• deals

    Facebook adds subpar search from Microsoft

    Forget Facebook's controversial redesign. Users of the social network have something new to complain about: third-rate Web search, provided by Microsoft. The two moves are connected; when ad-hating CEO Mark Zuckerberg forced through the revamp of Facebook's profile pages, he bumped Microsoft-sold banners off of them. To make Microsoft whole, Facebook agreed to a search-advertising deal. You know it must burn Facebook's proud engineers — those who haven't left — to partner with an organization that has done nothing but lose market share for years.

    5:00 PM on Tue Oct 7 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    829 views, 5 comments

    Most discussed WagCurious: It's not that bad. At least your site can actually show up in their index after a couple months. With more »

  • online advertising

    Microsoft crowds search results with more ads

    If you wondered why Google continues to relentlessly gain market share, look no further than Microsoft's boneheaded concept of progress. "Good news," crows Microsoftie Carolyn Miller, announcing the addition of a fourth ad spot above Microsoft's Live Search results. That brings the total spots on Microsoft's search-results page to nine. But the search results and ads on a simple query — say, "flowers 94103" — remain useless. Adding more space for ads means less competition for the spots — and thus less economic pressure on advertisers to only buy carefully thought-out ads relevant enough to perform well. If Microsoft were serious about beating Google, it would show fewer ads, not more. This was a decision made by an accountant, not an algorithm.

    3:00 PM on Fri Sep 12 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    513 views, 7 comments

    Most discussed cv: Neither. more »

  • the practice effect

    Microsoft's desperate search

    In the age of desktop software, Microsoft had the luxury of taking years to copy competitors. In the age of Web software, it's next to impossible to catch up. As customers use websites, they generate data which helps the site's creator improve it continuously. It's a topsy-turvy world reminiscent of David Brin's The Practice Effect, which Microsofties would do well to read. Spending nearly three years to implement even a bad idea like bribing users to use its search engine shows how badly ossified Redmond's software-development culture has become. More »

    Feature

    5:00 PM on Wed May 21 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    2,433 views, 16 comments

    Latest by Caligo: The customers that Microsoft will attract will be exactly the ones that retailers don't want, the cheapskates, the ones who more »

  • google vs. microsoft

    Map fight

    TIM FAULKNER — It appears Microsoft, with their "coincidentally"-timed press release announcing 3-D imagery in Live Search, was hoping to steal some of Google's thunder earlier today since it was widely speculated that Google would be announcing new features today at Where 2.0, the location-focused conference. Word of Google's Street View and a beta of Mapplets, map widgets, has largely negated that preemptive press strike. More »

    12:39 PM on Tue May 29 2007
    By Tim Faulkner
    1,841 views, Comment

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