Bing Now Nearly As Good As Google — Says Microsoft 405
An anonymous reader writes "Harry Shum, who oversees research and development for Microsoft's Bing search engine, believes his company has now matched Google's ability to build software platforms that can harness the power of tens of thousands of servers. — 'For many years, we've really tried to play the catch-up game,' Shum says. 'And now we feel that after a lot of effort, we understand search quality problems better than before, and that if you look at Google and Bing, the quality is beginning to be very comparable.' While his comments might be a little biased, many people do share the same opinion. How do you feel about Bing's search results compared to Google's? For example DuckDuckGo, the privacy oriented search engine, uses Bing's back-end and has gained a small following on Slashdot."
Not So Much a Rules Change (Score:5, Insightful)
...as a lowering in standards. Slashdot is now all about the paid astro-turfing, self-referential brand-building, and manufactured outrages designed to generate pageviews. The founders are gone, and It's Time to Start Running This Like a Business, Goddammit!
Let me read it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nearly as good" like "not good as"?
Re:Holy self-reference! (Score:3, Insightful)
DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com]? It works. hat else is there to say?
Re:Holy self-reference! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the Slashdot crowd is at least above the average level of intelligence for Internet communities.
Yet even so, they throw a shit-fit over Google.
As far as I understand it, Google uses all of its free (awesome) tools to collect information on you. This is the route you take to work everyday. You like this genre of book. Your wife is a cheating whore. You know, basically a personality profile. They then take this profile and sell it (along with millions of others) to advertisers - or rather, Google sells their service of targeting advertising. So if I really like martial arts movies, I'll see ads from Google.
Let's posit that I had nothing beyond the basic protection of an antivirus and a weekly MBAM scan. No adblock, no NoScript, and I'm running Chrome. After Google's evil plan comes to fruition, I see... advertisements. Which precisely do nothing to me. Sure an ad might give me a suggestion on something I was looking for in the general area, but I'm not going to buy a product solely on the quality of its ad alone. I very rarely buy things at all, anyway.
So what's the big worry here?
Re:Holy self-reference! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Use Bing for the Picture (Score:4, Insightful)
Google seem to go out of its ways to pissed of long time customers.
Now you're being silly.
Not willing to use Bing (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't want to see an internet where Microsoft had the controlling share of the search market. I've had enough of them attempting to destroy the market while they controlled the desktop (and I'm still dealing with that).
I use Microsoft's products where it's appropriate and/or necessary, but avoid them where it's anything close to a judgement call. I'm certainly not going to help them gain a new monopoly where they don't currently have one. Keeping them hungry is probably good for the competitive environment.
Re:anecdotally.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't consider the changes they made very significant, but I had actually always assumed that they aggregated results between their different products. I actually prefer to have a single privacy policy, but I do realize that the potential for abuse is greater with the aggregation. From what I've seen so far though, their is no abuse ... they only do what they said they'd do with the data. Microsoft on the other hand is using extortion tactics to force companies to give them money for producing Linux devices, and makes it extremely difficult for me to buy a laptop without paying for Windows. I'm also very bitter with them over the OOXML travesty among other things. If you don't want Google to track your searches, don't log in for searches. I would like the option to choose whether or not I have search results targeted to my taste though ... I would imagine running a search while not being logged in will also do that though.
Re:I gave up on Google search a long time ago. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Holy self-reference! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Holy self-reference! (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck are you searching for that you get completely useless results on both Bing and Google?
Bing needs to be BETTER than Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of Bing's problem is that they're trying to be "as good as Google". They need to be better than Google to catch up. Bing still has half the market share of Google. Most of Bing's traffic is from Internet Explorer, where Bing is the default browser. Few people use Bing by choice.
Google has its vulnerabilities. The quality of the business data in Google Places is pathetic. Small businesses complain constantly about Google Places, but it's not their fault. Google can't even get the big ones right. Google Places sometimes thinks Ford Motor Company headquarters is a medical clinic, that WalMart headquarters is a pharmacy, and that Fannie Mae headquarters is permanently closed. It also thinks that Coit Tower, a San Francisco landmark, is a carpet cleaning service. Try searching for Fortune 1000 companies in Google Places. The results for major companies are often just wrong. Google's approach to business locations is still very keyword-oriented, which makes it error-prone and easily spammed. It's quite common for a search for a major company to map to a hotel near their HQ.
These are "Places" queries. If you ask that question of a map system, you probably want to go there. These are queries for which there is a right answer. It's not an opinion. It's not a popularity contest. It's not "social". Google can't handle that.
Bing could win by getting that right. Real data is available about businesses and business locations.
Why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Would anyone use the not quite, but almost as good (according to the developer) product?
Especially when it's Microsoft, because fuck them.
Not touching it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Holy self-reference! (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people have no idea how to use a search engine.
MICROSOFT (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "nearly as good" alternative since 1975.
Nearly as good as TinyBasic
Nearly as good as CPM
Nearly as good as 123
Nearly as good as MacOS
Nearly as good as dBase
Nearly as good as TurboPascal
Nearly as good as CompuServ
Nearly as good as Netscape Navigator
Nearly as good as Unix
Nearly as good as SGI
Nearly as good as Apache
Nearly as good as Java
Nearly as good as MacOS again
Nearly as good as iPod
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Nearly as good as iPhone
Nearly as good as iPad
Nearly as good as Google search...
The hits just keep coming!