Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
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Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
1–10 of 126 posts
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#2At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons:
1) it's Microsoft
2) it's not better than Google
I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft to power users.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#3At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft…
Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#4What numbers matter here? Usage? Traffic? Referrals? This article makes it seem like revenue?
Just for the heck of it I just grepped the log on my one server. It's got about 200 different domains, mostly smaller sites. About 600k hits today. ~5,000 referrals from Google, ~200 from Bing. Strangely enough there seems to be about 11,000 hits from Bingbot and only about half that from Googlebot crawlers.
I'd be interested in hearing how those numbers compare to other sites.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#5I use Bing whenever I'm dissatisfied with Google's results. Bing has always returned worse results in this case. YMMV.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#6At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft…
I don't use it because I am turned off by the name, strange I know. It's a hard word to speak and it is a meaningless word.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#7I use DDG as my default at home, Google at work and Bing on my phone. My main complaint is the inability to restrict searches by date from their mobile version.
As others mention the name is just godawful. Chanandlerbong.com would be an improvement.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#8At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft…
Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.
Try searching for 'hoogle'. What I want is this: https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ - not the website I am already on typing a search query in to!
tbf, I don't feel the same way as the GP. But this search always struck me as crazy in the past.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#9Bing does not support literal searches. This is a dealbreaker for me, particularly since their language models aren't very precise if at all employed.
I believe this is why many developers will find Google is a lot better. A lot of our searches are very specific error messages, for example.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#10As mentioned in the article, and I recall from when I was more heavily invested in the stock market, Bing cost Microsoft billions of dollars every year in lost revenue. We all knew that. But this article goes on to say that it's hard to figure how much Bing brings in and they are only going by what Microsoft says and Microsoft says it's "profitable".
Well, profitable could mean by a dollar, and I don't see any shouting from the rooftops by Microsoft. I also don't see, as someone else brings up, much in the way of their presence in my server logs either.
What really gets me are all the articles that appear on MSN but really turn out to be searches with Bing. Don't know if they still do that. I don't use MSN either.