Interesting little Letter Of The Day that says Microsoft really, really wants Google. It wants Google for one reason, namely, to strip it naked and to castrate it.
Microsoft wants to put an end to people being able to use the power of Google, especially as to the way that we all can use Google as a tool which makes the Internet particularly useful in helping us all to get through our days without depending on Microsoft.
Here’s an exercise for all to try. Search Google for Linux Windows That gets you about 14 million pages, even with the English preference or filter turned on. Now, got to msn.com and search the Microsoft way for the same two words. You get exactly 18 pages. The word censorship doesn’t seem to do justice to what Microsoft has done to a msn user who wants to compare Linux with Windows, does it?
Here’s another exercise. Search msn for Linux. Note that the third item returned is tech.msn.com and that the page no longer exists. The fourth item deals with this topic “Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products.”
Ummmm …
Microsoft rants and conspiracy theories are two guilty pleasures of mine, but in this case, I’m just left going “Huh?”.
I am glad that Google has, for now, apparently decided not to go further with talks about being acquired by MS. And it also looks like Microsoft is getting increasingly interested in the Internet search business.
It’s a well-known strategy of MS to absorb nascent or potential competitors if they can, and crush them if they can’t. But to think that MS wants Google solely to censor Linux … is a stretch.
Per the letter, I typed in “Linux Windows” in a Google search: I got 8,870,000 hits.
Teoma: 7,404,000
AllTheWeb: 8,563,408
AltaVista: 4,470,065
WiseNut: 688,940 (okay, that’s kinda low, but maybe that’s how WiseNut groups hits together)
Yahoo: 5,670,000
Admittedly, the same search on msn.com got 16 hits. When I did a search on “Linux” alone, I got 365 hits. So, yeah, MSN’s search engine is somewhat dubious. But I don’t see MS trying to take on (or take out) every single search engine
out there on the web just to prevent people from learning more about Linux.
If the juggernaut proves me wrong, though, I’ll happily apologize.
This is scary!
I love Google. I’ve used other search engines, but I still come back to it. The Microsoft search engine is a waste of my time and it would be a terrible blow to accessing information on the web if Microsoft took over Google.
Oh, and I dabble with Linux, so finding useful information and how-to stuff is important to me.
In other news…
Term: “solaris”
google: 8,280,000
msn: 87
The other os options are more equitable, but it seems odd to me.
King Bill
Search term:
“Bill Gates for King”
Google–7
MSN-154.
Okay…what I just learned is that even when you select “exact phrase” for an MSN search, it doesn’t search exact phrase.
On the other hand….
When I typed “Windows” into Google, I got 101,000,000 hits.
When I typed “Windows” into MSN, I got 2373 hits.
I suspect this has more to do with MSN’s search algorithm than any conspiracy.
Re:On the other hand….
…which I think should be a concern for librarians. The question is, if Microsoft bought Google, would MSN use the Google search engine or would the Google search engine use MSN? If it’s the former, then good, but if it’s the latter, then we all will have massive headaches trying to find information on the web.
Re:Ummmm …
Well I did a search for linux using uk.search.msn.com and it turned up over 2 million sites. The same thing with msn.com and it was only at most 400. I think MS does censor the US searchers somewhat when it comes to linux compared to their other sites. Maybe thats where they are worried the most since that is their biggest market.