3 ms·

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it

30 points by vaksel 17y ago

neilc 17y ago
Actually, Microsoft uses Hadoop. But that's only because it recently purchased the semantic search startup Powerset. Not only is open-source slow to reach the Microsoft back-end, but so is, well, the cloud. Actually, Microsoft's Dryad project is significantly more sophisticated than Hadoop. Using Hadoop is not exactly a compelling example of how technically sophisticated your organization is or how much you utilize "the cloud", anyway.
trezor 17y ago
To be honest I don't think google is being entirely fair here. Google provides me with a service. In that respect I don't care how that service is provided and on what technology that is based. It could be a giga-cluster of retrofitted Commodore 64s thrown out in orbit to save on real estate costs, kept in place by a reinforced fiber back down to Google HQ. As long as the service works, I wouldn't care less. This gives google complete freedom in their implementation, so they pretty much built up their own infrastructure from scratch, for a very specific purpose. Microsoft on the other side delivers software, general purpose platforms which you can deploy and build your own solutions on. Granted, they got the whole internet thing a little late, but I can't blame them for trying to exploit the technology they already posses instead of ditching it all and starting from scratch. With Microsoft's solutions, I know I can make them do whatever I want, on pretty much any x86 hardware, and I know it will work. "Google OS", for a lack of better name, I doubt would be particularly useful for the general public. I don't think it's surprising for a platform tailored for one specific goal to perform better than general purpose platforms in that specific area, but that hardly means that the other platform is worthless.
- jaydub 17y ago
  I understood the article to be focusing on Microsoft vs. Google in terms of their approach to the same set of challenges in the web sphere. ("Google has questioned Microsoft's entire approach to online infrastructure") In this respect, it would seem that Google's "horizontal" infrastructure stack makes it more adept at handling web-scale problems across multiple domains (versus Microsoft's "vertical" problem-by-problem approach).
  - DocSavage 17y ago
    Agreed. This debate was in the context of cloud computing. After working with Google App Engine and their datastore API, I more fully appreciate the willpower required by their developers. Some queries that would be relatively easy (and not super-scalable) have to be reformulated so computation is done on write and not on read. An example is writing an app that uses ranking and decay: http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/overheard.html http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/overheard.html There's a different set of tricks to learn, so in the context of cloud computing, if you aren't willing to confine your approaches to those amenable to truly distributed cloud computing, you're not addressing the basic problems. Of course, there will be apps that can work effectively without web-scale, but are you talking about the "cloud" at that point or just hosted apps?
ntoshev 17y ago
Is the talk available online or at least, is there alternative coverage? The Register conveys the message "Google thinks Microsoft infrastruture sucks", but they don't seem to understand the arguments (or at least, I can't understand their coverage without guessing a lot).
rbanffy 17y ago
Congratulations for Microsoft. They are currently in the #2 in the four step Gandhi scale: 1) they ignore you 2) they laugh at you 3) they fight you 4) you win Let's hope they never get beyond 2.
- echair 17y ago
  They're walking down those steps, though, not up. The next step is 1, not 3.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    I genuinely hope you are right
    - kyro 17y ago
      Why?
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        Because Microsoft's monopolies are hurting competition and the evolution of our practices. We certainly don't need them pushing a new search engine through MSN Messenger or Windows updates.
        ori_b 17y ago
        No, that's Google that has a search monopoly at the moment, and seriously needs a challenger.
        rbanffy 17y ago
        Perhaps, but is Microsoft, a convicted monopoly abuser, the right challenger? Microsoft has already a powerful grip on the whole industry (why do you think multi-processors and 64-bit computing took that long to catch?) for us to feel too comfortable with them gaining more power. Google has a monopoly on search, but Microsoft has a couple at least as valuable as Google's.
miloshh 17y ago
Of course, Google's infrastructure is great, whether MapReduce or GFS. However, if Bing gets to a point where their search results are clearly better, then Google will be in trouble, and no amount of screaming "we have a better infrastructure!" will help. Users want the best results, and that's why Google originally won against other search engines. I don't know if that's ever going to happen. Probably not, but I would not bet on it.

30 points by vaksel 17y ago

neilc 17y ago

Actually, Microsoft uses Hadoop. But that's only because it recently purchased the semantic search startup Powerset. Not only is open-source slow to reach the Microsoft back-end, but so is, well, the cloud. Actually, Microsoft's Dryad project is significantly more sophisticated than Hadoop. Using Hadoop is not exactly a compelling example of how technically sophisticated your organization is or how much you utilize "the cloud", anyway.

trezor 17y ago

To be honest I don't think google is being entirely fair here. Google provides me with a service. In that respect I don't care how that service is provided and on what technology that is based. It could be a giga-cluster of retrofitted Commodore 64s thrown out in orbit to save on real estate costs, kept in place by a reinforced fiber back down to Google HQ. As long as the service works, I wouldn't care less. This gives google complete freedom in their implementation, so they pretty much built up their own infrastructure from scratch, for a very specific purpose. Microsoft on the other side delivers software, general purpose platforms which you can deploy and build your own solutions on. Granted, they got the whole internet thing a little late, but I can't blame them for trying to exploit the technology they already posses instead of ditching it all and starting from scratch. With Microsoft's solutions, I know I can make them do whatever I want, on pretty much any x86 hardware, and I know it will work. "Google OS", for a lack of better name, I doubt would be particularly useful for the general public. I don't think it's surprising for a platform tailored for one specific goal to perform better than general purpose platforms in that specific area, but that hardly means that the other platform is worthless.

jaydub 17y ago
I understood the article to be focusing on Microsoft vs. Google in terms of their approach to the same set of challenges in the web sphere. ("Google has questioned Microsoft's entire approach to online infrastructure") In this respect, it would seem that Google's "horizontal" infrastructure stack makes it more adept at handling web-scale problems across multiple domains (versus Microsoft's "vertical" problem-by-problem approach).
- DocSavage 17y ago
  Agreed. This debate was in the context of cloud computing. After working with Google App Engine and their datastore API, I more fully appreciate the willpower required by their developers. Some queries that would be relatively easy (and not super-scalable) have to be reformulated so computation is done on write and not on read. An example is writing an app that uses ranking and decay: http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/overheard.html http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/overheard.html There's a different set of tricks to learn, so in the context of cloud computing, if you aren't willing to confine your approaches to those amenable to truly distributed cloud computing, you're not addressing the basic problems. Of course, there will be apps that can work effectively without web-scale, but are you talking about the "cloud" at that point or just hosted apps?

ntoshev 17y ago

Is the talk available online or at least, is there alternative coverage? The Register conveys the message "Google thinks Microsoft infrastruture sucks", but they don't seem to understand the arguments (or at least, I can't understand their coverage without guessing a lot).

rbanffy 17y ago

Congratulations for Microsoft. They are currently in the #2 in the four step Gandhi scale: 1) they ignore you 2) they laugh at you 3) they fight you 4) you win Let's hope they never get beyond 2.

echair 17y ago
They're walking down those steps, though, not up. The next step is 1, not 3.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  I genuinely hope you are right
  - kyro 17y ago
    Why?
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      Because Microsoft's monopolies are hurting competition and the evolution of our practices. We certainly don't need them pushing a new search engine through MSN Messenger or Windows updates.
      - ori_b 17y ago
        No, that's Google that has a search monopoly at the moment, and seriously needs a challenger.
        rbanffy 17y ago
        Perhaps, but is Microsoft, a convicted monopoly abuser, the right challenger? Microsoft has already a powerful grip on the whole industry (why do you think multi-processors and 64-bit computing took that long to catch?) for us to feel too comfortable with them gaining more power. Google has a monopoly on search, but Microsoft has a couple at least as valuable as Google's.

miloshh 17y ago

Of course, Google's infrastructure is great, whether MapReduce or GFS. However, if Bing gets to a point where their search results are clearly better, then Google will be in trouble, and no amount of screaming "we have a better infrastructure!" will help. Users want the best results, and that's why Google originally won against other search engines. I don't know if that's ever going to happen. Probably not, but I would not bet on it.