I don’t want to be unnecessarily Microsoft bashing here, but take a look at these two identical web searches on Google and Live Search:
First, Google (click to enlarge).
Now the same search on Windows Live Search (or whatever it’s called now):
Notice that in the Windows Live Search one, there is absolutely no mention of free software as in the freedom type. Not even a scrap of evidence that the FSF exist.
Now, either Windows Live Search is worse than I originally thought, or there’s some kind of conspiracy thing going on here. I hope for Microsoft’s sake it’s the former.
If it were the latter, I would be very worried.
It’s not Google being quirky either, Yahoo also list the FSF as the top result for the same query.
Do the searches yourself – on Live Search, Google and Yahoo.
UPDATE: turns out this only happens when Live Search is set to weight UK results (like when you come from a UK-based IP address through Live.com). More info.
That is strange, I’ve just done a search for “free software” and the first result was the FSF, although according to thie site I was logged in, maybe there is a conspiracy!
FSF is the first result for me on Live Search.
Got it.
If you bounce through live.com from a UK IP address, it presumably prioritises UK results and the search for some reason (still unknown) excludes the FSF.
If you go to search.msn.com (or bounce through a non-UK IP), it sets the mkt value in the URL to mkt=en-us, so no UK weighting on results. Then it returns the FSF as the first hit.
For privacy reasons, when I posted the link to do the search, I stripped out all URL key/value pairs except the actual query, which removes the UK weighting and the FSF comes it at number 1. Here’s the the original search link.
I guess I should have checked my URLs carefully before posting 🙂
Still, it leaves an unanswered question – why no FSF in the UK?