

Eric Schmidt: “Our competitor is Bing” - thomas
http://www.liveside.net/bingblog/archive/2010/09/24/google-s-eric-schmidt-our-competitor-is-bing.aspx

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simonsarris
On my first day of giving Bing a go (I used it for about two weeks to try to
fairly assess) I ran into a problem: It can spellcheck words, but it cant get
it right contextually.

Let me give you an example:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer>

<http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer>

I meant to type "how I won the war" and only Google picks up on this.

"waer" alone into google instant will bring up water (country), but with the
context of my search phrase it gives me something far more accurate.

~~~
ianbishop
Sounds like Bing uses just spell checking rather than n-grams on search
queries as Google does.

~~~
kenjackson
That's a pretty big whole for Bing to miss. Probably doesn't track as well
since it requires a mistyped query -- most people doing comparisons of
relevance compare correctly typed queries. But a big hole for real world
usage... at least I'd think so.

~~~
jrockway
I agree. The first thing I would do, if writing a search engine, would be to
do Google-style phrase corrections.

(Although lately, I find it too aggressive. When googling obscure error
messages, it usually "do you mean"-s it into a less obscure error message that
I already understand. Sigh.)

~~~
chc
I really think Google is getting to be too clever for its own good. When I try
to search for some Mac API, it will give me a blog post about an iPhone app,
no matter how much I beg and plead. Bing returns precisely what I wanted for
those "Where the heck did Google get that SERP from?" kind of queries.

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antpicnic
Google needs Bing to be moderately successful to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit.

Bing is a win for Microsoft either way. If it gets about 30% market share,
then Bing makes Microsoft money and forces Google to invest more in search. If
even the largest software company after investing billions can't stop Google's
growth in search, then Microsoft and others will claim that that Google is a
monopoly. So it should be subject to anti-trust laws.

In the old days, when General Motors completely dominated the car industry,
they made sure to keep their market share under 25%. They believed, probably
correctly, that a higher share would bring anti-trust sanctions.

~~~
jrockway
Isn't anti-trust designed to prevent people from _abusing_ their monopoly
position? For example, Microsoft was the top OS vendor. They wanted to
dominate the highly-lucrative Web Browser Vendor business. So, they forced
everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser.

The government thought this was an abuse of the monopoly, but the charges
didn't stick.

What Google's doing is nothing close to that, though. Nobody uses other search
engines because they suck. The results are irrelevant and the ads are
irrelevant. That's not anti-competitive action, that's competitive action --
they make a good product that people like. Seems legal to me.

~~~
asnyder
I don't know about you, but to me Google is already pretty scary. Google has
the power to completely destroy your business. They have little to no human
communication, thus not allowing for any real follow-up, they're like this
god, or black box. You have to hope and pray your begging will correct things.

For example, lets assume you have a somewhat successful product, getting
pretty good search results for your category, and one day your site throws
some errors, or it goes down, or something of that nature, your site is now no
longer showing for your category. They don't tell you anything, not even if
you use their Webmaster tools, all you know is that according to their search
query result performance that all of a sudden you stop showing up for any
other term than your name. Previously you were showing up for many terms.
After you correct these issues, which you can only really guess at, you submit
a re-consideration request describing the issue, your solution, and why you
think whatever thing you think is the problem should be corrected. Now you
wait. Not for some response, but just an automated reply saying that your
response has been dealt with, not whether they did anything, or if in fact you
had an issue. This will come 2-3 weeks later, your business may already be
dead. But if it's not, and magically you show up for Google results again, and
webmaster tools shows you that your previous search terms have relevance, you
will most definitely not be in your previous position. Time to get out there
again, get fresh in-links, and re-build your business.

This is the current status quo. This is very very scary. Even Credit Cards
have to tell you why you were rejected, not enough credit history or something
like that, you can even get one free credit report in response that will
explain things. Not Google. I would sleep much better at night knowing that
there was some process that would tell you if there's a problem, and if
possible what the reasons were, in general terms. Once you correct them you
should be able to submit that you did, and hopefully that would address the
situation in some reasonable amount of time.

It's crazy that most of us are ok with a search engine dominating 70% or so of
search, without any ability to resolve conflicts, ask questions, or anything.
We can only click buttons and hope that after enough times the great Google
will listen.

~~~
jrockway
This doesn't bother me. If my website got delisted from Google, I'd find
traffic in some other way. If my ads didn't get run by Google, I'd just
advertise somewhere else.

Honestly, Google is not that big of a company. I checked out the Fortune 500
list, and Google is not even in the top 50. Amazon.com, Bank of America, and
CVS Carkemark know a lot more about you than Google. And they don't care --
you come to them, and they sell you their product, and it's often a good deal
for both sides. Google is just like this, except smaller.

In the IT industry, we like to think that Google is important. We see their
logo a lot, we hear how nice it is to work there... but they are really small
potatoes. Advertising is nothing. Giving people money, giving people drugs,
selling gasoline, shipping books to your house overnight, and making light
bulbs and jet engines is a lot more profitable than sending clicks to your
website. Sorry, that's the reality... there is a lot more evil to be done in
the world than Google is capable of. (Look at the number of Fortune 500
companies that are primarily military contractors. Their corporate mandate is
to _cause people to die_ as efficiently as possible -- Google manages your RSS
feeds and cat pictures! Sorry, not evil.)

(Why isn't Google as heavily regulated as banks? Because they really don't
matter that much. Yeah, you can search for your name on Google and see content
that you put up on the web under your name. But the banks collect information
about you, to make business decisions, without you ever even knowing. Right
now, their computers are deciding whether or not you are a credit risk, and if
they decide you are, they are canceling your credit card. That vacation you
wanted? Gone. That house you wanted? Never. That's power that Google simply
doesn't even come close to having!)

~~~
asnyder
Unlike the other companies mentioned there is very little alternative to
Google. Especially if you target the technical demographic. If CVS does
something bad, I can go to Rite Aid. However if Google delists you, your
customers most likely won't go to Bing, or DuckDuckGo, you'll be dead.
Furthermore, if you're not "relevant" to your search term, then advertising
for that term will be prohibitively expensive. So you're screwed two ways.

I'm just saying their current status quo coupled with the power they have is
scary. They should, like the banks, communicate with you. Even if it's not
that detailed, a little bit of interaction goes a long way. They already have
humans reading your reconsideration requests, they should allow them to issue
a response, instead of just an automated reply. It shouldn't be this guessing
game that we play. It's not OK that something that controls almost all of
search is that inaccessible to communication, follow-up, and resolution.

~~~
zaphar
How much do you think they can tell you without revealing the signals they use
to determine relevancy?

The fact is their current policy is in all likelihood the one that allows them
to serve relevant results to the greatest number of people for the lowest
cost. If they start giving it the personal touch as you say then the cost will
go way up it won't bed just you and the occasional accidental delisted site
owner but will be every spammer, con artist, and fly by night SEO expert. The
support costs would be astronomical. And your hoped for solution is to have a
government entity step in and mandate they spend that money in a hopeless
attempt to let you talk to someone in person? In short you want the government
to force Google to reduce its profits, potentially drastically, for your own
personal benefit.

~~~
jrockway
Won't someone _please_ think of the OP's failed business model? The government
_needs_ to protect the lucrative business of owning a link farm!!

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TrevorJ
Seems pretty logical to me. As much diversity as Google has, they are still a
search company. A lot of the tech they leverage in other areas seems to come
from competencies they acquired while improving search.

I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google
and FB don't solve very many of the same problems.

~~~
inerte
> I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google
> and FB don't solve very many of the same problems

They don't, but they share one common goal: Get money from advertisers, who
are targeting people looking for some thing.

This "some thing" is obvious on Google, its users are in buying mode even
before entering the query term.

Now, _if_ (and that's a big if), FB can connect advertisers and buyers, it'll
slow down Google, because people will have spent their money with FB
advertisers.

Google and FB customers are their advertisers. They might do completely
different things but their revenue source is similar.

I personally don't believe in this. Facebook doesn't share the same easiness
of monetization as Google, and it has some huge issues of making its visitors
enter buying mode.

But there you go... even if I disagree, that's why some people think of a FB
vs. Google fight. Follow the money :)

~~~
cliffchang
If you think of advertising as "traditional advertising" and "internet
advertising", then FB and Google are certainly rivals. However, in pure
marketing terms, they are actually very different.

Google search ads EXCEL in "Demand Fulfillment" - say you want need a plumber
now since your toilet is overflowing. I don't think Facebook will ever beat
Google here. Google sort of created this niche where they were better than any
competitor that had ever existed.

Facebook, on the other hand, is better at demand generation. Consider
advertisers who want to reach teenagers who would want to buy videogames - a
new game is coming out, and they want you to know about it. Before, you'd have
to find the TV shows that they would watch, or billboards that they would see,
or queries that gaming-teens would search for, and advertise there. These are
all competitive and difficult proxies for the audience you want to reach.
Facebook is a much better place for that than Google.

In fact, you can imagine synergy between FB ads and Google ads. FB tells
people, "you should listen to this band that you haven't heard of", and when
you Google that band name, you see ads for places to buy tickets and albums.

~~~
equark
Google has AdSense / Doubclick network. This is a huge number of eyeballs with
many banner types. And Google knows my basic browsing history via cookies and
my entire search history. At least for me, Google knows exactly what I'm
interested in, tend to purchase, and tend to click on. Facebook knows my basic
demographic profile, which isn't really that valuable. I'd say the value of
Google's data is about 50 times Facebooks.

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Arun2009
I like how his cool confidence stands in contrast to Steve "I'm going to
fucking kill Google" Ballmer's aggression. Notice how generous he is with
compliments for Google's competitors.

~~~
rodh257
Probably easier to do when you're on top. If he seemed anything but confident
it would raise a fair few flags (media would be all over it too).

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emwa
can somebody explain how being on facebook stops people from searching on
google?

~~~
dchest
I guess, the more time they spend on Facebook, the less time they spend
googling?

~~~
jrockway
Two different activities. If I want a map from 123 Fake St. to 742 Evergreen
Terrace, I am going to use Google Maps, not Facebook. If I want to know how
many degrees Fahrenheit 100 Celcius is, I'm not going to ask Facebook, I'm
going to ask Google.

If I want to look at drunken pictures of my friends, though, then I will
definitely use Facebook. I use each tool for what it's good for, and I think
most other people do the same because it comes naturally.

(I hate structured socialization, though, so I don't use Facebook. But I can
accept that I'm abnormal in that respect.)

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jeromec
Very good interview. I think it's smart that he is not underestimating Bing.
Mr. Schmidt also has great comments clarifying Google's position on the net
neutrality announcement with Verizon (about 12:00 mark).

~~~
lukevdp
Agreed. I also found it a very informative video

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fleitz
It makes a lot of sense, android and phones are a complement to their
business. Android is simply a way of reducing the cost for producing more
phones. Facebook while large doesn't pose a serious threat to "organizing the
worlds information" once Facebook sells their social graph information Google
will simply purchase it and use it to further optimize search results. Neither
Facebook, nor Apple are real competitors to Google's core operations. Google
is a much more serious threat to Apple with Android than Apple is to Google
with iPhone. Facebook and Apple ARE threats to mind share, but that pales in
comparison to a threat to the bottom line.

Bing IS a threat also because Microsoft has a large stake in Facebook and
could ostensibly find itself with preferential rights to Facebook's social
graph. If Bing could integrate the graph into results first it could give them
huge search advantages. Traffic from Bing also costs about half of what it
does from Google.

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awakeasleep
I felt really annoyed by the interviewer. It seemed like along with
information gathering, he was equally interested in creating controversy.

Did you notice how, instead of asking Schmidt questions, he posed contentious
statements? "CERTAINLY Google must be scared of Facebook!" He did that with
everything. Look how Mr Schmidt scrunches his face at about 2:00 when the
interviewer tells him how he must be feeling.

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aufreak3
Isn't it likely that FB is making google _more_ ad money without google having
to lift a finger? On FB, a good chunk of links to "outside world" stuff pass
around. Websites do fbconnect 'cos FB&twitter drive traffic to them. Google
places contextual ads on these sites and in youtube videos _without_ anybody
needing to search for anything. Even youtube has "share on FB" button.

I don't think FB can keep their soc graph to themselves for much longer .. if
as ES says people will just give the data to google ... just as they probably
do for FB now. (You can tell FB to crawl your gmail contacts and link up.)

So by that argument I can buy ES's "FB is not our prime competitor" statement.
Apple is somewhat obviously not a competitor since google can also push ads to
iOS devices and pull data like location.

That leaves Bing .. which makes me scratch my head. The only reason I can
think of for google considering Bing to be their main competitor is to avoid
antitrust suits by not looking like a search monopoly.

Side note: FB's ads are pretty funny actually. I keep getting "Download
Chrome, a fast browser" ads on my FB page despite the fact that I'm viewing
the page in Chrome.

~~~
aufreak3
To put it another way, when I hear "google is a search company", I take it to
mean "google's business depends on searching the internet" instead of "people
use google to search the internet" - the former being much wider in scope than
the latter.

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eogas
Facebook and Apple? Where'd they come up with that one?

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dbrannan
To me Bing sounds too much like "bling". Does anyone else have that silly word
association stuck in their head?

~~~
1010011010
I always think of Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ>

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Qz
It's funny, in my mind I always think Eric Schmidt looks like Egon from the
Ghostbusters, and whenever I see his picture I always think to myself, 'Who is
_this_ guy?!'

