Date:  Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:42:59 -0300
From:  "Mark Dodel" <madodel at ptdprolog.net>
Subject:  [VOICENWS] OT: A Finger in the Eye of Microsoft


From: The Appraising Microsoft mailing list
http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/am-info 

[Moderator's note: This is not my idea, I'm just passing it on for anyone
that might find it interesting.  Yes its off topic for this list and is so
noted in thesubject, so if it annoys you, just delete it, but you
shouldn't be reading it anyway.  ;-)  It is however a small way to stick
it to M$ in their latest scheme to assimilate and control yet another part
of the internet.]:


If you're a techie, like me, you've probably noticed that Microsoft has
been making a lot of noise about competing with Google these days. Yahoo,
too, has been active. In general, the search engine space is starting to
heat up again after several years of google-dominance. And if you're
running a website, for yourself or for someone else, you've probably seen
the Microsoft search bot in your server logs. At least, you have if you
pay attention to your server logs and Microsoft can find your site yet.

Now, don't get me wrong, competition is a good thing... but competition
from Microsoft is not. We all know that competition from Microsoft
involves things like "cutting off their air supply" and aggressively
wielding their desktop muscle and huge cash reserves to get a foothold in
the new market. Google's an established player, but it's facing a fair
amount of competition and the current IPO can perhaps be taken as a hint
that they are vulnerable -- that is, sufficiently in need of cash that it
might affect their ability to respond to new players.

So it looks like Microsoft is trying to extend its overbearing self into
the search engine space, and the target at the top of the list is Google.
Now, as a Linux user, I understand two things about this situation: first,
Microsoft is not my friend; and second, Google has been a very good
friend.

So here's what I have to say: from now on, the Microsoft search bot will
be specifically excluded from my web sites via the robots.txt file. The
following entry should accomplish this:

 User-agent: msnbot/*
 Disallow: /

What that means is that I won't allow Microsoft's search engine to index
my websites. Google can, yahoo can... but Microsoft can't. It's the
website owner's version of an invisible boycott. And if enough people do
it, the Microsoft search engine will find itself unable to search large
segments of the web. And that means that people who notice this won't want
to search using Microsoft's search engine.

-----

The full article is on my weblog, here:
http://matthew.infodancer.org/weblog/entry/103.jsp




--
 Warpstock 2004, Denver, Colorado, October 21 - 24, 2004 
http://www.warpstock.org
 Warpstock Europe 2004, Arnhem, The Netherlands, November 26-28th, 2004
http://www.warpstock.net

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