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Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

pcworld.com

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Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#31

Post by arielcostas »

mrweasel wrote: post #18
notfed wrote: post #12

Can't reproduce. Does it only happen from Edge?

Works in Firefox on macOS. Interestingly enough, you can already use Bings settings to disable all the cruft on bing.com. If you do that, I think the majority of users would not know the difference between Google and Bing, other than a more pleasant search experience and fewer ads (or no ads, I'm currently see zero ads or trackers on bing.com without any ad blocker). Seems hard to justify staying on Google, when Bing…

And, at least in the EU, we get LLM responses (via MS Copilot) on Bing, but no "AI Overview" on Google. Though seeing how poorly Google AI Overview on search works, I'd rather not have that offered to me.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#32

Post by asdff »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #22

Never quite understood the hate for Bing. I despise Microsoft, but Bing is fine. It's one of the least shit Microsoft products there is. It definitely wasn't competitive on release, but it's fine now. To be fair I think this is a function of both Bing having gotten better and Google having gotten worse.

Initially it reeked of IE by association. But then internet communities realized it was better than google for porn. So now its OK in some circles at least.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#34

Post by asdff »

arielcostas wrote: post #31
mrweasel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works in Firefox on macOS. Interestingly enough, you can already use Bings settings to disable all the cruft on bing.com. If you do that, I think the majority of users would not know the difference between Google and Bing, other than a more pleasant search experience and fewer ads (or no ads, I'm currently see zero ads or trackers on bing.com without any ad blocker). Seems hard to justify staying on Google, when Bing…

And, at least in the EU, we get LLM responses (via MS Copilot) on Bing, but no "AI Overview" on Google. Though seeing how poorly Google AI Overview on search works, I'd rather not have that offered to me.

You can just scroll past it you know

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#36

Post by mrweasel »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #22

Never quite understood the hate for Bing. I despise Microsoft, but Bing is fine. It's one of the least shit Microsoft products there is. It definitely wasn't competitive on release, but it's fine now. To be fair I think this is a function of both Bing having gotten better and Google having gotten worse.

Honestly I feel like Bing has been the better search engine for 6 - 8 years at this point.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#37

Post by sumtechguy »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #22

Never quite understood the hate for Bing. I despise Microsoft, but Bing is fine. It's one of the least shit Microsoft products there is. It definitely wasn't competitive on release, but it's fine now. To be fair I think this is a function of both Bing having gotten better and Google having gotten worse.

Honestly, this is what I want bing's 'homepage' to look like and I usually configure it to be as close to that as I can. The default was/is a ton of news and other junk. I just want a search bar and maybe an identifier picture. It was one of the things I liked when google first came out. It was 'simple' as many of the other search engines from years ago had tons of 'helpful' things on the front page that I just did not want.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#38

Post by _yb2s »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #22

Never quite understood the hate for Bing. I despise Microsoft, but Bing is fine. It's one of the least shit Microsoft products there is. It definitely wasn't competitive on release, but it's fine now. To be fair I think this is a function of both Bing having gotten better and Google having gotten worse.

I have a longtime dislike for Microsoft but google has become almost unusable recently with fake ai pages filling the results, and Bing seems to work better.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#39

Post by dec0dedab0de »

I started a new job where I have to use windows, and more than once I didn’t realize I was using bing until I went to turn on verbatim and it wasn’t an option.

Side note, I miss search engines from 20 years ago, I can’t believe it’s gotten this bad.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#40

Post by elAhmo »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #22

Never quite understood the hate for Bing. I despise Microsoft, but Bing is fine. It's one of the least shit Microsoft products there is. It definitely wasn't competitive on release, but it's fine now. To be fair I think this is a function of both Bing having gotten better and Google having gotten worse.

Moves like the one from the linked article is one contributor to the hate.
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