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Bing Search Tainted By Pro-Microsoft Results
bdcny7927 writes "Just as Bing is gaining popularity, some disturbingly pro-Microsoft and anti-Apple search results are rearing their ugly heads. Case in point: a search on Bing for the phrase, 'Why is Windows so expensive?' returned this as the top link: 'Why are Macs so expensive.' That's right. You're not hallucinating."
Surprised, why?
I am not stubborn. I am right!
...are you really surprised?
THL phish sticks
Shocking.
It seems that Don't be Evil is not the corporate motto of Microsoft.
It makes you appreciate google, despite their mildly objectionable data collection/profiling.
Search string: "Why is Windows so expensive?"
Results:
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Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium | TalkBack
If so don't PC users ask WHY is Windows so expensive? Cheapest upgrade for Win 7 is 50 and that's temporarily for early adopters (119 later) Snow Leopard is only 29 for all Leopard ...
o talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66314&messageID=1250260
o Cached page
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MacNN | Acer: Home Premium is the real Vista
"Hmmm, I'll have to think about that... Why is Windows so expensive?" "That's the Microsoft tax." "Doesn't e v e r y b o d y use Windows?" "Not anymore."
o www.macnn.com/articles/06/10/27/acer.on.windows.vista
o Cached page
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Do you need more than Windows 7 Home Premium? | TalkBack on ZDNet
If so don't PC users ask WHY is Windows so expensive? Cheapest upgrade for Win 7 is 50 and that's temporarily for early adopters (119 later) Snow Leopard is only 29 for all Leopard ...
o talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66219&messageID=1249894
o Cached page
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Rittman Mead Consulting Blog Archive Virtually there
I suppose the next thing is to build a Windows VM for the stuff that needs Microsoft Windows (OBI SE-ONE, for example) - but why is Windows so expensive to license? ...
o www.rittmanmead.com/2007/11/21/virtually-there
o Cached page
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PC World Community: Hollywood's Victory Over The Pirate Bay
Why is Windows so expensive to buy in a box, when Dell can buy it in bulk for a couple dollars? How much money does Bill Gates need? What is fair trade? ...
o forums.pcworld.com/message/209250
o Cached page
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PC World Community: Windows XP User: I'm No Thief
At least I think it is. Why is windows so expensive in the first place? They're totally ripping us off!!
o forums.pcworld.com/thread/60075?start=30&tstart=0
o Cached page
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ffextensionguru.wordpress.com - Traffic Details from Alexa
why is windows so expensive; new tab homepage; guru blog; the book of mozilla; mozilla weekly; ie 8 windows update; primo pdf; tabs open relative; flash player updates
o www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ffextensionguru.wordpress.com
I don't care why you're posting AC
... why are Macs so expensive?
That's why I have often taken my car to repair shops that are nothing but repair shops, not gas stations or tire stores or whatever doing car repair on the side. They have to live on the basis of their car repairs, and they are likely to pay attention to that, and if they do bad repairs they will go out of business.
Similarly, Google lives by its search engine, and people at Google know it. There is nothing more important to Google than returning good search results, and if somebody else starts returning better ones Google is in deep trouble.
It won't take much for me to conclude that a search engine operated by somebody like Microsoft or Apple is biased. A biased search engine isn't going to get me the results I want (unless, I guess, I agree with the bias, but in that case I run the risk of learning nothing and simply being confirmed in my ignorance). If Microsoft wants me to use Bing, they're going to have to be extra careful to avoid the appearance of bias.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I seriously did. I actually went to bing and searched Why is Windows so expensive?. I Cannot believe the results but, you wanna know what I find even more hilarious... The fact that this post on /. just upped Bing's visitors over a thousand times more then they have ever gotten before.
Yes, the mac link appears under the google results. However, the other top google results are all about the Windows OS. The bing results has NO results about Windows OS on the first page.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Is there a way to mod the entire article down? That would be a useful feature.
For example Expedia. Perhaps travel queries are tainted too. And who knows what else.
Hey Slashdot, how about covering the fact that KDE 4.3 [kde.org] was just released today?
Ops.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Except that putting that same query to Google will give this result in the first page:
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/why-are-macs-so-expensive--609128
Why would I use another search engine when I can use Google?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Because I just don't think MS has the technology to pull this off. Bing/ Live search just suck. I get better answers by asking my cat and she only responds with "meow" if my question has the word "treat" in it.
It's not specifically pro-MS or anti-Apple. It's just that whatever their ranking algorithm is rates yahoo answers as a better source than other sites. Search engines have to weight sites somehow; if all sources of pages were equally good authorities, we'd all still be using altavista.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
I conducted some other tests on Bing
'windows worse than osx' returned top results on how OSX is worse than Window$.
'windows worse than linux' returned a similar 'pro Window$' result.
'windows more vulnerable than linux' did the same
It is fairly blatently pro-M$ in M$ vs. OSx vs. Linux type searches.
Anyone surprised?
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
And "is windows expensive" returns just plain anti-Windows results. "why is windows expensive" (eliminating the 'so') returns more neutral responses. This is just a difference in the search algorithms. I wonder how many phrases were tried before the authors obtained suitably pro-MS results for their troll.
Given the wealth and power involved, did you really expect them to respect fair play?
Google does. The only reason Microsoft can't is its long standing corporate greed; the same kind of greed that will have a monkey stick his hand in a jar for a treat, and since he won't let go of the treat and his fist won't fit through the jar's neck, he's stuck.
That's proably why (IMO, YMMV) their software sucks so badly. This is what I expected from bing and I'm surprised that anybody else was surprised.
I also wasn't surprised to find at work that although I have IE's default search set to Google, when I typed a URL without the HTTP:// it gave bing search results page instead of a Google search results page. Like the late Lilly Tomlin's telephone operator character said smugly back when AT&T was the only phone company, "We're the phone company. We don't have to!
I think it's pathetic.
Free Martian Whores!
Using "Why is Windows so expensive?" in double quotes produces far different results than 'Why is Windows so expensive?' in single quotes in a Bing search. Using the double quote method produces some results that speak to Microsoft's OS being expensive.
Maybe he's requesting a dupe?
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
At least "Who is more evil than Satan himself" search provides accurate and timely information.
What could possibly go wrong?
It recognizes "rtyrty5233" as a word too. Is that a Microsoft product too? Or do you think it could just be that the digits turn off checking?
Why does windows Suck? => Windows and microsoft results, no macs in sight
Why is windows insecure? => Windows and Microsoft results, no macs in sight.
Put quotes around the question, i.e. "Why is windows so expensive?", and Bing only returns Windows results. But looking at these results, they are not big hitter sites. I am no big Windows fan (using Linux anytime I have a choice) but I just don't think there is that much discussion about how expensive Windows is out there. The expense of Macs is always discussed.
Check out the Google fights if you don't believe me:
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22Why+is+windows+so+expensive%22&word2=%22Why+are+macs+so+expensive%22
I don't know what algorithm is used to rank results by Bing, but it doesn't seem to be pro Windows in general, only with that particular search.
Nothing to see here, move along....
TFA states that they stopped doing it. He screencapped his results, but it's not surprising that you don't see it now.
At least.. for now.. with those search queries..
But can you trust them to give honest results later on when the heat is off again?
Yes, but doing the same search, "Why is Windows so expensive?" on Google gives the "Why are Macs so expensive?" article on the first page of results.
Searching for "Why is windows so popular" returns a top hit of: HowStuffWorks "What is Linux and why is it so popular?" I am not sure that either Google or Microsoft are trying to bash each other. I think that there are just a lot more people who want to know why macs are expensive and the search engine pushes it to the top.
Change the search to, "Why is your mom so expensive?" and the first result is "Why Are Bulldog Puppies So Expensive" but somehow I doubt that Microsoft is "pro-your mom" and "anti-bulldog" puppies.
"Looking out of the windows of the expensive Manhattan apartment..." satisfies the query results and seems like MS is deflecting results. The problem is compounded by MS using common nouns like "Windows" or "explorer" or "server" or "word" or "works" for their product names. I search for results on "sql server" and it brings up Oracle's SQL server and the Postgres SQL server and Sybase and all of the others. "Why is SQL Server expensive" could come up with any number of rival software companies simply due to this quirk of the marketing department.
I honestly don't think it's that intentional. "Why are Macs so expensive" legitimately could contain a comparison "... makes Macs more expensive than Windows". In this case, both brands are equal distance from "expensive", so the article would seem to be relevant to either result. Simply including "more expensive than Windows" makes it even more likely that an algorithm which includes distance thinks it is relevant to Windows more so than Macs.
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A pet theory of mine I'm still working on: Looks like google weights certain words, and Bing hasn't learned this yet (or gets it wrong).
For example, you want to search "Why is Windows so expensive". The top-weighted words should be the noun "Windows", followed by "expensive". You don't want one without the other.
Since you're looking for an explanation, "why" should also carry a small weight. It's more likely to answer your question if the page has "and that's why windows is..." or "A lot of people asked my why... and so here is my answer" or the rhetorical "Why is ...?" or even "which is why..." So you seemingly get Bing results of "expensive" without the "windows" part.
I would expect a subtitle or heading to have more weight than text in the article, so maybe MS is not weighting H1 more than normal P or SPAN or DIV text. Overall, i think it's just a dismal failure of the algorithm due to immaturity rather than anything intentional.
I work for a large bank... suddenly, our mandated IE 7, which used to allow you to add other search engines, now only allows Bing. (in the search bar.. it isn't like they've blocked Google). But it is still quite annoying, and things like this don't get deployed by accident to thousands of employees.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.