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[News] New Measurements Widen Google's Lead, Yahoo Tries to Fight Back Back with Open Source

  • Subject: [News] New Measurements Widen Google's Lead, Yahoo Tries to Fight Back Back with Open Source
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:45:54 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Searching for Web Numbers

,----[ Quote ]
| Last month, when Web-measurement company comScore Inc. released its U.S. 
| search numbers for June, Google Inc. held less than half of the market among 
| the top five search engines, and had less than twice the market share of 
| Yahoo Inc. But today, comScore announced it was revising its methodology for 
| counting up Web searches. When the numbers were revised, Google’s June market 
| share shot up to 54.9%, and its lead over Yahoo increased by nearly seven 
| percentage points to 31.1%.      
`----

http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/searching-for-web-numbers-172/?mod=yahoo_hs

Yahoo Challenge to Google Has Roots in Open Source

,----[ Quote ]
| If you want to get your hands on an open source version of some of Google's 
| core technologies, maybe you should ask Yahoo. 
`----

http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2173262,00.asp

Microsoft has meanwhile resorted to gaming the system. Number-tweaking is
Microsoft's strength.


Related:

How Microsoft Clubs to Search Gains

,----[ Quote ]
| We checked with Hitwise, and they explained that June gains include “searches 
| automatically generated from a promotion on club.live.com,” up to June 9,  
| 2007. After that they stopped counting the data. 
`----

http://gigaom.com/2007/07/27/how-microsoft-clubs-to-search-gains/


Tracking Internet Use Remains Difficult

,----[ Quote ]
| For example, this month Nielsen said search-engine queries for No. 3-ranked 
| Microsoft Corp. jumped about 80 percent in June, a curious development for a 
| search engine that had been continuously losing market share.  
| 
| Microsoft said the gains were the result of a word game promotion, in which 
| players had to form words out of a jumble of letters. As part of the game, 
| Microsoft's search engine automatically hunted for Web pages that contained 
| the word being guessed at.   
| 
| The promotion raises the question of whether these clicks were the result of 
| using automated means, and therefore shouldn't be counted. 
| 
| Nielsen product manager Scott Ross said the company sees no need to change 
| the June search-engine rankings. Yet, he conceded that critics -- including 
| Yahoo, operator of the world's second most popular search engine -- may also 
| have a point about Microsoft using questionable means to spark the surge in 
| popularity.    
`----

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070725/tracking_internet_usage.html?.v=1


Microsoft’s Club Live fiasco

,----[ Quote ]
| People were using the macro on more than 3 games at a time, on more than 2 
| accounts at a time, why Microsoft didn’t pick up on the fact that in the 
| first few days some people had accumulated enough for 3 Zunes each is beyond 
| us. Some were lucky, others, not so much.   
|
| [...]
| 
| So far no one has been banned from using their accounts, which they needed to 
| sign up, probably because they did not break any laws, or probably because 
| Microsoft didn’t want that hassle and liked their new found traffic.  
`----

http://www.blogthe.net/2007/07/16/microsofts-club-live-fiasco/


Bots Helped To Boost Microsoft Live Search Gains

,----[ Quote ]
| In a blog post, Compete analyst Steve Willis attributed Microsoft's 
| search gains to prizes awarded to users participating in Live Search 
| Club, which features games that post queries to Microsoft's search 
| engine.
| 
| [...]
| 
| Microsoft is essentially being DDoSed by thousands of people hundreds 
| of times per minute, but they are mistaking this rise in traffic for 
| people actually using Live Search."
`----

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201001092


Is that 1 Million Zunes Shipped or Sold?

,----[ Quote ]
| Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, says he believes 
| that Microsoft could have shipped 1 million Zunes. "They have not sold 1 
| million players through nor do I believe they will by the end of June," he 
| said. "That number is likely to be around 750,000."
|
| Microsoft's modest sales goal--at least compared to more than 100 
| million iPods--may or may not be in sight, depending on whether
| that number is shipped or sold.
`----

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/games_consumer/is_that_1_million_shipped_or_sold.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535


Rumor: Is Microsoft cheating their [Xbox 360] sales?

,----[ Quote ]
| All in all, there are some sobering thoughts with very broad implications
| for any company if that were true. That being said, would you buy
| from Microsoft, or any other company for that matter, if they were
| cheating their sales?
`----

http://xbox360.qj.net/Rumor-Is-Microsoft-cheating-their-sales-/pg/49/aid/89595


Uh-Oh, Vista! PC Sales Levels Are Normal

,----[ Quote ]
| "Vista hasn't been a catalyst for PC sales," he said. "Looking at the
| weekly data, there really isn't anything happening with sales that
| has anything to do with Vista."
`----

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/oh_oh_vista_pc_sales_levels_are_normal.html


,----[ Quote ]
| "This is a relic of old-line consumer products companies like Philip
| Morris, or fraudsters like Miniscribe who literally shipped bricks in
| lieu of disk drives to hit sales targets.
| 
| [...]
| 
| Channel stuffing is the business practice where a company or a sales
| force within a company inflates its sales figures by forcing more
| products through a distribution channel than the channel is capable
| of selling to the world at large.
| 
| [...]
| 
| We have a game we play around the office here with Microsoft press
| releases. The game is, "Find the words that make the headline true."
| It's not always easy.
| 
| [...]
| 
| Sony, like Microsoft, announces units shipped, not actually sold.
| This allows both companies to advertise sales numbers based on how
| many units they can force retailers to accept, not on how many units
| customers actually buy; both have considerable market power to push
| excess unsold inventory into the channel."
`----

http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2007/04/microsoft_phili.html


Open Source Fights Back

,----[ Quote ]
| Question: The OpenSourceParking.com announcement cites a Netcraft
| report, which found that GoDaddy.com's migration from Linux to Windows
| caused Apache to lose server share. Was this event the sole impetus
| for OpenSourceParking.com?
|
| Perens: Not the first. It's part of a continuing behavior pattern by
| Microsoft that I think it's fair to call "dirty fighting." GoDaddy was
| using Apache (I assume on Linux) because it was a great technical
| solution. They didn't switch to IIS on Windows Server 2003 for any
| technical reason. The switch was accompanied by a press release by
| GoDaddy, containing Microsoft promotional language. Now, I've changed
| many servers from one thing to another, but I've never made a press
| release about it. GoDaddy wouldn't be doing that unless Microsoft had
| offered them something valuable in return. There has been talk in the
| domain business that Microsoft has been offering the large domain
| registries a wad of cash to switch their parked sites. There is no
| other reason to do this than to influence the Netcraft figures.
`----

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=15108

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