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How Microsoft Degrades Their Users (In a Good Cause)

Posted by kdawson on from the whoa-there-nelly dept.

blackbearnh writes "We all know that slow Web pages drive users crazy, but where is the boundary between too slow and too simple? As Microsoft's Eric Schurman points out, the fastest-loading page of all is a blank one, but it's also the most useless. In an interview with O'Reilly Radar leading up to his appearance at the Velocity Conference, Schurman talks about his experiences working on some of Microsoft's highest-volume sites, including the home page and Live Search. In particular, he discusses how Microsoft will selectively degrade the performance of pages to small sets of users so that they can see how various amounts of delay at different times and places affect user behavior. 'In cases where we were giving what was a significantly degraded experience, the data moved to significance extremely quickly. We were able to tell when we delayed people's pages by more than half a second, and it was very obvious that this had a significant impact on users very quickly. We were able to turn off that experiment. The reasoning... was it helps us make a strong argument for how we can prioritize work on performance against work on other aspects of the site.' He also talks about what it's like to be one of the most often-targeted DDoS sites on the planet."

12 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. As opposed to ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    In cases where we were giving what was a significantly degraded experience ...

    ... the normally degraded experience.
    (Ba da BOOM! Don't forget to tip your waitress.)

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:As opposed to ... by Jurily · · Score: 5, Funny

      Experimenting by delaying a pageload for 500ms is worthy of ethical considerations?

      No, they should be shot on sight.

    2. Re:As opposed to ... by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Funny

      The summary is about graceful degradation. TFA is OFFTOPIC here.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    3. Re:As opposed to ... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's half a second! Let's do the numbers:

      We assume that Live search gets ten billion hits a day. We also assume that Microsoft degraded 5% of all hits. Thus Microsoft has wasted 1000000000 * 0.5s * 0.02 = ten million seconds! Microsoft wastes more than 26 years worth of productive time per day. Now, assuming that the computer of the Live search users consume 800W on average, we find that Microsoft wastes a whopping 20.9 watt-millenia per day. Assuming that 80% of that is turned into waste heat it's obvious that this has a non-negligible impact on Earth.

      Gentlemen, I think we have found the root cause for both the energy crisis and global warming (and because our bitching about the oil price annoys the arabic world, also islamic terrorism). Now all we need to do is keep Microsoft from doing these experiments and everything's dandy again.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  2. Select groups of users by mysidia · · Score: 5, Funny

    selectively degrade the performance of pages to small sets of users

    In other words, Firefox, Opera, XP, and Linux users. And the experiment will get turned off, once they switch back to IE8 on Vista.

    1. Re:Select groups of users by perryizgr8 · · Score: 5, Funny

      no, he did not forget. they are just too insignificant to talk about.

      --
      Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
  3. Re:One of the most often-targeted DDoS sites by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    So you ping and then you sleep()? Not much of a flood ping really...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  4. Punch your customers in the face, selectively by syousef · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I were running a fast food restaurant one of the first things it would make sense to do is pick groups of customer to punch in the face instead of giving them their order. It's all for a good cause. We want to know just how much abuse they'll take before they go down the road to the competition. That will help us figure out how good our food is. Now did you want a fries with that burger? *PUNCH* How about a *PUNCH* drink?

    See how absurd it sounds?

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    1. Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively by lxs · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't be so negative. They're simply migrating the Vista experience to the Cloud.

    2. Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey, who invited the logic guy to this Microsoft bashing thread?

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
  5. I submit to you by ghjm · · Score: 4, Funny

    a web page more useless than a blank page.

    http://havenworks.com/

    Thank you, and good night.

  6. Re:One of the most often-targeted DDoS sites by RichardJenkins · · Score: 4, Funny

    So you ping and then you sleep()?

    TODO: Insert geek related sex-joke here