On my first day of giving Bing a go (I used it for about two weeks to try to fairly assess) I ran into a problem: It can spellcheck words, but it cant get it right contextually.

Let me give you an example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer

http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer

I meant to type "how I won the war" and only Google picks up on this.

"waer" alone into google instant will bring up water (country), but with the context of my search phrase it gives me something far more accurate.

Sounds like Bing uses just spell checking rather than n-grams on search queries as Google does.

That's a pretty big whole for Bing to miss. Probably doesn't track as well since it requires a mistyped query -- most people doing comparisons of relevance compare correctly typed queries. But a big hole for real world usage... at least I'd think so.

I can't tell if that whole is intentional.

You're query is irrelevant.

I agree. The first thing I would do, if writing a search engine, would be to do Google-style phrase corrections.

(Although lately, I find it too aggressive. When googling obscure error messages, it usually "do you mean"-s it into a less obscure error message that I already understand. Sigh.)

I really think Google is getting to be too clever for its own good. When I try to search for some Mac API, it will give me a blog post about an iPhone app, no matter how much I beg and plead. Bing returns precisely what I wanted for those "Where the heck did Google get that SERP from?" kind of queries.

Indeed. I think google might be falling into the trap of believing that the better search is the one with more results when in many, most?, cases the exact opposite is the case.

I tried a bunch of search engines the other day when I couldn't find something specific. Bing was the least useful: it generalized "dice" to "die" and then gave me lots of hits about death. It should have been fairly obvious that the articles returned had nothing to do with dice.

Interesting. If you use Bing from Germany (with German UI), it works correctly, i.e. suggests "How I won the war".

Which makes sense, as "water" is not a German word...

Google needs Bing to be moderately successful to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit.

Bing is a win for Microsoft either way. If it gets about 30% market share, then Bing makes Microsoft money and forces Google to invest more in search. If even the largest software company after investing billions can't stop Google's growth in search, then Microsoft and others will claim that that Google is a monopoly. So it should be subject to anti-trust laws.

In the old days, when General Motors completely dominated the car industry, they made sure to keep their market share under 25%. They believed, probably correctly, that a higher share would bring anti-trust sanctions.

Isn't anti-trust designed to prevent people from abusing their monopoly position? For example, Microsoft was the top OS vendor. They wanted to dominate the highly-lucrative Web Browser Vendor business. So, they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser.

The government thought this was an abuse of the monopoly, but the charges didn't stick.

What Google's doing is nothing close to that, though. Nobody uses other search engines because they suck. The results are irrelevant and the ads are irrelevant. That's not anti-competitive action, that's competitive action -- they make a good product that people like. Seems legal to me.

I don't know about you, but to me Google is already pretty scary. Google has the power to completely destroy your business. They have little to no human communication, thus not allowing for any real follow-up, they're like this god, or black box. You have to hope and pray your begging will correct things.

For example, lets assume you have a somewhat successful product, getting pretty good search results for your category, and one day your site throws some errors, or it goes down, or something of that nature, your site is now no longer showing for your category. They don't tell you anything, not even if you use their Webmaster tools, all you know is that according to their search query result performance that all of a sudden you stop showing up for any other term than your name. Previously you were showing up for many terms. After you correct these issues, which you can only really guess at, you submit a re-consideration request describing the issue, your solution, and why you think whatever thing you think is the problem should be corrected. Now you wait. Not for some response, but just an automated reply saying that your response has been dealt with, not whether they did anything, or if in fact you had an issue. This will come 2-3 weeks later, your business may already be dead. But if it's not, and magically you show up for Google results again, and webmaster tools shows you that your previous search terms have relevance, you will most definitely not be in your previous position. Time to get out there again, get fresh in-links, and re-build your business.

This is the current status quo. This is very very scary. Even Credit Cards have to tell you why you were rejected, not enough credit history or something like that, you can even get one free credit report in response that will explain things. Not Google. I would sleep much better at night knowing that there was some process that would tell you if there's a problem, and if possible what the reasons were, in general terms. Once you correct them you should be able to submit that you did, and hopefully that would address the situation in some reasonable amount of time.

It's crazy that most of us are ok with a search engine dominating 70% or so of search, without any ability to resolve conflicts, ask questions, or anything. We can only click buttons and hope that after enough times the great Google will listen.

This doesn't bother me. If my website got delisted from Google, I'd find traffic in some other way. If my ads didn't get run by Google, I'd just advertise somewhere else.

Honestly, Google is not that big of a company. I checked out the Fortune 500 list, and Google is not even in the top 50. Amazon.com, Bank of America, and CVS Carkemark know a lot more about you than Google. And they don't care -- you come to them, and they sell you their product, and it's often a good deal for both sides. Google is just like this, except smaller.

In the IT industry, we like to think that Google is important. We see their logo a lot, we hear how nice it is to work there... but they are really small potatoes. Advertising is nothing. Giving people money, giving people drugs, selling gasoline, shipping books to your house overnight, and making light bulbs and jet engines is a lot more profitable than sending clicks to your website. Sorry, that's the reality... there is a lot more evil to be done in the world than Google is capable of. (Look at the number of Fortune 500 companies that are primarily military contractors. Their corporate mandate is to cause people to die as efficiently as possible -- Google manages your RSS feeds and cat pictures! Sorry, not evil.)

(Why isn't Google as heavily regulated as banks? Because they really don't matter that much. Yeah, you can search for your name on Google and see content that you put up on the web under your name. But the banks collect information about you, to make business decisions, without you ever even knowing. Right now, their computers are deciding whether or not you are a credit risk, and if they decide you are, they are canceling your credit card. That vacation you wanted? Gone. That house you wanted? Never. That's power that Google simply doesn't even come close to having!)

Unlike the other companies mentioned there is very little alternative to Google. Especially if you target the technical demographic. If CVS does something bad, I can go to Rite Aid. However if Google delists you, your customers most likely won't go to Bing, or DuckDuckGo, you'll be dead. Furthermore, if you're not "relevant" to your search term, then advertising for that term will be prohibitively expensive. So you're screwed two ways.

I'm just saying their current status quo coupled with the power they have is scary. They should, like the banks, communicate with you. Even if it's not that detailed, a little bit of interaction goes a long way. They already have humans reading your reconsideration requests, they should allow them to issue a response, instead of just an automated reply. It shouldn't be this guessing game that we play. It's not OK that something that controls almost all of search is that inaccessible to communication, follow-up, and resolution.

How much do you think they can tell you without revealing the signals they use to determine relevancy?

The fact is their current policy is in all likelihood the one that allows them to serve relevant results to the greatest number of people for the lowest cost. If they start giving it the personal touch as you say then the cost will go way up it won't bed just you and the occasional accidental delisted site owner but will be every spammer, con artist, and fly by night SEO expert. The support costs would be astronomical. And your hoped for solution is to have a government entity step in and mandate they spend that money in a hopeless attempt to let you talk to someone in person? In short you want the government to force Google to reduce its profits, potentially drastically, for your own personal benefit.

Won't someone please think of the OP's failed business model? The government needs to protect the lucrative business of owning a link farm!!

Why is it not OK? You are not their customer or shareholder; what obligation do they have to you?

Nobody else likes other search engines and can't find your site? Tough shit. That's not Google's concern and it's not the government's concern, which makes you responsible for dealing with it.

What is wrong with you? First, you have no idea if I'm a customer or shareholder. Second, they have an obligation to their users and customers to conduct business in a reasonable way. If you actually read what I've been saying, which I know is very hard, because we have a tendency to skim and let our biases let our emotions get the best of us, I'm not saying anything crazy.

All I'm saying is that Google should set up some processes so that issues that can be major, such as an accidental delisting, or similar be addressed with some level of human interaction, whether it's an actual response, or an automated response letting you know the issues, nothing more.

In my opinion, and hopefully sometime in the near future the US Congress will agree, that it's not OK for something to have that much sway over the web and not be accountable or have any reasonable processes in place for corrections. It's just not.

You keep saying the same thing over and over; you use the word "obligation". Why do you think they are obligated to reply to your emails? Are they legally obligated? Are they morally obligated? If so, why? How many people have to email them every day before they aren't obligated to reply anymore? Why?

Your point would be a lot clearer if you had said, "I wish" instead of "obligation". I wish a human at Google would reply to my email when they accidentally delist my site. I wish someone would spend $100 of Google's time to research my problem and talk to me. I wish Google would mail me ice cream and ponies once a week.

If you actually read what I've been saying, which I know is very hard, because we have a tendency to skim and let our biases let our emotions get the best of us, I'm not saying anything crazy.

If your sentences focused on one topic, and didn't diverge to psychoanalyze me, which I know is very hard, because we have a tendency to let our emotions get the best of us, causing a run on sentence, where the word obligation is used a lot, and holy shit this sort of thing is hard to read, emotions or not, and what was I saying? Oh yeah, your points would be easier to follow.

Anyway, Google's philosophy is to make decisions in general rather than in bulk and then they let the computers do the real work. It's the only sane thing they can do; there are billions of websites, and if they had to research every delisting case, they'd be out of business. It's no loss to Google or its users if your site doesn't show up in search results.

You just aren't all that important to Google or the rest of the world. Nor is anyone else.

I think more of the fear of Google stems from the average person's relationship with it, and doesn't have much to do with how large a company it is.

BofA, Amazon, etc. are all companies that we deal with directly in a customer<->vendor relationship. Amazon puts up products for sale, people buy them. BofA gives people a place to put their money, in return for the ability to lend that money to others.

But your average Internet user isn't Google's customer. They're Google's product, and are "sold" to advertisers. People interact with Google every day, and in return, Google gets to collect, store, and mine our information in ways that we don't really know about or understand, and sell the results of that analysis to others.

So I think some of the Google-fear is based more on that than raw revenue generation. Being sold to advertisers on a massive scale is just kinda creepy.

Walmart has similar power to destroy your business if they refuse to sell your product. Google has no obligation to help keep your business afloat in the same way Walmart doesn't owe your product a spot on its shelves.

Walmart is the only place to get Walmart's house brands. That's not a monopoly, that's merely inconvenient.

What are you talking about? Nothing you said has anything to do with anything I'm saying. You and the other commenter are skewing my comments with your responses into something they're not.

You talk about Google as if it's some community resource you have a right to have; it's not. Google only has the power to destroy your business if you make your business model reliant upon them, that is a choice you make. There's nothing wrong with that choice, but you have to recognize it's your choice and Google owes you nothing at all.

As soon as you start having such a huge market share like Google does, whether you have a right to it is irrelevant. The fact is that they dominate, and have a defacto Monopoly in certain segments of our population. As such, there needs to be some standards and processes to for conflict resolution.

We shouldn't be ok with a company controlling almost all of search and not having any way to check them. There's a reason certain industries are now regulated, and why there are anti-competitive laws. Google and the web in general is still too new to have such regulation, but hopefully we're not too far away from it.

Again, I'd feel much better at night knowing there's a standard procedure with actual follow-up to explain and investigate search related issues, including delistings.

> The fact is that they dominate, and have a defacto Monopoly in certain segments of our population.

No, it's not a fact at all. Use Yahoo or Bing, as long as there are functional alternatives you can't claim there's a monopoly. Google dominates search, that's not the same thing as a monopoly. Google does not have a monopoly.

> As such, there needs to be some standards and processes to for conflict resolution.

No, there doesn't, you haven't established that they are a monopoly, or that they're promoting anti-competitive practices, or that search is even a vital service like electricity that should be regulated.

> There's a reason certain industries are now regulated, and why there are anti-competitive laws.

Yes, there are, for good reasons, no such reason exists to regulate search.

> Google and the web in general is still too new to have such regulation, but hopefully we're not too far away from it.

Hopefully we're very far away from it because it's absolutely not necessary and shouldn't happen.

> Again, I'd feel much better at night knowing there's a standard procedure with actual follow-up to explain and investigate search related issues, including delistings.

Then don't use Google, no one is forcing you to, you can get traffic from other places if you put effort into it. The fact is, you use Google because their product is superior and they bring you more traffic; that doesn't mean other options aren't available, just that they don't work as well as Google does. And for having a superior product, you want to punish them with regulation. That's seriously fucked up thinking.

I agree with your main point, but not the Microsoft example of abuse: they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser

They didn't force anybody. One of the first things I would do with a fresh install of Windows back in latter 90s was open IE to download Netscape. Having IE on there made it enabled me to easily learn about and get different browsers. I don't understand how that is so bad. Where was the antitrust on Winsock? What? Forced to use their TCP/IP stack?! Consumer-based OSes should have certain software by default.

Wasn't this more a bit of prescience on Microsoft's part? I mean, now we have Google developing a "browser" OS. Can't get much more coupled then that. What if that becomes the monopoly OS in 5-10 years?

It's always the details that matter.

Shipping the browser wasn't the problem. The problem was that they stopped system vendors installing Netscape and/or making it the default browser.

Doing that is fine if you are in a competitive market, but if you are a monopoly then it's anti-competitive and abuse of market power.

Unfortunately Anti-trust action is often used to drag companies into the unholy Congressional Lobbying racket.That's the way it worked out with Microsoft. Google's lobbying budget seems to scale with it's size so maybe it will escape serious action.

Google 'email'. Now gmail might have the top position organically, but if Google is a clear monopoly the DoJ might come a-knocking just to make sure.

Seems pretty logical to me. As much diversity as Google has, they are still a search company. A lot of the tech they leverage in other areas seems to come from competencies they acquired while improving search.

I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems.

> I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems

They don't, but they share one common goal: Get money from advertisers, who are targeting people looking for some thing.

This "some thing" is obvious on Google, its users are in buying mode even before entering the query term.

Now, if (and that's a big if), FB can connect advertisers and buyers, it'll slow down Google, because people will have spent their money with FB advertisers.

Google and FB customers are their advertisers. They might do completely different things but their revenue source is similar.

I personally don't believe in this. Facebook doesn't share the same easiness of monetization as Google, and it has some huge issues of making its visitors enter buying mode.

But there you go... even if I disagree, that's why some people think of a FB vs. Google fight. Follow the money :)

If you think of advertising as "traditional advertising" and "internet advertising", then FB and Google are certainly rivals. However, in pure marketing terms, they are actually very different.

Google search ads EXCEL in "Demand Fulfillment" - say you want need a plumber now since your toilet is overflowing. I don't think Facebook will ever beat Google here. Google sort of created this niche where they were better than any competitor that had ever existed.

Facebook, on the other hand, is better at demand generation. Consider advertisers who want to reach teenagers who would want to buy videogames - a new game is coming out, and they want you to know about it. Before, you'd have to find the TV shows that they would watch, or billboards that they would see, or queries that gaming-teens would search for, and advertise there. These are all competitive and difficult proxies for the audience you want to reach. Facebook is a much better place for that than Google.

In fact, you can imagine synergy between FB ads and Google ads. FB tells people, "you should listen to this band that you haven't heard of", and when you Google that band name, you see ads for places to buy tickets and albums.

Google has AdSense / Doubclick network. This is a huge number of eyeballs with many banner types. And Google knows my basic browsing history via cookies and my entire search history. At least for me, Google knows exactly what I'm interested in, tend to purchase, and tend to click on. Facebook knows my basic demographic profile, which isn't really that valuable. I'd say the value of Google's data is about 50 times Facebooks.

Agree completely, in fact I sort said some of these things at another message on this thread. An like I said in the parent, Google vs. FB is not a fight that I particular believe, but I was hoping to shed some light on why people make this connection.

Google has money in abundance, they're putting millions on social projects, hoping to have some of FB's thunder (and data). While I don't know if Google will ever succeed, every social feature added by Google is a point of conflict with FB, thus feeding the "there's a war going on" opinion of some people.

I'm not sure your plumber example really works out. Facebook could hypothetically tell you that "Your friends X and Y used plumber's Z services, and liked it!", which is much more persuasive information than a generic ad.

Ah, this is a very good point you bring up here. Had not thought in those terms, but you are very right. Advertisement, however tends to be very pan-platform if you will. Even more so these days, integrated, vertical marketing seems to be the name of the game. The big money will continue to make ad buys on all platforms that deliver eyeballs, not just one or the other.

Yes, because the more venues you broadcast your ad, the more chances you have to find a customer.

But not quite, because of one thing: ROI.

On the web, you can easily measure the return of your investment. Match your spent money with the server visitor logs, and you know instantly if your campaign is profitable. With "brand" advertisements, the game is different, you can't see immediately that 1 dollar spent on ad generated 2 in sales. But it's a tried and proven method of advertisement, basically all we had until the internet.

Enter the web, you can reach a precisely targeted audience, and easily measure the return.

If you know Google delivers more ROI than Facebook, you're going to spend your money on AdWords. This is specially true for the long tail of ad money, businesses with smaller budget for ads. Google has this market locked tight, anyone can start an AdWords campaign, and the truth is that everybody does.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook makes money from advertisement, but they will never (in its current incarnation) match Google's offers: AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Optimizer, etc.

What Facebook has to do to connect advertisers and consumers is so much more complicated than Google. Build a "social graph", find their preferences, match with their friends, plus putting their users into buying mode. BUT, if delivered, it's way more powerful, because the product has been proven with your circle of friends and with stuff that you have actually said you like (Facebook knows a lot about everyone).

People don't search facebook much. If anything, facebook is hostile to search, seemingly by design.

The secret of ad dollars is that not all visitors are equal. People who use google search are already looking for something, often something to buy, such users are the most susceptible to ads because the ads can actually be helpful. In contrast, ads inserted into the UI of a social networking site are far less valuable. In order for facebook to compete with google they'd have to reinvent themselves substantially.

I like how his cool confidence stands in contrast to Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer's aggression. Notice how generous he is with compliments for Google's competitors.

Probably easier to do when you're on top. If he seemed anything but confident it would raise a fair few flags (media would be all over it too).

can somebody explain how being on facebook stops people from searching on google?

In MBA world there is this somewhat confused notion that if Facebook's search engine is powered by Bing then people who use Facebook a lot will naturally/organically start using their search (ie Bing) more.

The halo effect.

I don't think it really plays out because who searches in Facebook, and your browser search box is always present.

I guess, the more time they spend on Facebook, the less time they spend googling?

Two different activities. If I want a map from 123 Fake St. to 742 Evergreen Terrace, I am going to use Google Maps, not Facebook. If I want to know how many degrees Fahrenheit 100 Celcius is, I'm not going to ask Facebook, I'm going to ask Google.

If I want to look at drunken pictures of my friends, though, then I will definitely use Facebook. I use each tool for what it's good for, and I think most other people do the same because it comes naturally.

(I hate structured socialization, though, so I don't use Facebook. But I can accept that I'm abnormal in that respect.)

Very good interview. I think it's smart that he is not underestimating Bing. Mr. Schmidt also has great comments clarifying Google's position on the net neutrality announcement with Verizon (about 12:00 mark).

Agreed. I also found it a very informative video

It makes a lot of sense, android and phones are a complement to their business. Android is simply a way of reducing the cost for producing more phones. Facebook while large doesn't pose a serious threat to "organizing the worlds information" once Facebook sells their social graph information Google will simply purchase it and use it to further optimize search results. Neither Facebook, nor Apple are real competitors to Google's core operations. Google is a much more serious threat to Apple with Android than Apple is to Google with iPhone. Facebook and Apple ARE threats to mind share, but that pales in comparison to a threat to the bottom line.

Bing IS a threat also because Microsoft has a large stake in Facebook and could ostensibly find itself with preferential rights to Facebook's social graph. If Bing could integrate the graph into results first it could give them huge search advantages. Traffic from Bing also costs about half of what it does from Google.

I felt really annoyed by the interviewer. It seemed like along with information gathering, he was equally interested in creating controversy.

Did you notice how, instead of asking Schmidt questions, he posed contentious statements? "CERTAINLY Google must be scared of Facebook!" He did that with everything. Look how Mr Schmidt scrunches his face at about 2:00 when the interviewer tells him how he must be feeling.

To put it another way, when I hear "google is a search company", I take it to mean "google's business depends on searching the internet" instead of "people use google to search the internet" - the former being much wider in scope than the latter.

Facebook and Apple? Where'd they come up with that one?

I always think of Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ

It's funny, in my mind I always think Eric Schmidt looks like Egon from the Ghostbusters, and whenever I see his picture I always think to myself, 'Who is this guy?!'