Comments On: Okay, Bing by David Schmader http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/06/23/okay-bing Comments On: Okay, Bing by David Schmader en-us Copyright 2009 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0800 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:00:00 -0800 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by razorclammer]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:38:38 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
@22 Did you see the Google Wave demo? Have you used Google Maps? See, I don't mind a business that uses the proceeds of one business venture (advertising) to fun other business ventures (maps and mail and other stuff). I do have an issue with Microsoft leveraging their monopoly, and their lock on their file formats, to stifle innovation.

Google may not be innovating as quickly as it once did, but it fosters a culture of innovation which is (IMO) a Good Thing. I think their practice of asking their engineers to spend 20% of their time working on their own ideas is pretty cool. Sure, Google might have some rights to those ideas you develop on their dime (I'm not sure what those rules look like), but if you come up with something cool you're liable to get to lead the team to develop it, and you'll be well paid to do so.

On the other hand, Microsoft seems to take stupendously intelligent individuals, and makes their output completely useless.
Posted by moofie]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:31:06 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
And it's sure as hell not going to be Twitter or Facebook, neither of whom appear to know how to scale up their rather shaky operations.
Posted by Fnarf]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:27:32 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
Similarly with their office suite, they didn't invent any of the components (word processing, spreadsheets, simple databases), but they understood brilliantly how to integrate them into a usable product. They earned their market share there, while people like WordPerfect and Lotus lost theirs through laurel-resting, and not knowing how to move forward. Same with networking; MS NT domains blew Novell out of the water.

But since then, they've been coasting on their established lead, just waiting for someone to take it away from them. The internet took them by surprise, as did email. It took them YEARS to make Outlook into a usable product, and the very fact that Windows still comes with (unremoveable) Outlook Express on it, more or less disabling the PCs of any inexperienced user who is foolish enough to click on a mailto link, is inexcusable.

And the internet is where it's happening; in five or ten years, there may not BE any PCs. No one has cracked it yet, but they're getting close; Google docs is pretty crappy still, but it has features (like infinite undo) that will eventually make workstation-based software obsolete. And then it won't matter if you have one of those cute li'l Macs or not. Almost every app that matters, like big-time SQL jobbies, can get an internet front end these days; and even things like movies and music make more sense to store on the web and stream than to carry around on private disk space, just waiting to crash or get infected.
Posted by Fnarf]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:24:06 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by librarylady]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:26:30 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
The root of my anger though wasn't about Bing, it was about the reflexive attitude in the posts and comments. I remember when the Xbox came out (and the Zune) I saw a lot of the same shit. The obvious bias annoys me. I grow weary of watching everything Microsoft does get crapped on, even though many things like Bing (and Xbox, and Zune, and a hundred other products) are totally divorced from the oft-cited sins of its software business.

And aren't you sick of Google, who, by the way, dropped the innovation ball some time ago when it comes to search? Bing isn't perfect, but it does some things well, and people who like the internet should welcome the competition anyway.
Posted by schmacky]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:16:38 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Will in Seattle]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:38:42 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
MS has no imagination, and they're STILL just chasing Google's tail, with no real understanding of the way forward.


Copying the success of true innovators has been a MS hallmark for decades, but it worked while the market for first time PC owners/users was still growing. Not knowing the way forward (which cost them their lead in the browser market, for example) didn't matter then. But their seeming inability to innovate anything is going to be their downfall.
Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:20:32 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Will in Seattle]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:08:58 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
Where search engines fail is on subjects where no one is trying to sell you anything. Wikipedia has taken up a lot of slack here, but there are still vast voids, greater than the oceans, in the representation of knowledge.

And the biggest black hole of all is when you're trying to find information about something that IS a salable commodity, but you're looking to learn, not to buy. For instance, trying to find usable information on musical artists can often bury you in a landslide of identical promotional text from some CD release, repeated endlessly on a thousand CD vendors, only a tiny fraction of which actually have any CDs; everybody's got the database, even if the business evaporated years ago.

You see this on news searches, too, where the first 100,000 hits are all the same goddamn AP feed, but you have to scan them all because of the one or two alternate viewpoints buried within.

If Bing could address the REAL problems with search, they'd have something. They can't, though. MS has no imagination, and they're STILL just chasing Google's tail, with no real understanding of the way forward. They understand Google's business model circa 2000 quite well by now, though.

But search is still entirely in the hands of the salesmen, so it's unlikely to ever get better.

I do like MS's "Bird's Eye" map view, though. It genuinely adds something to Google Street View. It's not new to Bing, though.
Posted by Fnarf]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:08:42 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
But no, they're MSFT, so they ignore the posted rules on the Information Superhighway.

Dicks.
Posted by Will in Seattle]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:08:22 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Julie in Eugene]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:07:41 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
I'm going to support what Schmader said. Anything any web developer puts together has to keep the retarded monkeys in mind otherwise it's worthless. Even very web savvy people can be flummoxed by the shit many developers fob off on us.
Posted by keshmeshi]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:01:32 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
This is why they bullied you.
Posted by blank12357]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:00:11 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
If you really want me to use your search engine, let me search for special characters. I cannot believe what a pain in the ass it is trying to find out how to escape a % in a batch script.
Posted by Ben]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:57:41 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:52:19 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:51:48 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by David Schmader]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:31:38 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
You also didn't bother to make use of Bing's cool video results page, which might have made sense since you were looking for, you know, a video. If you had, you would see that the video will surface on the actual page, and will play just with you just cursing over it with no ads or anything.

Your internet savvy is at the level of a retarded monkey, but it's OK...you may not have actually posted something of value, or indicative of thought, but you did keep your coolness credentials. Congratulations! Now go back to your true callings in life: narrating Showgirls and writing up Last Days (both of which I love).
Posted by schmacky]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:21:00 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Jenny from the Block]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:19:27 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]>
I really love that they are spending over 100 million on ads while laying off employees

the real problem is that bing is trying to buy "coolness" ... which is something that is earned not bought ... regardless of the fact that google doesn't claim to be hip, just efficient
Posted by Gordon Werner]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:15:50 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by rejemy]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:11:35 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:10:26 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Okay, Bing]]> Posted by switzerblog]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:55:36 -0700 The Stranger