We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

Post by BasicBlock » Sun, Jan 05, 2014, 5:41 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #117

devcpp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make some good points but you lost me there: >Windows is one of the great engineering feats of CS Do I have to point out all the lame exploits and bugs which take so long to get fixed, the terrible design, the "things which should have been there years ago but we still don't have" like a decent file manager, task manager, copy utility? And AFAIK Windows made few major contribution to the theory of OSs (semaphores…

You could point out all the lame exploits and bugs, but only if you want to spark a long argument that you will end up losing. There are a variety of things I don't like about Windows, and I avoid using it. But the idea that it's somehow less secure than other operating systems is for the most part a Linux advocacy myth. The fundamental security architecture of WinAPI is just not that different from that of Linux or…

Post by mau » Sun, Jan 05, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

_pius wrote: post #110

antics wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi OP. Your points, as I understand them, are the following. Correct me if I'm wrong. * MS is not a good example of a strong engineering org. Further, it is not a good example because Windows sucks. * Google doesn't employ every smart person ever. * Google can't actually compete. (ed note: in any field, or just against iOS and Fb?) * My argument is like the argument that no one would supplant Windows. * Given enough…

For starters, we built the entire Bing stack from scratch. No OSS. No common platforms like the JVM. Nothing like that. We started from nothing, and invented the server infrastructure, the data pipeline, the runtime that would support the site, the ML tools, everything. Wasn't much of the Bing stack built off Powerset, whose core technology was licensed from Xerox PARC? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/microsofts-bing-p…

Post by lysa » Tue, Jan 07, 2014, 7:06 PM UTC

antics wrote: post #114

sophacles wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP - but I think you miss the relevance of point 5. Tech is littered with the irrelevant remnants and skeletons of "giant unstoppable forces". Look at Sun - in the 90s they were unbeatable, by 2004 they were quickly growing irrelevant. Oracle seems to be on the way out. Cisco too - they haven't done much exciting in a while, in a lot of circles they are viewed as the company holding networking back. Other com…

I'm responding to the fact that OP claims MS is not a good engineering firm. I don't think that point is arguable. We are not just good, we are among the very best in the world in terms of engineering achievements. Of course, whether we survive is another question entirely! I did not speculate on this, nor would I. Who knows what the future holds, we've just this year basically bet the company on some fairly risky th…