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.