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Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

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Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#51

Post by scorpion032 »

raganwald wrote: post #12

Perhaps a bit OT, but... The post seemed to be riddled with formatting and grammar errors. This rubbed my old-school English sensibilities at first, but then I began to enjoy its rough feel. After all, it's a post about how people who worked tirelessly to bring a product to market were shipping things while the rest of Microsoft slept. The story very clearly describes a dichotomy in Microsoft's culture between proces…

Indeed. The coherent thought that this post was put up with and that it communicated, more than made up for grammar and formatting errors.

Perhaps, the reason there were all these errors in the first place was because it was written in _that movement_ when one has a "quantum of thought"

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#52

Post by kami8845 »

kami8845 wrote: post #44
dhimes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

@pbhjpbhj

I know what you're talking about but it doesn't apply to comments. The only thing that automatically adds up and downvotes to comments is what they call 'fuzzy comment karma' which is to prevent bots from figuring out too quickly that they have been shadow-banned, since to them it looks like they are getting 2 downvotes here and 3 upvotes over there.

The system has been active longer than the post was old and it's just and example, if you read through comment threads back then and now, you will notice the difference without having to rely on karmic metrics.

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#53

Post by bobbyfive »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #29
kami8845 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing that out, as others have written below, I'm a new user and while the system here looks pretty similiar to the one at Reddit, the type of comment that is appreciated here seems vastly different. I was kind of surprised to instantly receive 3 downvotes for my first comment that just expressed my happiness to have found this community, and while it was pretty void of content, the rules expressly stat…

>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…

"Note that positive doesn't mean affirming groupthink, or karma whoring (which is hard here but looks possible) but adding to the conversation."

That's simply not true. There are plenty of examples of people getting downvoted for having a contrary viewpoint. Groupthink is alive and well on HN.

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#54

Post by code_duck »

cdesmar wrote: post #31
bartl wrote: post #23

Earlier 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.

Unpredictability is progress?

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#55

Post by Splines »

brudgers wrote: post #47
InclinedPlane wrote: post #22

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. 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 (nev…

I'm not following you. I imagine that the Bing team would gladly increase their market share in exchange for the costs involved.

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#56

Post by mredbord »

Splines wrote: post #55
brudgers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 (nev…

I'm not following you. I imagine that the Bing team would gladly increase their market share in exchange for the costs involved.

Of course more market share is good. But Microsoft is not purely interested in growing share with Bing; non-differentiation with Google is a good thing in and of itself. The less differentiated Microsoft is from Google, the greater perception of their platform having feature parity with Google. That way consumers are not forced to choose based on features, just ecosystem.

This is a the reason that Microsoft is a fast copier of market leaders, so that everything consumers could want, on paper, is housed within their roof (and Google's). It seems counterintuitive that less differentiation would be useful, but I think it's what Microsoft is going for.

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#58

Post by ajays »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #24
raganwald wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Middle managers are rewarded for making budget and meeting release dates. Seems good, right? So they agitate for (wait for it) maximum budget and minimum feature set. So that success is assured and their metric is optimized. Unfortunately those things are exactly contrary to company goals. Why does this happen? {opinion} Middle managers are too remote from either customers (financial goals) or top management (company…

I think it's not the presence of middle managers; but how they are evaluated and incentivized. I don't envy their jobs; the upper managers have entire teams with clear tasks; the engineers on the other side have stuff to do; the middle managers are, well, caught in the middle. So they try to make themselves relevant by injecting themselves into various processes; by blocking things to make sure that everyone knows that they are present; by taking credit wherever possible.

So eventually it's the fault of the upper management, if they can't come up with the right incentive scheme to keep things moving smoothly.

I hate middle-managers too with a passion; but having seen them operate, I can't blame them for doing what they do. They're just playing the game by the rules. Blame the one who made up the rules.

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#59

Post by dhimes »

kami8845 wrote: post #44
dhimes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

giving your personal karma-score any meaning is just a major headache and best be avoided

Oh, yes, completely agree. It not the karma scoring that hurts, but rather than no discussion is considered acceptable.

it is best to simply accept downvotes without explanation as background noise

Sadly, yes.

Re: Birth and Death of Microsoft Bing

#60

Post by jdp23 »

Interesting perspectives. I was there in 2006-2007 when they made the decision to throw resources at the problem and challenge Google head-on in algorithmic search. The strategy at the time was to become #2 in a duopoly by investing at a level that Yahoo! couldn't compete with, and focus on the most valuable searches (travel, shopping, etc.), and leverage Microsoft Research a lot more.

From an abstract business perspective it's worked remarkably well. But if so many motivated and talented people are leaving, then there's something fundamentally flawed. And there were a lot of other much-less-expensive approaches they could have taken instead (or in addition, if they wanted to shoot for the moon) that would have also created a lot more opportunities for growth and excitement for younger engineers in particular. Ah well.

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