This is too blanket a statement that Dare Obasanjo made, Robert:

Absolutely 100% true. Bloggers will hype up Google stuff over Microsoft’s stuff almost everytime. Why?

Although Scoble does use a question mark in the title: Bloggers have a double standard when it comes to Google vs. Microsoft?

My immediate reaction? No way. Scoble lists his reasons why he thinks it is this way and I agree with him for the most part, but I put the light on this blog to try and answer that question below.

Equitable coverage?
I like to cover tech stuff from all companies in the Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (GYM) bag, although it seems like there are currently more things I can write about from Google and Yahoo than I can from Microsoft for two main reasons.

1. Microsoft doesn’t ship as many products/services that I’m interested in as Google and Yahoo. I’m sure on a pure numbers basis Microsoft actually ships many, many more products/services than Google but the keyword is “interested.” I could write generic release posts for every Windows Live offering but those are boring. I need to feel something strong, either positive or negative, to write about something or it’s just as boring to read as write.
2. I don’t have an NDA from Google. I’ve gone up to Redmond many times over the last three plus years this blog has been in existence and wish I could have written about some of the things I’ve seen, tested and tried. A binding, legal agreement has kept me quiet. This doesn’t mean I will stop beta testing for Microsoft, no way. It means that I feel a bit handicapped in my enthusiasm because of these NDAs. I wish they’d give us something from these beta sessions that we could write about. This would be one area where Microsoft could get a lot more press, but they’d lose some competitive edge if they weren’t careful about sharing too many early details.

In fact, there are a couple Live-related services I’d love to write about right now, but have agreed in writing not to do so.

I own GOOGle stock, something I mention almost every time I write about them. Something I do as a disclaimer for new readers and hope existing ones don’t tire of the redundancy. I also own Yahoo stock. I don’t own any Microsoft stock and have no intention of buying any until they figure out what they are doing. When they can’t even make up their mind about what domain to keep or call MSN Spaces (although they say it won’t change now), I have a hard time as an investor trusting my money with them. Still, I write about Microsoft more than Yahoo, so there isn’t any financial reason behind the coverage.

Testing the amount of GYM coverage by posts
Overall I think my coverage at Hmm has been fairly balanced but I wanted to put the past posts here to a simple test that anybody reading could verify. I just did a Hmm search through the 3,576 published posts to see how many posts where Google and/or Microsoft have been mentioned. I then did a few additional queries. You can run all these searches yourself and read the past posts in the archives. I didn’t link up all the queries, but they are easy enough to enter into the Hmm search.

Google: 694 / 3576 (19.4%)
Microsoft: 591 / 3576 (16.5%)

I think both get mentioned about the same amount though if you counted the actual number of mentions in a single post through all posts. Used to mention Yahoo a lot but 2006 has not been a good year for Yahoo.

Yahoo: 403
AOL: 114

Hmm queries for products
*233 - Tablet PC
*194 - Xbox
95 - Microsoft Office
66 - Excel
55 - Word 2003
32 - Office 2003
28 - Office 2007
19 - Word 2007
9 - Google Spreadsheets
9 - FrontPage
8 - Writely
4 - PowerPoint

* Three categories exist for Microsoft products — .NET (only 2 posts though), Xbox 360 and Tablet PC — out of the 44 categories at Hmm. There are no specific Google product categories listed or broken out here.

Hmm queries for people
Robert Scoble: 73
Bill Gates: 62
Adam Curry: 23
Matt Cutts: 12
Larry Page: 11
Dare Obasanjo: 9
Sergey Brin: 6

Looks like no double standard here to me
Overall, these numbers only show how many times these people, places and things have been mentioned, not the content of the posts. Without an exhaustive post-by-post study I believe I’ve been just as critical of Google products/services as Microsoft’s. I’m probably a little more critical toward Microsoft than Google on the whole because I dislike a lot of what Microsoft has done, particularly in their many Windows bugs and problems. This serious Outlook issue comes immediately to mind and one that I hope has been fixed in Outlook 2007.

At the same time, Google has annoyed me with some things too like their book copying/printing saga, they rarely release a beta that scales to the need and that they seem to be a bit of a one trick pony (ad-supported free services) when competing against others. They do have some pay for play products like the Google Mini and it sounds like this new Google for Your Domains is going to have a subscription element.

Bottom line is there are products, services and procedures both new and existing from Google and Microsoft and this year to a much lesser extent Yahoo that I’m excited about and have something to say. I write about the things that interest and fascinate me first and that I’d like to share with readers and think will make you go hmm. This doesn’t mean I write about everything each company is doing, nor do I even try. I don’t have a built-in bias for Google, Yahoo or Microsoft where I will slant every piece one way or another.

In fact, it’s entirely possible a year from now Microsoft will have higher numbers than Google because they will have both Vista and Office out by then. There will be a lot to write about in the coming year if Microsoft ships as promised.

It’s a long standing and valid criticism that Microsoft needs to ship more products faster. To an extent they are trying hard to change this with their Windows Live products and energy. It will be interesting to see where things are a year from now. Maybe it’s best in the meantime that Microsoft employees like Dare give us lists of all the products/servics that have shipped and should be writing about. I’d gladly go through a list and write about what I’ve missed that’s interesting.

It’s harder to write about something we can’t see and experience, you know? I do write about some rumored product stuff here, but much prefer to write about things I can link to and readers can try out and judge for themselves.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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