Does Bing Have Google Running Scared? 560
suraj.sun alerts us to an anonymous-source story up at the NY Post, not what we would normally consider a leading source of tech news, claiming that Microsoft's introduction of Bing has alarmed Google. "...co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned. Brin, according to sources..., is himself leading the team of search-engine specialists in an effort to determine how Bing's crucial search algorithm differs from that used by [Google]. 'New search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey,' said one insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The move by Brin is unusual, as it is rare these days for the Google founders to have such hands-on involvement in day-to-day operations at the company, the source added." CNet's coverage of the rumor begins with the NY Post and adds in Search Engine Land's speculation on what the world of search would look like if Yahoo exited the field.
Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:4, Insightful)
And Seinfeld falls into this statement where exactly?
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft does marketing better than everything else they do? I don't buy it. Embrace Extend Extinguish comes to mind for starters. I'd say their ability to control the markets they are in is also more effective than their marketing. I'm sure there's more if i cared to keep going. There's a reason we've seen so many anti-trust lawsuits against them, and it isn't because they are great at marketing. I'd even venture that if what they were "best" at was marketing, they wouldn't be the target of so much hatred and scandalous news we hear of every other day at slashdot.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft does marketing better than everything else they do?
Yes. They're a marketing company that has some tech leanings - it's been this way for as long as I've been into computers (the early 80's)
I don't buy it. Embrace Extend Extinguish comes to mind for starters.
You mean the marketing thing they need to do because they're incapable of engineering something good themselves?
I'd say their ability to control the markets they are in is also more effective than their marketing.
Umm, marketing is how they control their markets.
I'm sure there's more if i cared to keep going
Maybe you should, because the examples you gave only undermined your point.
Yes, who can forget MS's great marketing (Score:4, Funny)
"Yes. They're a marketing company that has some tech leanings - it's been this way for as long as I've been into computers (the early 80's)"
Sure, who can forget the famous 1984 commercial and the 16 page insert in Newsweek magazine for Windows 1.0 .. oh wait.
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"Yes. They're a marketing company that has some tech leanings - it's been this way for as long as I've been into computers (the early 80's)"
Sure, who can forget the famous 1984 commercial and the 16 page insert in Newsweek magazine for Windows 1.0 .. oh wait.
Correct, because the best defense from an allegation is to find an example of someone else doing something similar to the allegation.
Cf. Republicans brining up Clinton whenever Bush is being criticized.
Re:Yes, who can forget MS's great marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, for a more recent example, Democrats bringing up Bush whenever Obama is being criticized.
One involved 8 years of prosperity and stabilization around the globe with a blowjob wedge issue.
The second involved 8 years of chaos, global instability, pockets of illegal prosperity with a Trust me and God bless America sock puppet hopin' to get a blow job for his wedge issue and not Torture, Massive Debt, Hate from Allies around the Globe, on and on and on.
I'll take a guy gettin' his nut off and doing the job over that douche of an alternative.
Re:Yes, who can forget MS's great marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you forget all the google chrome ads and promotion of it in youtube? And how they pay firefox and opera to include google as the default search engine. That counts as marketing aswell.
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Some people can't accept the idea that MS customers might actually like MS products, so they use this concept of MS as a marketing wiz to explain their success.
Well, I like MS products.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Microsoft is not good at marketing. What they do well is business. They have the sharpest business techniques you will ever see a company run. They originally got in the door by convincing IBM to give them the deal. All the way along, they've been making deals that somehow turn out best for them. With windows, they started by playing nice with IBM as long as possible, even promoting OS/2 for a while, until the precise moment when they needed to backstab them. With Netscape, Wordperfect, they kept on pushing their average products until the other companies made a mistep, and they were ready to pounce. If Google ever DOES make a mistake, they will be ready to pounce.
THAT'S what Microsoft does. They are always waiting and ready when their competitor stumbles.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Insightful)
But these are just your examples. Microsoft has exhibited marketing excellence throughout its existence from choosing to offer discounts to computer manufacturers who do not sell systems with alternative OSes to MCSEs and Microsoft Solution providers who are provided with primarily marketing resources rather than technical resources. Apparently, much of what you think is just "business" is the particular subset of business known as marketing.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Insightful)
Your example is not Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It has nothing to do with it. The idea of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish in example is:
Java was developed by Sun as an open standard for programming applets that were OS independent.
Microsoft licensed that technology under the terms that they not modify it to make it platform specific.
Microsoft ignored those terms making their VM extensions specific to Windows. They did this so that developers would develop for their VM/implementation thus failing to support the open standards/platform. This training of Developers Developers Developers to the Microsoft way was the extend portion of that business tactic.
Sun saw this and sued Microsoft. Microsoft was ordered to remove the VM from Windows as it was a violation of the terms of the license. Essentially they embraced Java, then extended it, then attempted to extinguish it but Sun go the upper hand. Then end result was close to a multi-billion dollar judgment against Microsoft.
That's embrace, extend, extinguish. You are talking in terms of proprietary vendor lock in.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Informative)
However, your point is weakened by your lack of attention to the details of reality. IBM sought out Microsoft's help with DOS, it wasn't the other way around. It was a big deal: for the first time in history IBM built the entire computer by subcontractors. This wasn't marketing, it was IBM looking for someone to build an OS for them. Their first choice, Digital, rejected them.
Let's look at Netscape: it wasn't the 'extra features' that made the difference (I assume this is what you mean by making files that competitors couldn't read), if that were all Netscape would have won because they were doing it too. Also, I don't remember any websites having trouble rendering in Netscape during the 90s, so Microsoft's attempts weren't very effective. In the end, it was Netscape creating a bloated, inefficient browser that killed them. IE WAS better, so there was no reason to switch to Netscape anymore. It wasn't Microsoft who killed them, it was Netscape who killed themselves. Microsoft kept trying until finally Netscape tripped and fell.
You're also making a stretch to consider vendor lock-in strategies to be marketing. Marketing is finding out what your customers need, and letting your customers know that you can provide something they want. Vendor lock-in doesn't really fall into that category.
Microsoft has exhibited marketing excellence throughout its existence from choosing to offer discounts to computer manufacturers who do not sell systems with alternative OSes to MCSEs and Microsoft Solution providers who are provided with primarily marketing resources rather than technical resources.
I don't know if I would consider this marketing either. It's once again a trap that wouldn't work except Microsoft has enough power in the market to bully OEMs. It only works because their 'customers' lack any sort of choice. It's more like strong-armed-negotiation-tactics, and potentially abuse of a monopoly.
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I'm no fan (anymore) of Microsoft's, but having actually lived through that era I feel I should contribute my observations. IBM was ready to kill Microsoft, and OS/2 was precisely the weapon to do so, so
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that Microsoft wrote OS/2 for IBM? And basically sabotaged it when they started working on Windows 3.0. IBM basically had to rewrite OS/2 themselves because it was so crappy. And Microsoft was first out the door with Windows 95 apps by months compared to Lotus and Wordperfect. Why? They were using secret API's the others had no access to. Believe me, the Microsoft of the 90's cheated at every opportunity to get where they were. They were cool in the 80's. Cheaters in the 90's and just plain old incompetent this decade. Maybe they are turning the corner with Bing and Windows 7. Who knows?
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Interesting)
Commercials are "important" to marketing, but commercials are not marketing. I'm not aware of any major corporation that does its own commercials. They generally hire an outside ad agency, that then does the commercials, and whatever research defined by the marketing director. I wouldn't judge a marketing director solely by its failed commercial campaigns. (But failure to capture/gain a market is reason to fire one, and crappy commercials would be a culprit.)
Marketing is figuring out what the status quo is, then figuring what nature of product can be introduced that makes money, then defining the strategy to maximize market share/profits. When you think of marketing, think Steve Jobs and Apple, and how they got their overpriced products sold to a rabid minority. Yes, Microsoft does not have a genius marketing department, but breaking legs hasn't been what got Microsoft on top of the software world (even though MS excels at it and are quite eager to break legs).
Windows was a strategic decision. The advantages of a GUI interface to the ungeek masses was pretty obvious after Apple came out with the Mac. Microsoft saw that IBM did not want to drive OS/2 into the consumer market, or was too inept to do so, and then decided they had to eat IBM's dinner. IBM whines about being backstabbed, because they're losers who never saw the importance of the consumer market to their market share. They had a technically superior product, talk about being bad marketers.
It was WYSIWYG and the Office application suite that killed Wordperfect, and that was marketing's kill. Wordperfect sat clueless, then fell behind on what their customer base wanted. Late on WYSIWYG, then late on bundling a robust spreadsheet, presentation, and database apps to the wordprocessor. Why buy 2nd best or the oddball, when Microsoft sold you everything you needed, AND EVERYONE else used MS products (compatibility)?
Finally, killing Netscape was a coup for BillyG, if you believe the Businessweek article. Bill groks that the Internet is the new market, Netscape already "owned" it, and Microsoft had to make a presence from NOTHING. He quickly figures out that Netscape makes all their money from the browser. So MS offers a free browser, and sucks all the financial oxygen from Netscape. Add an email client, and support for every internet gadget, and the only competitor to Microsoft is the amorphous internet giving away a free OS (until Google). THAT is marketing.
Business tactics is creating a pricing scheme that puts only your OS on every computer built by a large manufacturer, and use it to threaten any manufacturer that tries to put on linux as an alternative.
Microsoft does not wait for their competitors make a mistake. NO successful business waits for their competitor. Microsoft treats each competitor's product like a marathon. They're so rich (and somewhat talented), they'll just fall behind and pace the leader, letting him/her break the air while they draft. Eventually, Microsoft figures out when to make their move. It takes exceptional marketing to redefine the competition in a way that the end result is making more money.
Bing is Microsoft's marketing answer to Google. The race isn't who puts out the best links to queries; the race is which search engine leads to the most sales. Bing may not generate superior search results to Google, but if you're looking to buy something, Microsoft is all over the experience. And its a simpler, more automated experience, because the unwashed masses are stupid, and appreciate people who make things easier for them without pointing out they are stupid. Advertisers will eventually want to throw money at Bing, because that's where they'll make more sales.
The NY Post story is a planted POS story, because Ballmer is the dumbest CEO with a job. Sergey Brin is not a money guy, an ego guy, or a BillyG paranoia "I must always win" guy. Google management whistled Sergey in, because they're not technical enough to determine the response. Google management took a look at Bing, figured out what's MS's game, and will make their adjustments. Meanwhile, Google's working on its game changer, which will probably be some form of semantic web environment; the Holy Grail of Internet search.
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NO, embrace, extend, extinguish has nothing to do with this.
Embrace, extend, extinguish is what they did with browser technology, with java technology, with Open GL, etc.
They would, say in the case of Java do this:
1) sign license
2) create virtual machine for windows
3) alter the java VM to add the ability to do some new and different things in Windows that you can't do in other OSes, such as Linux or Unix,etc.
4) after the momentum is enough then declare Java (as Sun designed it) dead and that everyone should
Re:about marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
The paradox with parent is that any new engineer, no matter how qualified, will have to do things "the Microsoft Way". This because of limitations that Microsoft itself created: Patents, licensing and over-marketing all built around a dysfunctional software core immobilised by the same.
It took some real b*lls for apple to scrap their own proprietary core for Unix's - that is what making computers that work better is all about.
Microsoft, on the other hand, owes its fortune to the fact that it managed to "guinea-train" an entire generation of first-time computer users - with an OS core that wasn't even of their own making - by their deal to having it shipped "for free" in every new computer. Turn a computer on, first-time user, and what's the first thing you'll "learn" to use? What you see in front of you.
Even though Microsoft could use their massive profits for researching something better or even new, they've spent so much time on protecting a system based on patents and marketing techniques that they've basically stifled any means for real innovation. Their error is refusing to change from their present path.
Because of Microsoft's history, I can't hide that my first impression was one of doubt (about the efficiency of the Bing algorithm over Google's), but you never know. The thing about search engines is that 99% of what happens in a search isn't visible to the searcher - it is not a function-laden gui - and the chain of operation is simpler, so who knows? If the algorithm *is* better and users get better results, it will be the better product.
Re:about marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
Google became the best search engine by being better than the rest, which then created an audience for targeted advertising. Google is all about getting clicks on the adverts on its pages.
Now i'm not saying Bing is better at search than google, but if it is then it makes sense for users to use Bing if its bringing better search results, which is bad for google as it reduces the numbers of people clicking on its ads.
Google has a balancing act to perform, if Google is too good at finding what we want , we don't click Ads. Which is probably why google has remained the best search engine available for a long time.
Microsoft is in an interesting position they are not nearly as interested in targeted Ads in the shrort term as they primarily want users to switch from google. This should mean they will be trying to produce better search results than google which is what we want.
Google must respond by producing better search results and there are two obvious area's in which they could improve, location and quality. Google allows advertisers to target ads to users in a particular city but don't allow users to filter results based on location very easily. Google also lets some really bad results float to the top of its search results, parked domains, malware serving domains, wiki pages and price comparison sites which often don't even have the product your interested in to compare.
If i was going to improve search quality at google, i would leverage some of the tools currently used for advertisers, let users choose to search in a particular locale of their choice. secondly clean up the search results maybe semi automated by using bounce back, where users land on a page and then hit the back button almost immediately that should reduce a pages page rank and drop it down the results list.
I'd also give users the option to blacklist sites as preferences. We all have sites we don't find useful or companies we dislike. The tricky thing is our searches are not always the same, when you want to buy something , you dont want the same results returned as when your looking for information about something.
Just as firefox has prompted IE to become a better browser, Bing may well be doing a similar thing to Google. One things for sure better search will reduce ad clicks which will reduce revenue at google or increase advertising cost, or both.
Re:Microsoft is a great engineering company. (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft exploited it with, tada, a better product.
Do you really think a superior notification sound made people buy Windows ?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and by the way, neither Qt or Gtk have a native grid that matches the grid controls used in Windows.
I've no idea about Gtk there, but what's wrong with Qt grid?
The only Linux GUI kit that has even halfway decent widgets is WxWidgets
Erm, are you seriously saying that wxWidgets offer better widgets than Qt? esp. grid?..
it falls short of what you can get out of Win32 native components.
You totally lose me there, given that native Win32 controls are very limited (they don't include dockable toolbars, for example, nor a proper grid). Comparing to VCL or WinForms would be more reasonable, though even then I don't see what they can offer that Qt does not.
Then there's WPF, but that's a very different story...
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Does "marketing" have a strict definition that could not be construed to include those things? I don't know the answer to that. I honestly thought that controlling or at least influencing the market was the primary goal of all marketing efforts and that the main difference between MS and other companies i
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, that explains their pitiful market share and the general dearth of resources, so easy to observe in what goes on over there. They are as good as gone...
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:4, Informative)
And Seinfeld falls into this statement where exactly?
Churro sales went through the roof after that commerical aired.
I want one right now.....it still works.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As a marketing strategy, the Seinfield ads sucked but were interesting nonetheless.
First of all, people were talking about them. Not exactly in a good way, but I can remember Slashdot posting article after article about them.
The second thing was the subtle message in each one of them. Every one of them had something to do with Vista. for example:
1) Bill Gates needing a Size 10 shoe instead of a size 9 = Vista needing a high end PC instead of a stripped down one.
2) Family accusing Bill and Jerry of stealing
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bill Gates needing a Size 10 shoe instead of a size 9 = Vista needing a high end PC instead of a stripped down one.
I have a feeling you're reading too much into it. Moreover, even if that was their message the analogy is completely wrong. People for the better part of their life use the same number of shoes. It would make just a little bit of sense if they were showing some boy/girl (which have different shoe number every year).
But in any case you may have extremely subtle messages in a pile of junk but only 0,01% of the target population will understand it. But do you really want that? Why not send a hand signed mail t
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And the link takes me to youtube; not very good marketing.
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http://video.msn.com/ [msn.com]
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree.
"Taking notice" might be an apt phrase to describe Google's reaction -- but even "concern" would be seriously overstating it -- never mind something like "panic" or "running scared".
Having said that, it's nice to see some competition in search, just as it's nice to see Macs and Linux keeping Windows honest.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not personally convinced that the Google engine is really that good, in fact by design it's all but worthless for certain types of query. Originally it was designed to be fast and to not need to be able to comprehend the content of the page. Over the years they've had to change that because of the gamesmanship that inevitably occurs when you're at the top. And for the queries that I like to make, it doesn't do any better job of finding things than the older MS search did.
It's a sad state of affairs, but right now we should all be cheering on MS in their endeavor this one time, they are the only company right now that's even trying to bring Google into a more reasonable share of search queries.
Re:Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketin (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with you. 99 times out of 100 when you enter a company's name, you get several hundred hits for web sites selling the company's product, but you won't find the link to the company you are looking for itself. Or if you are interested in trying to do some research on [pick any topic] and do a Google search using that topic as a starting point, you will get thousands of hits trying to sell you anything associated with it. But with the exception of a Wikipedia link usually a few links down, you won't find anything useful helping you to research your topic. And then there is the issue of revenue generating ads. As long as web sites don't throw pulsating, gibbering, and epileptic seizure inducing advertisements in their margins or banners, I don't have an issue with ads. They have to make money and pay for their servers etc. (I do use ad blocker plus, so I guess this makes me somewhat hypocritical about this since I never check to see how many static ads it filters out... my preference would be that it allows 100% of the static ads through... a bit of carrot to counter the whip... but who has time to verify this?). So those static ads with words like 'buy' and 'price' etc. could screw up the search as well (I guess depending on how static the ads get :) )
People wonder why Wikipedia has gotten so popular. It is because it is the only place you can go on the internet, enter a search term, and have a reasonable expectation of getting a hit on the subject you want to learn about; without having to jump through all sorts of filtering hoops to ignore things like 'buy' or 'sale' or 'download'. Sure you can filter like that, but you also may be screwing your search at the same time. What if you are writing a paper on topics from actuators to zebras. You may want to know how much of your search topic items are bought each year, how much of a country's GDP was based on it, etc. while not wanting to buy any. You may end up filtering out sites that are useful to you. I gave a couple of random examples, but this can apply to almost anything.
What I would like to see Google do (and all the other search engines too for that matter), is create an option and associated algorithm to break out web searches into two fundamental/gross search categories:
I would like to see any progress on getting more meaningful results back from a search. I don't think we will ever see this since all the search engines generate their revenue through advertising. Ultimately, this means we are stuck knowing how much everything costs, but never able to find out what they are good for. :-)
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I agree with you. 99 times out of 100 when you enter a company's name, you get several hundred hits for web sites selling the company's product, but you won't find the link to the company you are looking for itself.
Care to come up with some examples? I just tried four company names and every one had the company as the first result. It might not be scientific but very far from 1 times out of 100 then? At this point you need 396 search queries that gives no match for the companys website within the first hundret results.
Google is fine when searching for companies it seems. Asus even had a link to their norwegian site as the first result (I sit in Norway).
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heh.. I think the lemur doesn't have much of a choice -- the Gorilla's been trying to visit the Lemur's cage of late (y'know, Chrome, Android, Google Docs, etc.)
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Microsoft is doing what it's best at - Marketing
but but... that's exactly what the advertisement business is all about! It hasn't been about "search" in a long long time (not since maybe 2003 or so when Google's search results started to suck).
Not so ... Microsoft genuinely delivers with Bling (Score:3, Funny)
Now that's a big part of the market we're talking about. So Google is rightly scared out of its wits.
Sorry ... can't fault Microsoft this time. It's finally delivering value to the masses.
Fantasy Vs Reality (Score:5, Funny)
Google Drone: *bursts through the office doors* Fuhrer Brin, Fuhrer Brin! I've news that Microsoft's Bing service is gaining on us!
Sergey Brin: JesusChristJesusChristJesusChrist what're we gonna do?! Oh god oh god, we are so fucked! *kicks over his desk and gets up to pace wildly about the room* Why is there no coke on this goddamn coffee table when I need it?!
Google Drone: *empties a baggy of cocaine onto the polished marble table and starts cutting lines* We need action now, sir.
Sergey Brin: *inhales a long line and rubs his hands all over his face* Ok, ok, I got it. Get every able bodied person on 24/7 shifts for the next month working to make our service better.
Google Drone: Bu
Sergey Brin: SCREW that, we have an emergency. Get me everyone in the auditorium now, we ain't leavin' until the Google main search page is shitting rainbows and making the users feel like unicorns!
What's really happening:
Google Drone: *walks calmly into Brin's hermetically sealed chamber* Here's the reports for competitors, sir. It looks like Bing may have established itself as a competitor with Yahoo! but it's too early to tell.
Sergey Brin: *steeples his fingers and lets out a long calm calculated sigh* Great, another trivial nuisance to keep an eye on -- well I didn't get this far by ignoring things. Ok.
Google Drone: I'll put them on the big board, sir.
Sergey Brin: Good but be sure not to put them on the buyout dart board, they're not an option.
Google Drone: Yessir, anything else, sir?
Sergey Brin: Yes, round up the boys in the rec room that seem to have so much free time lately and see if they can brainstorm up an optional beta prototype we could throw on our page to win back the morons
Attention to Detail vs. Asperger's (Score:3, Interesting)
True enough, but it's also possible to pay too much attention [fawny.org] to details. There's always the chance of a misstep somewhere, but I think Google's most at risk if they pay attention to the wrong detail, or waiting for a large volume of data to make "the perfect choice" where the best course of action would be simply to make a different choice.
That said, it is still kind of hard to accept Microsoft as a credible threat, except
Whatever (Score:5, Interesting)
Your competitor releases a product, you analyse it. That simple.
When I worked at VMware we analysed every VirtualPC release both before and after Microsoft acquired it. There was a checklist of VMware "innovations" which we had metrics to measure how well VirtualPC didn't stack up against.
If you don't do this, you don't know why your product is better than your competitor's, and so you don't know how to compete with them. Unless, of course, you're like Microsoft and think "compete" means "lie".
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Unless, of course, you're like Microsoft and think "compete" means "lie".
Whatever, Microsoft knows what the consumer wants. It's not speed or accuracy or any of that stuff that Google uses to measure "quality." It's so much more simpler than that. Microsoft has searchability.
What? You don't know what searchability is? Well, then you're like the guy in Microsoft's commercial where a user is using Bing and his friend comes up and asks him what "searchability" means and everyone laughs him out of the room. You don't want to look stupid, do you? Didn't think so.
You don't need numbers and statistics that can be twisted, you just need to know that Bing has the best searchability. Jerry Seinfeld will eat a churro to that. Searchability. It's just more searchable.
Sad thing is, that'd probably be an effective ad. And if you don't think so, look at Budweiser's latest campaign.
Baa. Baaaaaa. Baa.
"Microsoft knows what the consumer wants" (Score:4, Insightful)
What M$ has going for it is consumer inertia, monopoly business practices, and a big installed base. Your belief in their genius at understanding consumer wants is faith-based. The list of M$ marketing and tech failures above is a long way from complete.
That said, I use Bing occasionally when I don't find what I want in the first couple of pages of google hits. It isn't better, but sometimes, different is what's needed. As for their translation setup... the dual window thing might be useful for a professional language translator who's trying to clean up the translator's output, but if one doesn't speak the language, google's straightforward translation interface that simply throws the translation on a page works better.
While google should watch them as they do any other competitor, they have no reason for concern. At least not this year.
Re:"Microsoft knows what the consumer wants" (Score:4, Insightful)
"and Windows 7 blows Snow Leopard out of the water"
I didn't know Microsoft made crystal balls that foretell the future. Fascinating the things you learn on /.
hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Bing gives us what Google already gave us 10 years ago. This is a major advance for Microsoft.
They used to be the company that gave us what Apple gave us a decade ago, now they are the company that gives us what Google gave us a decade ago.
It's good to see that Microsoft is not stagnating, but is still able to trail way behind its competitors always trying to be something it isn't.
I miss the Microsoft of the 1980's, when they actually had products that weren't copies of everybody else's products.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Bing gives us what Google already gave us 10 years ago. This is a major advance for Microsoft.
I think that's a little bit disingenuous. Try searching "reddit.com" of google and bing.
Google gives you a list of all results mentioning reddit.com, and a few common links into the site. That's it.
Bing gives you just the entry for reddit.com (probably what you want), and the common links into the site. There's a sidebar with related searches, "reddit nsfw", "reddit game", "twitter", etc. There's a sidebar that says similar to this site is digg, drudge report, huffington post, perez hilton. Judging by experience that's a really accurate summary of reddit.com. You can click 'show all' to see other pages that match "reddit.com".
Frankly I'm pretty impressed with bing, and I can see why google would be looking at it with a keen eye.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, that's pretty funny on both counts, but I often type in a URL into a search engine to make sure I go to the legit site and not accidentally to some "whitehouse.com" or "bankfoamerica.com" type of site.
Maybe I'm just some old timer and the anti-phishing in browsers is plenty fine... idk. But anyway, the point being that all the related searches and 'this is like' sidebars can actually help a lot. Another poster says goog does this also if you select the options to do it. So anyway I'm not trying to claim Bing invented anything (it's Microsoft...), just saying that as an the overall search engine it's on par with google if not better in some ways... definitely not '10 years behind' like the original poster said. I guess I missed the joke.
This is deliberate! (Score:4, Interesting)
What you're missing is that this is a deliberate strategy on Microsoft's part that served them well for many, many years. For a long time, Microsoft sought to have the second best product in any given category. Then they would just sit there and wait for the best product to get lazy or stagnant and come in and sweep up the remnants. They did this again and again and again in the late 80's and 90's, and it worked every single time, because eventually the competition would trip up leaving the market open for Microsoft.
Examples?
The problem with this strategy is it only works when your competition slacks off. And nowadays Microsoft's competition--i.e. Google and Apple--aren't slacking off. At least Not Yet.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried it after having read about their supperiority in porn searches. It was quite good, actualy, especially these video snippets searching yields. It very well may be Microsoft has found its niche in search market...
Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
My gods, this may just be the greatest ad for a Microsoft product I have ever seen.
Must. Resist. Urge. To try. Bing.
Uhuh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uhuh (Score:5, Funny)
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how market competition is supposed to work.
Evil or not, a Google without competition inevitably stagnates.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft figured out BigTable, heck, they open sourced their implementation of it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/09/201210 [slashdot.org]
Competition can only help (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether or not the story is true, competition - even from the likes of Microsoft - competition in the search market is a good thing to have. Google has been been without serious competition in the web search market for almost a decade, and there are definitely ways they can improve the quality of their results.
Two things that most people will want avoided are 1) feature-bloat rather than basic s/n improvement as the method of competition, and 2) unfair use by microsoft of its (diminished) OS monopoly. Both these things were seen in the browser wars, and it took 5 years (more or less) for browser software to recover from that fiasco.
Bing doesn't work... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this might shock the US crowd, but the rest of the world exists too, and nobody told Microsoft while they were developing Bing's neat features. So what happens is, that all those interesting little local search and filter things are useless to everyone else and winds just winds up being Live Search with new branding.
I like the concept of the filters but they only work for a very small selection of US centric pre-selected results. In fact if it isn't on MSN.com it doesn't seem to exist as far as Bing is concerned.
So bing is meh, it was an interesting demo but just wasn't developed enough to be a real product. Google's unfiltered results are still much better than Live Search.
I don't know, but it should (Score:5, Insightful)
Any self-respecting organization will take a close look at a competitor product, specially when such competitor happens to be one of the world's largest player in the industry.
Bing will certainly snatch a fraction of the market share owned by Google; modern top management theories demand that Google determines whether the market share lost to the rival will be a single user or a more considerable fraction.
It is not about Sergei pissing his pants, but about him and his company designing a solid strategy to respond to their competitor's move.
As much as I hate to say it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Over the last several years I thought it was my imagination or increasing impatience that has caused my increased dissatisfaction with Google's search results but when I think about it more closely pagerank has been around for a long time and it hasn't altogether changed much. With pagerank basically being synonymous with Internet presence there has been a ton of research into gaming the algorithm and finding ways to artificially boost your website's relevance and this has basically resulted in the increasing decline of Google's search results over the last several years.
Just as an actual example I was looking into buying a guitar amp online I had heard about and I wanted to find a website I had been to before on another computer that had a database clips demoing various amps and other guitar gear but I couldn't remember the name. After getting frustrated with several Google searches yielding nothing but trash for the obvious search queries, I turned to Bing because I thought it might be worth a laugh. First result was the website I wanted from the beginning, and that pains me a lot as someone who hates most of Microsoft's products as much as anyone else around here.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What was the specific search that you typed into Bing and what was the website you were looking for?
My experiences have been more the opposite way when testing Bing.
I'm sure we're all very interested in where Bing's strengths are.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? So what was your search term, because i find this very hard to believe without that tiny bit of proof, that would have been so easy to include??
Bing promotion (Score:3, Informative)
Of course that if some competitor does a big fanfare move Google should be concerned, and see if what looks as pure vapor have some smoke in there, as if something is being cooked there. Is it just aesthetics? There were some prizes recently for photographical iGoogle themes. But if is something more complex than that, and if not covered by some of the weird Labs testing runnings, a better understanding on that is required.
An alternate to Google atleast (Score:5, Interesting)
At it's launch, there was considerable difference in the results of the two (Google giving far more relevant results). But Bing has been rapidly improving and now I get pretty much identical results from both.
Bing is a huge improvement over Yahoo at least for general queries.
It's a pity that Safari (at least on Mac) doesn't allow any other search engine except Google. That is just plain mean.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Glims for Safari lets you tweak a million things, including user-defined search options:
http://www.machangout.com/ [machangout.com]
What do you mean "If"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What do you mean "If"? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.alexa.com/topsites [alexa.com]
Only one domain on the entire web gets more traffic than yahoo.com and that's obviously google.com.
In various countries in the far-east, Yahoo beats out Google to the #1 spot.
Yahoo is still a vast presence in search-engine-land.
And yep, my granny says "I'll google it" and promptly clicks on her yahoo.com bookmark. The term means "search" to many users, not any specific brand. In much the same way (at least in the UK) that someone might "hoover the room" with their Dyson.
Re:What do you mean "If"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Google should be scared (Score:5, Funny)
Go to bing.com and click on video search. Then type in "naked women" and hit enter. Hover your mouse over each thumbnail. Now you should understand why google is scared shitless of bing, they are already destroying them where it counts, as a porn search engine.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No video search on Bing, if you are in Finland (maybe in other countries, too).
Also, the search results are tailored for the Finnish. And they are brain-dead, compared to the Google search results.
At least Google works equally well in every country.
My personal anecdote with Bing (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that Microsoft is to be evil, and Google is to be the good guy, and /.ers mostly side with Google, yada yada yada...
All that asides, I'd like to say that, from my personal experiences, Bing is pretty good. I've been using it on and off since its launch, before its ad campaign. Note that I still use Google on an everyday basis, but Bing has been doing better and better.
I spent a bored Saturday afternoon, comparing the two, with different methods that I use everyday for searching:
In over half of what I put in, Bing came up with results that made more sense to me, and which are closer to what I'm searching for. I found that Google is more and more rigged with "hidden" ads, which is quite annoying at times. Maybe it's just that Google is better known, and all the so-called SEO experts work on it more, but it's still annoying.
That's just personal experience, and it's by no means scientific. YMMV. I, for one, welcome good search engine, even from the evil empire.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's just a field he forgot to fill in on the MS astro turfing system.
Please! Thwart that Search Monster that is Yahoo! (Score:3, Funny)
>> speculation on what the world of search would look like if Yahoo exited the field.
Similar to how the world of racing would look if stuffed turtles left it.
Rumor started in the NY Post? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rupert Murdoch's NY rag (the WSJ being the other)? Then it's scurrilous and almost certainly not true. Google isn't worried about Bing. The whole thing smells of astroturf and paid shills operating under cover of darkness.
Re:Rumor started in the NY Post? (Score:4, Funny)
Who are you kidding? You don't need to PAY News Corp to come up with crap! They do it all on their own!
Bing probably won't win.... (Score:4, Informative)
I can think of a number of top tier companies, 3dfx for example, who were the absolute unquestioned masters of their market but who got wiped out because they didn't take their competition seriously and let their product stagnate.
Google almost certainly isn't running around in a panic over Bing, to wipe them out now would take a product which is measurably better in some important way(speed, ease of use, quality of results, etc) for anyone to even come close to toppling them. At the same time they'd be idiots to ignore new competition, inspiring the dominant market players to expend resources improving their products is one of the most common benefits of increased competition.
Google are just being sensible. Bing may be nothing in fact it almost certainly will be, but it may be something. Even if it only grabs 1% market share, if it grabs that share from google they lose money.
Only stupid companies blindly assume that their competition will fail and their dominance cannot be challenged, and Google are anything but a stupid company.
Torn.. (Score:4, Interesting)
On the one hand, the lack of a technologically compelling competitor to Google concerns me. As a consequence, google susceptibility to SEO gaming is significant, but Google doesn't have a sound business justification to change what is working unless a competitor outdoes them. Unfortunately, in business the only 'justifiable' time to fund improvements is when there is *something* to gain and Google simply has nothing to gain in this context without competition.
On the other hand, I don't think Microsoft should be the one to come in. They are another goliath that retains some good technical people, but strategically knows little more than brute force nowadays to get into markets. They bought their way into second place in game consoles, they are trying to buy their way into some niche markets where Linux currently leads (both in the server room and embedded spaces). They tend to offer generally 'mostly sufficient' technology that doesn't really stack up to their competition or blow them away on a technical level, but earns what ground it can by sheer force of money earned through the markets they did corner at the right time with the right technology (invented or purchased). Through dumping (and even further, sometimes essentially bribing customers to use their products) they pursue an obsessive need to take over new markets.
In other words, I want to see Google challenged by a competitor on the strength of the technology they offer, not on the strength of a massive marketing budget and the ability to blatantly lose money for future market share. I have tons of respect for Google for actually innovating and revolutionizing search while every major player languished. I want another google, not microsoft, to get Google back on its toes.
Compare them yourself, without branding (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare them yourself, without branding: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ [fejus.com]
This site basically outputs search results in three columns, with all formatting uniform, all branding removed and columns permuted on every search. You vote for the best results. I found myself unknowingly "voting" for Bing a surprising number of times.
Mod parent up - blind search test is quite useful. (Score:5, Interesting)
When you try the blind search test, the results look very similar. All the mainstream search engines are doing about equally well. There was a period in 2007 when Yahoo was substantially ahead of the others, because they had about fifty special-case recognizers for things like celebrities and movies, but now everybody has that. (And nobody noticed that Yahoo was better for the six months they had a technical edge, anyway.)
Try heavily-spammed searches like "London hotels". All the big guys are still being fooled by ad-heavy redirector sites. It's possible to do better against link spammers [sitetruth.com], but the big guys aren't trying very hard to do so. Google used to be against "search engine optimization", but some time in 2007 they went over to the dark side and started sponsoring SEO conferences. [searchengi...tegies.com] It's inevitable; Google makes their money from AdWords. Search is just a traffic builder.
The article is most likely BS, (Score:3, Interesting)
The article is most likely BS, written by someone who doesn't know how the Search industry works. Let me lay out some facts for you so that you see why I think it's BS:
1. Most, if not all algorithms that Live Search / Bing uses are PUBLICLY DISCLOSED in papers published by Microsoft Research, and the corresponding patents that Microsoft holds. You don't need to "identify" anything. And even if you did, the new features introduced by Bing are so superficial that "identifying" similar algorithms would not take Google's engineers and researchers much time.
2. All major search engines monitor each other constantly and they know exactly what the competition's NDCG metrics (normalized cumulative distributed gain - the measure of how relevant the results are) are. As a rule, it's undesirable to crank up the NDCG too much, since doing so reduces the click through rate on ads, so historically, Google has kept their NDCG just a wee bit ahead of Yahoo and Live, and every time the two would update their algorithms, Google would crank it up a notch to stay ahead. To think that they've been sitting on their ass in the past couple of years is stupid.
So at most, I think Google is working on some experimental stuff related to presentation of results, which is where it's currently lacking, in spite of their half assed, hidden-by-default sidebar.
Just a reversed PR by proxy. (Score:3, Insightful)
This must be the most transparent desperate try at getting good PR i have seen in a long time. Its pretty obvious Microsoft wants to distribute a picture of Google "putting their best" at finding out what new wonderful things has come from the name change Microsoft did. Everyone knows its just a rebranded Live Search with hand tweaked results.
Bing is just as bad as Live Search unless you stumble upon a very limited set of handmade search results. Bottomline, its still Live Search and the algorithm still sucks. No amount of PR will change that.
The only thing i think Google is afraid of is Microsoft using its monopoly to crush any competition. Like, using an upgrade to change peoples search presets or pushing people towards bing no matter where they really want to go...
Bing rocks.... (Score:5, Funny)
...the evidence: http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1696/bing2.jpg [imageshack.us]
new headline sugestion. (Score:3, Insightful)
how about insted of "Technology: Does Bing Have Google Running Scared?" we try a more realistic "Technology: Google, still on top and willing to try and improve after Bing's release."
Maybe no google but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard a rumor :o (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't Bing implemented with FAST? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh that's so reliable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh that's so reliable (Score:5, Interesting)
The deal they made when they created the algorithms was that the computer wouldn't really understand what it was reading so that it could be fast. Unfortunately, it seems to have severe problems comprehending that most users don't want a page where the search terms appear across the entire page. Most of the time we want them to appear relatively close together.
Searching for bug reports and troubleshooting information tends to be extremely hit or miss with Google.
Which surprisingly enough is similar to the competition with the added bonus of having to sift through a larger portion of link farms and spam on Google.
Turn of 'safe search' (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Preach it. It's useless. It's shameful. It's shamefully useless.
I go looking for the doctor's office that is right next door to me (I need the phone number and hours). I know the name, I know the general address... I can't find the damned page.
Then my wife pulls it up in 20 seconds with Yahoo, and I seethe at Google. How could they let this happen? Beaten by Yahoo???
Unbelievably bad.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, Google's Japanese algorithm is so poor I usually end up using Google Image Search of all things (!) for regular queries. At least I can see directly from looking at the picture thumbnails if the result is remotely relevant or not.
Re:Have any of you actually used bing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Crap comes from people learning to Game Google (Score:4, Interesting)
If getting your site in Bing's search results means big bucks, they're gonna Game that just the same. You'll see the crap come flushing in.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
parent is lying (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent got rated "+5, insightful"...really? More like "-1, full of shit".
See for yourself. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=hardwood+suppliers&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]
I'm no carpenter, but I looked at all of the first 20 links and only one of them was a link farm. The rest were either actual vendors of hardwood floor supplies or legitimate lists of suppliers (like the ones magazines often have). In nearly every case there was an actual physical location or an online store where I could purchase wood.
If you're going to troll for Microsoft, go do it somewhere where people are too dumb to verify your claims.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe bloggers and link aggregators will find how to game bing in the future, but for the moment i find it's the better search engine, which really leads to your next statement which is pretty unbelievable - do you really think quality doesn't matter?! i don't ever want to hear you bagging microsoft products that have high market share or that are poor quality then, because according to you it doesn't matter.
for the rest of us, the quality of the results DO matter, and google would b
Yes, it could. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes, it could. (Score:5, Informative)
How is that recursive?
Bing is not Google
(Bing is not Google) is not google
((Bing is not Google) is not Google) is not google
(((Bing is not Google) is not Google) is not Google) is not google