
Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight - ashitlerferad
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/apple-switches-from-bing-to-google-for-siri-web-search-results-on-ios-and-spotlight-on-mac/
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sitepodmatt
Bing is still poor for obscure searches, e.g. today Im searching for other
poor folks dealing with ebay's API and the message "Invalid store category
name" in quotes. Bing 0, DuckDuckGo 0, Google plenty. Reality is most of my
tech searches are like this and hence I can't give up Google, or I can at cost
of either my time or my clients. It be nice to have another search engine with
depth of Google but nothing comes close, it's like the old days of Yahoo
directory vs AltaVista, you could never find the serialz on Yahoo.

~~~
throwawaykf09
While Bing was poor for tech related searches in the earlier days, I find it's
no longer true. Are you sure it’s 0 results on Bing? I get a bunch of
relevant-looking results, and they’re all different from what Google gave me
(just the first page):

[https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name...](https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name%22)

Some weird personalization thing? Interested in seeing what others see when
they click that link...

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TimonKnigge
I get no results following your link.

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irishsultan
I got no results either, then I decided to switch my country/region to US
English which resulted in a lot of results.

Rather strange to localize results so much (especially when the alternatives
are showing many results vs. showing no results)

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dchuk
They need to get this switched over for voice activated Siri, no one in the
history of the planet has wanted their hands-free, verbal question answered
with a screen full of Bing search results...complete waste.

~~~
teej
99% of my Siri usage is "Hey Siri, google search for X." I'm happy that
they'll be switching.

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jakebasile
I really wish they'd let me set Siri to search DuckDuckGo.

~~~
lemoncucumber
I could almost see Apple buying DuckDuckGo, given that a) Apple cares about
their users' privacy, and b) Apple cares about having control over the entire
user experience. DuckDuckGo would fit right in with both of those core pieces
of Apple (no pun intended).

I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem _too_ far-fetched.

~~~
beaner
Apple doesn't care about it's users' privacy. It only ever started making a
big deal about privacy when people started criticizing Google for hoarding too
much personal info and using it to target ads, which people think is evil.
Apple doesn't do these things (it's not Apple's business model), so they began
heavily marketing "privacy" as something you'd get from them and not the
competition. They make sort of okay attempts at privacy, but since they don't
collect a lot, they don't need to do a lot, and many of the things they have
done have been weak, easily exploitable, or hacked. "Privacy" for Apple is a
marketing term like "unbelievable," "magic," and "revolutionary."

~~~
millstone
Disagree strongly. Apple pays a serious price for their privacy stance, which
they would rather not pay. Doing machine learning on-device makes it less
effective. Apple's directions aren't as good as they could be because Maps
randomly segments trips and masks its users identity. Apple's App Store
revenues are lower because they limit how apps can identify users.

This difference is deeper than business models. Compare Google's Hands Free
with Apple Pay for example: the same business model (collecting interchange
fees) but Apple's approach preserves user's privacy at the cost of some
convenience, while Google's is arguably more convenient but informs both
Google and the merchant as soon as you enter into the store.

~~~
greggman
Apple Genius just asked me for my username and password to my MacBook so he
could type it into some service form for repairs. I don't think asking for
that info is really compatible with "we care about privacy"

~~~
danpalmer
There are a lot of things that employees in the retail stores do that isn't
very "Apple". I suspect that's partially from not having as strong culture fit
selection in hiring, partially from lack of understanding (when it comes to
security, it's a nuanced subject) and partially from the realities of being
productive in a retail environment.

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greggman
the form was an official Apple form for repairs. they are going to replace my
keyboard and screen. they said they needed the password to test. I asked why
not just boot from a USB drive and they said they could not do that. I didn't
ask why they couldnt just swap a drive for testing.

they didn't offer this option I had to suggest it but basically I'll have to
reformat the drive before taking it in for service.

~~~
stephenr
Create a separate account for them, and make sure you have FileVault turned on
so your home folder is encrypted.

I've managed to get this concept across to authorised repairers who don't
speak english (and I don't speak Thai).

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Angostura
Exactly. Or just enable the guest account. That's what I always do.

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stephenr
I assume they _might_ want admin permissions honestly.

Having said that, prior to my recent visit (failing mbp fan) my trips had
always been for failing/failed discrete graphics (about 5 trips on 2 different
generations of 17" mbp) so a reinstall is inevitable because making macOS work
properly after a mainboard replacemnt is more work than reinstalling from
scratch

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gunsandnachos
It so easy to get admin rights on a Mac anyway.

\- Boot into single user mode...

# mount -uw /

# rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

# reboot

Reboot the machine and it walks you through a re-run of setting up the OS X
set up assistant, which allows creation of an admin account.

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tryingagainbro
Why doesn't Apple open their checkbook and start their own search engine. I
mean, really open it. It's not like they don't have the money and it's not
like this is a logical step.

They can't start small, meaning the need users to train the SE? What else can
it be. Of course they can't put live a horrible version...

~~~
xRahul
Have you seen their attempts with Maps. I can't imagine how the search would
go. They already have so much bad press with Maps, I'm sure they don't want
more added to it.

~~~
toephu2
Have you used Apple Maps recently? It's not that bad anymore. Just because
they had bad press about it 5 years ago doesn't mean the product is still
stuck in 2012.

~~~
richardknop
From time to time I still accidentally open Apple Maps on my iPhone while
searching for some place (tube station, restaurant, store) and almost
immediately close it and use Google Maps. Apple Maps is still much worse, the
UX is worse and it's much more difficult for me to find things on the map.

Especially tube stations are much more visible on Google maps and I often use
tube stations for orientation. On Apple Maps stations are very light color and
hard to spot. The same with other landmarks.

I don't understand why they don't do some user testing and find out what UX
practices are the reason why Google Maps is so much easier to use and
replicate that. They've had years do do this.

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chewz
From my experience it depends a lot on the country. Apple Maps was for me
excellent in China or Japan and terrible in Thailand for example.

Both Google and Apple buy basic maps info from third party and the quality
depends a lot on the deal they get. For example it is not possible to save
area offline in Google Maps for Thailand due to some legal issues I guess.

Google has much more user engagement and stars and recommendations give Google
a big advantage.

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ksk
I've been trying to use bing as a primary and google as a backup for a few
months now. IME, Bing is good 60-70% of the time, but often times I'm
exploratory-searching and bing is pretty much useless here. Google, manages to
somehow find the right link, especially when I am guessing the keywords. On a
side note, Google often tells me theres million+ results (e.g.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=SIEMENS+pc+based+automation](https://www.google.com/search?q=SIEMENS+pc+based+automation)
) and then shows me only 10 pages of 10 each. Seems like over the years Google
has been pruning the results quite a bit.

~~~
snag
I went all the way to page 10. At the bottom, it reads :

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries
very similar to the 100 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the
search with the omitted results included.

~~~
ksk
Yeah, but that still doesn't show all the supposedly millions of results. Last
time I checked it was capped at a few hundred (not this specific query).

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nicodjimenez
Poor Bing, I never thought I'd find myself rooting for Microsoft, but here I
am.

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blue11
I have heard from ex-Bing engineers that Microsoft had deprioritized search
R&D a couple of years ago. Since then there has been an exodus of engineers
from that group.

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mikeash
This is great. Maybe I'll start using this feature again.

But, my god, would it kill them to implement a few different search engines
and let us choose?

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aeleos
I wonder how this will work with apples recent fight against online
advertisers. If google does track users but it is all anonymous from the
advertisers perspective, does that mean Apple is okay with it?

~~~
xbmcuser
Maybe thats the reason they went back with Google now they didnt want Google
to have apple customer data for competitive reason but now that they have a
system in place to block that they have gone with the best search engine.

~~~
romanovcode
I doubt that google would pay $3B for just anonymous search texts. They must
be tracking you.

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m3kw9
Bing gives obvious inferior results when I have been using it

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sidcool
Wonder how much Google paid them.

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grzm
$3 billion is the number in the article.

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andy_ppp
With the amount of data Apple has from Siri I’m constantly surprised they
don’t at least have a stab at building a search engine, possibly one with very
fine grained privacy/accuracy controls.

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elaus
I don't think Apple does "fine grained controls"

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m_mueller
For the specific context of privacy, they have had more fine-grained controls
than Android since the inception of the appstore, until release of Android 6.0
where Android AFAIK has caught up.

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kuschku
Almost, but still not. There’s still no way to revoke
android.permission.INTERNET

And if you revoke any permission to any Google apps, all of them will refuse
to do shit, and you can’t even place calls without giving Google access to
your location, body sensors, bluetooth, etc.

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thegayngler
Privacy cancelled.

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fhood
read...the....article

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AlphaWeaver
Is this a response to Bill Gates saying he's switching to Android?

