
Apparently Bing Is Something Of A Hit - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/01/apparently-bing-is-something-of-a-hit/
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calambrac
I've been using Bing as my default search in FF all day today, just as an
experiment. I can't tell if what frustration I am experiencing is just due to
not being used to it, but I will say that any other time I've tried doing this
(Yahoo, Live, Ask), I've quickly switched back to Google simply because I
couldn't get my work done. The fact that it's been more than an hour and I
haven't given up on it says a lot.

~~~
froo
_I've been using Bing as my default search in FF all day today_

I must admit I've just started to do the same and am getting the same result.
I quickly added bing and its not sucking...

.. as someone who wrote off Microsoft only a few months ago and still on my
"Fuck yeah, open source! Fuck Microsoft!" high, I'm feeling a little
conflicted.

Well done Microsoft.

~~~
trezor
Not to deliberately derail the thread or anything, but if you in any way
associate using google search with promoting open-source, you are doing
something wrong. Google search is (too) as proprietary as it gets.

As for bing, I gave it a shot. After switching to the US version it was a
whole new product. My biggest complaint so far is the lack of intelligent
porn-searches :P

~~~
calambrac
The search is proprietary, but the company itself is one of (if not the)
largest supporters of open source software out there.
<http://code.google.com/opensource/>

Using Google for search makes Google money. Google reinvests a not-too-shabby
amount of that money back into open source software. Ergo, using Google search
promotes open source.

~~~
skinnymuch
Google also releases stuff by subsidizing them like crazy. Guess what happens
to people who make better products? No one hears about them because all the
techies are circle jerking themselves over the new Google product.

Sad, really.

~~~
calambrac
I'm pretty sure you're just talking out of your ass. Google has a long and
storied history of releasing things to the sound of chirping crickets (Orkut,
Froogle, Knol, Custom Search, etc.), and a lot of their services that aren't
necessarily duds certainly aren't being circle-jerked over, either (Checkout,
News, Finance, etc.)

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callahad
Definitely not a bad option, but as Mr. Arrington says, "I’m used to Google
and I know how to find the things I’m looking for."

I honestly cannot think of a time in the past year where Google has failed to
locate sufficiently relevant information for a given query. If Google ever
disappoints, I'll definitely fail over to Bing, but those days will be few and
far between.

(And I do have a few presentation nits with Bing. I've seen a sponsored links
block inserted ~250ms after the results rendered, immediately shifting the
result positions and interrupting my skimming of the page. I can't open image
results in tabs using Chrome, and their content wrapping for image results,
Wikipedia pages, etc. feels a bit heavy-handed).

~~~
timcederman
To be honest, I've felt Google has been 'babying' me too much in the last
year. I've had part of my queries dropped, different intent inferred and weird
verb stemming applied to my searches. In the last 6 months there have been at
least a dozen occasions where I've felt the results are total crap for no good
reason.

(mind you, that's out of 15,000 searches according to my Google search
history)

There's also the general problem of too many commercial pages when you're
trying to get information, not a product. However Bing, et al, seems to suffer
from the same thing.

(eg, try finding out information about the Shoreline Amphitheatre VIP lounge
experience. There are sites out there which discuss it, but it took a
ridiculous number of permutations of search terms to finally find them)

~~~
randallsquared
Yes, one of the few major problems I have with Google is that it just changes
your query sometimes when you _really_ want what you typed, and the slight
change (adding an "s", most often, for me) swamps the results you're looking
for in a sea of unrelated stuff. Even using quotes doesn't help here, though
it should. I'll try to remember to use Bing for those kinds of queries when I
run into one again.

~~~
lincolnq
Did you try putting a + before the word? I think it tells Google "don't fuck
with this word, I want an exact match"

~~~
timcederman
Thanks! I always forget to use that, because its original use was only to
force Google to keep common words in the search query.

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madair
There will be inevitable negatives comparisons to Google, and perhaps some of
them are right. I'm just pleased it's working well enough for me and that
there is finally now a viable competitor to Google.

~~~
litewulf
Just wondering, why is it important to have a viable competitor to Google?

Are you worried about corporate shenanigans, or a single point of failure or
something entirely else?

~~~
madair
The danger of all monopolies. I'm not trying to troll or promote irrational
fear, but I feel that the competition has been too weak.

The hegemony of a single organization which has a clearly stated philosophical
viewpoint with a desire to index all information quite simply poses risks
which others have described better than I can claim to. By diversifying those
risks I hope we can reduce the potential problems.

I'm not saying that Microsoft is the antidote, just that I am glad to see
competition. I hope there is more forthcoming.

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noodle
i have to admit, it is surprisingly good. not better than google, but it
presents itself as a quality alternative. several steps up from live.

given some more time to chisel away at it, MS might have something which could
seriously compete with google in the future.

~~~
10ren
The results seem similar to Google. I wonder if PageRank litigation is a
possibility.

~~~
noodle
possible, but that would be one hell of an epic court case. probably wouldn't
even be worthwhile to try and jump into that. both sides would probably lose a
lot, on multiple levels.

~~~
10ren
Yes, I was thinking PR. Odd fact: Yahoo appears to have a license for PageRank
(Yahoo bought overture/goto, whose patent Google infringed with AdWords
auction). GOOG-MS might cross-license too.

------
pc
If you want to test Bing in Safari, try:

    
    
      $ curl collison.ie/code/bing-safari-patch.rb | ruby
    

It'll replace Google with Bing in Safari's search box in the top right.

(Of course, you should read the code before running it.)

~~~
evgen
Or go get the glims safari extension so that you can add whatever search
provider you want for the search box and also pick up a bunch of other neat
safari tweaks (how I survived without the ability to undo a close tab I will
never know... :)

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cnlwsu
I was a little excited after reading the article, alas I was disappointed when
I tried it out. Seems to do everything in its power to avoid displaying
blogspot, google mail lists, and google code projects. It didnt display as
much about me as when I searched my name on google - did not even have my blog
which has my name in the DNS :( . When I searched for dojango I was very
disapointed... "Results are included for django" could have been changed to
"Results were replaced with this search that we think you meant" To top things
off, it seems to temporarily freeze my Ubuntu's installation of FF every time
I move my mouse around the page.

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radu_floricica
The problem with new search engines is not only how good they are, but that
google is _the_ standard. Every website who wants to be visible is google-
optimised, so it will be hard for a contender to be both original and
successful.

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Retric
Bing seems to really like a few sites (Wikipedia, Amazon), but it's not quite
up to Google search results.

PS: Some of the differences are just funny. Retric in Google = Hacker News
profile, Retric in Bing = Slashdot Profile.

~~~
jm4
_PS: Some of the differences are just funny. Retric in Google = Hacker News
profile, Retric in Bing = Slashdot Profile._

Slashdot has been around for over a decade. It has a PageRank of 9 versus 6
for HN. I would imagine Bing has a similar metric for measuring the popularity
of a site. It seems to make sense that the Slashdot profile would rank higher.

What I think is really interesting is why Google ranked the HN profile higher.
I'm thinking freshness is weighted much higher on Google than it is on Bing.
I've done similar searches on both and while both yield relevant results I'm
more likely to see older content on Bing.

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10ren
Nice point that there is a little google lock-in, when people have learnt how
to find things with google. It's not just the query syntax, but also that
we've learnt what kinds of answers it gets back.

~~~
10ren
Thinking further: lock-in doesn't give you much competitive advantage in comp
tech - but it does grant you a buffer against competitors. It buys you time,
to match their improvement, or even improve on them. Therefore, in tech, I
think competitive advantage should be measured in _time_ * : our good image
gives us 1 week; user inertia is 1 year; adapting to another interface is 3
weeks; our server farm speed is 6 months; PageRank is 2 months.

These times only come into play when a competitor offers something better in
some way (if there's nothing better, then these timers aren't engaged). It's
like a better product is a pressure or voltage differential, and the
competitive advantage is the resistance.

Of course, when you're ahead is the time to grow your competitive advantage,
even though it's not needed, so that you have it when it is needed. It's an
investment. The parts of the model are: the users you have; the relative
attractiveness of a competing product; and what stops your users from
switching.

Actually, I think this is just one kind of competitive advantage, and it only
covers existing users (not new ones). For a start up, it's not enough to just
retain users, you need to get them in the first place. You're better off
focusing on getting them (by increasing the relative attractiveness of your
product) rather than stopping them from switching... but Warren Buffett is
always going on about competitive advantage - what exactly does he mean?

[ * ] for half their users to switch

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jzachary
I like Bing. It does a much better job for image search and presentation than
Google.

The thing that will make Bing competitive with Google, however, will be the
front page. Google has adhered to a simple front page with religious zealotry.
Bing, on the other hand, seems to embrace making the front search page more
useful. It remains to be seen if MS will clutter it up, but if Google starts
adding widgets and tools to the front page, you will know they are paying
attention.

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Raphael_Amiard
I didn't like the search results. It tries to guess on what you want, and as a
techie i guess i'm more used to specifying myself what i want to search.

~~~
bitwize
Would you like them better if the Google logo were floating at the top of the
page?

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
I was refering to actual search results, for the same search, with comparison
from both search engines. I might be totally wrong, and the issue is in a good
part subjective. That's why i did put the words "I didn't like", and not "The
results are plain bad".

Implying i was just influenced by the brand, while it may have seemed clever
to you, is rude , gross ,and totally unrelated to what i said.

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paulgb
I like the preview of the content when you hover over the result. It's
interesting that Wikipedia pages can be viewed as pages on Bing.com. I think
that's a feature that came from Powerset.

It's a reasonable competitor to Google, but I was hoping for a feature or two
that would really impress me. Everything I see so far is an incremental
improvement at best.

------
evanmoran
Personally I'm still enamored with WolframAlpha, though Bing has a distinct
edge in ease of typing=).

I realize that (for now) these sites are apples to oranges, but I would
welcome any move by Microsoft/Google to take on Wolfram. Perhaps Bing will go
this way? They have a lot of smart filtering, and the endless image search is
just fun.

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nathanwdavis
I'm happy with it - my site comes in at #8 on it, instead of #10 on Google for
my target keywords "etf screener". Besides that though it does exceed my
expectations.

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kwamenum86
uuuh...guys? I think Bing might be better than Google....what do I do?

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jcapote
Meanwhile Windows continues to rot away; Remind me why they need to be so into
search again?

