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Microsoft once more proves you can indeed buy stupidity

Steven Hodson — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:51:01 +0000

I am not sure if you can put a price on stupidity or not; but I am pretty sure that if you could weasel out of Steve Ballmer how much this possible getting into bed with the newspaper giants is going to cost you’d have a pretty good idea.

When the news broke late yesterday it quickly became the topic of choice for just about all the tech pundits out there. Even Duncan here at The Inquisitr has his say about the idea but while I wouldn’t go to the extreme of suggesting a boycott of Microsoft or Bing I will say that if this is indeed true this has to be the dumbest idea on so many levels that my neck hurts from shaking my head so much.

To understand just how stupid this inane idea is we need to look at all the players involved in a debacle just waiting to happen.

Google

The short end of this is that no agreement between Microsoft with News Corp, or any number of news organizations that are stupid enough to go this route, is going to have any longterm detrimental effects on Google.

When it comes to Google it has built its fortune around the Long Tail of the Web, not against the fluctuation of an ever decreasing time frame, or value, of the “news” cycle. The search giant knows that it is extremely hard to sell advertising against information that loses its relevancy almost as soon as it is posted.

Its recent rumblings within the real-time web isn’t so much as living up to their ethos of indexing all the information on the Internet as much as it is about not letting Microsoft have all the marbles in the playground. Unlike any deals being cut with newspapers; so that they can continue to prop up an industry in severe trouble, making deals with real-time web services is more of where the web is heading and as such it makes sense to Google to be in that space.

As Kent Newsome, along with a bunch of other smart folks, points out people are forgetting the power of the verb and human being’s general apathy and inertia.

Here’s the thing: people are going to use Google, that’s why it’s a verb. If you take your content out of the Google search results, people won’t see it. Merchants go where the people are, not the other way around.

Google knows this and it also knows that what ever is published to the web will eventually make its way into its search index. Real-time or Long Tail it doesn’t matter to Google as long as they can successfully sell advertising against any and all search results.

News Corp and the other desperate Susans of the News Industry

The whole argument being put forward by Rupert Murdoch and the other news industry barons that Google; and the other minor players in the search business, are nothing but bloodsuckers destroying the news business sounds like a bunch of whiny boys threatening to take their bat and balls and go home.

As much as they carry on about the evilness of Google nobody is listening, or caring, any more. We’re all too busy reading the news on sites that are trying to understand and deal with the new way of doing business. Along with that we are reading blogs, reading our Facebook pages and following links to interesting stuff just as we are also doing on Twitter.

And this is one of the major points that the news industry seems to have failed to understand. People don’t go to Google to search for specific news organization’s latest headline. People use Google, or other search companies, to search for ALL of the news about the latest breaking event; or they go to the actual news site itself.

The idea that this is some sort of salvation that will see newspapers finally lift the veil of disaster that is hanging over them is nothing short of delusional. The delivery of news is changing and it is no longer the private fiefdom of an exclusive bunch of rich pricks who think that can buy and sell the world.

Rupert Murdoch acting as the cheerleader of this idea of search engines paying for access doesn’t give a shit about the effect long term of any deals created using this idea. He doesn’t care one iota about the journalists who still don’t know half the time on a day to day basis if they are going to have a job the next day just because Murdoch and his ilk only care about making sure their bottom line isn’t endangered.

This is all about Murdoch being able to keep maintaining control over his media empire while he is alive and he doesn’t care about the survivability of his competitors beyond his opportunity to buy them. Being able to force Internet companies like Google, and Microsoft’s Bing, to pay him the ransom he wants is only a feather in Rupert’s cap – nothing more.

Microsoft

First off I can totally understand why Microsoft would even consider going down this road. That said I think it could be one of the most stupidest things ever conceived of at the company under Steve Ballmer’s stewardship.

As Duncan noted in his post Microsoft has come a long way since its days of being the epitome of evil in just about everyone’s eyes. If this is actually something that Microsoft is seriously considering they could wipe out just about all the good work that has been down to revitalize the company in the public’s eyes.

This whole thing strikes me as nothing more that Microsoft having to pay protectionist money in order to not become totally inconsequential in the search market. The problem is that once Microsoft hands over that first payment they are screwed on so many levels as it is a payment that they can’t take back and will only become the first of a non-stop stream of cash flowing out to the robber barons of news.

One of the biggest dangers that this move by Microsoft could create, as Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web notes, a dangerous precedent that we could never go back from.

Doing so would set a precedent that content should charge search engines for the right to be spidered. What you are doing is just that, attempting to buy exclusive rights to News Corp online. This is the proverbial slippery slope.

Openness is one of the most important concepts on the internet. If you create content, it is searchable. Google brought this revolution, and made the internet not just live up to its potential, but made it useable. Pre-functioning search, the internet was just an idea with potential. Search unlocked the dragon, in the best way possible.

By beginning to close search, by hitting other engines with a dollar-war, you, Microsoft, are going to destroy the open internet. If News Corp wants to not play, fine. Let them leave. They will suffer more than they are supposing. But by paying to get an exclusive, you are tearing the fabric of the free exchange of content and ideas that the internet stands on.

For a company that has been making great stride to change the perception of it this idea of buying search results on such a scale the effects would be disastrous. As many have pointed out the calls for a boycott of Microsoft and Bing would start faster than the ink could dry on any deals.

Us: the netizens.

The newspaper industry isn’t suffering this crisis for no reason. We have found new, and in some cases better ways to get our news and most of the time it has nothing to do with newspapers or even news television. We have also discovered that discovering our news doesn’t have to cost us money.

This would change that if only for a short period of time. We are already seeing calls for the return of the paywall with the deluded belief that people – in general – will pay to read the news and that this is the only way for the news industry to survive.

It has nothing to do with the survivability of the news because that will always be there but it has everything to do with big corporations playing power games with us stuck in the middle.

What these companies; Microsoft, Google, and the news industry on a whole, have forgotten is that the game is changing and we are a whole lot mouthier than we use to be. As major contributors to all these companies, whether it be with money or content, we have a say in this as well and for the first time we have the tools to make them listen.

While this is a bad idea for the search industry and most importantly for Microsoft and does nothing more than extend the period of life-support for the news industry it also is bad for us as the lifeblood of the Internet.

Sitting lurking and watching the disaster unfold isn’t an option. We need to tell Microsoft in loud voices that this isn’t an acceptable idea. Hell even if it means using Bing before any deals are made if only to show Microsoft that they don’t need to do this to be successful we need to speak up and stop this idea dead in its tracks.

If we don’t we are the only one’s who will pay the price. Not Microsoft, not Google, and most definitely not the news industry.

Time for Google, and Microsoft, to call Murdock’s bluff

Steven Hodson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:57:20 +0000

There’s been a lot of go-round this past week about Rupert Murdock yanking everyone’s chain about pulling their content from Google unless the search giant is willing to cough up some money for the privilege of indexing News Corp properties. In fact both Duncan and I have written about the whole stupid mess here at The Inquisitr.

The most consistent statement that everyone has been making about the threats is that if Murdock was serious all it takes is a single line in the Robot.txt file on any of the News Corp servers and the bullshit poker game is done. On the other side is a bunch of folks saying that this is nothing more than a bargaining ploy by Murdock to try and get all the search companies to cough up some cash for access.

Well I’ve got another suggestion but this one goes to both Google and Microsoft.

Call his bluff.

Seriously. Pull all of News Corp content from your indexes and don’t have your search crawlers pull in any new data. After all neither of you are obligated in any fashion to index Murdock’s content. There are no laws saying that you have to index News Corp media sites.

If Murdock seriously thinks that he has the upper hand in this, that Google will collapse without the content and that Microsoft will truly do anything, no matter how stupid, in order to get even a percentage point over Google by paying News Corp blackmail money then I think it’s time to show him otherwise.

All Murdock is getting right now is more and more press as we babble on endlessly about the momentous battle of the search titans against the news titans. It’s bullshit people. Seriously. It’s all a game and I think that if Microsoft and Google in conjunction shut down any spidering of News Corp media properties we’d see in a very short time just who has the better hand here.

And it isn’t Murdock.

Think not?

Then check out Jeff Jarvis’ post today. He has some nice looking graphs showing just how little the 148 German newspapers who signed the Hamburg Declaration really matter to Google.

Here’s a hint….

… dick all.

C’mon Google and Microsoft – call an end to this farce. Call Murdock’s bluff. We’ll love ya for it.

Your Google PageRank may soon depend how fast your site loads – Why?

Steven Hodson — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:52:20 +0000

Google has been making a lot of news over the past while about how it wants to help speed up the web; and as nice as that might be it has gotten more than a few people wondering why.

This last week saw the announcement that the company was working on a new protocol that would sit on top of the standard HTTP protocol. The idea behind SPDY is to help reduce latency and make the overall page surfing experience a little faster.

Not long after that Google’s Matt Cutts has an interview with Mike McDonald from WebProNews were Matt lets the world know that Google is seriously looking at making the page load time a part of the algorithm used to calculate a web site’s PageRank. The idea being that the faster your site loads the better that will affect your overall score as calculated by Google and the better placement you’ll have in search results.

Interesting idea – except why is there this sudden concern with how fast pages load?

Granted we all have heard about how fanatical Google can be about page load times since the faster their pages load the more searches they can deliver. On the flip side however there is the time that it takes for the Google crawlers to index, and update, all that data out there. In this aspect of the search game they are often at the mercies of the designers of websites.

So if Google can get everyone to do everything they can to make their pages load faster it means that Google’s crawlers can do their job in the fraction of the time thus saving Google an incredible amount of money. Of course it benefits site owners as well to do what they can to increase page load speed but is Google’s rewarding faster loading sites with a better rank the right way to do this?

Douglas Karr from Marketing Tech Blog doesn’t think so and he goes as far as to suggest that this is leaning to being evil.

So, as one of the wealthiest companies in the world, Google is beginning to drop the hint… hard. Make your sites faster and we’ll reward you with better ranking. This is fantastic for companies with the infrastructure, capacity and resources… but what happens to the little guy? How does a small personal blog hosted on GoDaddy for a few dollars compete with a company hosted on a platform that costs thousands of dollars with loadsharing, caching, web acceleration or cloud technologies?

In my humble opinion, I think it leans the evil side. Let’s break it down:

The web is becoming more complex.

This requires Google to advance its technologies.

That costs Google more money.

The alternative is penalizing sites that perform slowly, requiring them to spend more and speed up their sites, reducing Google’s costs.

That doesn’t make good PR, though.

Instead, Google does it in under the auspices of enhancing the web experience.

It’s not about you and me. It’s about Google’s bottom line.

Personally I think Douglas makes a valid point and one well worth thinking about.

The hashtag jungle of real time search

Steven Hodson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:19:40 +0000

Last week my partners in crime over at The Cynical Bastards podcast talked about the deals that Twitter had made with both Microsoft and Google that would allow both companies access to the fire hose of information that Twitter generates every minute of the day. While it was my thinking that Twitter must have made out large in the deals Mark called that thinking into question but as it may turn out I could be wrong in my assumptions.

I say that because of some details that came out in a New York Times article about the marketability of real time search in general and about the Twitter deals in relation to being a provider of content for real time search. As Miguel Helft noted in the NYT article

But Twitter’s chief executive, Evan Williams, said revenue was “not the focus” of its agreements with Google and Microsoft.

What’s more, neither of those companies has immediate plans to put ads on its searches of Twitter, though they may do so later. And Facebook said last week that it received no money from a separate agreement to make some of its users’ updates available in real time to Microsoft.

While a large number of social media pundits, myself included, like to poke fun at Twitter for seemingly being unable to monetize all that data flowing though its timelines it does speak to a larger problem.

Just how do you monetize a constantly changing landscape of hashtags and shortened URLs?

People like blogger Rob Diana suggest that its real strength will only become apparent with the growth of the mobile computing.

A majority of the real time search boom will be in its convergence with another rapidly growing industry, mobile computing. There could be real time recommendations based on your current location using an application that aggregates information from real time searches as well as social sites like Yelp and Urban Spoon. Businesses can easily see the benefits of this as well with local advertisements and “limited time” discounts on your mobile phone.

Just think of the applications that could be possible when you mash together recommendations, discovery, social media and real time information. Not surprisingly, the business model for these new types of applications will probably still be advertising, but it is localized and specialized. Generic search may have known what you were looking for, but the new mobile applications will also know when and where you are looking for it.

However there is also a more interesting use of real time search of social media that may turn out to be much easier to monetize which Rob points to as well in his post

There are the basic breaking news applications, which could be huge in their own right, as well as niche applications like social media monitoring.

While being able to market against your typical search results can result in lots of money being made and easy to see ROI real time search is still both too new and ambiguous to provide the same kind of results – for both provider of results and companies advertising against those results. However the thing that real time search does do is allow companies to be proactive to events as they happen rather than reactive.

Rather than having to deal with old news and the built up reaction to past events companies now have a chance to see these negative events, or even positive ones, as they are happening. By being able to deal with consumer reactions as they develop in real time companies are able in the short run to save money that they would have otherwise had to spend on things like lawyers, public relations, and crisis management.

In the long run it puts a human face to the companies who step in early due to their monitoring of social media and in turn presents the company to consumers as one who cares and is worth spending our money on.

This kind of use of real time search might only return savings or make millions for those involved which might not be as sexy as making billions but sometimes reputation is more important than short term dollars in the bank.

Just as social media has been disruptive and mindset changing for our traditional business models maybe real time search will be just as disruptive of the business of search.

Google – the new playground of malware scum

Steven Hodson — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:29:11 +0000

It’s bad enough when regular sites get hijacked by people who want to fill your computer with all kinds of spyware and other assorted types of malware but when they start manipulating Google search results I think one could say things are getting out of control.

The team over at Sunbelt Software, developers of the Vipre security software, have a post up about just this fact. The way it works is that these malware serving sites are set up to use Google as a referrer and have massaged the served up links in search results to lead you directly to compromised sites.

Apparently one of the ways you can tell if the URL is dangerous is if you see a /?p or ?/t in it and while Google does seem to catch some of the dangerous links it doesn’t catch them all as you can see from this image courtesy of Sunbelt

The amount of search terms that can lead you into this dark world of dangerous search results is dizzying. While the security guys might like to think of it a a fun pass time it sin’t somethign for the average user to play around with.

Alex from the Sunbelt blog says that the use of search results like this is massive and points to a list of search terms used in a recent blackhat run on Google. This is only a potion of his whole list but it will give you an idea

2010 Military Pay Charts
Aileen Quinn
Amelia Earhart
Anglicanism
Arsenio Hall
Astate
Banco Del Tesoro Venezuela
Bedava Ingilizce
Bianchini .
Bitty Schram Fired
Black Parade
blackberry storm 9520
Blast Off
Bobblehead .
Bravo project runway .
Cafe World
cfnm youtube
Charlie Manuel
child stuck in balloon
Chris Cooley Blog .
Chris Mckendry
Christian Audigier
Collin Wilcox Paxton
Collin Wilcox Paxton .

As they use to say on Hill Street Blues – be careful out there.

Looking at the nuances of the Twitter search deals

Steven Hodson — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:36:19 +0000

Well there is no denying that today was an interesting one when it comes to the world of search and the real time web. From everything I have read so far today everyone seems to be of the opinion that the two deals Twitter made today are pretty important and I would have to agree with that assessment.

Microsoft

Other than Twitter I would have to say that the big winner of today’s announcements definitely has to be Microsoft. Not only did they ink a deal with Twitter but they also made one with Facebook as well. While Microsoft’s Bing search already has a beta page up for searching Twitter it will be a couple of months apparently before their work with Facebook will be available.

The fact that Microsoft was able to have even a beta result page ready for the announcement today could prove to be very important for the company. As it stands Google won’t have anything available for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months – depending on who you talk to.

This is a golden window for Microsoft and Bing because it will give them time to review and fine tune how the results are made available during which they can try and capitalize on being the only major search provider searching the real time web. While they won’t see a rush of new users to the search service it could definitely cause more than a few to start using Bing on a more regular basis.

Google

While the web’s search darling has announced inking a deal with Twitter for access to the fire hose the fact is that they are still some time from having anything people can actually use. I find it interesting that Microsoft was able to get a beta Twitter search up for today’s announcement but Google wasn’t. This would mean that Microsoft has to have had access to that hose prior to Google which goes to suggest that Microsoft has a better grasp on the importance of Twitter and real time search.

This isn’t to suggest that Google won’t have a good product when they do bring it to the table. On the contrary I fully expect them to have an interesting take on how real time search results should be handled. I just would have expected given the current opinion of Microsoft being a stick in the mud enterprise oriented company and Google being the do no evil Web 2.0 darling perpetual beta company that they would have been first in this little skirmish.

The fact that Microsoft beat them at this point with a usable real time search product doesn’t mean that the tables have turned. Google isn’t going to lose any sleep or long time users over the deal but Microsoft may have just been given a golden opportunity to show they have a very capable product that will win some folks over.

Twitter

You have to admit this was a pretty cool deal that Twitter managed to pull off without anything really leaking out about it. Being able to ink 2 non-exclusivity deals with serious enemies who are always looking to one up each other and nothing gets out almost right up until the announcements – nicely done.

While I am sure that Twitter will be banking some serious cash out of these deals I am sure it is nothing that would pale by comparison to an exclusive deal. This has me wondering if it was Twitter that made the non-exclusivity a requirement of even talking about making any deals. If so kudos to the Twitter team for making some good money but at the same time making sure the Twitter stream remained neutral.

Overall

We are the winners here – make no mistake. Microsoft gets a chance to prove to new users that they have a better search, Google gets to index even more of the world’s info only in real time, and Twitter gets to probably put some serious cash in the bank and possibly start living up to its valuation. In the end though it us the users who will ultimately benefit.

Twitter FTW.

Granny sex is more popular than naked chickens

Steven Hodson — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:55:13 +0000

I have often wondered as a blogger what would happen if my browser and search history was ever examined by law enforcement. Think about it – bloggers are always searching for stuff that ranges from strange to illegal. We are always checking out all kinds of sites as we research for posts. Given how much the police and courts are using things like Google searches as part of investigations and trials bloggers could have a hard time explaining some of their stuff found on their computers.

However using Google to find out information about granny sex or naked chickens isn’t something one would think of doing. It would seem though that people are and to the point that granny sex is more popular as a search term than naked chickens.

I also don’t even want to know what it is that prompted this person to even compare the two.

hat tip to The Duty

Face.com follows Photo Finder with Photo Tagger for Facebook

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:00:59 +0000

Back in May, we told you about Face.com’s Photo Finder, a facial recognition app for Facebook that aims to find tags for untagged photos floating about in your network.

Photo Finder has racked up some impressive stats since it launched, scanning over a billion faces and facilitating the tagging of over 400 million of those photos. (Point of reference for my fellow New Yorkers- that’s like tagging an entire rush hour 6 train full of people!) Here’s the stat breakdown, from Face.com’s blog:

13 Million photos scanned a day.
550 Thousand an hour.
9 Thousand a minute.
150 per second.

On average, a Photo Finder user uploads 300 pics and has around 10,000 in their network, 2/3s of which are untagged or partially tagged. Enter Photo Tagger. Photo Tagger was conceived to allow users to power-tag these untagged pics. It scans your albums or your friends’ albums, batches your peeps into groups and suggests tags for them. All you have to do is confirm the tags and the app pushes them out to Facebook.

Photo Tagger is currently in closed alpha, but it sounds like a handy little tool for making photo sharing more efficient. Check out the screencaps below to see the tagging process in action.

More Bing homepage photos plus a photo contest

Steven Hodson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:25:00 +0000

I realize that this news will really only apply to a small segment of readers, those one’s not swimming in the Google kool-aid at least, but when it comes to Bing one of the that has become a bit of a consumer hit is its homepage photos. The photos change everyday but now they’ll be changing in more countries with pictures of those countries.

Starting next month these additional countries will include: Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and the UK. these countries will have customized photos with their own hotspots of mouse over information. Now sticking with the homepage photos for a second one of the really neat things that has come out of these homepage photos is Bing fans have begun collecting them in order to share all the ones that have been displayed so far.

The best project so far is the one that Long Zheng has put together over at the Bing Image Archive which is where you can find all the background images presented in a calendar format that you can scroll through to see what image was shown on what day.

Now on to the contest.

The Bing team is launching their first photo submission via Facebook. The theme is summer travel and the winner will have their photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3rd. If interested head over to the Bing contest on Facebook and check out the rules and such. Good luck.

hat tip to LiveSide

Yet another Twitter search company to go public June 18

Steven Hodson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Word comes from Mary Jo Foley about a new search company that plans on taking the wraps off of their social search startup on June 18. The startup is run by former Microsoft General Manager of Microsoft Search and is a custom built social search engine that will track conversations on Twitter.

The company, CrowdEye, has been in stealth mode for the past nine months but if everything goes alright it should be live sometime tomorrow. The blurb from their site goes something like this

“CrowdEye is a new generation of search engine which looks at the worldwide web in a new way. By tracking discussions on Twitter, we can help our users find out what’s important to them right now in real time. CrowdEye has created innovative technology to scan through tweets, retweets, twitter links and more. We then provide you with powerful yet easy ways to slice, dice, summarize and categorize the data to answer your questions. Whether you’re interested in following your brand, baseball, celebrities, movies, or anything else people are talking about – CrowdEye can help you know what people are thinking.”

Yup just what we needed, another company being built on top of a company that has no discernable business plan.

Microsoft’s Bing ads and the logic of a decision engine

Steven Hodson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:59:19 +0000

It would seem that a part of that massive $100 million that Microsoft has earmarked for the advertising campaign for Bing has started to flow. so far there have been three commercials that have surfaced and like the guys over at TheNextWeb.com I wasn’t impressed at all with the first one but the two follow-up ads begin to show the direction that the campaign could be headed.

They also to a certain extent explain the logic behind the idea of reframing Bing as a decision engine rather than just another search engine. The fact is that Microsoft, or any other company for that matter, would have very little success competing against Google on the search engine turf. Google owns “search” – that there is no denying and attempting to even try and dethrone them from that spot would be nigh impossible at this point in time.

So what Microsoft smartly did was probably ask themselves how could they change the terms of the battle. Instead of fighting over “search” what could they do to rephrase the question in the minds of the consumers. In light of the company’s recent success with their Laptop Hunter ad campaign Microsoft saw how this rephrasing of the question could be successful. In that campaign rather than attacking Apple on the perception of quality of products they went straight for the pocketbook. It didn’t hurt that we are also going through economic hard times but sometimes fortune shines on the daring and in this case timing was everything for Microsoft.

When it came to search though the battlefield was different as there were no price comparisons that could be made. So where was the chink in the search armor that Microsoft could possibly make the greatest headway?

Well it turns out that it may be as simple as terminology. After all what is it we use search for in the first place?

We use it primarily to find information upon which we can make decisions. Is that the product we want based on all the relevant information about that product. Is that the piece of information we need for the point we are trying to make? The problem with search engines is the vast number of results that can sometimes be returned – even with an advanced search query. Once you’ve gat that list of results you then have to wade through them all clicking on possible links to get the actual information.

Where I think Microsoft came at it differently was acknowledging this “decision” generating aspect of search and asked how can we make this easier for the consumer.? How can we possibly present the consumer with enough data on the results page so that they don’t have to click through unless they are sure that the item fits what they were looking for? How do we help the consumer make those “informed” decisions easily and quickly?

In other words rather than asking how can we make search better they started asking how can we help you make your decisions easier to do. So rather than framing Bing as just another search engine Microsoft based what they were doing on this idea of helping the consumer in a decision making process. Hence their “decision-engine”

Will this prove to be the right idea?

Well given that their ad campaign is being based around the idea that search has become just another case of information overload, or as they call it – search overload, they just might have found a winning niche. Only time will tell I guess if the fortunes will smile on them the same way it did with Laptop Hunters. In the meantime here’s the two newest ads of their search overload campaign – you decide for yourself if you think the campaign will work in changing the framing of the question.

The straight scoop on how they came up with Bing

Steven Hodson — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:00:04 +0000

So everyone has had a chance to kick the tires of Microsoft’s ~~new~~ rebranded ~~search engine~~ decision-engine and not surprisingly the reviews are mixed.

Putting all that aside though one still has to wonder just how they came up with the name Bing (it’s still stupid) as the brand name they wanted to use for their shiny new decision-engine. Well thanks to Steve Clayton I managed to find out and figured I would be a nice guy and share it with you. So without any further ado the statement from Yusuf Mehdi

So why did we pick Bing as the new brand name? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product — optimized for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world. We like Bing because it sounds off in our heads when we think about that moment of discovery and decision making — when you resolve those important tasks. And frankly, the name needed to clearly communicate that this is something new, to invite you to come back, to re-introduce you to our new and improved service and encourage you to give it a try.

Hmmm.

Okay, whatever you say Yusuf, but I still think the name is ridiculous.

[SHOCKER] Did you really expect any love for Bing?

Steven Hodson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:06:38 +0000

Unexpectedly Microsoft unleashed the preview (beta) of their new (or is it rebranded?) ~~search engine~~ decision-engine called Bing earlier than expected. While everyone was waiting with baited breath and sharpened knives for June 3rd when it was supposed to be available Microsoft uncharacteristically launched early. As I headed to bed late last night (or early this morning) the reports were beginning to trickle in but rather than stretch the patience of my wife any further I decided to wait until today to have a look and see what was being said.

Not surprisingly the majority of comments being made on the tech blogs can pretty well be summed up with the typical FAIL statement. There were a couple of surprises though but on the whole the response has been just as I expected it to be – biased. It’s not surprising I guess given the love affair that much of the tech blogosphere and Web 2.0 hippies have with anything even remotely Google.

Mind you some of the points trying to be made are just outrageously stupid that I can’t believe that supposedly smart people even posted them let alone think that we would swallow them whole. So rather than really extend a lot of words rehashing what has already been said I figured I’d take a look at what the wise people of the tech blogosphere had to say.

The stupidly outrageous

Of all the crap to come out the lead position obviously has to go to the fuss being made around Bing being the newest provider of porn. It all started with a message on Twitter from Loic Le Meur, the man behind Seesmic, when he posted this

To which M.G. Siegler was quick to get into print when he wrote this

This is just too good. One of the features of Microsoft’s just launched Bing search engine is that it auto-plays videos in results when you hover over them. Naturally, the first thing a number of people, like Loic Le Meur, did was search for “sex” or “porn.” The results are majestic — if you’re a teenager looking for a way around porn filters on your computer. And this isn’t artful porn or something like it, it’s straight-up, hardcore pornography.

Sorry MG but I expected better of you than this. Sure it makes for a great headline and is sure to help the pageviews but you neglected one important thing. Do the same thing on Google and you will get the same kind of results. At least Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins was journalistic enough to point this fact out in his post.

My take on this: This was nothing more than sensationalistic attention getting by people who should have known better. Any search engine, as Mark pointed out, should return results directly connected to your search query. The fact that Bing does as good a job as Google – or better – should be a testament to how good it is. To insinuate that this is a bad things for Bing to be doing while not even acknowledging that Google behaves the same way is just facetious and stupid.

The Negative

The overwhelming reaction I have seen so far today has been the typical Microsoft sucks – Bing FAILs type of stuff which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Microsoft could have actually developed a totally unique and killer search (decision-engine) engine only to have people claim that it failed. The thing is that Microsoft isn’t stupid enough to think that they could even come close to taking away any market share from Google regardless of what they launched.

The web reality is that Google is the search king and Microsoft knows that but that doesn’t mean that the company can’t bring something to market that does something different when it comes to search and does it well.

Has it achieved that with Bing?

While Duncan thinks otherwise I think it is still too early to be claiming Bing is a failure (other than I still think it’s a stupid name). That hasn’t stopped the tech know-it-alls though. Whether it be just the headline of a post to semi in-depth posts the naysayers abound

Bing Bing: Microsoft’s search engine unexpectedly live, but not Live via Guardian

Money Quote:

But in most respects, Google still rules. The fact is that Bing is an incomplete beta, and while it’s not bad, it’s not actually a match for Google at the moment.

Microsoft Unveils Bing Search Engine. Nice! Now, Back to Google via Business Hacks

Money Quote:

So, yeah, there’s some good stuff here. But for now Google will remain my go-to search engine, because I know it’ll give me the most accurate results.

Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ Search Engine Debuts, But It’s No Google via webmonkey

Money Quote:

While Bing is definitely Microsoft’s most impressive search engine to date, it still lacks anything game-changing enough to make us switch away from Google.

Banging on Bing: A Bummer via The Noisy Channel

Money Quote:

But I can’t say I’d be thrilled. I’ve only had a short time to play with Bing, but I’m not overwhelmed. In fact, I’m quite disappointed, given their big talk about deliver a “decision engine“, I expected at least a little bit of innovation in the user experience. No such luck, The focus is still on the ranked list, and their ranking is, at least to my taste, perceptibly inferior to Google’s.

Bing: Am I Missing Something? via Technologizer

Money Quote:

For me however, Bing just isn’t it. I’m glad to see Microsoft is finally serious about search — but I don’t think matching your competition is going to win the day in the end.

The one point I have argued from the beginning was the choice of Bing as the new name. Allen Stern took up this point but from a different aspect in his post on Bing this morning. I’m including it in the negative column because … well .. Allen isn’t all that hot on Bing period

Will Bing be the next Google or the next Cuil? Who knows at this point but what I do know is that had they used the Live name for the brand, they would have been further down the better path.

The Positive – or at least an attempt at it

To a certain extent I was a little surprised at the fact that Bing has gotten some good press but of all of the reaction I have read so far the biggest surprise had to come TechCrunch. We don’t normally link to them but in this case I unlike them I have to set any bias aside because their support was such a surprise.

Apparently Bing Is Something Of A Hit via TechCrunch

Money Quote:

My thoughts on Bing: I like it. And I’d consider using it as my search engine. But like many people I’m used to Google and I know how to find the things I’m looking for. Bing returns very different results for a lot of queries, which is great.

As far as the rest of the positive tech blogosphere response it went something like this.

Bing: Is That an Acronym for “Bing Is Not Google”? via Digital Daily

Money Quote:

…. there’s a lot to impress. Bing is fast — very fast, actually. It’s local results are robust, accurate and usable. This search for “pizza near 94117,” for example, returns not just a list of pizza parlor homepages, but phone numbers, directions, reviews, coupons and bird’s eye maps as well. Video search is deep and the ability to further calibrate it by length, screen size and resolution is a nice touch.

Bing – is this Google’s Netscape Time? via Broadstuff

Money Quote:

We’ve been trying Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, for the best part of the day and – almost surprised to say – it’s rather good.

In the end

Anyone who thought that Microsoft would come out of the gate hoping that Bing was going to be a Google killer is being silly. I am sure that the numbers will look good for the next couple of months as people stop by and kick the tires but I think that Microsoft would be happy to see their percentages of search users begin to even move in an upward trend.

Bing isn’t a Google killer. Period.

That doesn’t mean though that it won’t find a loyal audience, possibly myself included. It also doesn’t mean that this is going to be the end product. Search is as constantly evolving field and I think we can expect to see Bing continue to experiment and improve over time.

And really that is all we can expect for a company to do in such a volatile market.

Henry Blodget opens mouth and inserts foot – again

Steven Hodson — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:36:44 +0000

On one hand I kind of admire the tenacity of a man who can go from getting his ass tossed out of a nice comfortable gig analyzing stocks and bounce a couple of times only to end up pontificating on the web. The only problem is that many times his online pontifications only go to show why it was he ended up having his stock market membership card ripped up.

Today’s post where he tries to show the rest of us mindless rubes as to why Microsoft is in desperate need of a reality intervention is a good example. Now given that its Friday though I can completely understand why he chose to try and get some Techmeme juice to carry him through the weekend. That doesn’t change the fact that he likes to gloss over the fact in favor of the hot headline geared for the Digg crowd.

There’s two points in his post where Blodget shows just how malleable the truth can be when massaged by a consummate spinmeister. The first is basically the lynch pin of his post but as Tom’s Tech Blog points out quite rightly it’s a point that is wrong

Blodget’s response was…

What is Steve missing here? Microsoft had a monopoly in operating systems. When you have a monopoly, everyone buys your upgrades. They buy them because they’re a bit better, yes, but mostly because they don’t have a choice.

Now as anyone with even a hint of historical knowledge knows Microsoft did not have a Monopoly on the Operating System in the time of Windows 1, 2 or 3. In fact, they were so desperate to hang on to their DOS business that they jumped into bed with IBM and declared OS/2 the future of computing

And no, MS-DOS was not a monopoly. They had several viable competitors at every step of the chain. From Amiga to Apple, CP/M to Desqview and all those in-between.

The only reason that Microsoft is the force it is today is because they had a lot of luck and very smart business decisions on their side. I’m not saying that everything the company has done over its lifetime is right – far from it. Here’s the thing though – computers, software and the Internet is a freaking business and in business being nice make you one of the biggest corporations in the world. Has Microsoft played underhanded hardball? Sure it has but then so has every other major successful corporation in the world.

Business isn’t about being nice to your competitors – it’s about cutting their throats at every possible turn. They all know it to – it’s the price of becoming insanely wealthy.

A minor side point about something else Blodget says in his post (emphasis mine)

Yes, Microsoft demolished Netscape’s browser lead, but that was because 1) Microsoft was able to build IE into Windows, and 2) Netscape took a wrong turn (into enterprise software). Microsoft never built the browser into an actual business, and in the past several years it has begun losing share to Firefox and Safari.

This argument kind of a loss leader though, used to make yet another useless point against the company. As far as Microsoft has been concern – rightly or wrongly – Internet Explorer is not a separate entity. To them it has always been an integral part of the operating system, both in technical terms and in mindset. I’m not saying this was the correct approach after all it is the one that got them into big trouble with the D0J, but Microsoft was never in the business of selling Internet Explorer – it was in the business of selling an operating system of which it was a part.

The second major point though that Blodget seems to make based on an assumption is that Microsoft will not succeed in besting Google when it comes to search because it isn’t a part of the company’s core competency. Of course to do this we would have to ignore the fact that search is indeed a part of their core competency because it is an integral part of Windows.

That point aside why does everyone assume that given the size of the search marketplace that Microsoft is going to come out of the gate trying to slap Google around. Suggesting something like this basically tells everyone that you think that some very smart business people, and not just in Microsoft, are idiots.

Idiots because they are even thinking of trying to chip away at getting even an incredibly profitable piece of the ever increasing search pie. Let’s get serious here for a moment. You don’t last the number of year as Ballmer has in this business by being a total idiot. sure he’s made some bad decisions that have cost Microsoft but name me a top business executive who hasn’t. shit happens they make mistakes.

To suggest though that a company the size of Microsoft should totally abdicate it’s involvement in the business of search is stupid. Ballmer knows that they can’t beat Google – they very well may never even come close, but that doesn’t change the fact that percentage points of the search business is worth billions of dollars. For him to ignore that avenue would be irresponsible to the company and the shareholders.

Yes they have done a really lousy job of trying to get those percentage points but that doesn’t mean they should stop trying. I don’t know if Bing is going to be the answer, although I don’t think they did themselves any favors with the name, but I also don’t think they should just walk away from the table.

If this is the kind of advice Blodget gave his clients back in his stock market days it’s no wonder they kicked him out of the club.

[pic courtesy of CNN Money]

Why Bing is a stupid ass name for a search engine

Steven Hodson — Mon, 25 May 2009 01:42:40 +0000

Rumors are flying leading up to Microsoft revealing their next attempt at trying to restart their search platform at the upcoming D: All Things Digital conference next week. For the last little while they have been apparently testing the engine in-house using the Kumo domain but the one other name being floated around as the possible brand for the search engine is – Bing.

Ya… Bing, and I don’t mean the cherries or the character from Friends (thanks AJ for those lost minutes reading about that). the only problem is that Microsoft’s attempts to trademark the name has been tossed by the US Trademark Office

Registration of the applied-for mark is refused because of a likelihood of confusion with the mark in U.S. Registration No. 3562956. Trademark Act Section 2(d), 15 U.S.C. §1052(d);see TMEP §§1207.01 et seq. See the enclosed registration.

Source: LiveSide.net

While much of the opinion about the Bing name has been pretty mixed from what I have read all I can say is that it is one of the stupidest names that Microsoft could have come up, well maybe not the stupidest but pretty close.

The fact is that Microsoft could have finally developed the killer search engine that leaves Google and all the rest in the dust but it won’t matter one bit with a name like Bing. Ask any serious marketer what they they think – how would they sell it?

Even with a killer search platform Microsoft has forgotten the most important thing – Google owns the culture. It owns the verb. How often have you seen someone write “I googled you last night”, or said “I’ll google that for you and get right back”. Google has become the search language verb. From pretty well primary school right through to the grave Google has become the defacto word for search.

If Microsoft even wants to have a chance regardless of the quality of their search platform, although it would be easier if it has been improved, they are going to have to fight for the verb. they are going to need to replace our usage of google with one of their own and Bing ain’t gonna do it.

Think about it.

Are you gonna tell someone that you binged them to find out who they were?

Are you going to be courageous to even utter the words hang on while I bing for that information with a serious look on your face?

I doubt it.

Silly Microsoft, Bing is for cherries – not serious search engine marketing.

Warrantless searches courtesy of the FCC

Steven Hodson — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:00:00 +0000

I’ll bet that you didn’t know that if you have any of the following

wireless router
cordless phone
cellphone
remote control for
baby monitor

you are now subject to warrantless searches by the FCC.

The FCC claims they have this right as a direct privilege of the Communication Act of 1934. While the constitutionality of the power has yet to be tested in court the proliferation of devices using the radio waves makes the potential for such a test much more likely.

The rules garnered some attention this month when an FCC agent investigating a pirate radio station left as copy of a 2005 FCC inspection policy on the door of the residence suspected of hosting the an unlicensed radio transmitter. While most lawyers familiar with this section of the FCC policies agree that its use of warrantless searches probably wouldn’t survive a court challenge refusing FCC admittance can carry a harsh financial penalty.

However there is a real concern as pointed out by Carlo Longino at Techdirt that this could be a back door around search and seizure laws

While it’s unlikely that the FCC will begin raiding homes to confiscate WiFi routers and garage door openers, there is speculation that should FCC agents enter a home and see evidence of unrelated criminal behavior, that evidence can be used for criminal prosecution. This could give law enforcement a potential back door around search and seizure laws, a move which certainly merits some concern.

Google already has a real-time search – of sorts

Steven Hodson — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:46:18 +0000

I’ve been watching this growing discussion about the importance of the real-time web and how Twitter has the distinct advantage in this area that would make it a pearl of an acquisition based solely on its real-time nature. At the same time just about everyone and their brother is suggesting that Google needs to up its game and get on the real-time search bandwagon.

While my personal feelings about the whole real-time web as being evangelized by all the heavy hitters in the tech blogosphere is still sitting on the fence it was nice to see some sensible thoughts today from Mike Elgan regarding Google and real-time search. The interesting take away from Mike’s post is that Google’s regular search is as good as it is because the company indexes almost everything on the web and that by tossing real-time search into the mix we would be in danger of ruining the results Google returns.

As Mike points out

Google will not, cannot and should not try to offer real-time search for everything on the Internet. One reason is spam. You already can’t stand just the spam that comes flooding into your own personal e-mail inbox. You definitely don’t want all spam posted everywhere.

With real-time search, spammers can monitor existing sites to see what people are writing about or searching for. Let’s say there’s a giant earthquake in L.A. Everybody wants to jump on their real-time search engine to get updates. It’s trivially easy for spammers to start bombing the Internet with spam loaded with the "earthquake" keyword.

This is already happening, even on Twitter. The more people use real-time search, the more time and energy spammers will devote to exploiting it.

In this I agree wholeheartedly with Mike but people seem to be forgetting one thing. Google already has the basis of real-time search up and running. It’s call Google Blog Search and it is very good at returning extremely recent results of blogs posts. I’ve seen even my own posts from both here at The Inquisitr and my home home blog, Shooting at Bubbles, show up within minutes of being posted.

Now granted this is only blog posts and to the real-time purists even five minutes is ancient but the fact is that with a little tweaking I’m sure that even that could be speeded up. Not too mention that it probably would take very little effort from Google engineers to add in services like Twitter, Friendfeed or any other so-called real-time service.

So rather than Google having to re-invent the wheel all they really have to do is tighten the spokes of what they already have.

Face.com out of Alpha with their Facebook app called Photo finder

Steven Hodson — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:30:33 +0000

The driving force behind Face.com, a company based in Israel and New York, has been to develop the best in class facial recognition software. In keeping with this the company has just released a Facebook app called Photo Finder. The idea behind the app is to let you scan all the photos on you network in Facebook finding photos of yourself and your friends and then tag them.

During the closed alpha of a few thousand people Photo Finder was able to scan 400 million photos and identify over 700 thousand people/faces.

The app works by scanning the public photos in your Facebook networks and suggest tags for those that are either partially tagged or not tagged at all. Face.com says it is the fastest, most powerful and most accurate facial recognition app available making it the best way to find photos of yourself and your friends that you may not have known even existed.

Sustainable energy visual search

Steven Hodson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:37:00 +0000

If you are someone who is heavy into environmental and energy issues this offering from Reegle might just be up your alley. while they might like to bill themselves as a search engine for renewable energy that really are a lot more than just that. along with aggregating energy news it has a great map section that lets you keep up with renewable energy projects around the world.

When you click on any of the icons that populate the map you will be shown the latest news links regarding renewable energy for that country. You can also click other search parameters and see upcoming events around the world that have to do with renewable energy and climate protection. Yet another selection will get you a list of links for the country’s energy profile from a wide variety of sources.

This moron was right – Google provides easy pirate searches

Steven Hodson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:06:02 +0000

The other day I wrote a post about the Pirate Bay court case and given that Google; or any search engine for that matter, can provide the same search results as Pirate Bay when would the entertainment industry be suing them. In the comments that followed most people with common sense saw the point of the post and agreed with the premise. It was after all the same point that even the folks at Mashable came up with in a later post.

A lone exception was from a John Hooper who called me a moron over my post

John Hooper 2 days ago

You morons. Your Google results are all legal downloads. Try again, this time, think about your terms a bit harder. C’mon, you can do it. Hint: try Blogspot (owned by Google in the terms).

Unfortunately the only one who really ends up looking like a moron is Mr. Hooper. As anyone worth their Internet salt can tell you, there have been custom search engines built on top of Google – which means they are only displaying results that would have been available on the regular Google – that search out both illegal and legal downloads of MP3 for a long time

Then there are all the blogs that will give you step by step search string building hints to find both legal and illegal files to download. Much like what TechMixer does

Tips 1: Search and Download Torrent File By Using Google Search Engine :

Enter filetype:torrent in google search engine.

Filetype means : Name of the file to search then filetype:torrent

For Example: ANTIVIRUS KASPERSKY filetype:torrent

Tips 2 : Search and download files from Rapidshare using google search engine to find All rapidshare.de Downloads:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=+.*+site%3Arapidshare.de

Application Downloads using Rapidshare.de :

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=.cab+OR+.exe+OR+.rar+OR+.zip+site%3Arapidshare.de&btnG=Search

Movies rapidshare.de Downloads:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=+.Avi+OR+.mpg+OR+.mpeg+site%3Arapidshare.de&btnG=Search

Tips 3 : Search for ebook using Google:

Find Apache’s (default) Index pageTry this query:

+(”index of”) +(”/ebooks”|”/book”) +(chm|pdf|zip|rar) +apache

To find a particular eBook file try this query:

allinurl: +(rar|chm|zip|pdf|tgz) title of the book

Tips 4 : How To Find Ftp’s The Easy WayI u

Some kind of search engine query examples are:

index of ftp/ +mp3
index of ftp/ +divx
index of ftp/ +”whateveryouwant”
allintitle: “index of ftp/mp3″

So before you go calling someone a moron Mr. Hooper maybe you should just STFU and realize that there are people out there who do actually know what the hell they are talking about.

Now stick that in your pipe and go back to class because obviously you still have a lot to learn about the Internet – much like the entertainment industry does. If it is on the Internet people will figure out how to find it, download it and share it. Too bad though people like yourselves still haven’t found out where to download a brain or a life.

[top graphic courtesy of Logoogle.com]