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Microsoft Lost Search War By Ignoring the Long Tail

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-wonder-if-it's-prehensile dept.

Art3x writes "When developing search engine technology, Microsoft focused on returning good results for popular queries but ignored the minor ones. 'It turned out the long tail was much more important,' said Bing's Yusuf Mehdi. 'One-third of queries that show up on Bing, it's the first time we've ever seen that query.' Yet the long tail is what makes most of Google's money. Microsoft is so far behind now that they won't crush Google, but they hope to live side by side, with Bing specializing in transactions like plane tickets, said Bing Director Stefan Weitz."

27 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Same old by Mystery00 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Company releases an inferior product, much later to the game than competition, makes excuses for failure, water still wet.

    --
    "we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
    1. Re:Same old by nomadic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      makes excuses for failure

      "We messed up" isn't really an excuse.

    2. Re:Same old by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Personally, I won't touch bing. It generates money for Microsoft, who is willing to give me almost nothing for free. Their free products are tied to using their overly bloated over priced products.

      Google has given me a browser, they gave me a superior search engine years ahead of any competition, they offer me a free operating system, AND they host a boatload of code for free stuff for which I've never paid a dime.

      More, Google promotes the advancement of computer science, without trying to take possession of every line of code written to work with their offerings. None of that "embrace, extend, extinguish" nonsense.

      And, if all the rest doesn't impress you, Google has decided that they WILL NOT censor the web for 1/4 of the world's population, while Microsoft is quite happy to do so.

      If anyone is going to make money off of my searches, it will be Google, unless and until some other company steps up to offer me tons of free stuff, and to "Not be evil".

      I guess you could summarize my attitude as "Fuck Microsoft!"

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    3. Re:Same old by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Microsoft is always late to the party. GUI, LANs, the internet, and now internet search.

      They figure they'll make up for it with superior marketing and product placement within their own software; don't underestimate the power that these things can have.

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
    4. Re:Same old by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Speaking of fanboys - maybe you missed the fact that MS OWNS every line of code they produce, and they OWN everything they research.

      On the other hand, Google gives away most of the stuff they write research. Google makes it possible to take their neatest stuff, modify it, and release it again.

      Granted, there are SOME things that Google won't open source. They have a few bread-and-butter things that they don't want to give away to their competition, which is understandable. But, for the advancement of computer science, almost everything they do is just thrown out there, and made available for anyone who has a "better idea".

      Try taking some MS code, and improving on it. IF MS approves of it, they will put their name on it, making it their own, then they will either use it, or drown it in the sea of obscurity surrounding Redmond.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    5. Re:Same old by cduffy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft gives free search, browser, and email just like google

      If it's tied to a paid product (Windows), it ain't free.

    6. Re:Same old by MrCrassic · · Score: 1, Insightful

      But what has MS Research given us

      Tons of advancements in operating systems and computer science, for starters. Whether that is more important than the accomplishments from Google Labs is debatable.

    7. Re:Same old by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Try taking some MS code, and improving on it.

      Most people who would try, would fail. MS gets their stuff working consistently (99% of the time anyway), then gives you a basic tool, an API, and any libraries and documentation you may need to build your own tool off of their technology.

      No, they aren't giving away their code, but they are giving you everything you need to use their code however you wish to use it.

      Seriously, when I got into administering MS servers, I was shocked at how much they give away for free. There are literally hundreds of very useful tools in dozens of different categories, many of which have an API for incorporating into your own code.

      Some of them are so good, MS has to gimp them so companies that a free tool competes with don't go under, but you are usually free to build a better tool based on it.

      I'm not saying I like Microsoft better than Google, Google is much more focused on the average user (including linux hobbyists). Microsoft is focused on businesses, and they do very well by IT professionals servicing their software. The consumer market, big as it is, is just a side market for Microsoft - an offshoot created by their business market. So yeah, they aren't nearly as generous to the average user - though you can still get all the free tools if you look for them.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    8. Re:Same old by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Up until fairly recently IE was also available for Mac, and you don't need to buy a new copy of Windows for every updated version of the browser*. In fact, Microsoft giving away the browser for free was the whole reason why Netscape was so pissed off at them. In any case, I suspect that the only reason IE is no longer available on Macs or other Unix systems is because nobody would voluntarily use it, so they just don't bother maintaining the port any more.

      *Except IE9 & XP, but there's going to be an 11 year gap between them by the time the new IE comes out

    9. Re:Same old by icebraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IE is just as free as Chrome.

      No, IE is just a product you pay for when you buy the Windows bundle. Then you get free updates, like with other paid software.

      Chrome is the property of a monopoly trying to squash the only other search engine in use. What's the difference? It's a competitive market, and Google is doing the exact same thing to Bing that Microsoft is trying to do to Chrome. It's competition, and its healthiest when you have three or more competitors. The search market really only has two, and one of those is far more dominant than the other.

      Except IE won because it came bundled with the OS, in clear abuse of their monopoly, while Google Search "won" for itself.

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    10. Re:Same old by thijsh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Isn't that their self-admitted tactic? I read recently that Microsoft does not innovate, they wait until others prove new tech and move in either by buying their way in or just by copying the competition (if it's fairly trivial). Whatever you may think of it it is a legitimate business tactic... but they won't get the respect from the tech community that Google gets. We geeks love innovation, and the people that do the coolest research 'for us' are our modern day geek heroes. :)

  2. Well, duh... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful
    said Bing's Yusuf Mehdi. 'One-third of queries that show up on Bing, it's the first time we've ever seen that query.'

    .

    Search engines are all about people looking to find stuff. A good portion of what people look for are probably new things that are happening now.

    So, Microsoft goes off and designs a brand new "bet the ranch" search engine, without even knowing how its customers use such a service. Yes, that sounds like Microsoft.

    1. Re:Well, duh... by ascari · · Score: 2, Insightful

      One could be forgiven for assuming that years of cumulative search and click data from MSN would have made this issue apparent very early on. But apparently that wasn't the case. Was the collaboration between MSN and Bing teams really that poor? Or was the MSN data just that worthless? In any case, it suggests that MS tries to have too many fingers in too many pies, and should refocus on making core products (Windows, Office an XBox) great again before running off dabbling in markets it doesn't understand. No wonder stock is flat since forever...

  3. It helps to be honest, as well by timholman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'It turned out the long tail was much more important,' said Bing's Yusuf Mehdi.

    Someone should tell Medhi that it also helps when you don't game the search results to fit your corporate agenda.

    From time to time, I try out the following query on Bing: "Why is Windows so expensive?"

    The day that the first result returned is NOT a site about Macs being expensive is the day I'll start to take Bing seriously. Until then, I'm sticking with Google, which is at least honest enough to properly index anti-Google queries.

    1. Re:It helps to be honest, as well by smpoole7 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It would appear that Bing correlates results in real-time, re-scoring based on clicks. So ... when someone searches, "Why Is Windows Expensive," Bing watches to see what the user *clicks* in the results and uses that to score *subsequent* queries. I'm just guessing, of course, but this could explain why some people get that Mac link as the first hit, while others get something else.

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
  4. Lost? by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As long as there are search engines and choices, the war isn't over. A war of unskilled attrition, ( like Microsoft plays ) can take a long time to end.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  5. Re:Bing Seems No Better by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's not the 20 relevant ones that's the trouble, it's the thousands of irrelevant ones.

    --
    Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
  6. So they say by gilesjuk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would say they lost by:

    1. Being too late. Search engines have been around for many years. You can't easily launch a search engine now without a massively improved user experience over what is already available.

    2. Not being trusted, I don't want to use Microsoft's search engine as it may subvert the results to promote their wares.

    3. Stupid name. Every time I hear "Bing" I think of Ned Ryserson from the film Groundhog Day.

    4. OTT interface, I don't need a big background when I'm looking for stuff.

    1. Re:So they say by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      1. Being too late. Search engines have been around for many years.

      Ironically, Google was also late. Yahoo and Alta Vista were quite popular at the time. The trick is that you have to do it better, not merely as good as. But MS is not known for original innovation.
         

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  7. The Data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bing can't perform as well as Google because for one, it doesn't have the same data to begin with.

    For example, have you ever released a new website and watched how long it takes for Bing to index it compared to Google?

  8. Re:They need to do something more radically differ by Fex303 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not try to make a search engine that doesn't track what you do? I'd pay a subscription for such a thing.

    How would they keep track of who has subscribed if they're not tracking people?

  9. Re:MapReduce Thinking? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For now. And that will only last until the founders leave or step back in the oversight and are replaced by Standford MBA's. Then it will become about the bottom line. Look at what happened to Motorola when the family was forced out about a decade or more ago...

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  10. Re:They need to do something more radically differ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    >The big problem with Google is privacy

    No it's not. Maybe it's a problem to you and a few other privacy nuts, but no one else minds, and it's good to Google, that's why they do it.

  11. Why I switched to Bing by Orion_ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The day I searched (a few months ago) for information on the Toyota recall and got an automatically scrolling box of Twitter posts was the day I switched to Bing.

    (That said, Bing really isn't as good as Google... but most of the time it's almost as good, and I really don't want anything to automatically scroll, and I really really don't want any results from Twitter.)

  12. Re:They need to do something more radically differ by timholman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But windows is a heck of a lot more open than the iPad

    You're comparing oranges to apples, so to speak. An operating system is not equivalent to a single product put out by a company.

    Tell me, is the Xbox more open than the iPad? Because those two products are the ones you should be comparing. Closed, tightly regulated ecosystems in both cases, although I'd still give the iPad the edge for ease of developer access.

    On the other hand, is Windows more open than OS X? Clearly, the answer to that is a resounding NO, as you quickly realize as you jump through Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage" license code hoops.

  13. Re:They need to do something more radically differ by RPoet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's a difference between keeping track of who has subscribed and keeping track of what subscribers search for. Of course, in this scenario, subscribers would have to blindly trust Microsoft.

    --
    "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
  14. Re:Bing sucks by smith6174 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sorry for calling you a moron, but I wouldn't feel better calling you a novice. Is the little oatmeal homepage the site you are having trouble with? Well, how about some free advice so you don't have to deal with anymore SEO fraudsters. If you have 41k inbound links and you still have a pagerank of 0, I'll bet you have been blacklisted or sandboxed. Second, it doesn't really help your site to have the entire first page of your HTML consisting of ASCII art including profanity. Third, you have almost no meaningful text or alt text on your images. I don't blame you for being skeptical of professional SEOs, since most of them suck. How long are you going to blame Microsoft for your problems?