[vox] [fwd] Is the MSN search engine being used in the battle to kill Linux?

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004, Bill Kendrick wrote:

> 
> Wow, this is bizarre.

That is one way to put it.

Dazed and confused is another.

> ----- Forwarded message from Tom Adelstein <tadelste at charter.net> -----
> 
> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:02:07 -0500
> From: Tom Adelstein <tadelste at charter.net>
> Subject: [school-discuss] LXer: Is the MSN search engine being used in the battle to kill Linux?
> 
> 
> http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/23328/index.html

Is the above link the "this article" referred to below? If so, it doesn't
address either the problem or the fix.

> Hello,
> 
> I could not track the source of old content showing up at the top of
> google searches on my name. According to the number of hits I
> generate, I have a significant mind share on Google. Finally, we
> tracked down the problem and found that MSNbot was hammering and
> multiplying links old and irrelevant content, pushing that above
> recent articles about Linux in Government, case studies, etc.

Still unclear... is MSNBot searching Google, and is Google allowing those
searches to affect article ratings? I was under the impression that Google
ratings were based on web links found by their own bot.  Is Google's bot
getting confused by some tarpit created by MSN's search engine?  Have you
contacted Google (they devote a significant amount of time to identifying
ways to prevent this type of gaming of their system).

> I also found other open source advocates on the web trying to find out
> why they couldn't stop MSNbot using a standard robots.txt directive in
> the root directory of their web sites. Some of the complaints related
> to increased fees for bandwidth.

Hmm... Microsoft ignoring industry-standard semantics? I am boggled. ;)

> In this article, I discuss the issue. I will also post the fix we
> discovered by accident. BTW, a standard redirect will not work.

Oh, really? Inquiring minds want to know more.  Would, perhaps, an
appropriately-designed firewall rule do the trick?

> I'm not very pleased to discover Microsoft is manipulating the content
> on the Internet.

Sheesh! Isn't this a free country?  Next thing, you'll want to regulate
the internet. ;)

Seriously... the tone here seems rather whiny.  He should announce the
issue and suggest a couple of options. (And stay on topic... Sun as
"better guy than Microsoft" in the article above is wandering a bit.)
Blocking access for bad internet citizens through various forms of peer
pressure is the traditional response to their unwelcome behaviors.

> Tom Adelstein
> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----

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