Bing is not really providing anything more than google's service. It only shows "big company's" routine of trying to drive others out of business. Death for Bing.
Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
41–50 of 130 posts
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#42The whole article seems to be back to front. As far as I knew Live search was essentially failing then they made it Bing and it's started to succeed. Am I missing something here or what? I'm no expert on the history but it seems to me that the opposite of what the author is saying actually happened!
I think that's one of the objectives of this article; provide that alternate perspective.
I thought that Bing was the true turning point as well, but I never gave Live Search a fair chance then, and I don't think many others did either.
To me, it looks like the author saw Bing/Live Search as something truly transformational within Microsoft. Public perception was that Live was a failure. But if I understand currently, the team was easily beating internal estimates extremely fast . For one reason or another there was a team reorganization that coincided with the PowerSet acquisition and the Bing rebrand. While there was a jump in market share, the foundation of the Bing team was taken out from under them and replaced with MS status quo.
Bing's death isn't a result of their success or failure as a search engine. Bing's death refers to the loss of something that could have made a difference in Microsoft, internally. The death of a team that could have done something truly great , (EDIT: as said by Cicero, when they were at their peak).
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, according to this post, everyone who was technically knowledgeable about Bing has left. That implies that there will no longer be any relevant technical progress, any more.
Not sure this is relevant progress but 18 march bing for "HG download" gave no mercurial results (hg was assumed to be a mistyping of HD), by 24 march it was giving all mercurial results. I twittered about both. That is at least anecdotal evidence that things are progressing in some way or another.
That's not necessarily a change in the codebase, that could be the system learning from associations in queries and results it gets over time (something I know Google does and has for years, at least).
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I don't think 9 downvotes over 4 comments qualify for such harsh punishment Personally I'd say that depends. If you have a positive comment history then no you sholdn't be banned for a small run of comments that the community finds unhelpful to the conversation. If all of your first comments are downvoted then I suggest you make a new account and wait until you have something positive to say. Note that positive does…
Part of the problem is that downvoting is used to express disagreement. We have this discussion often on HN (perhaps too often): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Note: the following unexpectedly turned into a bit of a rant, with a dose of whining thrown in: Many of us "old-timers" think that downvoting without giving a reason is mostly bad form (the exception is for a rude or obnoxious comment). I've person…
I might not have as much experience as you, but if I've only learnt one thing from being active on Reddit is that giving your personal karma-score any meaning is just a major headache and best be avoided. But the development you are talking about can also be witnessed there. For example in /r/programming, there used to be things such as posts with 91 comment karma and _0_ downvotes. This stuff doesn't exist anymore, the community has grown, become a lot less homogenous and more 'nay-sayers' have introduced themselves.
The above is of course just an example that is indicitative of what I'm talking about. In my opinion, it is best to simply accept downvotes without explanation as background noise. They happen and there's not much you can do about it.
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#45Is this written in English?
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#46I am not sure about the death of Bing, Bing has momentum and they should take it forward and not lose ground. Competition is important to bring the best out of technology.
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#47I don't know that Bing has "failed" yet, but I highly doubt it'll be anything other than one amongst many in the pack in 5 years. Microsoft has always been good at the pivotal turnaround. Recognizing when a key moment was on the wind, mustering together a tremendous effort, making a good number of smart decisions and putting out a solid anchor product that (re)cements their position in the industry and reinvigorates…
>"I don't know that Bing has "failed" yet, but I highly doubt it'll be anything other than one amongst many in the pack in 5 years."
For Microsoft, having a full featured reliable non-core product with measurable market share is a success because it allows Microsoft to offer vertical integration without the specter of anti-trust allegations - imagine the howling in DC and Europe if Bing controlled 70% of search (never mind the valley).
Bing's robustness helps Microsoft sell software and services, while it's modest market share keeps infrastructure costs lower and Microsoft's core revenue stream coming from areas other than search reduces the pressure to game search algorithms towards their advertisers in order to increase revenue in the way that Google does.
What the article shows is not that Microsoft is inept, but rather that they are able to create an internal unit with many elements of a startup, scale that unit massively, and then transition it into a solid corporate structure capable of surviving over the long term - in other words, the article shows that Microsoft was not only able to successfully foster internal entrepreneurship in order to quickly move into a new market and capture meaningful market share in the face of a mammoth, entrenched, and powerful rival which dominated the market, but also to consolidate that position swiftly before their rival could respond in a significant way.
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I don't think 9 downvotes over 4 comments qualify for such harsh punishment Personally I'd say that depends. If you have a positive comment history then no you sholdn't be banned for a small run of comments that the community finds unhelpful to the conversation. If all of your first comments are downvoted then I suggest you make a new account and wait until you have something positive to say. Note that positive does…
Part of the problem is that downvoting is used to express disagreement. We have this discussion often on HN (perhaps too often): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Note: the following unexpectedly turned into a bit of a rant, with a dose of whining thrown in: Many of us "old-timers" think that downvoting without giving a reason is mostly bad form (the exception is for a rude or obnoxious comment). I've person…
>[kami] "For example in /r/programming, there used to be things such as posts with 91 comment karma and _0_ downvotes. This stuff doesn't exist anymore, the community has grown, become a lot less homogenous and more 'nay-sayers' have introduced themselves."
WRT Reddit what I've heard on the site is that they have an obfuscation system that adds downvotes and hides the current voting position. It would be impossible thus to see that a story had 91 upvotes and no downs as apparent downvotes are automatically added. It's supposed to be part of the system to prevent people from gaming karma scores.
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#49Strange. To me, as an outsider, it looks like Bing has just started to get good enough to be considered as a threat to Google. Of course, they have a long long way to go. But it appears as a rapidly emerging product rather than a dying product.
I agree. It was only in the last year that I could use Bing as my primary search engine.
Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing
#50The biggest problem that comes in the way is the condescending attitude of the "grown ups". It is very important for the "management" to realize that they are actually only facilitating what is "happening" and they should let the system handle itself and get out of the way than get into and disturb the existing norm.
One of the most serious problems with modern "management" is that the incentives are all wrong. Imagine that I hire a programmer and pay him by the line of code. This idea has been so thoroughly debunked that it is nearly impossible to write out the consequences without sounding cliché. Yet it happens all the time: Companies promote "Architects" who are evaluated by the weight of their "architecture." The result is s…
It is funny that you mention architects because, my job title where I work is "Architect".
I totally agree with you in that it is the people that is the most important of all things. Tools are just tools and processes are just processes, it is the people when given right tools and shown right processes that make all the difference.