Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#1

Post by betimd » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

We all see the naturality that Google developed on search while this is missing on Bing and other search engines.

Knowing the fact of Microsoft development abilities, money the have and infrastructure (Azure) I'm very surprised how they are so behind in terms of features (search, NLP, context, etc) with Google.

Anyone shares same opinion?

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#2

Post by gostsamo » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

Search is the core of Google. The best engineers of the company are centered around it. Microsoft has other priorities and they can either invest billions to just be even with someone who was their first or they can have a search engine that is good enough for everyone who does not like Google.

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#3

Post by ffpip » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

Lots of google's search improvements are from browsing data from Chrome. This can help in freshness of pages, adding unknown URLs, determining how much a page is trending/popular

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#4

Post by jpttsn » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

I don’t like Google’s search results very much. What features am I not seeing?

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#5

Post by strikelaserclaw » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

Are we sure that we aren't biased towards google due to familiarity? I started using google a long time ago before bing was even a thing and now I know that i use google mainly due to inertia. The weird thing is over the year my searches have gotten much more narrower, and i usually end up viewing results from reddit, amazon, stackoverflow and a hand full of megacorps. I'm really not even sure how hard search is when most of the information people want to see is concentrated in a few websites. Google used to be a lot more useful back in the day when i would scour page after page looking for information from obscure one off websites.

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#6

Post by muzani » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

Is it? Bing works just great for me. A lot of Google's results have been inaccurate lately, mostly from too much SEO manipulation.

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#7

Post by codingdave » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

No, I liked Google's results better 10 years ago. They are trying too hard to guess what I am asking for, and sometimes I find it difficult to look for a variety of answers because I get the one "right" answer, posted on a couple dozen pages. Some searches turn up so many of their new widgets that I don't even feel like I get a page of results... just canned questions and answers and widgets. Other searches give me 2 pages from a single site (pinterest, reddit, etc.), or most often, multiple pages of SEO-optimized content from people trying to flip Wordpress blogs for profit. If searching for reviews on retail products, I almost always ignore the first few pages of results on Google to try to find real reviews by real people.

I prefer search engines that are just search engines, and give me a basic list of results that I can judge for myself.

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#8

Post by s5ma6n » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

I recently gave Bing a chance after DDG being so slow and now I am quite happy with the result quality and presentation of Bing. Give it a try!

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#9

Post by yostrovs » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

s5ma6n wrote: post #8

I recently gave Bing a chance after DDG being so slow and now I am quite happy with the result quality and presentation of Bing. Give it a try!

I also gave their news section a chance to compare to Google news and it seems vastly superior in content quantity. Simply search "Russia" for example and you will find a lot more stories than the main headlines in Google News. You will find out local things happening in that country, not just what Putin is up to.

Re: Ask HN: Why Bing (and others) is so behind Google in features?

#10

Post by gpapilion » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

I think the identity of google as a search company continues to drive innovation. They have a deep desire to provide you the exact answer you’re looking for.

Microsoft is an enterprise sales company, who is driven to sell product. They are capable of delivering a world class search product, but it’s not the same priority for them.