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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

#91

Bing: The "is pepsi okay?" of search engines.

Terrible comparison. Some people genuinely prefer Pepsi. I can't see anyone genuinely preferring Bing when it's not the default search engine on their tool that they don't know how to/care to change.

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

#92
post #67

I use MS Edge as my browser. It has a little nifty feature where you highlight words and you can right click and do a "Bing lookup" and it opens a drawer on the right in the same window. It's really nice and doesn't break my workflow like the Chrome alternative which opens a new window. I still use google for the most part, but I haven't found myself in a situation where I open the Bing drawer and say "Oh god, this i…

Huh? Doesn't chrome open a new tab?

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

#94
post #47

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?

> it won't let me turn it on without giving full access to...

Well it won't allow me to turn it on because I live in France and thus have a "french" MS/Live account but set my system language to English. Go figure†.

† I can very well make up a zillion obscure and convoluted technical and/or legal reasons, but none make any sense from a end-user point of view, which is, in the end, what matters.

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

#96
post #5

I use Bing whenever I'm dissatisfied with Google's results. Bing has always returned worse results in this case. YMMV.

Bingo - but seriously, I tried this too, I now use DDG, then Google and if I can't find what I'm looking for on either I tweet about it or write a blog post.

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

#97

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…

"but because we made the search while Excel was opened, the function was auto-populated in the highlighted cell." - which version of Excel was this? The desktop version (2010, 2013, 2016?) or the XAML version? I'd be surprised if Cortana integrated with the desktop version, considering Office doesn't run in Windows 10's sandbox model, and Microsoft is only allowing sandboxed apps access to the cooler features of Win1…

This certainly would not be the first time that Office is allowed to use secret APIs to put the competition at a disadvantage.

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

#99
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But not for scenarios like "what meetings do I have today?"

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

#100
post #29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the first result for me. It does have a "did you mean 'google'". I wonder if the increased search volume over the past hour since you posted this updated the probability that it was a mistyping? It wouldn't surprise me - unique vocabulary (think hashtags) created all the time, and Google is pretty good at responding to that.

Yup. Doesn't even suggest Google anymore for me, and all the results seem to be Haskell related, save for some unfortunately named altcoin.
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