07.14.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Bing Fails, So Microsoft Proceeds to Anti-competitive Practices
As the world shifts to the Web, Microsoft is running out of time
“It’s not the first entry for Microsoft, They do this about once a year.”
–Google CEO, regarding Bing
Summary: Microsoft’s Bing fails to make gains and Microsoft resorts to business as usual
IT WAS more or less clear that Microsoft Bing had failed when an executive quit the team. What remains of this whole gig are some minor gains from an approximately $100,000,000 investment in advertising (paying the press for positive coverage too). According to StatCounter, Microsoft’s gains are only a blip on the radar, but press that Microsoft bribed rewarded will likely tell a different story.
Bing: Not Really Gaining on Google
[..]
All the buzz comes from a new search market analysis by Web stats company StatCounter. Bing, the researchers say, secured 8.23 percent of all U.S.-based searches for the month of June. (Bing officially launched on June 3.) The previous month, StatCounter shows Microsoft sitting at 7.81 percent of U.S. searches. That amounts to a month-to-month increase of just under half a percentage point following Bing’s debut.
According to the Microsoft/Bing-sponsored press, Bing Travel fell offline after fires. Lack of redundancy did not help (single point of failure). This shows that Microsoft is still unable to serve reliably [1, 2].
A fire last night at Seattle’s Fisher Plaza data center has knocked out service to some top Web sites, including Bing Travel and Authorize.net.
Microsoft’s attempts to stop Google seem to involve a healthy dose of FUD right now, but there is also vandalism. Here is what the New York Times says about one role of Chrome OS:
What Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has to fear more than anything else is that he’ll awake one day to learn that the Google search engine suddenly doesn’t work on any Windows computers: something happened overnight and what worked yesterday doesn’t work today. It would have to be an act of deliberate sabotage on Microsoft’s part and blatantly illegal, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Microsoft would claim ignorance and innocence and take days, weeks or months to reverse the effect, during which time Google would have lost billions.
It is already done with IE6 (see links below). Microsoft is using the operating system to discriminate against Google search, but regulators do nothing about it. Here is another New York Times article about a lawsuit against Google. Microsoft participates in this. It was harassing Google in this case, but nowhere is it mentioned in the report.
The Justice Department confirmed on Thursday that it was conducting an antitrust investigation into the settlement of a lawsuit that groups representing authors and publishers filed against Google.
On a related issue, now that Google enters the sub-notebooks arena, Pamela Jones writes in Groklaw: “I can’t help but realize that competing in the netbook space presumably gives them the opportunity to raise antitrust concerns in that space.” For details about what Microsoft did, see [1, 2]. Attempts are being made to rewrite the history of GNU/Linux on sub-notebooks.
In addition, on a separate note, Apple and Microsoft are accused of breaking the Web not just by suppressing <video> and <audio> (Google does the very opposite thing, but its take on Ogg Vorbis/Theora as preferred codecs remains ambiguous at best).
Unacceptable Browser HTTP Accept Headers (Yes, You Safari and Internet Explorer)
[...]
The browsing engine most responsible for killing XHTML prefers XHTML over HTML! It would also prefer PNG over HTML. That’s a little embarrassing, but what is worse: Safari and Chrome accept XML over HTML (and, ambiguously, over XHTML, too). WebKit’s Accept header forces web developers to work against the HTTP spec.
In summary, Microsoft continues to be vicious on the Web, but fortunately enough, Microsoft makes no gains on the Web. █
Related:
- Is This Bing or is it Bong?
- Does Microsoft Break the Law in Search of a Future?
- Yahoo! and Microsoft Still Search for a Future!
- With Vista 7 Already Disappointing, Is There a Future for Microsoft?
- Bingeing with Microsoft and Ruining the Environment
- New Speculations About Microsoft Buying Citrix or Grabbing Yahoo! Search
- Search Engine News: Google Is Not…
- Microsoft Pays Company Which Recommends Bing Over Google
- From Live Search to Dead Search (aka “Bing”)
- Microsoft’s Search Engine Already Banned by Websense and by China
- Name it “Bing” or “Kumo” or “Live” or “MSN”, But it is Dead on Arrival
- “Decisions Engine” Means Microsoft Decides What You Should Think
- Reader’s Article: Bing Against Google
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David Gerard said,
July 14, 2009 at 9:15 am
Google’s “Do No Evil” appears to mean in practice “Don’t Go Out Of Your Way To Actively Do Evil, But If It Just Sorta Happens Then Oh Well.”
The <video> codec appears to be getting much closer examination with the Wikimedia use case. That is, it stimulated all sorts of interesting discussion on how to make things work for a provider who provide only Theora with the spec deliberately leaving out a codec. Safari’s unpredictable behaviour is the hard part, but for Apple rather than Wikimedia.
(It would be emotionally satisfying to some degree to give Safari users an “Apple broke this for you” message, but isn’t really serving our readers. Safari is quite definitely the nuisance special case. We need to reliaby detect when a Safari user has the XiphQT codec pack installed; if they do they should get the Theora video, if they don’t they should get the Java viewer and a link to get XiphQT. People with a browser that doesn’t do <video> at all get a link to Firefox 3.5 (the only stable release browser that does Theora <video>). iPhone users are out in the cold. So Apple either make it easier for us to get theora into Safari, or we have to recommend their users use Firefox instead.)
Jonathan Wong said,
July 14, 2009 at 10:06 am
Wow… that’s a beautiful list of cherry-picked articles and arguments against Microsoft. What do we expect? It’s the Boycott Novell blog after all.
I guess that really proves the point about the Internet. You can always decide the conclusion you want to draw first, and you will always be able to find enough articles on the Internet to support your argument either way.
Of course, the author conveniently forgot to include anything pro-Microsoft, such as the fact that there are literally thousands of positive reviews for Bing sprinkled all over the blogosphere and Twitter.
Or the fact that Google is also harassing and participating in the EU antitrust case against Microsoft.
But hey! At least here is one more piece of “online journalism” which can be used to support pre-determined conclusions by Google fanboys and Microsoft haters around the world!
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Microsoft pays for positive coverage of Bing, so I don’t need to hear about “reviews” in Twitter. Microsoft does the same thing for other products.
I couldn’t help noticing that “microsoft” is the #1 tag in your blog.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Hmm… I wonder where were all the paid positive press coverage during the Vista debacle and all the other Microsoft screw-ups over the years?
And for Microsoft paying off Tech Flash for positive coverage? Wow, they sure aren’t getting their money’s worth…
http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Introducing_Bing_the_better_way_to_Google_49272392.html
http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Is_Bing_Travel_copying_Kayakcoms_popular_travel_Web_site_49092346.html
http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Mozilla_Microsofts_facts_on_IE_Firefox_good_for_a_few_laughs_48633712.html
(Plus many more…)
Anyway, thanks for visiting my blog!
Now that you noticed that I blog a lot about Microsoft (and many other topics), did you read any of those articles?
How many of those are pro-Microsoft and how many of them aren’t?
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I’ve just done a post about our little encounter.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 11:23 am
And… of course, naturally, you disabled comments for that post.
Nice. I guess it’s either your version of the truth or no truth at all.
Well… it’s your blog. Your rules.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Jonathan,
We are not as naive as you need us to be.
Jonathan Wong said,
July 14, 2009 at 11:01 am
Cool! Thanks for the free publicity.
If two comments on a blog post that openly invites (and I hope encourages) discussion and comments constitutes astroturfing, then I suppose you have a lot more “XXX AstroTurfer Strikes Boycott Novell” posts to write.
I guess I’ll leave it to others to decide whether they think my comments were being objective or not.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 11:05 am
It’s about them being “pay2post”, not the question of subjectivity. This helps in establishing a case against unethical TE at Microsoft.
Andrew Macabe Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Shill-turfing; coincidence? Ubuntu Karmic scheduled for release in Oct. same time as microsoft is to release vista 7 rtm.
Alex Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Well, Mr. Wong, I learned to take the word of paid PR people with a grain of salt. And we all know how dirty Microsoft is at PR.
Reading Microsoft PR is like finding yourself in ‘In a mirror, Darkly’ – a distorted and evil version of reality. I feel soiled and dirty afterwards. And the patterns are very similar – discouraging the efforts of honest people working together, painting everything with a dark brush (Look, we are not the only bad guys – everyone does it), attacking competitors with completely unsubstantiated accusations that otherwise would be directed at Microsoft (preemptive attacks to distract attention and muddy waters). It is old tactics but hey, I guess it still works.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
In the IRC channel, someone showed me this.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Hehe… that is actually a pretty funny video. Good find!
Now, if only I was in advertising or marketing perhaps that would be relevant to me…
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Alex, the problem is that I’m not a PR person, much less a paid PR person, and much less a paid PR person for Microsoft.
I’m just a fan of technology and believer in always presenting both sides of an argument. That’s who I am, and that’s not something that any employer can change. In that sense, I’m probably not very different from most of the people reading this blog (minus the fanatical MS hate, of course).
Before this thread disintegrated into “Shillgate”, I posted two comments above.
Please explain to me how anything I said in the two comments above,
a) discourage the efforts of honest people working together
b) paint everything with a dark brush
c) attack competitors with completely unsubstantiated accusations
d) create a distorted and evil version of reality
As a bonus exercise, read Roy’s original article, and repeat the same four point exercise above.
Adam Williamson Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Jonathan, you really don’t have a leg to stand on here. If you as a paid employee of a company are going to make posts in public about that company’s products, you need to declare your affiliations. That’s just basic ethics.
It’s not that hard to do.
(I work for Red Hat, for anyone who doesn’t know that yet.)
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I’ve just filed a complaint. Enough is enough and all I needed was to catch one (the rest are not caught, yet).
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Um, Roy, is that Jonathan Wong you’re referring to…?
If it is, you’re out of line, he’s clearly identified himself as being associated with Microsoft since he first started posting, I believe. That can’t, by definition, be “astroturfing” and the FTC is certainly not going to tell Jonathan “Don’t post on Roy’s site!” You’re all wet on this, you’re wasting your postage and the FTC’s time.
This is out of touch with reality, Roy. You’ve gone off the deep end, I’m afraid.
joo Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Of course you disable comments. So much for “no censorship”.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Looking forward to see what comes out of it. I’m sure Roy will be posting any response he gets.
@joo – Look at what gem I found under the “About the Site” link:
Roy, time to change that blurb…
joo Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 12:59 am
@Wong
That is a gem. He should change it to something like “You can comment, but if you don’t agree with what I say, then my friends and I will threaten & defame you. If you get the upper hand on me, I’ll run away and let my friends take over the hatemongering”
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:24 am
@jonathan, I actually doubt Roy will post the response he gets from the FTC, which is unquestionably going to be “What in the world are you going on about?”
We’ll just have to keep asking him from time to time. “Heard from the FTC yet, Roy?”
joo Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Roy is really pissed that things are going the way he thinks they should. It seems like he’s coming unhinged. His “complaint” will end up in the FTC weekly newsletter as “Joke of the Week”.
joo Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:40 am
That should read “Roy is really pissed things are not going the way he thinks they should”.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Like I said, I think I may have broken him.
That tends to happen to my toys. =(
Jonathan Wong said,
July 14, 2009 at 11:19 am
And what gave you the impression that my comments were paid for or sponsored by Microsoft in any way?
On what basis did you draw that conclusion from?
Just because I’m a Microsoft employee?
Are you open to the possibility that my comments were written because they reflect what I believe, and not because that’s what my employer tells me to write?
In your never-ending crusade of bashing everything Microsoft, are you really so blinded to believe that anyone that leaves a comment refuting your points must have been paid to leave that comment?
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Roy’s just had some sort of psychotic fugue, I think, Jonathan. Given that you were clear about where you worked (as I recall), and given that there’s no “NO MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES ALLOWED!!” notice posted anywhere, not to mention that this isn’t a product review kind of site, I’m completely baffled by this.
The only rational explanation that I can come up with is that Roy has such a low opinion of his readership (perhaps not without reason) that he figures they’ll only read the headlines, he’ll be a big hero for “taking on Microsoft”, and by the time the FTC sends his complaint back with a big, red “What the hell are you talking about?” stamp on it, the rest of the Short-Attention-Span Theater crowd will have forgotten that he ever filed this totally bogus “complaint” in the first place.
I think I might have broken Roy. =(
Sabayon User Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
You may not have noticed but he’s become a lot more erratic and aggressive since he posted that apology to you. I think that got to him in a big way, even considering how humiliated he must have been by Shane’s comments.
joo Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
You’re right. I hadn’t noticed that.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Well, you know, journalism, tough job, lotta stress.
Have you thought of taking up smoking, Roy…?
joo Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
just had? HA! More like, “just had another”.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 12:24 am
@David
Just curious, but how have you broken Roy? Any stories to share?
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Oh, just go have a glance through this article and this one.
You’ll get the idea.
Chips_B_Malroy said,
July 14, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Jonathan Wong says:
“And what gave you the impression that my comments were paid for or sponsored by Microsoft in any way?
On what basis did you draw that conclusion from?
Just because I’m a Microsoft employee?”
———————————————————————————————————
Its nice you admit that you are a “MS Employee.” That is to your credit sir. I am all for giving everyone a chance to voice their opinions, better if they have facts to back them up.
However, I for one did not see that acknowledgment, that you are in fact working for MS, in any of your comments here, until Roy Schestowitz pointed out the fact that you are an MS employee in his link. Furthermore, Roy Schestowitz even pointed out that on your site its (your employment) not acknowledged except maybe in another link that a visitor would have to click on. So kind of a “hidden” from the main page type of acknowledgment at best, where you have given the user the “impression” that you are just a normal blogger.
If you worked for the news media, (and in a way you do PR for M$) this is a form of propaganda, its called lying by omission. Leaving out an important fact, or facts, that will change the argument, or the relevance of your argument. Bear in Mind, I am not calling you a lier, just that the way you come across without explaining your relationship up front with the company that you promote in your writing, does make you a shill, a M$ shill at that.
On MS Watch, I used to debate in the comments with MS employee Jess Meats. While I seldom agreed with her, I did respect the fact that she was up front right away about who she worked for. So had you done the same as her, I for one would not now paint you with the hidden “M$ Shill” label, which you totally deserve, BTW.
So lets discuss your main reason for trying no to be more open about who you work for (MS) and therefore your motives. I would say about 99.9% of the folks going to your website will never click on that link that tells that you work for M$, and you are aware of that. You try to use that to your advantage when you are caught as in the case by Roy. The one thing we all know, is that if you are up front, honest about who you work for right away when you post, then your opinion will be vastly downgraded, as it should be. But by taking this “stealth” route, you have further degraded your employer, and brought shame on yourself.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
And Mr. Chips_B_Malroy, who would you be working for? It’s OK. I don’t really need to know.
Regardless, I respectively disagree with your assertion. Perhaps it has to do with the nature of this blog, which is a lot different than other more objective blogs on the Internet that I’m used to reading.
As much as the editor denies it, my opinion is that an objective reading of the content on this site shows that plain and simple, this is a Microsoft hate site. Since Day 1 (I would presume that was the day the Novell deal was struck), the site had one mission in mind, which is to dig up dirt on Microsoft. And naturally, the audience of this blog are folks who don’t… umm… like Microsoft very much.
Therefore, it seems like a reasonable and natural defense mechanism for readers here to automatically ignore or discount any opinions or facts (however valid) which are brought up by Microsoft employees, even if these opinions/facts are being offered in the spirit of open discussion and debate.
That is the only reason I can think of why the author’s immediate reaction to my first comment was to look up who I am, instead of refuting the points I bring up.
You can choose to believe me or not, but I pride myself to be objective in both my blog posts and my comments. The reason why I normally don’t mention who I work for in comments (like most other blog commentators) is because my activity on social media is entirely my opinion – not of Microsoft’s.
I rather debate and engage based on the merits of my arguments, not because who I work for. Sadly, it seems that the anti-Microsoft fanaticism here won’t allow that to happen.
Like what I mentioned to the author earlier – if he thinks I’m an MS (sorry, it should be M$) shill and that’s all I blog about, I invite him to actually read my “microsoft” posts and see which ones are really shilling Microsoft and which ones are criticizing them.
However, since his mind is already made up, I doubt he will take up the offer.
Boden Larson Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 11:18 am
“That is the only reason I can think of why the author’s immediate reaction to my first comment was to look up who I am, instead of refuting the points I bring up.”
Yes, he resorts to an ad hominem attack and then goes on to defend this strategy. In my opinion you can never win once things turn in this direction, so don’t sweat it. I’m sure that many readers here see what’s happening even if they remain silent.
Microsoft paid me $5 to write this. If you would also like to receive $5 from Microsoft, forward this post to at least five friends!! It’s an amazing program almost too good to be true!
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Its nice you admit that you are a “MS Employee.”
I’m still waiting for you to admit that you’re a liar.
That is to your credit sir. I am all for giving everyone a chance to voice their opinions, better if they have facts to back them up.
No, you’re not, Chimp. If someone expresses an opinion you don’t like, you post all the contact information for their place of employment in the hopes that “someone else will make the call”, you malignant coward.
Roy Schestowitz said,
July 14, 2009 at 2:23 pm
This site is as much “anti-Microsoft” as the United States is “anti-Madoff” and the British are “anti-Mugabe”.
Those who do the crimes deserve no favouritism.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
No, Roy, you are “anti-Microsoft”. Fanatically and irrationally so, sometimes. Like now.
Seriously, dude, you filed a complaint to the FTC over a guy who said he was working for Microsoft right up front…? There aren’t any “product reviews” on this site, anyway, so what’s your reasoning on this?
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Those who do the crimes deserve no favouritism.
So, I guess you’re down with me calling Stallman on his sexually-loaded “joke”. It’s not a crime, but it was an injustice.
I don’t think Jonathan’s committed a crime, though. Wishing doesn’t make it so; delusions don’t, either, for that matter.
Chips_B_Malroy said,
July 14, 2009 at 6:00 pm
@Roy:
When the MS Shills start calling everyone MS Haters, you know they have nothing. This one less than nothing, not even a shred of regret for trying to fool people to his “conflict of interest.”
I might point out that his type of behavior is against the law here in the USA. Federal Trade Commission anyone? But I would not waste my time complaining there.
Also Roy, they only write for propaganda reasons. I have yet to see this Shill, debate even one fact, or link that you have posted on this site. He would rather stick to vague misleading generalities, on an emotional appeal, things he cannot be held to account for. The fact that he is also an “MS evangelist” means his job is to post. So how is one to separate “his real opinion” from his MS evangelist sponsored one? The truth is there is little difference between those two, just windows dressing to try to confuse. In fact if the “MS employee” posted too much online critical of MS, they would fire him, They have fired employees just for posting pictures of Mac computers sitting on a loading Dock.
And then Mr. Wong has this to say:
“And Mr. Chips_B_Malroy, who would you be working for? It’s OK. I don’t really need to know.”
So which is it Mr, Wong, do you really want to know or you don’t really want to know? Perhaps you could be a little clearer here? Or maybe you just wanted to throw some mud at the messenger to make yourself feel cleaner?
One last thing, typing M$, is not hateful. Most people understand that MS will do “almost” anything to get the $. Including employing people who will not clearly identify themselves as working for, and furthering the interests, of Microsoft. People without remorse or regret, for their actions.
Regards:
Chips B Malroy
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
What the trolls hardly realise is that the more they comment, the more they indicate that the original posts are right on topic. The trolls attempt diversion tactics.
David Gerard Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
It’s generally the posts with a zillion comments that mean something’s hit a sore spot.
One day they’ll work that out.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Not to whip a dead horse, but it needs to say that the zillion comments are not so much about the article itself, but more about me being a shill.
But it’s alright, after this week, I sort of get how this place works now, so looking forward to coming back in the future to join more of these lively debates.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:45 am
Actually, “Chips”, I’d like to know who you work for. There are some answers I’d like to get.
Chips_B_Malroy said,
July 14, 2009 at 6:56 pm
@David Gerard:
Good point, maybe they would like to bury the Fact that Bing is just MSN version 3.0 alpha.
After all, it was Steve Balmer that said the future of M$ (yes thats with a $) was online advertising.
Note to Balmer, Bing is not going anywhere against Google which still gains market share. Also the other half of online advertising is Adobe Flash, which M$ would like to steal for themselves with Silverlight/Mono/Moonlight. These are not going anywhere either. But since they have nothing else, M$ will continue to pour money into these investments.
XBox360 is unlikely to ever make any real money overall with all the RROD and E74 problems. Overall, XBox360 will most likely never get back the money invested in it, a loser. Worse, its was supposed to kill off the Sony Playstation, and has failed to do that. In fact, the Wii joined the mix and is actually making real
money. The Zune should have a name change, how about the “Brick.” It will never be a contender, but will continue to lose money.
Which brings us to M$ two cash cows, Windows (including server) and Office. Putting Office online for free, is not such a smart thing. Its going hurt profits. Both of the 2 cash cows are now hurting during this recession. And now Google Chrome OS joins the fight for the Netbook. We are witnesses to the beginning of the Decline of M$. It has already lost desktop market share from a high of 95.3% at one time.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Is there any real proof of that?
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Nah, it’s just the Chimp going ape again. He just makes stuff up, y’ know? Like all that pro-Mono stuff he claimed to have read on my web site? When you got all excited and happy for about 15 seconds until it became obvious that he hadn’t read any such thing, and even you had to concede that there was no evidence to support the contention that I was a “Mono supporter”…
Of course, your “priorities” (according to your press agent, Jose) didn’t allow you to correct the story where you point to a mono-nono article which suggests that my issues with Stallman are (surprise!) really because I’m a “Mono supporter”…
Dante said,
July 16, 2009 at 8:53 am
Roy, I hate to ask, but when your referring to something, could you at least give us an outside link? Like an acutal site or pdf or something? Just going around and around in circles is troublesome.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Referencing by post_id is a lot faster. That’s why I do it.
Boden Larson said,
July 16, 2009 at 11:36 am
Boy, this article is nothing but a bunch of self-referential bullsh*t.
The title: “Bing Fails, So Microsoft Proceeds to Anti-competitive Practices”
The substance: what I’m reading here is that Bing has not yet proven to be a success, even though Microsoft paid a lot to advertise it, and that there was a fire in a data center resulting in a related website going offline. Ok. But then simply tossing in a bunch of links to your own past stories about completely unrelated anti-competitive practices does not link Bing to these practices. The only quote that might be somewhat related to your thesis is the one from the Times in which the author claims that Google should worry about Microsoft somehow blocking access to Google. However, this is just a “what if” statement, nothing more.
In order for this article to make any sense, if the title correctly speaks your intentions, you need to show that Microsoft has engaged in anti-competitive practices specifically since the launch of Bing, and directly related to Bing in the marketplace. We all know that Microsoft engages in anti-competitive practices, and we all know that Bing is not a hot shot success. What we don’t know is that Microsoft is employing illegal tactics to gain an unfair advantage for Bing in the search market. Apparently, neither do you.
A more fitting title would have been: “Bing Fails to Meet Expectations. And Remember these Anti-Competitive Articles We Posted Earlier… Man, They Were Awesome”
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Fine, you can return to chatting with Microsoft MVPs.
I see that any Bing criticism is indeed receiving a lot of backlash. It means it’s the right topic to bang on.
Jonathan Wong Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
@Boden
Yup, the ad hominem attacks are starting again.
Roy had a chance to respond to your argument, but instead he tries to Google (or is it Bing?) some dirt up on you and unfortunately the best he can do is to find you on a forum asking a question.
I am beginning to see how it works around here now…
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
The place tolerates shills provided that they don’t break the law (which you did).
Boden Larson Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
You just made coffee shoot out my nose!!! Hah oh man.
Somebody broke the law? Which law would that be?
Having a difference of opinion and stating that opinion in a public forum, regardless of who a person may be connected to, is not against any law that I’m aware of. This guy could totally be a paid shill, but it’s not wise to make that claim without substance greater than circumstantial. Even Microsoft employees are entitled to opinions about Microsoft. Furthermore, pointing out that somebody who writes a pro-Bing opinion has a blog with pro-Microsoft opinions adds nothing to the conversation. Nothing. People with opinions, which includes most of them, typically have a history of opinions as well.
This is completely off topic anyhow. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just respond to an opinion and argue any topics that arise instead of immediately resorting to casting doubt about a person’s character? A person that you have no history with or knowledge of? When your first response to a contrary opinion includes such aspersions, well…I think that might be referred to as trolling. Tip: you don’t have to troll on your *own* site.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
In case you don’t know, AstroTurfing is illegal in the EU (and apparently the US too as of late). Maybe you have not kept track of this saga.
Sabayon User Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
In case you don’t know, libel is illegal in the UK. Oh wait, you do know.
Boden Larson Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Ouch, I’ve been outed!!
Sure, I’ve “chatted” with Microsoft MVPs. I’m like…employed…and stuff. Not everyone who uses and seeks support for Microsoft products is a shill. What’s sorta funny is that if you continue to use your amazing investigative journalism powers (including your “search Google for a person’s name” skill), you’ll find a long diatribe of mine about that exact experience with Microsoft MVPs. I found a bug in Office 2007′s installation resource, corrected it myself, and then wanted to tell Microsoft about the problem only to find out that they wanted me to PAY them for support to tell them about the problem.
Anyhow, yes I use Microsoft products professionally. At this same job I am also using Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD, Apache HTTP, MySQL, Nagios, GLPI, Tomcat, Liferay, Alfresco, Firefox and quite frankly a whole crapload of other open source, free software, of which I was the proponent and primary driver for its adoption.
I’m not sure why I feel the need to defend myself against another of your ad hominem attacks after having advised another in this thread to ignore them… oh well.
If you’d like to return to the actual topic at hand — that is, if you’re finally comfortable with who everyone is and what they may have written on the internets — how are you linking Bing’s lack of success to anti-competition?
Again, just to make it clear: my comment has nothing to do with whether or not I’ve ever asked a Microsoft-related support question, nor does it have anything to do with whether Bing criticism results in backlash. My comment was simply pointing out the apparent fact that while the title of your article implies some wrongdoing by Microsoft related to Bing search, the content of your article in no way supports this claim.
Would you care to employ some critical thinking and respond to the actual substance at hand? Going off topic makes you look like you are not able to support your own article. Is the title misleading, or do you actually see a connection here that I do not?
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I don’t need to “defend” my post because the facts are laid correctly. Bing failed to gain market share of any concrete value and several other writers whom I cite agree entirely. And if you follow other links, then you will see anti-competitive Bing practices that I refer to. There’s more than one type.
eet Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I don’t find any compelling proof of ‘anti-competitive practices’. Anyway, from ’0′ to 8 percent within a month ain’t so shabby in the tough market of search-engines, dontcha think? Nah, of course you don’t think…
Sabayon User Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
As a parallel to that, considering how many times you’ve smeared me, I must be asking the right questions. How many times have I made the front page now? Three? I must be more popular than Stallman, haha.
In the meantime, you continue to alienate everyone in the FOSS community: lowly unknown users like me who try to help installing betas, filing bugs and recommending Linux to friends and family, and prominent figures like the Ubuntu folks and David Schlesinger. You and your friends on the other hand do absolutely nothing of value. Nothing. Not a single one of you.
I hope you keep going. It’s the only hope we have that your toxic “advocacy” will stay relegated to its current dark corner. The more you open your mouth, the more people realize what a danger people like you and your minions are to FOSS. Steve Ballmer himself couldn’t have dreamed up a more effective tactic to make us all look like psychos.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:53 am
It’s not the Bing criticism that’s receiving backlash, Roy: it’s your scummy, ham-handed, mendacious excuse for “journalism” that’s receiving backlash.
eet said,
July 16, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Of roy’s articles, some is made up of wishful thinking (like this one), some is made up of self-referential linking, some out of non-coherent quotes and unrelated links, some of hatred, and some -well- is just _made_up!
Boden Larson said,
July 16, 2009 at 5:07 pm
@Roy Schestowitz
“I don’t need to “defend” my post because the facts are laid correctly.”
Yeah, actually you do need to defend your post. Well, you don’t have to, but from where I’m sitting you haven’t made your case. Not even close.
Firstly, it’s not my job as the reader to click through a whole ton of links to try to find the story that you’re telling me is in there somewhere. If you found a story, just show it to me. It’s incredibly frustrating that your plethora of links are almost all directed at your own articles, each of which contains an ungodly number of links to your own stories. Trying to find the actual “outs” to actual sources is proving difficult. Your articles look well-cited, but you can’t cite yourself.
Ok, so again the subject is Microsoft using anti-competitive practices in regards to the Bing search engine. (BTW, I think Bing sucks for everything but video) So let’s go down your list of links:
1) An executive quit. Not related.
2) Paying for press coverage. Ok, this is related and I apologize for initially missing it. However, the story with this one is that Microsoft sponsored a PING PONG TOURNAMENT. I always knew ping pong was some wicked sh*t.
3) Microsoft not gaining on Google. Not related.
4) Microsoft paying for press. Ping pong tournament article again.
5) Fire at data center knocks out Bing Travel. Not even close to related, and not even really about Microsoft. Many companies lost websites during the outage.
6) Zune and XBox no good. Your own article; didn’t dig through it because it’s again, not related.
7) Downtime at Azure. Hardly earth shattering, but let’s stay on topic: not related.
8) FUD about Chrome OS. Barely related if only because Google is big in the search business. But I’m not seeing a *lot* of FUD…more like a lot of questions like, “what the hell is Chrome OS going to do”, “how does it relate to Android”, and “is Google going to kill Microsoft with Chrome!?” These are all pretty obvious questions. Wait, we’re talking about Bing, right? Right? What will the default browser be on Chrome OS I wonder?
9) New York Times article about what Google should be afraid of. Related, but complete supposition. It’s not even veiled, it’s quite clearly just a “what if Microsoft did this!” piece.
10) Anti-trust lawsuit against Google’s book project. Not related. BTW, the Internet Archive and others are also against (or concerned about) Google on this one.
11) Microsoft bullying netbooks. This is true, no question. But *unrelated*.
12) Same article as above but with different words. Still true. Still unrelated.
13) Again with the netbooks. Again not related to Bing.
14) Someone pissed about browsers not following header standards, including Webkit and IE. Not related.
And then 13 more related links, all to articles here. I’m going to assume that I needn’t follow “related” links in order to understand the basis of article I’m reading. No WAIT… I clicked on the first one, and it’s more related than anything in the actual article.
15) An article claiming that typing “Linux” into Bing results in a dropdown with things like “linux microsoft” and “linux windows”. Actual search results don’t appear tainted. This was a better source of anti-competitive practice than anything in the article.
16) An article about Microsoft forcing Bing on IE6 users. This bug was fixed immediately. Hey, another related article.
17) An article about Microsoft and Yahoo. Not really related.
18) Anti-Windows 7 article. Not related.
19) A generic article about Bing and Spam. Huh?
20) Microsoft might buy Citrix or Yahoo. Not related.
21) Just a bunch of links to stories about Bing, none of which have anything to do with anti-competitive practices. Not related.
22) Microsoft contracted an independent company to do a study. Bing came out on top for advertising potential. Microsoft is on company’s client page. Barely related and not even unethical unless the study was specifically fudged, which we don’t know.
23) A criticism about Bing. Not related.
24) Bing is good for porn. Not related.
25) Microsoft says that search doesn’t work, period. Actually, they don’t say that at all. Get some context already. This is a marketing strategy to claim that Bing solves search problems better than the “old way”. Hardly anti-competitive, but sorta related.
26) Article claiming that Bing’s results are tainted. I’m able to verify from the article that there may be something to this. Very related, why so low on the list?
27) Bing looks similar to Google. And KDE looks like Windows 95. Big deal and not related.
In the first 14 links that I clicked on in your article about Microsoft using anti-competitive practices because Bing isn’t doing well, only one had any real meat, and it was about a ping pong tournament. Everything else was mostly besides the point.
In your “related” articles you had some actual meat, but it was all fairly old. I’m not going to be too picky about the article title, but you did imply that Microsoft has started to do some bad things because they realize that Bing is a failure. I don’t think you’ve got a clear sequence of events spelled out.
At any rate, I think I’m counting 5 total related links out of 27. You quoted only one of these links in your actual article, and it wasn’t even evidential and not intended to be. I had to click through the rest of them all. I doubt that the reader experience you’re going for here is having people clicking 27 links to find your point.
I spent a damn hour combing through your post to find out what you were talking about. I’m still not totally clear, but I think it’s that Bing isn’t very successful, there is evidence that Microsoft is tainting search results, and that Microsoft has a history of paying for press coverage, and is currently sponsoring a ping pong tournament. If you’d had a more focused argument I wouldn’t have bothered posting, because you do have an argument with some validity for sure.
And I would STILL be posting comments here if you hadn’t pulled such a lame ass move like finding an old discussion group post where I asked a question about MS Office. Hell, dig back on Usenet to around 1995 and you’ll find me asking embarrassing questions about Visual Basic. Dig back to around 1999 and you’ll find an article I wrote about about connecting a Linux distro (might have been RedHat) up to a Windows domain. In fact, you’ll find all sorts of junk. It is what it is. Using it to imply something about my character, however, is just an asshat move.
Oh, and attacking this Wong guy…even writing an article about him, was extremely childish. I clicked through your damn links, and I read more than I wanted to from Wong. I couldn’t find anything that made me suspicious of him being a shill. You actually accuse him of breaking the law! You’ve got a lot of growing up to do.
It is possible for people to enjoy using Microsoft products, you know. They do actually work, and often times there are no alternatives that work as well. I’ve got a big giant sheet of paper up on the wall of my office with a big crossed out “Microsoft” and two columns listing all of the Microsoft products my organization is using, and free (libre) software that might work to perform the same business task. It’s been up there for years. Unfortunately, there are a few products that actually work, and the alternatives don’t work as well. I’ve tried them all and I continue to try new releases, waiting for the day. I hate Microsoft for their bullshit with the BSA years back, their offensive activation schemes, their lack of support for *expensive* products, their shitty “software assurance” licensing scheme, and several other reasons that come and go. But I can’t let my dislike take my eyes off the bigger picture, which is that my business isn’t about software loyalty… software is just something we use to achieve our other goals.
I’m rambling at this point, and I apologize. I’m not taking my own advice that I gave out many hours ago
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Boden,
I apologise. This is why I worry about a high number of venomous people that enter this site. They make everyone who is new a little suspect at first. This leads to a certain prejudice that’s the same in USENET (unmoderated).
The specificity in my links may seem low because of the way I compose posts, adding post_ids of previous posts which I know contain supportive evidence in the form of external link/s. Doing it differently (and more properly) would take twice the time. The more exhaustive process is reserved for rare articles that are better presented and are more comprehensive, not blog posts.
Again — sorry for jumping the gun.
Boden Larson Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I apologize as well for my excessive sarcasm. I’ve enjoyed some of the articles that have come from your site, especially when it first appeared.
ms said,
July 16, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I used and enjoyed the experience of the bing search engine. It had a nice look to it, and there was a clarity in the results and quality of the presentation of them (whatever subtle factors I can’t explain)
But it was good. This article is kind of stupid, Bing is too new, and apparently too expensive to just write-off. It’s been around, what a month or something? I dont’ really like Microsoft per se, but Google needs competition and Microsoft needs to put out good stuff. In this case I think they have.
WTF do people want? It’s a free search engine that displays results. Why does it have to remarkably fail, what satisfaction do people get from that?
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Give Wolfram|Alpha a go.
Sabayon User Reply:
July 16th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Wolfram Alpha is not a general search engine, and you know that quite well.
Answer the question posed to you, please.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
July 18th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Alpha? Have you even used Alpha, Roy? It sure sounds like you haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.
Boden Larson Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I agree that competition in the search market is a good thing. Google really does seem to be a good company, but they’re certainly not open-source saints as they are portrayed in some arguments. It’s also a little unsettling just how much information they posses, especially considering the way that corporate culture can change over time.
I’m certainly not against Microsoft being in search. Their engine has always been inferior, unfortunately, and remains so. (Although there are certain areas where Bing is proving useful)
What I do object to is tainted search results and suggestions. It’s unethical no matter how you spin it. This article does not do a good job of summarizing some of the issues with Bing…I really had to dig for them in the links.
One thing that stands out is the auto-complete search field feature in Bing, where a drop-down appears under what you’re typing with search suggestions. If you type “linux” into Bing, the drop-down will be populated with items like “linux microsoft”, “linux windows”, and “linux vista.” I have a bit of a hard time believing that these results were generated automatically without any human input. The reason is simple: I don’t think it’s that common to search for comparisons between Linux and Microsoft products. No where’s near as common as searching for “linux” and some related term. If you do the same thing in both Google and Yahoo, you get more realistic results, like “linux download”, “linux commands”, “ubuntu linux”, and “linux kernel”.
I’m no conspiracy guy, and this is hardly on the level of conspiracy. But this sort of thing is just wrong. A search engine should be about relevancy, and results should only be skewed for classes of content, like spam. It’s not cool for a company to weigh their own agenda higher in the results, even if the “results” are just search suggestions.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Boden,
Microsoft has done this for years (also in Live/MSN). There are documented examples (even from IBM’s vice president, Bob Sutor) and this includes discrimination against ODF.
If you revisit Microsoft’s shameless rigging of polls (confirmed), none of this behaviour would surprise you; it’s only to be expected.
eet Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 11:25 am
What you call ‘confirmed’ and what is reality are two different things altogether… You do live in your own, little world…