Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Specmanship at its finest.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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
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.
koolaid (yes, I mispelt it) and dogfood are two different concepts. Ironicly, you to drink the koolaid is to be dogmatic whereas to eat the dogfood is to be pragmatic. You drink the koolaid to show you believe in the superiority of your product. You eat the dogfood because you recognise that your product is not perfect and hope that by using it daily you will see where improvements can be made. Either way, it seems Microsoft employees neither think their product is superior, nor recognise it as imperfect.. the former is surprising, the later is just what we've come to expect from them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Your model is mostly correct, but I can't seem to find the ????? step in there anywhere. If reading Slashdot has taught me anything (and it's taught me many things), it is that no business model is EVER successful without the inclusion of the ????? step.
IAALS.
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.
You do realize that the people who work there are just that... people. They are going to use whatever they think is the best tool for them, within reasonable limits. Since Apple makes the best mp3 player that's what the employees are going to spend the money on. Ballmer can throw as many chairs as he wants and that's not going to change. If the PS3 has the goods they'll have that. As long as Google is a better search engine it'll be used. But really, lets not kid ourselves about OO.
And I noted that "pedophelia" (instead of "pedophilia") succeeds...and gives you the option on the side to narrow your search to "Preteen Girls Virgin"...so apparently the stuff they are protecting us (or them...whichever logic they are using) from is still there, you just have to know how to find it.
There are numerous problems with the analysis, including that there's no randomization, which makes any statistical inference to a broader population invalid anyway. Of course, journalists and such ignore this all the time. Even introductory college statistics textbooks sometimes make it seem OK to do inference when there's no randomization.
It may be, also, that this guy's site is ranked higher on Google than on MSN or Yahoo, which would make the proportion of MS employees coming from Google higher than the proportion which actually use Google regularly. This is called a lurking variable, and I'm too lazy to test it right now.
IAASM (I Am A Statistics Major)
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
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!