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Microsoft Businesses Google The Internet

Microsoft's Answer to Google Base 121

Posted by Zonk from the war-for-our-information dept.
douglips writes "Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Microsoft intended to compete with Google Base. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Google Base, the Microsoft project code named 'Fremont' will focus solely on classified ads. It will also allow restricting items to various audiences such as social networks or domain names. At this point, though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Microsofties." From the article: "In building Freemont, Wiseman and his five-person crew tried to make it both personal for people who only want to trade among family, friends and colleagues, while also providing the option of a public posting. Classifieds is a growing piece of the booming online advertising market that's expected to reach $13.8 billion by 2007, surpassing advertising spent on magazines, according to JupiterResearch. During that timeframe, spending on display ads and online classifieds together are expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent. "
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Microsoft's Answer to Google Base More

Microsoft's Answer to Google Base

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  • Dupe! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eddy Da KillaBee ( 727499 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:12PM (#14166703)
    From November 30... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/30/054425 6&tid=109&tid=95 [slashdot.org]
    • I knew I had just seen this!
      One would think you could come up with some simple search engine in code for slashdot to look for duplicate articles prior to submission by the editor.
      Hey I know! Have a Google search of the topic before the editors submit it.
      Somehow this seems appropriate given the subject of the dupe article.

    • Re:Dupe! (Score:4, Funny)

      by tehshen ( 794722 ) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:24PM (#14166818)
      Microsoft are going to beat Base twice as hard!
    • Maybe ScuttleMonkey and Zonk are having some kind of feud where each is determined to outdo the others posting on a certain story and Taco is too tied up with personal issues to sort them out.

      That kind of rubbish happens in a lot of organisations.

      I can imagine Taco being driven to distraction by thoughts of the impending BellSouth representatives knocking on his door looking for their protection money. Cash Only.
    • Rather ironic for me, as I lived in Fremont [bbc.co.uk] twice as well;-) As long as MS doesn't take the same year and a half detour to Milpitas [bbc.co.uk] that I did, they'll be fine.
    • The best part is the titles are nearly identical:

      Microsoft's Answer to Google Base [Zonk]
      Microsoft Testing Its Own 'Google Base' [ScuttleMonkey]
    • Who modded this guy up? As has been discussed 2^oo times before, the editors probably know full well what they're doing, but they do dupes for any combination of the following reasons:

      a.) Bring in more advertising revenue, because a large portion of the slashdot crowd (myself included) read these dupes, having at least some idea that we're reading a dupe.
      b.) People still click on the dupes, generating additional revenue for Slashdot from the advertisers that pay by-the-click.
      c.) Some people have claime
      • The other thing is that some people claim "dupe!" to things that were posted a month or two ago. Funny thing about the technology industry is how fast things change, so while the basic article subject might be a dupe there are likely new developments that are worth discussing. Now in this instance that doesn't appear to be the case as this dupe was two days ago...

        • The other thing is that some people claim "dupe!" to things that were posted a month or two ago. Funny thing about the technology industry is how fast things change, so while the basic article subject might be a dupe there are likely new developments that are worth discussing.

          Only if the person writing the summary, or the *cough choke* editor, hasn't made this explicit by saying, 'As we've discussed before [link], [IT company] has announced [some spaffy vapourware]... but now it has [whole new layers of

      • Who modded this guy up?

        At a guess, a bunch of users with mod points who are as pissed off about all the dupes, obvious advertisements, misleading, wrong or downright deceitful articles and poor grammar and spelling that the "editors" allow to persist despite numerous vocal complaints from the readership.

        I've not once even seen a response from any of the editors. Most people don't like feeling that they're being ignored.

    • In the past, many slashdot users have complained that
      this or that article has basically the same information
      as a past article, differing only in the title.
      They call that a "dupe".

      This is not the case here.
      Here the titles are also the same.

  • What is Google Base? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elrac ( 314784 ) <`carl' `at' `smotricz.com'> on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:12PM (#14166704) Homepage Journal
    Before this post, I'd never heard of Google Base. For anyone else in that boat, here's the URL:
    http://base.google.com/base/default [google.com]

    And yes, it shows up very high on the list of hits if you Google for "Google Base" :)

  • If not a dupe... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If it's not a duplicate link to the same exact story, at least it's a dupe to the same essential coverage.

    Taco is getting better! :)

  • A searchable DB, think of the possibilities! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:13PM (#14166716)
    With all their wizardry, maybe they could use it to find posts like this one from 2 days ago [slashdot.org]!

  • Don't mind it's a dupe... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dark-br ( 473115 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:14PM (#14166729) Homepage
    ... I'm here only to see the bashing :)

  • freewheeling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:15PM (#14166737) Journal
    > Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Google Base

    So instead of something cool, open ended and something that will have uses its designers never imagined (like the Internet itself) they have made something boring, predictable and something that's been done about 100 times before.
    Congratulations.

    Oh yeah, and they are Wal-Marting a bunch of small local businesses like newspapers and craigslist. Nice.

    • Re:freewheeling (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      something boring, predictable and something that's been done about 100 times before.

      A bit like this story ;)

    • Craig lost his health insurance?

      -Rick
    • But if it was Google walmarting a bunch of small local businesses, well, that's ok because it's Google!
    • this isn't insightful.

      how is it that microsoft is "walmarting" it and google isn't? Your cultural bias is obfuscating your critical faculties.

      In fact, not only is google walmarting it, they are going to get people like you to improve it for free (potentially devaluing your own skillset, if you happen to code) all out of some ill-guided cultural devotion. In other words, google is artificially extending their workforce to their advantage for free in this open-ended, cool something that you envision.

      Then the
    • they are Wal-Marting a bunch of small local businesses like newspapers

      Just yesterday Knight-Ridder announced that it was looking for buyers for its network of 30-odd newspapers across the U.S., with an asking price of $4 billion. On Monday, the FTC approved the pending merger of Village Voice and New Times Media, the two (and now one) largest weekly newspaper companies in the country.

      Most newspapers that have survived up until now can hardly be said to be "small" or "local".

    • Oh yeah, and they are Wal-Marting a bunch of small local businesses like newspapers and craigslist.

      Newspapers Wal-Marted "for sale" signs on telephone poles. Craigslist Wal-Marted newspaper classifieds. Microsoft Base Wal-Marted Craigslist (which is partially owned by eBay now, FYI). Soon, Wal-Mart will Wal-Mart Microsoft Base, making Wal-Mart the number one online classifieds provider. Wal-Mart, left with no competitors to defeat, will then be forced to Wal-Mart itself, resulting in a collapse of the world

  • Slashdot's Answer to Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)

    by macoppock007 ( 933207 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:17PM (#14166748)
    Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Slashdot intended to compete with Slashdot. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Slashdot, the Slashdot project code named 'dupe' will focus solely on repeating previous stories. At this point, though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Slashdotters.
    • Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Slashdot intended to compete with Slashdot. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Slashdot, the Slashdot project code named 'dupe' will focus solely on repeating previous stories. At this point though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Slashdotters.
    • At this point, though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Slashdotties.

      I'm in. Do you want an invite?

  • Craigslist? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xiaomonkey ( 872442 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:17PM (#14166754)
    This sounds more like direct completion to craigslist rather than Google base.

    But, I guess doing the whole clash of the titans thing, e.g. Microsoft vs. Google, does make the story sound a bit more sexy...

  • Duh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:19PM (#14166765)
    Google Base is not just classifieds plus some other free-wheeling stuff. Google Base is obviously an attempt by Google at creating/owning the Semantic Web, and a pretty damn good one at that.
    • Well, since the article is a dupe, I might as well dupe [slashdot.org] a comment:

      [Google Base, imho,] precisely is not Semantic Web!

      There are no common ontologies (I can just add whatever concepts and attributes I like without any agreement or documentation) and no means for exposure (like RDF) of the marked-up data - it's all internal to their database and hidden behind an interface that doesn't go far beyond keyword search...

      Please tell me if I'm wrong...

    • I'm glad to see that somebody "gets it" - great thinking....

  • Slashdot Search (Score:1, Redundant)

    by courtarro ( 786894 )
    There's this nifty feature in Slashdot known as a 'search'. Not all sites have it, because it often takes a bit of work on the backend to produce useful output. However, progressive sites with excellent editing have this great feature. You can check it out at the link below:

    http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=microsoft+fre m ont+google+base [slashdot.org]

    There's another /. story on November 30 that seems strangely relevent to this one. You editors might want to check out this great new feature!

    • I never bother with this 'search' feature you're talking about. If you just wait a few days then whatever it is you were looking for finds its way back to the front page.

      • If you just wait a few days then whatever it is you were looking for finds its way back to the front page.
        So its official - slashdot is now like a septic tank or politics - the really big turds keep floating to the top, you flush and they don't stay down ...

  • How about NOT personal? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:20PM (#14166780) Homepage Journal
    "Wiseman and his five-person crew tried to make it both personal for people who only want to trade among family, friends and colleagues"

    Who the hell would want to do this? Just give it to one of them. I would want a service where I can post a classified to people who *aren't* family, friends, and colleagues.
    • "make it possible" indicates that you can choose to only trade with family, friends and colleagues. It would a safe bet that you can also trade with people that are not inside your network.
  • The article says something about putting ads on MSN messenger / MSN spaces. Does this mean this is totally different from Ad Supported Free Windows [google.com]. Also does anyone know if the ads will be as non-intrusive and follow the google ad sense model?
    • I found it: "With Fremont, Microsoft expects to make money by selling contextual advertising that would accompany search results, Wiseman said.". I am guessing Microsoft Contextual Ads = Google Ad sense (or the intention anyway)!.
  • For the curious, Fremont is also the name of an area in Seattle. Here you go [nwculture.com].
    • Yeah, Fremont, Seattle's hippie district. So perhaps Craigslist is more what they're aiming at. Maybe MS will give classifieds a haircut and a real job...
      • Once upon a time - Fremont was Seattle's hippie district - now it's the home to Adobe's Seattle facility - mostly Indians and Paks (where's the diversity when everyone comes from the same two countries).

        Good coffee can longer be found anywhere there since Starbucks (the other evil empire) shut down the local Torrefazione cafe. Nope, Fremont has long since been sadly gentrifried - with the emphasis on "fried"....

  • Haven't you noticed Microsoft playing "catch up" to a lot of Google's new services lately?

    Since google came along, it seems Microsoft is becoming less relevant as people stop caring about "operating systems" and caring about actual services.

  • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Informative)

      by plato2876 ( 771348 )
      Well, Craigslist is JUST for the classifieds side of things, much like MS' version of this. Google base, however, can be used for a plethora of different DB work, beyond just simple froogle item ads or such.

  • Record Attempt? (Score:5, Funny)

    by uberdave ( 526529 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:34PM (#14166904) Homepage
    29 comments and not a single "All your base..." joke. Gotta be a record.
  • You mean to tell me that someone came out with a great idea and Microsoft just happened to be hot on their heels with a similar idea that nobody is allowed to see yet? Is this a crazy world we live in? I mean... c'mon. What are the chances?

  • The resulting recursion results in singularity such the world has never seen, followed by world never being seen again...

  • This reminds me of the bandwagons poor pony... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:41PM (#14166964) Homepage Journal
    ... as more people get on the band wagon the harder it is for the pony to pull it.... and the market gets strained....

    of course the difference here is going to be determined by how well such online classified reduce the use of ebay....

    And there is nothing stopping google or anyone else from also providing such classified service.

    Why would MS be announcing this now?

    T0 get the competition going or are they just market testing?

    If the market isn't there, and they drop it... it won't be the first time.... that is what market testing is for... and MS is really little more than a marketing company...

    Who knows, maybe the traditional paper based classified publishers, who really know teh ins and outs of alot of the process, have never thought of doing it online...

    MS wants a piece of which pie now?

     

  • foxbase alpha (Score:3, Funny)

    by BushCheney08 ( 917605 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:48PM (#14167023)
    Google Base Beta? That's the followup to Foxbase Alpha, isn't it?

  • Haven't commented on Base yet... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lpangelrob ( 714473 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:53PM (#14167075)
    ...but I would like to hear from users... is there any particular reason to put most of your life online? I haven't used the service at all yet, especially since all the kinks aren't worked out of it.

    I can understand people knowing that my car is a 2004 Honda Civic. Maybe Google will try to sell me parts, and maybe they can provide me with an online car maintenance schedule automatically as part of their master plan to dominate all information. But what else do they ask for? What else do they want to know?

    Is it basically a volunteering of household and personal financial information, much like MyPoints is (only you earn 'points' there. Not dissing, I worked there.)?

    I'm genuinely interested in the benefit to the user, and not just 'because it's a Google service and it's there'.

  • I'm just wondering why anyone would want to do this.

    Surely the more people who read your ads and can buy your stuff, the better?

    D
  • I don't think MS is trying to compete with Google at all. I suspect they just want Google (and the rest of the world) to think they are trying to compete.

    Google, they think, will work harder, taking resources away from other new and inventive things that could hurt Microsoft.

    Some real people will wait to do anything about Google Base while they ponder whether they should ignore Google and see what Microsoft is going to come up with "real soon now."

    Its just the old time FUD factor use so successfully by IBM

  • Microsoft PM's details about all this... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dare O, who is on a similar team within Microsoft, has blogged on some more details and, naturally, how much he likes 'Fremont' here... http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?g uid=85351eb5-509b-4c27-ad0e-1195fa802ca7 [25hoursaday.com]

  • Actually not exactly (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually this is not so similar to Google Base, but a more direct (and small-thinking) rip off of Craigslist, as far as I can see. There is the similarity that Microsoft also have a search engine to directly map over this data, but eWeek are going much too far (also in http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877217,00.as [eweek.com] p [eweek.com], linked) in ignoring the fundamental differences between a community listing site, an auction site (where the role of the provider is much more hands-on) and the need for Googl
  • Microsoft is more restrictive with betas while Goolge is more open Gmail and web acclerator are exceptions(or were). Thats one positive to google for those who like the cutting-edge

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