Slashdot Mirror
Has Bing Already Overtaken Yahoo?
nk497 writes "Microsoft's newly revamped search tool Bing has already overtaken Yahoo in the US and globally, according to StatsCounter. The net traffic watcher said Bing has topped Yahoo 16.28% to 10.22% in the US, and 5.62% to 5.13% globally. Though the firm noted Bing's popularity may drop off after the excitement wears off, the firm also said: 'Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo at a cost of $40 billion it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated.' Google, of course, still leads by a considerable margin."
It's hard to see how someone wrote this post today - when the same site shows that Bing surpassing Yahoo! only lasted for a day. TechCrunch already pointed this out yesterday. Bing may or may not have a big impact - but I think it will take some more time before we know whether it will or not. There is certainly a very long way to go before it even begins to approach google.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Not so fast. Same source indicates the bing has already fallen back down to (less than) live.com levels.
TechCrunch: Bing was #2 for a day then Yahoo regained its place as Bing fell.
"As Matt Cutts (who yes, works for Google) points out in the comments, StatCounter updates every few hours, so there is also data for today already. And itâ(TM)s more bad news for Bing. Itâ(TM)s now down to 5.65% in the U.S. â" yes, thatâ(TM)s less than what Live.com was at last month."
Soccer Goal Plans
I'm skeptical of this data--at least worldwide. When I click the gs.statcounter.com link and go to Statistic:Search Engine and Country/Region:Asia I see Baidu at an alarmingly low rate. Barely even recognizable. The CSV sheet shows it at zero until 03/05/2009 which is hilarious and then it bumps up to 1%. Yeah, I think they have some problems with their data collection methods or who is reporting this data anyhow. Maybe their software's only in English? I don't know but that data alarms me and I would take their stats in other realms lightly as that's a vote of no confidence from me--something is skewed horribly and I don't like it. They might be right about Yahoo! compared to Bing but this is certainly not reassuring.
My work here is dung.
Bing Is Not Google
They had a prime time commercial where I live. I saw it, and I could tell it was going to be a bing advert so I paid attention. So my wife paid attention too, and the first thing she said after the commercials was... "Biiiiing". So it was catchy and probably stuck in her head (buy my years of "just use google" still remains).
Yahoo might be worried, but I don't think Google cares... at this point it's a race for second place.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
I did a little experiment. I loaded up IE, hit the search button, typed something in, and ran the search. Whaddayaknow, Bing comes up with the search results. So every idiot that has the same Windows installed as the day they brought it home from Walmart with IE as the default browser and the little search button as their only gateway to the world is going to use Bing whether they know it or not. Apparently there are quite a few such idiots. Are we surprised?
mmmm...forbidden donut
This morning, our dear leader Steve Ballmer is unveiling our completely new search service, unrelated to anything we at Microsoft have ever done before: Bob Hope.
We spent lots of time listening to you, except when you told us how much MSN Search^W^W Live Search^W^W Kumo sucked 'cause you're just wrong about that, to learn which buzzwordy Web 2.0 thingies you use search for today. Finding a webpage that has anything to do with the search terms you entered is so passe, dahling.
So today we're introducing a new kind of search, that goes beyond traditional search engines that do tedious things like find stuff, to instead help you make faster, more informed decisions. (Windows 7 is peachy keen, by the way.) We think of Bob Hope as a Decision Engine. We've sued Stephen Wolfram into atomic dust using our patents on FAT and Mono, co-opted the Wolfram Alpha engine and swapped Mathematica for Visual Basic and Wolfram's brain for the exhumed corpse of Bob Hope.
So why did we pick Bob Hope as the new core of our search? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world.
And just look at these results!
What do we want?
Braaains.
When do we want them?
Braaains.
What do I need to run Windows 7?
Braaains.
What's Bill Gates got that means you should buy everything you can from the company he founded?
Braaains.
What's the final proof of Steve Ballmer's equal genius to Steve Jobs?
Vistaaa.
This is something new, something improved! You need to try it! It'll give so much more betterer results than that other search engine we can't name because Steve will wedge another chair up our butts! Please, come and try our new and improved service! FOR GOD'S SAKE TRY THE DAMN SERVICE. OR THE PUPPY GETS IT. We're Microsoft. We're serious as a heart attack on this one.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
You know the next onslaught of Bing ads will claim:
"More popular than Yahoo!"*
* For one day after weeks of massive advertising, Bing beat out Yahoo in website traffic. Results not typical.
How long before M.S. sends out an update that automatically redirects URL typos to Bing?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Time to get ready for work, Redmond.
1. Their marketing strategy seems to be to push the name 'Microsoft' as far away as possible. Interesting they view their own name as a liability in this space.
2. 'Bing is not google' abbreviation seems particularly weird. Suggesting that currently google has an oppressive, monopolistic grip on the search industry, leaving little choice but to have to go with them as they are the defacto standard. The company that wants to save a market from an oppressive, de-facto standard monopoly is.... Microsoft?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Over the weekend, I went to yahoo to search immigration information on pre-WWI Germany and the site kept timing out. Google was giving me nothing. I went to Bing and got a few good listings. Yahoo is just a poor search engine.
I dated your sister until you told me not to? BING! Needlenose Ned! BING!
Man, I've seen that movie so many times.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I did a little experiment. I loaded up IE, hit the search button, typed something in, and ran the search. Whaddayaknow, Bing comes up with the search results. So every idiot that has the same Windows installed as the day they brought it home from Walmart with IE as the default browser and the little search button as their only gateway to the world is going to use Bing whether they know it or not. Apparently there are quite a few such idiots. Are we surprised?
People like you are why IT people get a bad rap.
Why is someone an "idiot" who does not care what search engine or browser they use? You are into (or do it professionally) IT, so this sort of thing is important to YOU. I bet in other fields, maybe for example sake investing, people could say "Wow, you're an idiot for not performing a split. Moron!"
Fact is different things are important to different people. It doesn't make them an idiot.
StatCounter confirms it.
Deleted
The commercial that I saw for bing was the most horrible commercial ever. Made me feel like if I searched for something that I'd get everything back that I didn't want to see as a result and nothing I was actually looking for.
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
Around a decade ago, it was enough to have a better search engine to get people to switch. But in the meantime, google has me hooked on mail, sites, and documents. Other people use other apps, but just like Microsoft snagged the desktop OS market based on it being the default on commodity hardware and then maintaining it with applications later, I believe Google will keep it's top spot on the same idea.
Migrating from a search engine simply is a lot of hassle now especially since it's diminishing returns, I have a feeling that "perfect" results and google and maybe even bing won't be that far apart from each other. Also, a decade ago, the internet was more of a wild west in terms of searching for information about some topics far and wide. You just didn't know what sites had relevant information. These days, a great majority of my searches start as "X Y wikipedia" because now there is a centralized spot for info.
I applaud Microsoft's effort though. Competition is always a good thing and might bring something unexpected or at least keep google honest and on its toes. Also, the bing page has learn/copied the good part of google, and that is the minimalization. A far cry from the horrendous "portal"idea that Yahoo, MSN, comcast.net, AOL, and others are still attached too.
Bing may or may not have a big impact
Well a quick straw poll in my building suggests Bing hasn't even surpassed yelling down the corridor so it's got a looong way to go!
When I type something in the address bar of firefox, it searches for it using bing (previously live search). Is there a way I can change this to google I'm Feeling Lucky (Like it was on the ol gentoo box? (I'm on vista now)).
Stop posting them on Slashdot and see their traffic drop. When was Yahoo! in the headline for Slashdot?
Oh...right, this story.
I'm just waiting for Microsoft to set Bing as the default search engine in IE and Firefox as part of an important security update.
You mean Yahoo! does web search?
Oh.. right.. I guess it does...
With a multimillion dollar ad campaign in full swing, of course people are going to visit Bing. I haven't seen a yahoo ad in months (print, web, or broadcast media)... but I'm going to bet Yahoo has more return visitors.
Yes, they are also famous for heavily discrediting open source and providing Steve Ballmer with free chairs.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Not going to happen. Yahoo! is at around 5% of the total market. We all know about it, because we remember when it was at the top, but for most people if you say 'better than Yahoo!' they say 'huh? Better than what? Is Yahoo a thing you Google with?'. All that kind of advert would do is draw people's attention to the existence of Yahoo.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
or *is* bing a search engine after all?
...is the integrated "porn theater" feature. Turn off SafeSearch (or w/e they call it, I care so little I forgot already), look up any porn search term - et voila! watch the videos right in the search results window.
:D
Looks like they're trying to kill off Redtube, not Google
wait until the "new" wears off and people will go back to their old favorites, google, yahoo, askJeevs' & etc... whatever, people are going to bing to see what it is capable of and when they are done they will leave, i am sure the microsofties & msn users will gravitate to bing, but not all...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
His best effort? Brought in new garbage.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347651,00.asp
You also can still use Altavista. I am sure it integrates better with your Vista PC.
Microsoft is the next AOL.
google returned these three first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_antitrust_case http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft-antitrust.htmlSo I compared that to Yahoo:
http://www.microsoft-antitrust.gov/ http://www.zdnet.com.au/tag/anti_trust-eu-microsoft.htm http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39202361,00.htmBing returned these three first:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/legalnews.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/legal_newsroomarchive.mspx?case=Government%20Anti-Trust%20Case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_antitrust_caseIf you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. - Joseph Goebbels
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...WTF is "Bing"?
Sorry, but seriously, can't say I've heard of it. Windows Live is being pimped too hard everywhere I look (thanks IE8).
Obviously not the market penetration they really think it is. Steve, call me when you start using Bing as a verb, OK?
Some of the articles in "IT Pro" magazine seem to me to be ads. Here are other articles:
..." Google and Microsoft are not a "pair".
Can Microsoft make a success out of Silverlight? Quote: "... Microsoft's Silverlight weighs in at just a four-megabyte download, and apparently takes just 10 seconds to install." Another quote: "So how has Silverlight fared, and can it really topple Flash?" Silverlight is far, far behind Flash.
Can Google or Microsoft get any bigger? Quote: "... Google, along with Microsoft, is so large and so dominant in its sectors, that both firms are hitting a point where their potential for profitable growth is limited." Another quote: "Certainly the pair of them own their key markets,
This is the article, published today, to which this Slashdot story linked: Has Bing already overtaken yahoo? But that article no longer exists, apparently. Now that link takes visitors to another article: UPDATED: Bing and Yahoo battle it out for second in search. Quote: "One stats firm has said Microsoft's Bing has already caught up to rival Yahoo, just a week after launch - but it's since slipped back to third." Bing hasn't "slipped back to third", Bing has dived in the ratings, and is now far behind Yahoo.
If it did manage to over take Yahoo, my suspicions are that the only way Microsoft can accomplish that would be to install this as the default search and push it down with Windows mandatory updates and over ride the users default settings. Many users know nothing about their computers and can't change it back without calling a geek, so Microsoft would stand to win here. There's a word for this but it escapes me about now.. :-)
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
And now that bing has been slashdotted, it'll be back to throwing chairs around...
"... In the end, I arrived at the decision that this is simply a timley [timely] story..."
It is not a "timely story". The Slashdot story is completely misleading.
As per Hitwise, Bing doing reasonably well in UK also.
If you don't know what Bing is, you should just Google it.
My webcomic
I just installed Opera-10 beta bc Opera says it is 100% acid3 compliant, and went over to Bing and chose to search for an image. When I tried to modify the search filter settings from the default (moderate) to no filter, the popup that had the checkboxes appeared UNDER the image windows, making a selection impossible.
As usual MS seems to be ignoring standards.
Summarized PDF
This process was upset by the new marketing direction, but it hasn't reached a steady state yet.
Drawing any conclusions whatsoever about the process before it has stabilized is as useful as trying to see the future by reading tea leaves in a cup.
It's been a long time.
PEBKAC.
ID 10T
And, of course, RTFM, noob.
This doesn't mean they are stupid, just stupid about X, where X is whatever we're talking about. If we were a VC blog, people making investments in Nigerian Princes would be "Idiots". A legal secretary put her money and stole company money to pay for such a scam.
She WAS an idiot.
Yet she passed all the (really quite hard) exams to take the job.
Greed made her an idiot.
And for you, you don't WANT to know how to operate a computer, yet demand the freedom to operate a computer. This makes YOU an idiot. Yet I guess you passed exams, drove a car without killing thousands of other pedestrian/road users and so on.
But, here, where computers are our reason for being here, you're an idiot.
MS lost the search wars some time ago. Meanwhile Google is moving on with things like Chrome and Wave wave.google.com ..
I'm from StatCounter and I would just like to address your concern. The detection for baidu was added on the 5th March 2009 at 21.00 GMT. When a new detection is added it is noted on the visual graph (but not in the csv download). Also if you look at the stats just for China you can easily see Baidu's dominance there.
Using Wikipedia for population, we have Asia at 4x10^9 or four billion. We also see that the population of China is 1.33x10^9--that is over one fourth the population of Asia is in China. Your data for the range you specified shows Baidu in China at 56.42%--a figure I believe although I would expect Baidu to be trouncing Google more so than a 21% lead. So using these numbers we can establish that China's numbers should be reflected in Asia's numbers at 1.33/4 or 33%. Now, we know that over half of that third is using Baidu. which means that at least 1/6 or 16.6% of your Asia statistics for that same range should reflect 16% using Baidu! Instead you show 1.51% of Asia using Baidu for that range.
Ok? I stand by my assessment that your collection methods are flawed and do not accurately represent usage across large expanses of users.
My work here is dung.
Of course Bing has overtaken Yahoo. They just flipped the Live search over to Bing, and the media hype machine filled in the rest.
At work, where our security settings prevent changing the homepage or default search engine, any mistyped URL automatically rolls over to Bing now, without any prompting from our IT staff.
So, it's not surprising that BING has higher numbers.
Interestingly, someone has put up a 'side-by-side' blind test to compare Bing vs. Yahoo vs. Google.
I'm surprised at how well Yahoo has acquitted itself, although I know from past experience that it just doesn't cut it. So far, Bing has been a dismal last place in every search I've thrown at this thing.
Check it out:
http://blindsearch.fejus.com/
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I first heard of Bing two days ago thanks to an ad on Hulu. That ad featured a woman with a necklace made of hot dogs, and said nothing about search engines or that Bing was even tech-related. For all they said in the ad it could have just as easily been a sports commentary hour. Great job building brand awareness.
There are lots of opinions as to whether Bing is number two or was number two or whatever. But regardless of its current rank, it is and will continue to be a major player and those who employ paid search as a strategy need to consider it. See here for more: New thoughts on Bing, Yahoo, and Google
Microsoft got the UI right this time as in the got rid of everything that wasn't related to searching. So my experience so far is good. OTOH I have no good reason to switch so Google is still my go to for search. I'll keep trying Bing out though because it's early on and they may just get better than Google.
I don't hate MS I just dislike their products (excepting Word, Excel and PPT) and their licensing - always seems that you have to pay more for every little bit of functionality whether it's to MS or some 3rd party and the functionality they do include is never quite up to the task despite the obviously high amount of effort put into developing it. Here's a tip Microsoft - "You can't know what you don't know" so let other's think it up for you and give them a way to share it with your customers for free if they want.
I would love to see Google or Microsoft allow user search plugin contributions as in provide access to a search API that requires a key of course and allows them to request and parse results themselves, then add in your text ads as part of the result set.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I think it may have been less "advertising" and more leveraging Windows Live Search redirections and newly-installed IE8 defaults.
Good for one day's bragging rights, I guess.
Time was, that would have resulted in a new monopoly. Guess you can't go back again.
Kythe
Free as in Beer or Free as in FOSChairs?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Look at the initial bounce Google Chrome got when it was introduced:
Google Trends
Nope, I don't work for neither MS or freetard army. Try again.
"While I agree with your main point, I believe it is "fair" to call people idiots if they are ignorant about something and then complain that it does not work for them."
Once my car broke down, I didn't know how to fix it, and I complained a lot.
Sorry.
They'd just game them separately with twinned sites & such.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ballmer, throwing chair: "I'll Binging bury Google!"
In hype, perhaps... I thought that "search overload" commercial was clever the first time I saw it. Then, when I saw it 3 more times in the same hour, I wanted to hurt someone. It's about twice as long as it should be, and it gets unbelievably tedious. It annoys me so badly that I've already sworn off ever using it.
... said the bored Redmond employee, carrying Ballmer jumper-monkey picture in his small cubicle. I'm in no way a Yahoo search fan (almost never use it, to be precise), but Bing looks far behind as far as search-result-quality goes. That, and the fact that, MS fan boys, face it, Microsoft just isn't cool anymore. And in these days that is a factor as much critical as the technical merit of the proposed solutions. That in case of Bing, are flawed, but you get the point.
This weekend I was away from my computer, unable to click on EVERY Bing Google ad possible.
Nothing like helping Google make money, while making Microsoft think continuing in their world domination.
I don't know, Microsoft can't seem to name a product or service to save their lives anymore - "bing", "squirt", etc. They must have hired the same weirdo who thought up the whole "Unzip, Expand, Explode" triumvirate.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
bing has been advertising non-stop on hulu, after watch a few shows last night I think I saw their 4 ads about 10 times each (which don't even hint about it being a search engine)
Their running a bingathon tonight 8 Eastern on hulu.
So "Bing" is another name for MS search but we are supposed to believe they jumped Yahoo by changing the name? That would mean not only would have all the previous MS search lemmings basically stayed put and people jumped from Google and/or Yahoo. That's just dumb and I have no doubt this is just another Microsoft marketing gimmick so more lemmings might get a warm and fuzzy feeling thinking there weren't the only ones using MS Bing. But, knowing Microsoft, maybe they did an OS patch which "fixed" the default search field for everyone using Windows and now they all use Bing. Or they only did that to the ones naive enough to still be using MS Vista. IMO.
What made me laugh when I tried MS Bing was when the search returned something like 6 pages but from page 3 onward all it did was reshowed the same last page of search results.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's more like this:
A mechanic and an IT guy are yelling to each other. "What do you mean you don't care what engine it is? You're a fucking idiot!"
If you claim some market share and even CNET which is known to be best friend of MS doesn't buy it and even laughs to it, it is time to re-consider your business.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10258576-2.html
IMHO you better go call MS, they may have some job for you.
Didn't even know they were still around.
The search thingy on slashdot gets more hits than the two of them combined.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bing, the search engine that'll return more links than you can throw a chair at!
It was during last night's Lakers (Go Lakers!) vs. Magic game #2. I am sure that will boost traffics.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
No! Come back! I don't care how tasty those cookies are! They are NOT worth your SOUL!!!
They are careful NOT to mention "free".
When Ballmer get's the chair, it's got a "sponsored by" sticker on it...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
But does it run on Linux?
1. It has a catchy name. Binging your mama sounds even cooler than googling her.
2. MS is throwing a lot of bling at bing.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I wrote a K5 article several years ago, "How to quit smoking cigarettes". It resonated with a lot of people, and it was blogged about quite a lot. Until recently a google search of "How to quit smoking cigarettes" landed it at the top spot. It's fallen off, but "How to quit smoking cigarettes mcgrew" still finds it on google.
Not on bing.
I then tried "What is a black hole?" The top spot was nothing about black holes:
The second result was wikipedia, the third was NASA. Judging from my limited test, I'd say Google has nothing whatever to worry about.
Free Martian Whores!
Good - Easy to use, decent results, refreshing look.
Bad - Poor related links.
Ugly - Can't try out everything because I don't have silverlight on my laptop and cell phone.
I'm wondering if bing is more about Silverlight than it is about being better than MSN Search or Live.
-- $G
-metric
I must be living under a rock. I hadn't heard of this before today....
So now Microsoft is helping me search for low fares on Southwest? Neet!
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Our company-wide web filter (Websense) blocks all access to bing.com .
Guess our employees won't be using Bing :-) .
This is the honeymoon phase. Everyone wants to see what is so good about it and will bum rush the site, that is why they are taking these numbers now, it overinflated its use nothing more. Same pattern that MS uses for most of their PR Bing Vista Zune XP Etc.
The love of good Whiskey,Woman,Weed is all i need.
I tried it out a couple of times, and it insists on offering me Finland-related search results. This made it completely useless for me. I guess it does the same for users from other countries - gives search results specific to the searcher's geographic location. Well, that's bullshit.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you can't join them, beat them!
No one ever won by being 2nd!
Okay, so truism aside - Isn't it sad that the behemoth of technology is aiming for second? Why not shoot for the top? Did MS get to be the biggest seller of software on the planet by aiming low? Whatever Ballmer is, he ain't Bill Gates!
Get off my lawn!
I wonder if we're just getting older.
You see, back in the day, we had to learn assembler to write programs. Then they made C and other higher-level languages. And then interpreted languages. but even when writing VB.NET or C#, in my head I'm doing the equivalent of the original C++ to C translator, adding C to ASM on one side and OOP to C++ on the other side.
I sometimes wonder that, back when search sucked (right around the time of Northern lights / AltaVista) I could find anything. It wasn't persistence - it was putting the right terms in. Think of what you want to see on the page, and let it do a simple look-up.
google is not processing data that way any more. We have to re-learn how to do our specific searches. I don't have an answer for you tho, still figuring it out. Meantime, try just asking a question like the idiot users do. It works more often than I expect.
Error: Ego is too big. Please shrink and try your search again.
There is a code search option for google. Use it instead of the general purpose search engine meant to sifting through unorganized (indexed, yes) data. Google is collecting your clicks, but they aren't looking at YOUR clicks, they are looking for patterns in the general populace. Quit thinking your data is important, and use the facilities provided.
http://www.google.com/codesearch
If you put "code search" into Google, you might find that. I did.
Also, Google can't do anything if the manufacturer doesn't provide links to support documentation. In most cases, I've found most of the docs available on the reseller's site. The MFR usually requires that you sign in or do some other foolish thing before providing you with options. Or maybe they have their data sheets hidden under a robots.txt file because they don't want Google siphoning gigs of data each dime it spiders. Not google's fault. If you know the manufacture, why not go to their website directly? Why do you expect google to 1) spider everything 2) figure out which is the MFR and which is the reseller 3) figure out from a bunch of numbers you're looking for a manufactured part number? Again, the facilities provided allow you to search a part on a particular site, just add " site:google.com" or whichever the mfr's domain is.
Also, what's your beef about auto-correct again? Did Google turn that option on in all of your apps and you can't turn it off? spend some time customizing the dictionary in Word (if you enjoy self flagellation) or whatever you're whining about. Are you expecting software to be contextually aware, when it can barely figure out what you want it to do RIGHT NOW?
Also, how is software supposed to learn that you don't like something it does? That's a lot of learning - the current iteration of software simply needs well-organized, easily accessible options concerning the stuff users have complained about during testing and development. What I think you need is the "Any time I delete your auto-correction, put the original content you replaced in the dictionary and don't ask me again" option. Most people won't want that option, but this way it doesn't have to try to interpret what you like or don't like - because if you're already irritated by the way it works, you're not going to like it when it adds additional logic to do things on your behalf.
google is not processing data that way any more. We have to re-learn how to do our specific searches.
I've often wondered what role that plays in Google's dominance. They have ways of phrasing your searches that work much better than other ways, and I've slowly learned how to do the phrasing. Let's say some cool new search engine comes along that's easier to use. It uses natural language and finds exactly what you were looking for when you describe it. Who's going to go to that site and type in their natural language after learning the language that Google likes you to use? Furthermore, who's going to be able to convince us that they're better than Google when you use the terms that Google prefers?
Google's the standard by which all others are judged, and Google's quirks may have long since become requirements without us even realizing it. If that's the case, then the hard part isn't going to be making a search engine that's better than Google, it'll be making a search engine that people can use better than Google, and that's hard when Google's all anyone's ever known.
"just use google"
Bing Is Not Google =
Just Use Google, Sweetie = ?
Genius!
I'm off to register this domain!
Wait a minute..
Microsoft has issued a press release that Bing has now easily surpassed Windows95 in popularity, and is approaching Windows98 in total daily users.
Steve Ballmer has even gone so far as to say that it may even overtake WindowsME, if it builds up enough momentum to break through that group's technological elitism.
~
I did the same test on a vintage Win2K / IE install which I run in a VM specifically because I have to test against ancient versions of windows and IE. This 2000 era environment directed me straight to bing.com to do my search as well - so yes, there are going to be a lot of people using bing to do their searches by default.
Having said that, I have no idea why anybody thinks it's strange that bing is having a surge and then a fall in patronage - isn't that what happens with just about any new product on the planet??? We'll know in 6 months if bing was a success. A day or even a month's data means nothing. As far as quality of results go, I think bing is a big success merely because it is not noticeably worse than Google - that's a huge achievement.
Well, Microsoft has launched their 'new' search engine... Here's my initial impressions.
They have missed all the lessons Google has taught us about making search SIMPLE and accessable. In fact, they have done the exact same thing in terms of bloated graphics, annoying scripts and reliance on "ain't it neat" technologies that KILLED ask.com
First load it takes forever loading some sort of background image, said image makes reading the text in the little side-bar difficult to read. Likewise the white on grey text outside their little search area is also below accessability norms in terms of contrast, the white heading texts below the image and then the menu line in the 'footer' being the worst offenders - I hope they enjoy their fines from the UK on the accessability grounds - The search box with it's akilter uneven spacing looks like a rendering error. That the results are left justified but fixed width is annoying since the width they choose is a bit too narrow.
Brand new website and the markup is malformed. This isn't the traditional validation errors you can ignore like empty alt tags, but geniune "the designer doesn't even know HTML" errors like block-level elements inside inline-level ones. This extends to the filesizes where there's 31k of markup being used to deliver 400 BYTES of content, improperly linked stylesheets, and javascript that by all indications serves no good fathomable purpose - much less the lack of graceful degredation when javascript is disabled.
It also appears that in Opera the page never finishes loading from links to files that don't even exist. Since the page is overly reliant upon javascript this means onload never fires - just brilliant. I'm seeing four different broken layouts in four different browsers...
The search results? Look like every other search engine - from fifteen years ago. Reminds me of altavista back in the day. While google has upped the ante adding the ability to white-list and black-list pages from their results, it looks like M$ has simply added tracking javascripts around all links on what is little more than a overglorified half-assed rehash of what search engines have been putting online for the better part of the past decade and a half. I think their use of (broken) scripting is supposed to help them cater the results based on what people click on - but since you don't know if the page ACTUALLY has what you want until you visit it, that's not exactly going to help tune results any.
The site is entirely typical of what I've come to expect from Microsoft so far as web technologies are concerned, which is to say it is plainly evident the people they have writing websites have no clue how to actually DO SO!!! Much like the new "live mail" this half-assed broken bloated codebase with the half-assed broken skin that doesn't even meet accessability norms should not be impressing anyone, and if anything should be resulting in people getting fired. If anything, it's an embarassment to the company of monumental proportions... but then we're talking about the company who's site for their web design tool "Web Expression" has a broken layout on Large font/120dpi systems.
Color me unimpressed. The ONLY reason it's seeing any sort of ranking spike is launch fever - I can't see anyone finding a good reason to actually stick with it apart from joe sixpack too stupid to know anything about the internet apart from clicking on the big blue E and having it go to MSN.COM
I went looking for trouble, and boy, I found her...
This is the problem. AltaVista worked in a predictable way: you typed search terms joined with boolean operators. It searched pages for those terms. It was a tool. Now Google seems to be trying to guess what I wanted to do, and its "intelligence" is being constantly updated. Thus, I can't use it as a tool anymore that has a predictable, consistent response to a particular action on my part. This is my problem with all software that tries to be smart. Either it really is smart, and does what I want all the time, or it needs to fucking take its place as a tool and do exactly what it is told, like all good software tools. Anything inbetween is madening to use. I hate it, but Google is become less and less enjoyable to use as time passes (all the fucking spam blogs and sites don't help, and I don't blame Google for that).
Or at least the spin.
Saw that the old default link to MSN now pointed to Bing on a couple of boxes I turn on every once in a blue moon, after they automatically updated to IE8.
"Move along now, nothing to see here."
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
The acquisition of PowerSet was a few days ago and is presumably not what is powering Bing. Apologies if this is inaccurate, it's the result of spending 5 seconds skimming the parent's TFA link.
Who was excited?
bing is a unix/linux tool from 1995
On a debian based system (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.)
sudo apt-get install bing
man bing
I say things which affects my Karma negatively. (and I don't care) For instance; All religion is false.