Bing is 'Bigger Than You Think', Says Microsoft (onmsft.com) 220
Microsoft said this week that Bing is "bigger than you think" and provided some numbers that could be a surprise to many. The company claims that fully one-third of searches in the US are powered by Bing, either directly or through Yahoo or AOL (both of which provide results generated by Microsoft). From a report: With 9% market share worldwide and 12 billion monthly searches, almost half of that (5 billion) comes from the United States where Bing has 33% market share.
Most searched word on Bing... (Score:5, Funny)
So True (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect many non-porn Bing searches are variations on "How do I set Google as my default search?"
MS AI Sexbot eating its own dog food (Score:2, Funny)
About 40% are how to switch to Google as default.
60% are from Microsoft's AI, Tay trying to search how to meet sexy alt-right single men [technologyreview.com].
Tay keeps re-submitting because bing thinks she wants to buy packs of American Singles [amazon.com]. White cheese, of course!
Re: So True (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: So True (Score:2)
But with a monopoly it's so much easier for the gov'ment because they only have to "convince" one company to give them access to all their data, instead of having to hassle a bunch of dopey little companies to do so. 'cause terism!
Porn (Score:2)
Bing is better than google at finding Porn.
It has a better video view interface too.
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"Google"
More "Insightful" than "funny" :)
Re:Most searched word on Bing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Duh (Score:2, Insightful)
After they weaseled Win10 onto everyone and set it as the default search engine, does this really come as a surprise?
Bing is a Me too product. (Score:2)
I haven't found any real advantage of Bing over Google other than some cosmetic stuff. I remember Microsoft Adds a while back showing that without the cosmetic differences Bing and Google were not differential. Which pretty much failed. Because if you are already using one product why would you change over to an other product that does the same thing?
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Well, maybe you feel like someone else should be spying on you for a change.
This brings an interesting question though: would you rather have one search engine know almost everything about you or would you rather have multiple search engines know a lot but nowhere near everything about you?
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Bing maps is wqy faster than Google maps.
Bing VIDEO is really good (Score:5, Informative)
search Bing for whatever porn you want, let's say tentacle henai, then click on the "Video" tab. It will pull up lots of videos of tentacle hentai. Also you can watch these videos from Bing search results without going to the video's originating website (which can be very sketchy and full of malware)
Re:Bing VIDEO is really good (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure Microsoft will talk about this use case in their next commercial.
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"Hay Siri, show me some tentacle porn videos."
"Alexa, order more man-size kleenex and a mop."
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This very neatly ties into that awful video where they had projectile vomiting on viewing someone's search history. I was just too blind to see how having retching and heaving and a floor full of puke was really the perfect way to speak technically
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search Bing for whatever porn you want, let's say tentacle henai, then click on the "Video" tab. It will pull up lots of videos of tentacle hentai.
I really really hope Microsoft capitalise on this very insightful post and make a Bing tentical hentai tv commercial.
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You do not need to sign in to change the filter setting. You can do it without a Bing account. You can even do it from your browser's "Private Window".
Fake news (Score:2)
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This is just more fake news from Microsoft.
I'm tired of the term "fake news". Can't we just go back to calling it "bullshit" like we did in the good old days?
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Commoditization (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't care how big Google or Bing is. Search is a commodity now. I don't really care which farm grew my morning grapefruit either.
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I don't really care which farm grew my morning grapefruit either.
I don't know about that. Locally grown and in season produce is vastly superior.
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I don't know about that. Locally grown and in season produce is vastly superior.
So you live in Texas, Florida or remember when California had good grapefruits. And if I lived in Hawaii I'd probably go for Tahitian Pommelmousse instead, because I could grow it my yard instead of having going to the store.
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So you live in Texas, Florida or remember when California had good grapefruits.
Actually, none of the above. But I do live within an hour's drive of farms and there are always plenty of farmer's markets in the city that sell whatever is currently in season in my area.
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What do you mean "no such thing"? My pantry disagrees.
I Switched to Bing (Score:2, Informative)
I've been proudly using Bing every since Google trampled on Free Speech and fired James Damore.
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Re:I Switched to Bing (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bit extreme... Maybe protest by setting yourself on fire or something, but using Bing?!
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Bing API is good (Score:3)
Not enough to see a giant dick on their homepage (Score:2)
Default (Score:5, Informative)
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The bigger question is why an email client would have a web search function at all. Do you also use your word processor for making spreadsheets and your graphics package for making databases?
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The bigger question is why an email client would have a web search function at all.
If you select something in an email, there is an option to search that highlighted text. It then opens up your default browser and runs that search. It's just a shortcut so that you don't have to copy -> open web browser -> go to search engine -> paste/enter.
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Only because there are so many browsers that MS has managed to get Bing setup as the default search engine
But the fact that Google comes as the default search on Chrome (with over 50% market share), as well as every Android and iOS [macworld.com], does not faze you in the least.
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Siri uses Bing to answer queries, that's probably a fair proportion of those searches.
Sure (Score:3)
"Bing is 'Bigger Than You Think', Says Microsoft"
Alas nobody else says this.
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Don't people always say that it isn't the size that counts?
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In fairness, (Score:2)
Damore memo (Score:2)
Really, Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's actually super relevant. A lot of people use it, i get ribbed for using it all the time but have no problems using it as my default search engine in the USA. I hear it can suck in foreign countries, but that's not a problem for me.
Lots of people enjoy bing.. great image search, great SERP design for common topics and they're continuously improving it. They have public conferences once a month where there are thousands of people on the phone hearing about new features and testing new services. It's hug
Bing is worse than you think. (Score:2)
I like Bing (Score:5, Funny)
He had a real self-effacing humor which played off well against Frank Sinatra's brash cockiness.
Bigger Than You Think (Score:2)
This is also what I always say before getting kicked out of the bed :(
Again MS is only looking at the US (Score:2)
If they aren't prepared to handle the global market they will remain strong. They keep launching products with US centric features and relevance and are extremely slow to grow support in other countries and cultures.
Not surprised (Score:3)
Microsoft will literally pay you to use Bing. They'll give about a third of a cent per search in rewards. And I still don't use it.
Bing is the default in a lot of corporate systems. It's like that where I work, and we can't even change the bookmarks.
But I think the big thing is simply that it's the default to Siri.
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I "use" bing for the pay. I open up another browser, mash the keyboard, and click all the related searches on the side and bottom to open them in new tabs. Takes less than a minute to generate dozens of bing searches. Of course I don't actually look at any of them background tabs of random searches, I just close them. Microsoft gets to falsify their usage numbers, I get gift cards.
Duck Duck Go (Score:3)
DDG uses Bing as one of its primary search engines. Just an interesting factoid.
It's not the size that matters... (Score:2)
It's how you use it.
Such a shame then (Score:5, Informative)
Let's hear it for Bing! (Score:2)
De-fault! De-fault! De-fault! [youtube.com]
Google Chrome (Score:2)
Nothing about how Google has pushed Chrome through dubious means to be the #1 browser, which, by default, uses Google for searching.
They both are playing fast and loose.
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The only time I use it is to do a search for "Chrome" which brings up a massive half page ad about how IE is better
It's not the meat it's the muscle. (Score:2)
Let me guess, it's not the size but how you use the search?
Heh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bing comes as a default search engine (as does Edge), it's obligatory to use in Windows 10S, and Microsoft offers freebies for people who use it (a big reason why the percentage is so big in the US - Bing rewards is not available in several countries).
Sure, some people use and like it, but I'd say 9% worldwide is a huge failure when you are trying to sway the market with agressive strategies like those.
Default is powerrful (Score:2)
Microsoft owns the default, and fools leave it alone.
Me, I prefer privacy: Duck Duck Go.
Bing is 'Bigger Than You Think' (Score:3)
That wouldn't be hard
(stolen from coworker)
Competition (Score:2)
I use Bing because it makes competition in the market place. For advanced searches I still use Google, but that's just because my google-fu is better.
I am ok with Bing really being big (Score:2)
As long as it does not become "too big to fail"
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... how?
They put up a story that isn't about Trump or the Google memo, and you're complaining?
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Re:And this matters to me... (Score:5, Funny)
It's controlled by a big corporation, so you should use Bing instead.
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Well, except google is also a convicted monopolist.
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As is Microsoft.
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As is Google.
I see a pattern forming here.
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Google values censorship.
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Keep doing business with megacorps that censors because free speech is an antiquated idea that should be burned. It's not like megacorps are the gatekeepers to the internet or anything.
"I care more about the label on the boot that's on my neck than the boot itself."... You're a tool.
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Hey, I'm a leftie, screaming my lungs out about corporate power, regulatory capture and monopolies is my bread and butter. So I'm hazing you for being late to the party you precious little snowflake.
"I care more about the label on the boot that's on my neck than the boot itself."... You're a tool.
Nice strawman.
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I'm hazing you for being late to the party
You don't know any position I have or held particularly so on this topic. Why are you generalizing and treating me as a group instead of an individual?
ow go vote for some communists
why would anyone be a communist with such a body count? I also think that I own my labor and can sell it at my discretion and economic transactions are not inherently evil.
You know. Never mind. I don't want to have a conversation with an ideologue that treats an individual as a group through generalizations and ideological purity tests. You are why we can't h
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You do know your entire commenting history is available at the click of a button, right?
Having said that, I apologize. I didn't realize you were an ardent anti-monopolist. We'll get those megacorps eventually, comrade!
You are why we can't have nice things.
Jebus! Go find your safes space already.
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and i am sure you read that commenting history, right?
u r my safe space.
only thing better than a dead commie is a dying commie telling me where more commies are.
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The only interesting thing to read on the internet is comment threads, so pretty much, yeah.
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only interesting thing to read on the internet is comment threads
clearly you have never read the Linux manual. sig be damned.
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10/10 would read ur comment again.
Re:And this matters to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so horrible about google?
1. Their search results have gotten progressively worse of late. it's either so fuzzy as to have half the top results completely irrelevant, or "verbatim" won't come up with anything because of spacing or the literal order of words is incorrect.
2. Search for "driver download" and you'll get some very shady websites, many of which don't actually provide driver downloads...and they do nothing about it. Same for "teamviewer" and other legitimate tools that get hijacked by "your computer has a virus" websites. If they want to perpetuate the blurring between the URL bar and the search bar, that's fine, but literally nobody has Googled for teamviewer and been okay with the sketchy sites that rank very high.
3. Overall creepiness. They collect *a lot* of data, even if users go out of their way to avoid it. Though they *say* they'll be responsible with it (and to be fair, so far they appear to have done so), it's incredibly difficult to opt out of data collection, because so much of the web depends on them (go ahead, disable Google Fonts and Google AMP and see what happens to the internet...)
4. Questionable practices - preferring faster sites is understandable, defining 'faster' as 'using Google AMP' is shady. Ad blockers are one thing, but adding an ad blocker to a browser that has a controlling slice of the market when 90% of their revenue comes from ads is 90's Microsoft levels of monopoly.
5. E-mail is a great thing. Gmail has twisted it very heavily from being an analog of letter-based correspondence to being a de facto chat client, and twisting POP and IMAP to make it less practical to use a third party mail client, and require an obscurely placed setting to allow third party clients to connect via standard protocols...and it's not getting better.
6. Discontinuing useful services and changing UIs and APIs to make things less useful (Reader, iGoogle, their 1,001 chat clients, none of which are XMPP compliant anymore, the list goes on).
7. On Android specifically, mandating profitable things ('Play Store' must be on the first page) but not openness-based things (mandating unlocked bootloaders or that shipped apps can be removed if not a core function). Yes, they sell their reference phones, but if they're going to have requirements that are purely for profit reasons, there's no reason they can't mandate Samsung do the same thing.
Now yes, I know there are rebuts to most of these items, but collectively Google has a stranglehold on the internet advertising market and controls enough of the internet infrastructure that avoiding them is near impossible, I do expect better behavior out of them.
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What's so horrible about google?
I said google news, not "google". Google is another issue. Figure out what's horrible about Google for yourself. I well help you with google news: it sucks, the format is crap, the concept is crap, the news search is crap, it gets worse with each revision... what the fuck. What are they thinking.
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https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/05/ftc-fines-google-19-million-for-kids-app-misuse
And that's not all of it.
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What's so horrible about google?
The quality of Google's search results has fallen fairly dramatically over the past few years, to the point where it's no longer superior to engines like Bing.
Google News recently made changes that has eliminated its usefulness for a lot of people. Bing News has become a better alternative for many of those people.
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When you have the dominant engine, everyone out there will be trying to subvert your engine to get their (usually spam) pages to show up first... Exactly the same thing happened to altavista.
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Viable how?
Google's results have ben in decline for a while, but for anything even slightly non-trivial Bing rarely even gives more than one or two results in the first page that are actually relevant. Every time I use them it's like returning to the bad old days when Alta Vista and Ask Jeeves. (I do computer repair, so end up doing a lot of searches on other people's computers with the default engine)
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... how?
Viable alternative to google/news, which is teh suck and getting worse.
Oh, some googley googler had mod points today, and hanging on Slashdot instead of working, mercy me. Look... the rot that is eating Google out from the outside... you are part of it.
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If you want a VIABLE alternative then look to DuckDuckGo, not bing... never bing... never, ever bing...
I forced myself to use DuckDuckGo for a month, by the end of the month, I was rerunning most of my searches with the "!g" tag to do the search on Google since DuckDuckGo results weren't what I was looking for.
Re:And this matters to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's very strange. One of the pleasant surprises I had when I start using DDG was that the search results I got tended to be much better than what I was getting out of Google.
Neither are perfect, of course.
Re:Umm, yeah, sure (Score:5, Insightful)
That and many browsers will have its default search engine as Bing or Yahoo. And still they are #2 behind Google.
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To be fair, Google is the default search on chrome, and that includes many smartphones (which are a very popular device to run searches on these days)
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Firefox changed it's default search from Google to Yahoo (which uses bing). It's troublesome to change the default to Google, but it's worth it. While you're at it, DELETE bing and yahoo from the list because some updates will change your default to them for you.
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But Google does NOT make iPhone, yet the default search there is Google (for lots of $$ it's been revealed) so that's no different than Firefox (I doubt Firefox made the change for free)
Thing is, there's always a default, maybe there shouldn't be, maybe on first boot you should have to chose, but as long as search engines pay mega-bucks to be the default, there will always be a default, and it's not unique to MS.
The one that is however less fair is when MS releases a "critical update" that reverts your sear
Re:It's the name (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Why would they name a service that you use to Google things "Bing"?
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No, this is the real Bing [youtube.com]. BING!
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It doesn't have to be deliberate for MS to count it as a win.
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To be fair, try using Google Assistant without using Google Search.
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Accordingly to my access logs, bingbot is extremely aggressive compared to other search engine bots... It seems to request the same files repeatedly, over and over... At one point my server was pushing a steady 20mbit/sec of traffic to bingbot.