April 06, 2006 | Thursday

John Battelle interviews Gary Flake

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Search Engines |Microsoft |Search Expertise |Search Research |Search Technology

This is one that may be strictly for true search geeks (we have plenty of those around here!), but check out this gem from the author of The Search: John Battelle goes back and forth with Gary Flake, veteran of Overture, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s research labs. There’s lots of talk of search architecture, algorithms, and UIs, but this quotation on the culture at Microsoft is also worth noting:

I don’t think MS is particularly clear in how it communicates things to the outside world. I also think that MS often makes mistakes by trying—wait for it—too hard. Specifically, instead of doing one thing and nailing it, we’ll sometimes do six slightly duplicative things in parallel—each being slightly below critical mass—which can create confusion inside and outside of MS until we’ve had time to sort things out better. So, yes, I get frustrated at times. So it goes. For me, frustration is a biological signal that means I should try harder, which is a good and helpful thing.

Some might say that trying smarter rather than harder might be the way to go, but it’s an interesting insight into one of the most experienced search researchers in the world. Read the whole thing.