Google is an accessory, Microsoft is a necessity.

Lately, there's been a lot of talk about who's more innovative - Microsoft or Google. I know what the general opinion among many average home users is - "it's Google." Let me try to prove why this is false and the only reason that makes you think Google is more innovative is out of a fake sense of loyalty towards Google because it has (for free), in many occasions helped you search for stuff online, complete projects and meet critical deadlines in time. But wait, there's more to it!

Before I start (screwing), I would like you to read Google's company description and Microsoft's company description on Google's own Finance section:

Google: "Google Inc. maintains an index of websites and other online content, and makes this information freely available through its search engine to anyone with an Internet connection. It generates revenue primarily by delivering online advertising." (Advertising revenue percentage is approximately 95%-97%).

Microsoft: "Microsoft Corporation is engaged in developing, manufacturing, licensing and supporting a range of software products and services. Its software products and services include operating systems for personal computers, servers and intelligent devices, server applications for distributed computing environments; information worker productivity applications; business solutions applications; computing applications; software development tools, and video games."

The above descriptions pretty much summarize the domains in which the respective companies rule the roost - Google with search and Microsoft with the rest of the computing world. This does not prove a lot, but I thought it would be a nice soft start to my killer finish.

The Innovation (meaning: "the creation of new ideas or things")

The flat fact here is that Google sucks at innovation. Every project it ever started, users either threw them right into the Recycle Bin (and where they never got recycled) or was shut down by Google citing 'lack of general interest'. To name a few of them are - Google Buzz, Google Wave, Friend Connect, Google Desktop, Google Base (still in beta), Google Checkout, Google Toolbar, Google Latitude, Google Pack, etc. [Source: ZDNet]

I exactly know what you must be thinking now - "This author is an idiot. What about AdSense, YouTube, Android, Google Docs, Google Talk, Blogger, Picasa, Google Maps or Google Earth? Were they not innovation?" To which I'd say - "They were, but not Google's." All these products that I've listed in this paragraph were ALL acquired by Google from other companies. See this list of companies that Google acquired on Wikipedia and you'll be shocked to know that most of the 'Google' we know today is not actually not Google. People don’t know this because most of them are just happy go lucky average home users. They just see "I love YouTube, it belongs to Google, Google rocks!" But all that Google does is - buy a company that is doing something good, integrate the new service with Google accounts and throw it on your face. Google only did two things right till date - the Search & Gmail (PS: I'm assuming that Gmail was not acquired because I don't see it listed on Wikipedia as acquired). To sum up the whole paragraph I would just say "Google buys a house, paints it blue, and presents it to you."

"Ok, this was Google's side. What about Microsoft? Is Microsoft Innovative?" A straight fact - Microsoft is definitely innovative, but also way more innovative than Google. Now again - the problem here is that people see Microsoft only as Windows + Office (which is not free), but it's not so. Apart from the awesome Windows and Office combination, there's Kinect for XBOX, XBOX 360, Microsoft Surface, Exchange, Outlook, System Center, Forefront, Lync (OCS v2.0), SharePoint, SQL Server, Windows Azure, Office 365 (BPOS v2.0), Visual Studio, Silverlight, XNA, Robotic Studio, Expression Studio, Photosynth, DeepZoom, the gigantic .NET development environment, Halo, Age of Empires, Windows Phone, Zune, Bing, etc. I could just go on and on and on. This is not all, this is just what I know and trust me, I know very little.

Things that Microsoft Research does is so high-end and cutting-edge, that most of it is out of my ability to even comprehend. Just so that you get an idea, here is a Microsoft Research Project (Digital Narratives) that allows you to deep zoom into a paused full HD video, navigate the surrounding 360 degrees (even those regions that are off screen or out of screen frame) and resume after exploring the whole area in the video. All this is done right from scratch by dedicated, hard-working and highly technically equipped Microsoft employees spanning across the globe. Is this not innovation? I think it is. But just to be fair here is a list of companies Microsoft acquired. Only Hotmail and Visio are the popular service/product we use were not originally developed by Microsoft - but then they were totally revamped to the Microsoft standard. Compare both the lists and decide for yourself who is more innovative. You know when your father says "Technology is moving very fast, my son." People like those at Microsoft are responsible for it.

The Survival Test

"Ok, then why is there a common notion of Google being cooler?". Simple - as I already mentioned in the very beginning that Google serves you with web results for free and Microsoft charges you for their software. But what people don't get is that Google uses targeted advertising for their source of revenue. That's why. Imagine using Windows OS with advertisements - you plug in a USB stick and see a pop up "Kingston Pen Drives for Sale, just for $8.99!! Click here to buy now!" Would you like it? No, right.

The thing to be understood here is that every company has it's own bread and butter products that generate income which enables the company to sustain existence. Ask Google to serve results without advertisements or Microsoft to make Windows Open Source - none would agree to do it. That's how the business model is. Ultimately, the consumers pay for a demand to be met and the companies earn - in one way or the other.

To make things interesting, imagine a hypothetical scenario: Imagine the world for one day without Google - anyone could still do most of their work and search on Bing, use Hotmail instead of Gmail and watch videos on a DVD instead on YouTube. Not a very difficult life. Now imagine the world for one day without any Microsoft software - No Windows OS, no enterprise software, no Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Imagine the millions of businesses that run on Microsoft software all coming to an abrupt halt. Right from the supermarket next door to billion dollar enterprises like HCL, IBM, Yahoo!, etc. Imagine computers at airports that run Windows - all coming to a sudden stop. ATMs that facilitate cash withdrawals 24x7 refusing to spill cash. As good as the 2012 apocalypse, right?

You can survive without Google, but not Microsoft. Period. That is the impact of Microsoft software on the world. Microsoft is like Oxygen and Google like ice-cream. Everyone likes ice-cream but take oxygen for granted.  Google is like a 16 year old teenager who thinks he is smarter than his dad, but ultimately - Microsoft is the Big Daddy and will always be. Google is an accessory, Microsoft is a necessity.

It's not over yet: Coming tomorrow weekend special - "Google Wonder Blunders". Stay tuned!

Bing Vs. Google: Who's the real villain?

Last evening I came across Danny Sullivan’s recent post “Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results” on searchengineland. Soon after, Google stepped out of the closet with a post on their official blog "Microsoft's Bing uses Google search results - and denies it." Interestingly, it was published right before the Farsight 2011 conference between Matt Cutts (Head of Webspam, Google), Harry Shum (Bing Corporate VP) and Rich Skrenta (CEO, Blekko).

To be honest, I was shocked after reading them. Being an extreme Microsoft fanatic, I was a bit disappointed too. I asked myself "Is this really true? Is Bing actually copying Google's search results?" I was not convinced so I decided to do a little background check.  This was Microsoft's response to Google - "Setting the record straight."

Today, as the facts unfolded after a little analysis and reading some brilliantly written articles like "20 Google Engineers Prove Bing’s Privacy Policy", the truth was out of Google's secret black box. The table turned upside down. I'll now sum up all my findings in a short and an organized way:

My first claim:

• Microsoft does not copy Google's search result.

To prove my point, I have this little picture that schematically demonstrates how online searches work.

Case 1: In a usual scenario, when the user enters a search query, a search engine uses signals to determine a particular page's relevance to the search term. Signals like - Is the search term in the URL? Does the page title contain the keyword, Does the page contain the keyword, a page's meta tag information, number of times the keyword appears in the page, etc. This happens on the search engine's own database created while crawling the web.

Apart from that it also relies on click-through data on external sites like facebook, twitter, YouTube, etc. For example a video that was highly popular and making rounds on facebook will be ranked higher in the 'Most Viewed' section on YouTube. In this case, YouTube tracks click-through on facebook and uses this information to rank the videos on it's own site. Similarly, both Bing and Google rely on click-through on external sites (including each other) as a source of signal for additional information.

Case 2: In the isolated scenario that Google created in the sting operation (using  honeypot technique) was searching for gibberish non-existent words on both Bing as well as Google. In this case what happened was since the search term was non-existent, Bing was unable to find anything relevant in it’s own database. It did not find any related information on facebook, twitter or any other websites either. So the only source of signal here was Google. Bing did not hack into Google's database or scanned the Google search result page. It only used information obtained from user click-through data on Google, hence the resemblance in the search results.

Not to mention that Bing only showed similar search results in 9 out of the 100 tests (yes, 9/100) Google engineers conducted. Mathematically speaking, even when Google was the only source of signal - Bing only showed similarities in 9/100 cases. Now imagine when common terms are searched for and Bing has over a million external websites where it can look out for data, how much would Bing rely on Google? I'm sure you can do the Math.

Secondly, Bing uses click-through via "Suggested Sites" and the "Bing Toolbar" which are manual user opt-ins. They are not enabled by default. Also, Bing's Privacy Policy clearly states that keywords/URL will be anonymously be sent to Microsoft in order to give the user a better, personalized search experience. Is this wrong? No.

My second claim:

• Google copied Microsoft.
  
  

1. Bing was the first to introduce the Background wallpaper, remember? Oh that, everybody does.
   

2. Microsoft invented the "Page Summary" that pops up on the right to the search results. Google got inspired and came up with "Page Previews".
   
   

3. Remember the old Google image search? Apparently that got inspired from Bing too and introduced the 'column on the left to the images' in the search results page, the 'all results on one-page' concept and the 'preview image thumbnail' when you hover your mouse over it. See the below images for details:
   
   
    
4. Bing was the first to introduce 'Twitter real-time' search. After a couple of months, Google followed too. (read here - http://news.ebrandz.com/microsoft/2010/3237-bing-rolls-out-new-real-time-twitter-search-feeds.html and http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174131/realtime_search_google_and_bing_rivalry_intensifies_on_facebook_and_twitter.html)
    
5. I'm sure they're trying their best to copy the Windows OS too and develop it (as Chrome OS), but seems like copying an OS is way difficult than copying minor UI tweaks on a search engine.
   
   

 

Conclusion?

Google's generalization of a small isolated case where only in 9/100 cases Bing showed similarities to Google's result and calling that "Bing copies Google's search results" is absolutely ridiculous. This is the third time Google has cried foul over something which just doesn't make sense.

Recommended Read:

20 Google Engineers Prove Bing’s Privacy Policy

Thoughts on search quality

What on earth are Google thinking?

Coming Up Next on the Blog:

Google's Wonderful Blunders.

B.E.S.T - F.R.I.E.N.D.S

This afternoon, in the air-conditioned college library, I was sitting with my mathematics book in front of me. But I was in no mood to study. I don't know why but the only thoughts circulating in my mind were those of my school & college friends with whom I've spent one of the most memorable moments of my life! So I thought I'd mention some of them and the reason why they hold a special place in life so that I can read this recursively whenever I miss them!
 
Ever since the day I can remember back in time, when my cool dad used to do my homework and my sweet mom used to button up my shirts, I never missed having good friends around me. When I was barely six, I always used to have fun with Siddharth, Bhavana and Aditi playing games as weird as teacher-teacher in the parking lot or hide and seek on the ground floor of my apartment. Siddharth had a cool tricycle which I used to drive most of the time. Aditi had a cute little baby bro Sanket who is probably in school now. We all teased Bhavana "Bhavana bilouna bhompu-bhompu thrash can" for some reason. Three amazingly cool pals they were! I also learnt how to ride a bicycle with them!

Then Harshit moved into the apartment, with Parshu and Hardik, his brothers. He was the sole gujju (gujarathi) pal of mine. He was such a comedian! He is one such person whom I've never seen loose temper (yeah.. I tried a lot but failed miserably)! Then it was Zachie and his two brothers- Jerry(mid) and Juda(youngest), like three cricket wickets linearly increasing in height! Everyday the story was just the same while playing cricket- Jerry would beat up Juda for some reason, Zachie would then beat up Jerry for beating him up, both Jerry and Juda go up home crying and complain their mom - then their mom would first beat up Jerry for beating up Juda and then call Zachie up and beat him up for beating up Jerry. Confusing right? Read it over again! Paramjit and Satish had the best nick names ever - Pepsi & Chaddi-Scientist respectively! I've spent most of the time shattering people's windows panes playing cricket with them (for which I used to get thrashed by my dad!).

In school, as far as I can remember in Sherwood Public School, it was Neeraj in whose companionship we to rule the whole class. We were like the bosses. If anyone had any issue, they first came to us. Whosoever was found guilty, was destined to get kick on the butt and a punch on the nose from Neeraj (he was a little fat), under my orders. Then later on Arun joined the school well after Neeraj left it, along with Mohnish, another cool dude. Arun was always bullied for his fairly dark complexion, but overall a cool dude.

Then I got transferred to Siva Sivani Public school. It was Akshay who was the boss there and also my friend. He was really good at studies, but not that great at football. The torturing headless head girl Kritika and the successor Parikshit always made me run on the ground either for my unpolished shoes or stained shirt. Then it was Arati who always jacked me with her super fluent english (shes a national level debator, that gives a clear picture!). I called her Potramma, named after an imaginery lady who was supposed to be an expert in washing clothes. Then there were Sajjad, who nicknamed me 'Hansa' and I got immensely popular because of that. Not to mention the cricketing legend Abhishek of the school and Akshay aka Ghodu who used to run like a honking hungry horse in search of a whore. Then there was Ann, most of us referred to her as 'chingy-pingy' due to her manipuri origin and the extra tall Shreha. How could I not mention the Vivek and Chameli controversy! There was also a cricketing dude called Sai Kumar whom I always used to tease chai-chai!

Then at the crash course for IIT, at Matrushri, it was Deepika who was a really sweet friend. I was just about to fall for her when I realized that my friend Rahul had also fallen for her. I just moved out of their way. They became a couple whereas all three of us still remain good pals!

Finally I ended up in FIITJEE, for my preparations for the IITJEE (entrance exam for the IIT's). In the first year, it was Karthik, Jayant, Mani, and Vidya who were my companions. Every break during the classes used to be a chalk fight war among us with pieces of chalks flying all across the class in every possible direction in huge numbers. This was the time when my transition from the good times to the bad times started. The studies went on to become harder and messier each year. The next year I found one of the coolest dudes till date. It was Shashi in the form of a huge ball of mass, but he was really a cool dude. Never got angry, and took everything in the positive spirits. And to some extent Tushar, who never sponsored a rupee for anything as far as I remember, the extra stingy!

In the third year, I can boast about the fact that I got one of the best friends group possible. To mention the names in no particular order, they were: Arindam- the smartass. We sat together the whole year. He is one reason why my maths improved over the year. Awesome company! Jayanta was too kind and good at heart who brought me chocolate cakes everyday and gave me the whole packet of it. I was shameless enough not to share it with anyone, not even him! Pritish hardly knew that we existed because he thought only one girl existed in the class, the one girl who was unaware of the fact that Pritish existed! Arushi was one of the coolest girls I've met so far. She is pretty sweet and the good thing about her is that she understands humor! Nikitha was like the official nerd of the class. I could never imagine if she had ever had fun till date. I got my notions about her corrected the day I, Arindam, Arushi and Nikitha and Niroshita went for a hangout. She showed such courage in the game of 'Truth & Dare', I was astonished. In fact, she inspired the rest of us to do courageous dares. Niketh was like a typical nerdo. Adil was considered to be Pritish's husband (in a gay couple!), Varun was a nerdy music freak, Prabhat was like a simple guy who did what he was supposed- come to the college and study. Rest of the free time, we all had huge amounts of fun in the college cubicles! God damn.. I am craving to go back to that time! 

Outside FIITJEE, it was RJ Adonica- a Radio Jockey in BIG 92.7FM who became a good friend of mine owing to the fact that I was a crazy fan of her and had never missed even a single episode of hers in the past one and a half year. Everyday at 10pm, I used to take my radio headset and get tuned to her show till 12. I got to know her when I went to the studio to see her. She showed me the whole studio. How they work, how is everything managed and put on air at the right time. The sad part is that she recently left her job as an RJ (on 28th Jan) and is off to Australia to get married and probably get settled there.
 
Not even a single day goes by without remembering them and the fun I had with them. So here is a blog articled dedicated to all my best friends who added colorful flavors to my life. Hats off to all of you! Thanks for being there!

Who am I?

For Non-Geeks:

I am Kunal D Mehta - just another ordinary engineering student who hates his college, but doesn't protest because the girls out there are so glamorous that it makes the fees paid to be there worth it.

Apart from that, I have awesome parents who always leverage me to make use of my full potential. I am very ambitious, thanks to my dad who made me understand how important it was to be successful and my mom who has constantly supported me in my deeds. I like going on long car drives, clicking photographs and watching movies. Occasionally, I can get romantic or horny or both at times.. ;)

For Geeks:

I am Kunal D Mehta - a Microsoft fanatic and someone who is extremely enthusiastic & passionate about technology. I am a Microsoft Student Partner and a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist [MCTS x 2] in Windows 7 Configuring and Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure. I aspire to become an Enterprise Administrator, CCNP and a VCP in the next 2~3 years.

My mantra in today's IT era is Green & Efficient Computing which is reflected by my interests and study of the latest technologies like Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Server Administration and Networking.

I am usually found in my hostel room either configuring failover clustering on my Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V machine, setting up a hub-transport role on the Exchange 2010 VM, creating new Sharepoint site on the Sharepoint 2010 VM, designing virtual networks on Cisco Packet Tracer, or if I am not jobless enough already, I ping random IP addresses on the college network to see if they have ICMP responses enabled. Any computer that shows me an "Access Denied!" never ever boots up again.. :D