I must say it's generally a very positive atmosphere and beyond the dogfood aspect ("Help other teams test their products in real world scenarios") the culture seems supportive of "use whatever tools to get the job done". People are not fanatics nor blind. It has been a thoroughly positive experience so far
Yep:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=msdn
8. Seattle, WA, USA
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?
Based on the stats this article is based on they're mostly windows (72 out of 74 are Windows): http://andrewhitchcock.org/companystats/ (someone linked to this above).
I'd guess that shows how accurate these stats are.
Seriously, as a web developer, I couldn't see how one could get by without Google and Firefox. Firstly, Google groups is where I find 80% of my answers, then 15% from google web search, and then maybe 5% from asking co-workers. It usually takes less or about the same time to google something, plus, i'm not interupting someone else and taking up their time. Secondly, Firefox with it's web developer tool bar is a godsend. I know one exists for IE, but it's not as good. I also find that FF gives better descriptions of javascript errors, along with the color coded source code view, which makes Firefox about 10 times easier to use for web development.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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
Yes, we all know this. We do work in a Search company you know (as I already stated).
The problem is Ask.com doesn't index technical data like Google does. One of the largest missing pieces in the index is the MSDN as one small example.
While alot of us do feel Ask is *better* than google at general life questions, it is horrible at technical queries.
This leads us to having to think about what we will be searching for and deciding which search engine to use before typing in http://ask.com/ or google.com
It's much easier to just type Google.com and have it all.
Google is like the jack-of-all trades, Good at everything but GREAT at nothing. Ask is GREAT at a certain segment of searches and unfortunetly poor at others.
I think this is why Ask is the backup-search engine for most people. When and if Google's jack-of-all trades approach fails, try out Ask's search engine.
They are working on the problem though, it is technically challenging to expand the index to include alot more types of information and remain relevant, but they are working very hard on it and I hope they continue to innovate in the search space as they have been and give Google a run for their money.
Bill Gates recently said in a conference that Ask is the only company doing true innovation in search for real people. It's funny you'd think he'd say that about his own MSN search.
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
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.