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Mary-Jo Foley
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Is Microsoft tinkering with Live Search results?

By | January 24, 2008, 5:03am PST

Is Microsoft filtering out from its Live Search results those it considers “undesirable” for the company?

That’s what one of my tipsters has suggested with some interesting evidence, involving a blog known as “Shipping Seven.”

Shipping Seven is penned anonymously by someone who has said s/he is part of the Windows 7 team at Microsoft. As one might assume, given Microsoft management’s  decision to be less transparent about its future plans, Microsoft is not too fond of the Shipping Seven blog. Company officials have declined to comment in any way on the blog, as well as on Windows 7, the version of Windows expected in 2009 or 2010.

Is Microsoft tinkering with Live Search results?Try this. Go to Live Search (www.live.com) and type in “‘Shipping Seven’ blog.” The results? Lots of blogs and news sites talking about the Shipping Seven blog. But no link to the Shipping Seven blog itself (at least not in the first several pages of results I examined).

Now try the same query in Google search. The direct link to the Shipping Seven blog is the fourth link. On Yahoo Search , the same search yields as result No. 1 the actual Shipping Seven blog link.

Coincidence? Crack down? Microsoft’s statement, delivered via a company spokesman:

“Results in Live Search are based solely on our algorithms and the frequency in which the engine crawls a particular site, we don’t editorialize the organic results of search queries.”

Seems like somebody needs to tweak an algorithm over on the Live Search team….

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Topics

Blog, Microsoft Corp., Search Result, Blogging, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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Well, they did a comparison on here
xuniL_z 28th Jan 2008
and LIVE was found to be as good as Google.

I use nothing but MS Live search now. It's more relevant than Google where the results are for sale to the highest bidder.


And the Live format is so much better than the boring old Google results that no longer are based on true search algorhyms as much as filters that give you only who paid the most to show up under your search terms.
View in thread
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Just goes to show you why no one uses Live Search
pmcgrath@... 24th Jan 2008
Rather than some effort to hide the log, this is just a great example of how far MS needs to go to be considered a credable seach engine.
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Current (global) Search Engine Rankings
B.O.F.H. 24th Jan 2008
77.04% - Google
12.46% - Yahoo
5.9% - Combined MSN and Microsoft Live Search
2.12 - AOL
1.38 - Ask
0.24 - other

Source: Search Engine Market Share for December, 2007
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Google should prepare themselves for monopoly status and start implementing
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
procedures right now, assuming that the more strict antitrust laws apply to them. But, it is nothing short of amazing what Google has done against a competitor that had years head start, and billions to invest.
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Ummmm....monopolies aren't illegal.
jinko 24th Jan 2008
Monopolies aren't illegal, anti-competitive behavior is.

There's a BIG difference between the two.
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BUT, monopolis MUST abide by another set of rules. I suggest that Google
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
prepare to abide by the rules for monopolies, just to avoid any problems.
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Yes, the evil G$$gle...
BFD 24th Jan 2008
monopoly must be stopped at all costs. They have eroded all of our privacy rights for the almighty dollar. They have sold all of us out to advertisers and spammers who will stop at nothing to invade our lives and infect our hard drives with malware.

The evil is G$$gle, we must UNITE to stop the beast master Sergey and the equally despicable Larry from taking over the world.
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Your words, not mine. I think that Google is a great competitor that has
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
forced a lot of innovation and competition. Yes, we WILL be holding their feet to the fire on privacy issues and watching them.
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Who are "WE"?
srobtjones@... 24th Jan 2008
I'm curious as to who "WE" are that will hold Google to any fire and how "WE" are supposed to do that?

Google has millions of desktops indexed and added to one of many databases in their possession. Add to this their ability to buy and sell databases with little to no government or consumer oversight, and the risks multiply.

Additionally, Google has archived tons of old web content and outdated information. This allows them to compile dossiers on people's past activities which may no longer accurately portray their current status or interests. Companies like Google who gather data and sell it are used regularly by governments world wide to avoid needing to comply with certain aspects of existing privacy law in the USA and in Europe.

In short, governments world wide publicly cry against big corporations like Google, but secretly, they love them because the governments get to circumvent certain regulations by buying data versus collecting it directly.

Yeah, it's a little bit "Conspiracy Theory", I admit, but it is true. How can you call the government in to fix a problem which benefits the government?

Good luck with that.
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If I were a drug dealer I might be worried. The "we" is individuals,
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
journalists, the government, etc. Google will be watched. But, Google is a great company that respects privacy. You might not have noticed that they were the only ones that fought the government on handing over search results. MS and Yahoo, just handed information over to the government, no questions asked.
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What DB negelects to mention is the reason google
GuidingLight 24th Jan 2008
chose not to hand over statistics to the government on child pornography searchs: Google does not[b/] want anyone to know how much money they make in ad revenue from these sites. DonnieBoy never mentions what Google'$ EULA says about information collect thru the use of their programs.

They do give out info when it is in their best interest, though.

http://www.betanews.com/article/print/Google_Called_Hostile_to_Privacy/1181578659

http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~christia/dbb.php?http://www.boingboing.net/2007/03/21/google-replies-to-re.html

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=07/11/27/2235251

But the fact that they have/are giving information to various other governments would lead one to believe that in the end they may have given the US government the info they requested, just not publicly, in order to avoid any further stain to their reputation.
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XiTi Monitor's search engine barometer
mhenriday 26th Jan 2008
(http://tinyurl.com/28or9d), which studied some 87892 websites worldwide during the period 1-31 December 2007 gives rather different figures for the respective market shares of Google (90.83 %) and Yahoo (2.92 %). Live Search ranks third, at 2.53 %. Orange is forth at 1.57 % ; no other search engine attained a market share of one per cent or more. Note that this study was carried out on francophone websites, which probably explains the discrepancy between the results cited above and those provided by B.O.F.H., which latter I assume were based on a study of anglophone websites....

Henri
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10% of "nobody" uses Live Search
quikboy 24th Jan 2008
http://blog.compete.com/2008/01/10/search-market-share-december-google-yahoo-msn-live-ask-aol/

And as if Google doesn't take a few links off their results...
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Nothing is beneath Microsoft.
bjbrock 24th Jan 2008
They care about one thing - maximizing their stock value - at whatever cost.

For anyone to think MS is anything but a corporate entity that values anything but its own future they are naive. Like it or not, this how corporations function. As with any corporation, anything they do has to be looked at in that light.
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Sure there is something beneath Microsoft....the competition. ha ha
xuniL_z 24th Jan 2008
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Sorry but you're way off
maldain 24th Jan 2008
There is nothing wrong with a company, corporation, partnership or sole proprietor trying to maximize profits though legitimate competitive activities. The problem Microsoft has is their secondary products can't compete on their own so Microsoft uses anti-competitive actions to eliminate the competition thus allowing an inferior product to continue to make money when it should be either improved or dropped as a product.
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No, he's about right
John L. Ries 24th Jan 2008
His point was that MS has little or no reason to promote the interests of their customers (where else are they going to go?) and I think he's right. Likewise I don't think that MS' executives care whether or not they are engaged in "legitimate" competition. At the end of the day, all that matters is how much their stock is worth.

Thus when dealing with MS, people have to look after their own interests and not rely on statements by MS executives which are absolutely guaranteed to be self-serving.
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You underestimate the bottom
Ole Man 25th Jan 2008
There will be many under Microsoft when the
bottom falls out............ all the suckers
who fell for Microsoft's bait.
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But on the brighter side...
MGP2 24th Jan 2008
Your blog at least made it to page 2 of the Live search results. wink
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You have never used Google? Talk about filtering
xuniL_z 24th Jan 2008
There are so many search strings that Google manipulates it's unfathomable this would even be mentioned.

And with Google or any search engine, sites with links, for some reason, often rank higher. I've gone through pages before finding the "official" site i was looking for numerous times. This is so common.

Additionally, i only use LIVE for microsoft related troubleshooting due to Google's filtering that takes many search terms i've used for years, and loads the pages up with ALTERNATIVES to the product i'm troubleshooting, rather than the links to troubleshooting sites it used to bring up.

I've gone as far as reporting this and have noticed it change a bit now. I'm assuming a lot of people complained.

However, if it's something someone else has done against Microsoft, it's apparently just and not blogged about.

Finally, Google hits are for sale. So maybe it's the same with LIVE NOw?
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Message has been deleted.
theo_durcan Updated - 25th Jan 2008
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Come on guys, don't try to make too much of this, it is just that these
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
guys are the village idiots and have a hard time making anything work right. This was for sure inadvertent. If you looked hard enough, you would find problems with MS search that looked like they were featuring competitors on purpose.
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Wow you are SO right...
BFD 24th Jan 2008
Yes, this is no big deal. After all, why should it matter. Google has its illegally obtained monopoly on search and advertising. It shouldn't matter what MS does because the DOJ and the EU will come in and break up Google and for the sale of its assets anyway.

Yes, I hate to say it but Google is done for. It's too bad their illegal monopolistic practices has put it in this position, but it was a good ride while it lasted.

Have a nice day.
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Google is not anywhere close to 90% so way to early to declare them
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
monopoly. But, they have earned every percent of market share by working their buts off against competition that had years head start and was much better financed. Nothing short of amazing.
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Absolutely wrong information
xuniL_z 25th Jan 2008
Google was financially backed strongly since the beginning. They'd never had made it beyond just another search engine w/o huge cash backing.

Way to run crying about things Donnie after you insult me on my original post that is pure truth, at least to anyone that acutally works in IT and has to use these products for real. You don't work in IT, or you are unwilling to say in what capacity, and post whatever you think is true with no regard for facts or truth.
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They did NOT have the billions avaiable at Microsoft, or the years head
DonnieBoy 25th Jan 2008
start that Microsoft had. In the beginning Google had nothing, then thousands, then millions, now billions. All build from the ground up because investors had confidence in the brilliance of the founders and the talent they attracted. Nothing short of amazing. Makes Microsoft look like the village idiot.
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Well I'll be. Microsoft had Billions at startup.
xuniL_z 25th Jan 2008
No wonder they grew into the largest software company in the world and remain on top for the foreseeable future.

Google owns nothing and is a house of cards and everyone knows it.

Microsoft grew from zero money to a Giant that affects the vast majority of the worlds population is so many direct ways and so far beyond any affect Google has it's not even appropriate to mention them both in the same breath.


Oh, i get it, Google only has their unethical advertising monopoly and youtube site that allows kids to see filthy language and filthy videos, right on it's filthy homepage....Google is the villiage skank. They are so skanky it's no wonder they will be broke up quickly before they can get their filthy porn and filthy language propogated any further.

Everything...i mean Everything else they've tried has stunk so bad nobody is even considering adopting it. Google Apps?? Down the toilet. What a waste of time that was, there is absolutely not any noticable marketshare there for sure. No wonder, the apps are slow and crappy and look like they were designed by the same filthy hands that post the porn all over youtube's main page.

They will go nowhere because unlike Microsoft, who just posted PHENOMENEL earnings and growth numbers....look out Donnie Boy, and spin it all you want, Vista is coming to most businesses and those windows shops that aren't are content to continue boosting Microsoft's revenues by buying Office 2007, SQL 2005/2008 and Server 2008 and are simply going to wait for Windows 7.

Yeah, Donnie Boy calls Microsoft the villiage idiots while they post another Quarter at almost 20 billion....that's for 3 months Donnie. Ummmm, villiage idiot....i'm pretty sure it's not anyone at Microsoft. Now Villiage pervert and slimeballs....they all reside at Google as they continue to march around the globe with their army of lawyers trying to steal any naming rights they please. They have so much negative sleezy karma going, they are destined to fail and they will fall and fall hard within this year. That's why their stock, along with Apple who is also a sleazy company, has been falling while Microsoft's is moving on up.

Meanwhile Bill Gates continues to promote helping the poor of the world and pouring in Billions to the cause of feeding the starving, stoping Aids and many many other wonderful deeds for our planet.....meanwhile Google is planning on where to get more sleazeball videos and sleazey ad campaigns going so people might use their only product.....a search engine that returns sleasy results with scumbag language and pictures, right there for the children of the world to see. Go Google, slime the planet with your sleazy, filthy crap. Donnie's got your back.
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We are talking SEARCH here. This article is about SEARCH. MS had billions
DonnieBoy 25th Jan 2008
to throw at SEARCH, and Google started with nothing. Compare the market shares in SEARCH right now.
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Geez Donnie, don't blow a gasket
xuniL_z 28th Jan 2008
I know how badly you want to back the slimey sleazeball tactics and content Google is sliming the world with but you don't have to shout.

Slime on Google. Let's see how many more businesses you can steal all rights from with your army of 500 sleazeball lawyers.


Donnie's with you all the way. Nothing could be as bad as Microsoft, which Donnie has no idea how much money they've put into search and obviously has NO idea of the billions Google was able to get in VC backing. Yeah, he thinks Larry, Moe and Curly have server rooms and offices and whatnot all over the world on what they made from the search engine before any backing.

Any they did make was from selling porn and all other varieties of filth to the people of the world. No wonder other countries hate America. They are not into the kind of filth that Google provides nor the filtered results in China to keep the people from knowing the truth about the horrors of it's government.
That filtering is the lowest form of slimeball tactics the world has ever seen.

Go Google and Donnie.
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It wouldn't be the first time they tampered...
jinko 24th Jan 2008
Anybody else remember typing "linux" into the early MS search engines?

10 results...when Google and Infoseek had millions.
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Just tried, result - 350 million
denis77 24th Jan 2008
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=linux
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Yeah, they got caught at it
IT_User 24th Jan 2008
What it was, the first result was guidance on how to convert from Linux to Windows. When this was brought to light, the results changed fast!
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So what if they do
GuidingLight 24th Jan 2008
Google includes those that benefit the company first, so what's the differnce how each company goes about it
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Big difference there
Chad_z 24th Jan 2008
It's the difference between a tweak in the ranking and censorship. That's a pretty big difference.

Don't apologize for dirtbag behavior when they're stone, cold busted. lol.
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You're right, little consequence
IT_User 24th Jan 2008
An ever-diminshing fraction of searches even bother with the site. Maybe Bill Richardson's backers or Yugo drivers or some such?
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What do I think? Use your options.
DaffyDuck 24th Jan 2008
Is this sad? Yes. Is it news? Not really. Is it problematic? No. One of the linked articles undoubtedly would link to the blog in question. Thereby causing the searcher a little more work in reading and clicking. Boo hoo.

Guess what? None of the "search engines" belong to us. They are web portals created by companies. Companies want to survive. So, they may craft a search algorithm to minimize perceived criticisms.

But we have options. We can use other search engines to complement search results. Or use an aggregator like Dogpile.

Yeah, it may seem like "more work". But honestly is web searching really that much "work"? The answer to that questions is "no, it's not".
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A very sensible post.
xuniL_z 24th Jan 2008
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I agree, no conspiracy, it is just that MS search does not work very well.
DonnieBoy 24th Jan 2008
What do you expect from the village idiots???
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Yes 51.4 billion
GuidingLight 24th Jan 2008
worth of idiocy. wink
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Mammon
thungurknifur 25th Jan 2008
So THAT'S why you are so infatuated with Microsoft!

You're soooo impresses with their huge pile of cash...

Well, well... Petty minds have petty dreams....
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Wow, Paris Hilton must be VERY smart
bmerc 25th Jan 2008
wink
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Google tampers with its results also
hsvessel@... 24th Jan 2008
my wife's name can not be found on google yet its all over the place on any other search engine ! go figure
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Silly argument
bmerc 25th Jan 2008
Google returns different results than some other search engine, therefore they MUST have tampered with those results?
That's idiotic.

Google and Yahoo use different algorithms. Expecting them to return the same results is stupid.
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As more info resides on the web...
wmlundine 24th Jan 2008
...exclusively; we have more reason to demand neutrality.
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Google: just as guilty?
ejhonda 24th Jan 2008
Quite often the website that is directly related to the search term I've searched on is not on the first page of results provided by Google. Sorry, no concrete example to offer, but it's happened often enough that I recognize it as an issue from time to time.

Conspiracy? I don't think so. I believe it is just some gap in the hit prioritization. This could happen to other search engines, too, like Live Search. But obviously, the suspicion is well founded since it involves MS.
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Not google problem
theo_durcan 26th Jan 2008
Some site are optimized to respond better to search engines, others not. some sites have more traffic than others, or a better Pageranking; higher listing is a result of many factors and an entire industry revolves around getting web sites on top spots.
Google is #1 first and foremost because reliability and accuracy; didnt happens overnight that users adopted Google as THE search engine. They left competition in the dust, remember that even for Windows technical related issues many people goes to Google instead to MS search.
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GUILTY!! GUILTY!! GUILTY!!
TechExec2 24th Jan 2008
.
Searches on www.live.com:

Search for: minimsft
This BlogSpot blog is found.

Search for: msftextrememakeover
This BlogSpot blog is found.

Search for: shippingseven
This BlogSpot blog is not found.

Microsoft is GUILTY!! GUILTY!! GUILTY!!



Microsoft Censorship: Common Sense

This is common sense! Microsoft operates much like a totalitarian government that censors the truth it doesn't like. Of course Microsoft is censoring the "ShippingSeven" blog on Live Search. If you want more objective, more open, and more truthful Internet search results, you must use a more independent search service. If you want the censored "Microsoft Internet", use Microsoft Live. The best domain for Live Search would be fool.com, but that domain is already registered.

To the Microsoft Minions: Notice the relative language. No company can be completely trusted, not even Google. But, Google is far more trustworthy about delivering Internet search results because that is their core business. If they seriously break the trust in Internet search, as Microsoft has done here, their core business will be hurt. Microsoft still thinks it can get away with doing things that are against its own customers interest. They do it constantly and consistently.



ABM: Anyone But Microsoft

How much evidence do you really need? Microsoft is out of control and must be stopped.

Nothing has changed. Today's Microsoft is just a somewhat "refined" version of the old "Evil Empire". There are endless solid reasons why the legions of ABMers are growing. This is a company that doesn't tell the truth, and doesn't allow the truth to be told.

I *NEVER* use Live search. And, I never will. I don't even use Microsoft software anymore. The company is FAR too big, and FAR too powerful, and FAR too arrogant, and FAR too desperately in need of some competition. The competition is always getting my money now.

I was a Microsoft customer from 1992 to 2007. Not anymore.

Anyone But Microsoft. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Going ABM is the only way to force Microsoft to remake itself and serve customers properly one day (many years from now after Windows is reduced to less than 50% market share...there is a lot of work to do).
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Incompetent of Cheating - who cares?
Jeremy W 24th Jan 2008
Of course, MSFT is guilty of both.

It is clearly an unethical firm stocked to the rafter with liars, cheats and crooks. One might say much if not all of the top management is described by that.

On the other hand, it has blundered for years in the search business, gaining no (actually losing) market share.

In this case, it is likely a perfect storm: breatakingly unethical management with world class incompetence - sort of like Vista (the Wow is now! - NOT!), Xbox (only 30%+ failure rate), WM (the less said, the better - probably the most incompetent offering from MSFT after the regretful Vista) and Zune, the name of another incompetent/useless MSFT offering that serially screws MAFT customers (Playsfor sure? Yeah, right!).

Like I said, who cares about the useless detritus that MSFT tried to foist on the public.
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Microsoft - smell the fear, feel the force
whisperycat 24th Jan 2008
Ahhh, Microsoft. That would be the selfless company currently trying to bribe schools in the developing world into infecting themselves with Windows in exchangfe for Microsoft cash "aid".

Trust and Microsoft are two words which only properly fit together if the middle word is 'anti'. Why would the results of their search engines buck the historical trend of self-serving lies and distortions?
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Censorship
John Musbach 24th Jan 2008
This is an interesting issue, could this perhaps fall under the category of censorship? If so, Microsoft might want to be careful because if they go too far down this route they might fall into the same trap Google fell into when they started censoring their search results in China as required by their government.

- John Musbach
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Harder to get away with in the US
John L. Ries 24th Jan 2008
Search engines trade on credibility, so if something useful shows up in most search engines, but not in MSN, then there are likely to be consequences. It's not like MS is in a position to lock Windows users into MSN Search (the last thing MS needs is another antitrust lawsuit).
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Well, they did a comparison on here
xuniL_z 28th Jan 2008
and LIVE was found to be as good as Google.

I use nothing but MS Live search now. It's more relevant than Google where the results are for sale to the highest bidder.


And the Live format is so much better than the boring old Google results that no longer are based on true search algorhyms as much as filters that give you only who paid the most to show up under your search terms.

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