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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

#81

Post by neocritter »

sumtechguy wrote: post #37
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 n…

That was back when everyone was trying to make a "portal" to compete with AOL. It seems like browsers are headed down the same path now with replacing the simple search box new tab page with the same stuff the portals had.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#82

Post by jjcm »

Disclaimer - I used to work on Bing like... 8 years ago.

There's probably some debate around whether this is nefarious or genius, but I'd lead towards the later. "google" has always been one of the number one search terms, and the amount of people who would open chrome, search for google in the address bar, then open google in the google search results, then do their search, was wild. There's a very large percentage of less technical people who aren't looking for Google, they're looking for search, and in their mind the two are the same.

They likely don't care what search engine they're using, so I suspect this actually captures a very large amount of search volume, while still solving the intent of the user.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#84

Post by bangaladore »

Arnavion wrote: post #10

You can also see it for yourself without needing Windows or Edge by opening https://www.bing.com/search?q=google in Linux Chromium for example.

Interestingly that doesn't work on Brave Windows (Chromium) but works on Chrome Windows.

I wonder if Brave is specifically deleting this element.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#86

Post by szundi »

jjcm wrote: post #82

Disclaimer - I used to work on Bing like... 8 years ago. There's probably some debate around whether this is nefarious or genius, but I'd lead towards the later. "google" has always been one of the number one search terms, and the amount of people who would open chrome, search for google in the address bar, then open google in the google search results, then do their search, was wild. There's a very large percentage…

With all due respect, still feels bs to rationalizing the intentional misleding of these poor people. It is not a coincidence that Google and search is the same in their heads.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#87

Post by jrochkind1 »

jjcm wrote: post #82

Disclaimer - I used to work on Bing like... 8 years ago. There's probably some debate around whether this is nefarious or genius, but I'd lead towards the later. "google" has always been one of the number one search terms, and the amount of people who would open chrome, search for google in the address bar, then open google in the google search results, then do their search, was wild. There's a very large percentage…

If they didn't care what search engine they were using, would it be necessary to make it look so much like the google homepage?

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#88

Post by quink »

jjcm wrote: post #82

Disclaimer - I used to work on Bing like... 8 years ago. There's probably some debate around whether this is nefarious or genius, but I'd lead towards the later. "google" has always been one of the number one search terms, and the amount of people who would open chrome, search for google in the address bar, then open google in the google search results, then do their search, was wild. There's a very large percentage…

> They likely don't care what search engine they're using

That's nothing, for our next iteration our navigation system will take you to the nearest Woolworths because they've got a commercial partnership with us even though the customer quite clearly said 'Coles'. It's likely they don't care.

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#89

Post by norman784 »

garciasn wrote: post #80
IncreasePosts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will help determine if you're cheap. How much money have you saved/made through the rewards points stuff?

Far less than the time saved had they received Google's results instead of Bing's inferior ones.

Are Google results good? I stop using Google years ago because of the garbage results (a lot of spam sites that were just serving data crawled from Github and other sites).

Re: Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers

#90

Post by vasco »

jjcm wrote: post #82

Disclaimer - I used to work on Bing like... 8 years ago. There's probably some debate around whether this is nefarious or genius, but I'd lead towards the later. "google" has always been one of the number one search terms, and the amount of people who would open chrome, search for google in the address bar, then open google in the google search results, then do their search, was wild. There's a very large percentage…

It's genius to copy your competitor because the user might not notice and you can also solve their problem? I don't think it's genius.
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