MSR Consulting TechnoBlog

Microsoft employees don’t eat their dogfood when it comes to search?

June 22nd, 2006

It seems that Microsoft employees tend to use Google for their web searching instead of their own search site. As a cynic when it comes to statistics though I tend to wonder whether or not there isn’t more to this story.

For example, did anyone check to insure that google or yahoo dont restrict employee access to competitive search sites? Was the quality of the visits evaluated to insure that Microsoft employees were actually browsing the web vs. doing competitive intelligence? At a gut reaction level my belief is that Microsoft employees are using google instead of their own search engine. On the other hand Microsoft is full of tech geeks just like me, and googles interface tends to lend itself to us tech geeks. We like bare, clean, interfaces that don’t waste any bandwidth whereas MSN seems to target the average web browser by offering a lot of content on its main search page. Could it be that MSN just isn’t targeted to the kind of users that are Microsoft employees? Enough babbling, article link and excerpt are below.

Most Microsoft Workers Search With Google – Technology News by TechWeb

An overwhelming majority of Microsoft employees use rival Google to search the Internet, bloggers and a Web metrics company claimed Tuesday.Andrew Hitchcock, a 20-year-old student at the University of Washington, got the ball rolling by posting Google Analytics statistics on visitors to his Web site. Of the users originating from Microsoft’s domain who reached Hitchcock’s site via a search engine, 80 percent came through Google. Only 20 percent used a Microsoft search engine (either MSN’s or the Live.com’s).

“Do companies drink their own Kool-Aid? (or eat their own dog food, depending on which company culture you follow),” Hitchcock asked on his site.

Microsoft may not, but Google and Yahoo workers apparently do; employees of those California-based companies were far more loyal to their own search engines. Of the Google visitors, 100 percent used their own search engine; 64 percent of Yahoo personnel used that portal’s search engine (the remainder called up Google).

Entry Filed under: General Technology, Internet, Internet Business Tools