

Admit It, Microsoft: You Suck at the Web - hshah
http://gigaom.com/2010/01/30/admit-it-microsoft-you-suck-at-the-web/

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aneesh
Just because you suck at something doesn't mean you should automatically give
up. I think it's to Microsoft's credit that they're continuing to go after
search. And they're making progress with Bing, albeit very slowly. I don't see
anyone else attacking Google in search.

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scrrr
For quality search results theres also still <http://www.ask.com> and
<http://www.alltheweb.com> . I wonder why we hear so little about those.

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wgj
On ask.com I have to scroll the page to even reach the first organic result
after the block of sponsored results. If you use it on a regular basis, don't
you get tired of doing that?

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gruseom
Bit of a baity article insofar as MS _can't_ "admit" they suck at the web and
it would be suicide if they gave up on it.

I have a question regarding Bing, though. A while back, someone here made a
suggestion that struck me as brilliant: that Bing provide an option to exclude
web pages with Adsense ads on them from search results. This would get rid of
untold jungles of webspam and deprive Google of revenue at the same time. Of
course it would also exclude many legitimate pages, but webspam has turned
into such a horrible problem that at this point I just don't care (especially
if the filter were an option I could turn on and off). If MS did this, I would
use Bing regularly. I can't think of any other reason to say that.

My question is: what besides accusations of anti-competitive behavior (which
strike me as rather weak in this case, MS being far from the monopolist in
search) would prevent MS from trying this?

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epochwolf
I think too much of the web has Adsense on it for that to be a good idea.

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gruseom
Yes, but pages with Adsense ads on them are of poorer average quality (I'm
guessing) because there is so much spam. Google have an obvious conflict of
interest preventing them from doing much about this. That conflict of interest
is just about my only real grievance with Google; I'm otherwise a happy Google
user with no incentive to switch. Why wouldn't MS exploit this? The suggestion
isn't that they suppress Adsense pages altogether, just provide an option to
filter them out.

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bobbyi
> Mabye it’s time the company sold off its online division to a company that
> is just that – like Yahoo.

I don't think Microsoft could find a buyer for its online division.

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awa
According to the graph in the article they actually made profit in 2004 and
2005 and only a small loss in 06..

I'll admit some of the web products suck (hotmail?) but not bing, they haven't
been able to profit from it. I guess currently they are after marketshare
rather than profits. Think of it like a startup burning through some initial
VC money to get customers except that they have a lot of money to burn!

Disclaimer: They pay my bills, but am not really a fanboy just not anti-
microsoft.

~~~
dangrossman
Hotmail is the second most popular e-mail service on the web, second only to
Yahoo! Mail.

~~~
awa
Popularity of a product is not a true sign of "not sucking" :P

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fauigerzigerk
Ok, but who, other than Google, does actually make a lot of money on the web?
Yahoo is struggling and most of what they offer is generic crap monetizing
their old brand.

I have no idea whether Facebook makes any money. It can't be easy judging by
their desperate attempts to trick users into doing things that are bad for
them.

Twitter should make tons of money considering their service is trivial (I know
it's not trivial to operate at that scale) and their mindshare huge. But how
much money do they make?

Content creators like journalists, authors or musicians find it very difficult
to make money as well.

Amazon does make money, but they are a retailer, not a web company I would
say.

In my view, it's an open question whether the ad funded web is a viable
business model for a lot of companies or just a niche in which very very few
big players make all the money.

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benologist
You could make the same argument about almost everything Google's done except
for search/advertising/youtube.

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boundlessdreamz
Hmm ? Gmail, Docs, News, Reader

Successfully bought and developed

Analytics, Blogger, Google Earth, Picasa etc

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aneesh
Add Docs to the "bought" list -- that was an acquisition too (of Writely).

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scrrr
Microsoft always seems to need one or two attempts before they make a really
good product. Win95 -> WinME -> WinXP. Zune -> Zune2. Vista -> 7\. They may
not be as agile as Google, but a lot of smart people work at MS. I hope they
succeed with good search. Google needs some competition.

Having said that: Bing sucks b __*s in Germany.

~~~
city41
Pretty much everyone I met at Microsoft was very smart. But at least within my
division, the available energy was never utilized very effectively. I always
compared it to a muscle car, sure that V8 has a lot of power, but boy that car
can't handle for anything.

With that said, you just can't apply blanket statements to the company.
"Microsoft isn't good at the web" just doesn't really mean anything. The Bing
team is for all intents and purposes, a completely different company from the
IE team, from the Xbox and Zune teams from DevDiv... How a given team at MS
does largely depends on how effective its management is. Some teams have
really effective managers, PMs, and developers that can execute. Others don't.
There is very little (almost none) energy, process or direction that gets
applied across the entire company.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
"[...] the available energy was never utilized very effectively"

Doesn't that apply to all big corporations to some degree? I think it's a
tradeoff between using each individual's potential and utilizing economies of
scale. The latter requires coordination of many people, which reduces the
leeway for all individuals involved.

Corporate culture is certainly important, but no corporate culture can
completely overcome the limitations imposed by utilizing size. At least that's
what the ad-hoc scientist in my head says, you know, the one that never
reveals any sources ;-)

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raganwald
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude> ?

~~~
Batsu
I can't help but wonder if we could derive a whole new term specified to
Microsoft.

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johnrob
"Does Microsoft not realize that all the spoils of the mobile web are going to
the companies that control the front-end interface — that is, the big mobile
OS players like Android and iPhone and not the fringe players like Windows
Mobile?"

Sounds like what folks said about desktops in the late 90s. History tells us
that the device/PC ends up simply being a way to access the web. Sure, there
are always some intensive apps that require the local cpu, but those are
rarely for the mass market.

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akamaka
Why does everyone forget about Messenger? With about the same number of users
as Facebook, it's hardly a failure.

~~~
epochwolf
Does messenger actually make Microsoft any money?

I have an MSN Messenger account but I never use their client for it. I've
always used 3rd party applications.

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pvg
You know what also sucks at the web? Blog posts with a pointless blurry 330
kilobyte PNG at the top.

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metatronscube
Not the only thing I would say that they "suck at".

