Deal breaker for me is Bing's lack of date filter.
I use this most of the time on Google.
I read somewhere they added this about a year ago, still missing for me, maybe just a US feature.
I still hate Google's so called mobile friendly results on iPad safari, so I have to use iCab browser even though it's slower, so I would try Bing if they added date filter.
Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
111–120 of 126 posts
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
But not for scenarios like "what meetings do I have today?"
In the situation where you're using Cortana to search your meetings you have to give it permission to access your data for two reasons - to tell it that you agree to allow it to access the information and to pay the price of using the service by giving it access to your data. The 'payment' issue is still there.
Agreed. I was merely pointing out that granting access to your personal life isn't functionally pointless.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I know it was a joke, but there actually is something to it.
I started using Bing for the rewards program. I would probably use it even without the rewards program, now. The results are approximately as good as Google - when I can't find something and I go to Google, 95% of the time Google isn't giving me good results either. There are some nice little features and I like the look and layout, but fundamentally what really sold it was the rewards program, which I've been turning into Amazon gift cards and using to fill my bookshelves.
But every time someone sees me use Bing, or I mention that I use Bing, there's very often some judgement there. Like it or not, people, even people on HN, judge you by the tools you use. The social aspect matters: Google and Apple produce excellent technical products, but they're so popular in part because of social effects. No surprise; humans are fundamentally social animals, none of us are beyond fashion.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#114The amusing thing is that when Bing had its own CEO and its own dev team, it didn't do well. When it was turned into just another Microsoft product, with different parts of it (operations, servers, look and feel, ad sales) handled by the Microsoft organizations that do those for other products, it did better. Maybe Microsoft has the big multi-product company thing figured out.
I think a lot of it is due to Windows 10. If you get upgraded from Windows 7/8, you always start with Edge as your new default browser and Bing as search engine for both browser and Cortana. Most people probably haven't switched back.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#115Anyone have a reference for Bing specific SEO? I mean, in the technical sense. I've noticed my site ranks significantly worse in Bing/DDG than on Google. All I've done for Google is on page SEO, nothing fancy or Google specific. I'm wondering if I've set something up incorrectly that I could fix via Bing Webmaster tools or some other method. Update: Apparently, this is not so. I now rank the same in DDG/Bing as in Go…
If I'm understanding correctly, you're seeing a fake rank increase due to personalization. Bing figured out what you're looking for(your site), so it bumps it up the page. Try a device you haven't used yet? If not, it's hard to say why. There are a few factors. -Bing might have taken longer to crawl new content. -Bing seems to value exact keyword matches more than Google does. -Google likes to show multiple types of…
I searched in a private browser session. Just tried again with a VPN enabled. Broadly similar results.
I might not have been searching for a broad enough range of stuff before, or maybe I only searched the newest pages.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
When we did user studies at Powerset, we did experiments where we put the Google name above search results from other engines and the Google was the strongest predictor. One test actually used a randomized ranking function on wikipedia search (so the algorithm recalled as well as google, but randomly ranked the results without any thought to relevance) vs Google, and we labeled the random data as Google and the Googl…
Is the Powerset technology still used somewhere for Bing? Bing used to be more intelligent right after the acquisition than today. Somehow it looks like they dropped the Powerset features after a few years. Also non EN-US Bing still looks and works like the old MSN search with a lot worse search results than Bing.com set to EN-US (Bing theme but old UX from MSN era and features frozen since MSN days).
Without disclosing things I shouldn't disclose (professionally if not legally), a lot of the acqusition was acquihire and then went on to cognitive services.
A lot of what the powersetters did was bring their expertise in indexing in. The Powerset indexing requirements were fairly intense, so bing getting those was a big leg up over the previous (good, but somewhat less informed) work.
A lot of the stuff we had at Powerset as custom services is now in Google and MS cognitive services. It's so cool to have access to those tools again. Luis.ai is really really fun to use lately.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#1171) 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…
First, classic Win32 apps ("desktop versions") have had access to a subset of useful WinRT components (WinRT the COM replacement, not WinRT the OS SKU) since early in Windows 8's history. (8.1 and 10 both opened up further the WinRT APIs that Win32 apps can consume.) A lot of the APIs only make sense inside the "sandbox" as you refer to it, but it's not locked down quite as much as you think it is. [Then there's the recently built Project Centennial bridge to give Win32 apps even greater access to WinRT APIs and the ability to spin up modern user interfaces in a mixed-interop model and ease transitions between the two types of apps.]
Second, that doesn't actually matter in this case anyway (and is a red herring) because it is Cortana automating Office and not the other way around. Win32 automation is relatively straight forward, including the most basic automation of them all: cut, copy, and paste. It could be Cortana is calling into COM components in Office or even older, more generic Windows Automation COM components. (Which can still be done, with permissions, from "inside the sandbox". Again the "sandbox" is not as locked down as a lot of people seem to think it is, especially in Windows 10.)
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#118Not Bing Search, but views from Bing Maps bird's eye view are often very good...
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#119I don't use Bing search, but I switched to Bing maps after Google's last set of changes rendered their map site effectively unusable. Bing maps has been.... really nice. I like it. It does what I want. I was not expecting that.
Bing maps is a great service, but you have to know it's there to use it. There's no link to the maps service on the Bing front page or the search result page. You need to know the URL. bing.com/maps is pretty easy to guess, but why hide it? I'm also a bit surprise that Bing video search is no longer available, at least not in Denmark.
That never actually occurred to me; I just went for maps.bing.com after being frustrated one too many times by maps.google.com, and it worked.
Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore
#120Earlier 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.
Nope - that does not do what you think it does.