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Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

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Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#71

Post by onion2k »

nol13 wrote: post #47
s3r3nity wrote: post #44

1) I always recommend to my friends to give Cortana more than a 5 second consideration - especially if they're Windows users. Since Cortana primarily uses Bing, there's always a hesitation - but it's surprisingly fun and an effective AI "assistant." I'm still working on understanding the Office 365 capabilities, as I discover some cool ones here and there Example that blew away a colleague at work using a Surface Pro…

I've really wanted to try Cortana since getting a Windows 10 laptop, but it won't let me turn it on without giving full access to search, email, credit card no, SSN, calendar, etc. Oh well. Why do I need to give it access to my search history and email to be able to find excel functions for me?

Why do I need to give it access to my search history and email to be able to find excel functions for me?

You should think of your personal data as a valuable asset that you can use to pay for things. Now you know why you need to give Cortana access to them.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#72

Post by onion2k »

ac29 wrote: post #46
dannylandau wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that measure, you earn about $2.7 a month, and that is sufficient for you to use Bing over Google!?

Again, the vast majority of the time, the Bing results are fine. I think I waste maybe 10 seconds a day re-searching things. ~$0.10 for ~10 seconds (approx $360/hour) is more than my job pays.

How do you factor in the cost to your reputation when people see you using Bing?

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#73

Post by thoman23 »

lmmlzxx wrote: post #68
izendejas wrote: post #9

Bing 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.

I'm not knowledgeable about Bing, but Google doesn't support literal searches either if you mean that in the sense of exact string matching.

Of course Google supports exact string matching. Just put your term in double quotes.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#74

Post by sz4kerto »

onion2k wrote: post #71
nol13 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've really wanted to try Cortana since getting a Windows 10 laptop, but it won't let me turn it on without giving full access to search, email, credit card no, SSN, calendar, etc. Oh well. Why do I need to give it access to my search history and email to be able to find excel functions for me?

Why do I need to give it access to my search history and email to be able to find excel functions for me? You should think of your personal data as a valuable asset that you can use to pay for things. Now you know why you need to give Cortana access to them.

> Now you know why you need to give Cortana access to them.

Do you think this is the sole reason behind that?

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#75

Post by kyriakos »

one of my issues with bing is that its primarily targeted to US. most of the cool features are not available internationally. on the other hand google seems to have localized content everywhere (even though Google Now is again not available in my country)

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#76

Post by onion2k »

sz4kerto wrote: post #74
onion2k wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I need to give it access to my search history and email to be able to find excel functions for me? You should think of your personal data as a valuable asset that you can use to pay for things. Now you know why you need to give Cortana access to them.

> Now you know why you need to give Cortana access to them. Do you think this is the sole reason behind that?

In the specific case that nol13 was talking about (using Bing to search for an Excel function), yes.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#77

Post by kyriakos »

onion2k wrote: post #72
ac29 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the vast majority of the time, the Bing results are fine. I think I waste maybe 10 seconds a day re-searching things. ~$0.10 for ~10 seconds (approx $360/hour) is more than my job pays.

How do you factor in the cost to your reputation when people see you using Bing?

I assumed HN community was beyond fashion and opinions like this.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#78

Post by gman99 »

lmmlzxx wrote: post #68
izendejas wrote: post #9

Bing 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.

I'm not knowledgeable about Bing, but Google doesn't support literal searches either if you mean that in the sense of exact string matching.

If you append &tbs=li to the end of the query URL, google does a literal search.

If you want it as a default, add it to your browser as a search engine plugin: http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+ve...

Or: Search tools → All results → Verbatim

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#79

Post by PhasmaFelis »

thoman23 wrote: post #73
lmmlzxx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not knowledgeable about Bing, but Google doesn't support literal searches either if you mean that in the sense of exact string matching.

Of course Google supports exact string matching. Just put your term in double quotes.

Mind you, it's overloaded now; double quotes also mean "this term must appear in the results." Used to be that prefixing with + meant that, but they killed that function so they could use it for Google Plus. You used to be able to search for, say, "annie oakley" "wild bill hickok" and find pages with either or both of those complete phrases; now there's no obvious way to do that.

Many years ago, IIRC, Google Search also supported boolean AND/OR, but that was also removed, for no obvious reason.

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