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How Microsoft Degrades Their Users (In a Good Cause)
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed May 20, 2009 12:45 AM
from the whoa-there-nelly dept.
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."
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As opposed to ... (Score:5, Funny)
(Ba da BOOM! Don't forget to tip your waitress.)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That's sort of the same thing I was thinking. I mean, maybe they should have users that opt in to such an experience before they start degrading it.
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Funny)
Experimenting by delaying a pageload for 500ms is worthy of ethical considerations?
No, they should be shot on sight.
Parent
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this would only actually be a problem if anyone used LIVE search.
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Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Modded as Funny (100%), but you've just laid out the environmentalist rationale for controlling everything everyone does, everywhere.
Parent
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:4, Funny)
While we're at it, can we assume that I have ten million bucks?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Statistics [alexa.com]. Also, scroll down and note the % of people who actually proceed to search.live.com, and then look at this [alexa.com]. (note that the last two statistics probably overlap gratuitously, so if you want to do any math, ignore the third, because the second is more precise.) And if you want some laughs, put google and yahoo into the compare boxes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If we can sue them, then we also have to sue Comcast!
They frequently slow down my browsing with their cruddy filtering, to the point where some jumps take seconds.
This isn't right(since I'm Canadian), but tracert doesn't lie!
It's horrible when a game's servers have comcast lines between them and me. Rather than 50-150 ping, I face 700+. :(
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Informative)
Gmail does "selective degradation" really well. E.g. if you load gmail over a slow VPN over wireless connection it says "This site is taking longer to load than normal, would you like to try the Basic Html version or wait longer". Also you can choose basic html (i.e. less ajax and css) as your default view.
Basic HTML is quite usable these days - it even does email address autocompletion on Opera. So it can use ajax but it presumably doesn't depend of it. In a way it's a bit like a well written application which can use new features if they are present but run without them on downlevel systems.
Parent
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're discussing the wrong topic. "graceful degradation" != "selective worsening".
In Gmail, the degradation is helping you cope with a poor connection. In Microsoft's experiment, the degradation is hurting you and is imposed by a coin flip.
Parent
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:4, Funny)
The summary is about graceful degradation. TFA is OFFTOPIC here.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You'd probably end up fathering Seth McFarlane.
Re:As opposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would probably completely invalidate the results though, for two reasons. First, the sorts of people who would opt into that wouldn't at all be representative. (It would take an unusual person to even find the opt-in, let alone volunteer for a degraded experience knowingly.) Second, knowing about it would be way too likely to affect how the people behaved.
You could get halfway by saying "would you like to help us do research" or something like that, without saying in what way, which would reduce these problems, but not completely.
Parent
Select groups of users (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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You forgot Safari and Chrome.
Re:Select groups of users (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They didn't do the experiment to find that out. They're only talking about what it's like (you even quoted it).
Agile and all that (Score:3, Insightful)
What is cool about the Web is that it is the most Agile of all release environments. Unlike shrinkwrap software, web software can be changed very easily and universally for all users. It brings a raw edge to the development of the software.
In this, there is also the possibility of becoming complacent and ill-tuned to the needs of your users. Taking Google as an example, they keep their services in a perpetual state of beta, always in testing, never reaching a final v1. This type of reliance on constant feedback from customers may work for a short while, but unless the product reaches a state of relative stability (in terms of both not crashing and also not changing) the users will typically find some other software to use.
So when Microsoft decides to impact a few customers with degraded QoS, they may be setting themselves up for a bigger fall later. By introducing the possibility that MS may actively sabotage your user experience in the name of experimentation and testing, they degrade their own reputation (as much as it can be degraded from its current levels) and needlessly increase FUD regarding their proffered services.
It may be for a good cause, but customers should not be the ones testing Microsoft's software. As a professional software house, they should provide good quality control before software hits the servers. It doesn't matter if this is the age of Agile or not.
Re:Agile and all that (Score:5, Insightful)
In this, there is also the possibility of becoming complacent and ill-tuned to the needs of your users. Taking Google as an example, they keep their services in a perpetual state of beta, always in testing, never reaching a final v1. This type of reliance on constant feedback from customers may work for a short while, but unless the product reaches a state of relative stability (in terms of both not crashing and also not changing) the users will typically find some other software to use.
You just disproved your own point.
Parent
Re:Agile and all that (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Half a second delay is the end of the world. Age of Linux as SaaS...or whatever buzzwords are in play here.
I'm up for a good Microsoft rant any time, any place, but if a small batch of users have to take a performance hit to improve the experience in the end for all users, isn't that a positive thing? You can't really beta test this stuff. You can try running simulations, but nothing beats real world numbers.
Would we view this any different if Apple tried it? Google?
(Disclaimer: This is a logic exercise. In reality, I doubt there's actually much MS could and would do to their site to improve my experience using it.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
but the key difference here is that changing ui is nowhere
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
if a small batch of users have to take a performance hit to improve the experience in the end for all users, isn't that a positive thing?
Didn't Jesus say "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're right. You're absolutely right. Hey, that Bible sounds like kind of a good book.
Re:Agile and all that (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought that was Spock [youtube.com].
Parent
Re:Agile and all that (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah! I mean, take IE6 for example. That didn't change in a REALLY long time, and lots of people use it! That makes it good, right? [/sarcasm]
Your statement neglects quality. Yes, people want sites that're stable and don't crash, and yes, changing the design every week is bad and confusing, but improving on the design and function of a site is always a good thing, so long as you do so at intervals large enough for users to adjust to. The design of Gmail has only changed drastically two or three times in it's history design-wise, but they still consider it a Beta (depending on what you consider a drastic change, of course).
The issue is that Google, once simply a search engine, is now in the Web Services industry. The fact is, no matter what the label says, Gmail and many of their other apps are not in Beta, and haven't been in a long time. They're just hesitant to call it "v1" or something because that has a sense of finality, like customers shouldn't expect it to change very often. With the web, and Web Apps in particular, that's no longer really the case. They are often redesigned and redone to improve their performance, effectiveness, ease-of-use, and even aesthetics. You even point out yourself how agile the web is as an environment for releasing software. You neglect, though, that this keeps it interesting for the users as well, because they like the feeling that their product is continually being improved at no extra cost to them (unlike many shrink-wrapped software) (Note: When I say "extra cost," I mean in addition to any subscriptions they already have to the service, if any).
The "Beta" in Google's case is very much a marketing issue as much as it is a technical issue.
Parent
Re:Agile and all that (Score:5, Informative)
"The "Beta" in Google's case is very much a marketing issue as much as it is a technical issue"
And perhaps a commitment issue, like people who stay engaged forever but never actually get married...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
It also bears considering that part of the experiment was to observe users' responses to the degraded service. A professional software house can control the quality of their software to to an arbitrary degree, for a cost. Understanding the marginal benefit of an additional "unit" of quality, however, requires them to characterize the users' response to software experiences of varying quality.
One of the most often-targeted DDoS sites (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for the reminder, it's already been a couple of hours since my last flood ping! Now if you excuse me...
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And pings to send before I sleep,
And pings to send before you sleep.
Re:One of the most often-targeted DDoS sites (Score:5, Funny)
So you ping and then you sleep()? Not much of a flood ping really...
Parent
Re:One of the most often-targeted DDoS sites (Score:5, Funny)
So you ping and then you sleep()?
TODO: Insert geek related sex-joke here
Parent
live search is still useless... (Score:2, Funny)
but the home page of live search is great. so i open it everyday and just watch the picture.
Punch your customers in the face, selectively (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?
Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be so negative. They're simply migrating the Vista experience to the Cloud.
Parent
Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds absurd because what you're saying is absurd.
If you ran an experiment where some customers had their orders delayed by a few minutes more than was necessary and had some kind of metric to determine their enjoyment of their dining experience, it wouldn't be so absurd. Perhaps you provide free internet access in your store, and the extra delay results in a greater chance of people making use of it. And once they've started using it, there's a greater chance they'll decide to order a coffee after their meal and stick around for a bit longer.
Or maybe you find they're less likely to return to the store. That might be hard to track, but the point stands. There are some things which are interesting and which may or may not give unexpected results when tried in real life. If an experiment like this shows that a few minutes delay significantly upsets customers, then it becomes clear that spending extra money to have more staff on is probably actually worth the expense. On the other hand if you can show that most people don't notice, then it makes sense to risk having a shortage of staff at peak periods if you can save a bit of money.
You might even find unexpected results, for example maybe a lot of people after waiting a few minutes with nothing to look at but the menu end up ordering more than they initially would, so it's actually profitable to make people wait longer. Who knows? The only way to find out is to experiment.
Parent
Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, who invited the logic guy to this Microsoft bashing thread?
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Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it wouldn't be so absurd, because we all know that a Microsoft Live results page is just like a nice burger, or a nice frothy Guiness getting poured ever slowly. The slower it takes, the better it usually is.
In fact, that should be Microsoft new marketing campaign: "At Microsoft Live, we make all our results from scratch and we don't pre-index anything. It does take a little bit longer, and we may not be the biggest search engine around, but that's just a sign we're focusing on delivering quality results -- not fast results."
Parent
Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a teenager, I worked at McDonald's. One day, some corporate people came into the restaurant with stop watches and notebooks. They had people pulled from the cash registers, then had extra people put at the registers. It appeared that they were doing something along the lines of what you are saying and what Microsoft did.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"You may be modded funny, but to me, that's only because there isn't a "douchebag" mod"
I think the funny mod can actually be used defensively... when somebody says something, and they might be completely serious, but it's blatently obvious that it shouldn't be taken seriously, a +1 funny mod can help to set the context of which it is read :-)
Alkamai? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, doesn't all of MS's servers get fronted by Alkamai systems (running Linux) to distribute the load and help mitigate DDoS attacks?
Re:Alkamai? (Score:5, Informative)
There's no L in Akamai, but yes, Akamai mirrors the static content, such as images. However, dynamic content such as search results are still served by Microsoft.
Parent
Move along, nothing to see here (Score:3, Insightful)
Passing on the low-hanging fruit, it seems to me that this is pretty much exactly the kind of thing that happens all the time at the packet layer. WRED, for example, selectively drops packets even when buffers aren't full and the network is still theoretically operating under capacity so that the next TCP connection doesn't bring down the uplink. How is the Microsoft strategy qualitatively different?
I submit to you (Score:5, Funny)
a web page more useless than a blank page.
http://havenworks.com/ [havenworks.com]
Thank you, and good night.
Absurd (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Why this is completely absurd. It would be like some moron deciding that people at Slashdot only read the top of the page and, rather than simply making a smaller page with a link to the rest of the information, only loading the top of the page until you try to scroll down and read more. Then suddenly things would jump around and muck up your concept of where you were on the page. The only thing that would be worse is if the put something cute or interesting at the bottom of the page to encourage you to scroll down to see it, and trigger this very undesirable behavior frequently.
Re: (Score:2)