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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."
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
Google employees probably use Microsoft's Operating Systems more than they do Google's ;)
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
Come on, it's not that hard to get a job here. You just have to try! And it really is a nice place to work. A lot of fun, cool people, (unexpectedly) kind of family-centric, and the pay's nothing to sneeze at either. :) I recommend it to anyone who's thinking about giving it a shot. Don't let the interview process scare you!
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"
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?
So would I. I would still use google even if given a chance to work at Microsoft. Of course, that probably has something to do with the fact that, if they offered me a job, I wouldn't take it.
You can call me dogmatic, but I have a very practical reason for not wanting to work at Microsoft: I've spent the last week or so reading up on SMB and NetBIOS. Egads this stuff is messed up. I had almost come to believe that the stuff about Microsoft software being crap was just bias from open source advocates, but the more I learn about it, the more I realize how truly aweful and stupid it is. And how does this relate to my practical reason for not wanting to work at Microsoft? The reason is, if I worked at Microsoft, there's a reasonable chance I'd end up having to maintain some of this crap. No thank you. They made the bed, and I think I'll leave them to lie in it.
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'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?
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.
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.
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).
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...
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.
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.
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....
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.
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!
Foot fetishism is "podophilia".
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.
Pedology is the study of soils, logically pedophiles would be soil lovers too. Dirty pedophiles...
I assumed that MSN search proxied *all* requests through to Google.
:)
Perhaps the MSN servers serve a cached response 20% of the time
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.
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
Is that most of the searches are "jobs+open+Google"
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
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.