Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

I agree that people should read Jeremy Pickens's post at IR Gupf--that's why I wrote a "quick bite" on my blog which a teaser excerpt and a link. Evidently Jeremy is getting a lot of readers today (including Mark Johnson, the program manager of Bing), which makes me happy.

Re: Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

#5

Post by abossy » Fri, Jun 19, 2009, 10:01 PM UTC

ntoshev wrote: post #3

Why the focus on celebrity and conflict? The cited blog post is better: http://irgupf.com/2009/06/19/semantic-technology-search-pane...

This is part of Daniel's "Blogs I Read" category. The focus is indeed Jeremy's post. It's not TechCrunch, trust me. :) The Noisy Channel is a fantastic blog, and is among the few websites I read regularly.

Re: Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

#6

Post by mlinsey » Fri, Jun 19, 2009, 10:02 PM UTC

icey wrote: post #2

Isn't this just like saying "You're so pretty" to make fun of people who aren't all that smart?

It struck me as a backhanded compliment as well. Especially given that part of the Bing marketing push has been focused on relevance so say what is essentially "we're glad that someone is working on improving search in ways that aren't related to relevance" is definitely a compliment and a tweak at the same time.

Re: Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

#7

Post by ntoshev » Fri, Jun 19, 2009, 11:23 PM UTC

abossy wrote: post #5

ntoshev wrote: post #3

Why the focus on celebrity and conflict? The cited blog post is better: http://irgupf.com/2009/06/19/semantic-technology-search-pane...

This is part of Daniel's "Blogs I Read" category. The focus is indeed Jeremy's post. It's not TechCrunch, trust me. :) The Noisy Channel is a fantastic blog, and is among the few websites I read regularly.

The Noisy Channel is all right, I just meant a direct link to the article would have been a better HN submission.

Re: Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

#8

Post by ntoshev » Fri, Jun 19, 2009, 11:27 PM UTC

mlinsey wrote: post #6

icey wrote: post #2

Isn't this just like saying "You're so pretty" to make fun of people who aren't all that smart?

It struck me as a backhanded compliment as well. Especially given that part of the Bing marketing push has been focused on relevance so say what is essentially "we're glad that someone is working on improving search in ways that aren't related to relevance" is definitely a compliment and a tweak at the same time.

If you look at relevance and search UI as if they are orthogonal issues, you are missing all the ways an interactive UI could be used to help the user get relevant results. One non-web example is Google's own Stock Screener (it is about limiting the results to the ones we are interested in):

http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener

Re: Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

#9

Post by pygy » Sat, Jun 20, 2009, 12:25 PM UTC

icey wrote: post #2

Isn't this just like saying "You're so pretty" to make fun of people who aren't all that smart?

I read it as an implicit acknowledgment of the relevancy of their results.

Bing (then Live), Yahoo and Google were equally relevant in 2008 when compared in blinded setting.

http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2008/04/search-engine-relevance-...

Re: Google’s Peter Norvig Offers Kind Words for Bing, Exploratory Search

#10

Post by ersi » Sat, Jun 20, 2009, 12:46 PM UTC

ntoshev wrote: post #7

abossy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of Daniel's "Blogs I Read" category. The focus is indeed Jeremy's post. It's not TechCrunch, trust me. :) The Noisy Channel is a fantastic blog, and is among the few websites I read regularly.

The Noisy Channel is all right, I just meant a direct link to the article would have been a better HN submission.

I agree, but the "summarised" version at "The noisy channel" was alright and I didn't feel it was "blogspam". It felt like it helped get me interested to read more, the original article has quite some more text than the summary - might have put me off. This got me interested.