Summary: Groklaw accuses Dr. Ben Edelman of being a front for Microsoft as Google carries on stealing Microsoft's thunder

BEN Edelman -- like Richard Edelman -- is accused of engaging in Microsoft PR. The former, however, has nothing to do with Edelman the firm, which supports the most vocal anti-Google attack dog (called "Consumer Watchdog"). "I encourage you to go to Bing and search for "maps". Bing maps is first, then Yahoo, then Google," Groklaw writes regarding this new article. "The selective attacks on Google are just plain silly at best. Given Edelman's resume, I think one must consider agendas, just as one would on reading the "independent" studies that say just what Microsoft desires. So I'd redo the headline to read: My Message to Microsoft: Spend More on Products and Less on FUD/PR."

Groklaw refers to the new article which says:

In mid February, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt expressed pride in Google employee Wael Ghonim’s brave struggle against the autocratic Mubarak regime to establish political transparency in Egypt. “We are very, very proud of what Wael and that group was able to do in Egypt,” Schmidt said in Barcelona. But what Schmidt needs to do now is apply Ghonim’s views about political transparency to Google’s own search business.

[...]

Last November, when the European Commission launched its investigation, the Harvard Business School professor, Benjamin Edelman, published a research paper entitled “Hard-Coding Bias in Google Algorithmic Search Results” which proves that Google has “hard-coded its own links to appear at the top of algorithmic search results.”

[...]

Google’s bias isn’t just limited to finance and health. In a January 2011 paper, “Measuring Bias in Organic Web Search,” written with Harvard Business School doctoral candidate Benjamin Lockwood, Edelman found that Google listed its own map service as the first result when a user queries “maps.” It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that Edelman and Lockwood discovered that 86% of map searches conducted on Google end up with the user clicking on Google Maps.

For those who are too lazy to read Edelman's CV, it says: "Microsoft adCenter (Harvard Business School Case 908-049) (2008) with Peter Coles"

At Nokia, the anti-Ogg person had also worked for Microsoft before he uttered negative things about Ogg. As for Edelman, his top "Programming Experience" is "Microsoft Visual Basic (14+ years experience)". Readers can decide what to make of it. Watch what he writes in his blog this month (context and more background information regarding the said incident [1, 2]).

Microsoft is afraid of Google not just because Google advances Linux; Google also goes for the jugular of Microsoft's #1 cash cow, with news like this in recent days:

Google Pushes Cloud Connect as Office Alternative

Cloud Connect first became available in a test version last November. It's based on technology the company acquired as part of its purchase of DocVerse, a startup created by two former Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) product managers. Cloud Connect is designed to help users of Word, PowerPoint and Excel move to Google Docs by giving them the same Office interface with the added collaborative features that Docs offers.

Joe Wilcox chose the headline "Google launches its next assault on 'cumbersome, legacy' Microsoft Office"

In the race to offer Microsoft Office functionality in the cloud, Google has beaten its rival getting a product out of development beta and into production release. Today Google announced global availability of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, which went into beta late last year. The technology builds off Google acquisition of DocVerse.

Microsoft has many reasons to be terrified of Google, whose market value nearly exceeds that of Microsoft right now (Apple's is already way ahead). We also know, based on articles from 2011, that Microsoft pays academics for propaganda. ⬆