Bing Gaining Market Share Faster

sopssa sends along a TechCrunch report on comScore qSearch numbers indicating that Bing is currently gaining market share faster than ever before. "In December, Microsoft's search engine gained another 0.4 percent to capture 10.7 percent of US search queries. That makes five straight months of steady share gains for Bing since it launched — Bing's share is up 2.7 percent in total since May, 2009. Google gained only 0.2 percent to end the month with 65.7 percent market share. What is even more interesting is if you look at year-over-year query growth rates for each search engine. Bing's growth is actually accelerating. Its growth rate in query volume was 49.4 percent in December."

Comments

Of course

[smooth wombat]

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

Duh!

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Firefox, Opera and Chrome do with Google? It's not hard to change search engine in IE, btw

Re:Of course

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Not to mention this has been the case for years. Unless transitioning from IE6 to IE7/8 has also accelerated drastically, the GPP's explanation makes no sense.

Re:Of course

[kjart]

It's actually pretty easy to change providers in IE - you just click on the drop down beside the search field and select 'Find more providers'. Brings up a page with numerous other search providers you can add (Google, ebay, etc). Also, I think if you go to google manually in IE, there is a prompt in the top right to switch (or at least there used to be - not sure if they killed this).

Also, if you were to apply the same logic, the marketshare gains by google would be non-trivial since they are the default homepage/provider in Firefox. Personally, while I do think the defaults do influence things, I also think you are overstating them slightly. Google's brand alone assures that a lot of non-savvy computer users will still go there despite defaults in their browser, simply because 'google' has become synonymous with 'search' to a large extent.

Re:Of course

[blanck]

Indeed, this may have more to do with an increase in adoption of Windows 7 than other factors.
I prefer Google for straight up search, but Bing is nice for some specialty searches, e.g. hotels with price comparisons.

Re:Of course

[Locke2005]

It also helps if you're willing to PAY people to use your search engine... Publisher's Clearing House sends me a daily email with a link to a Bing page, offering me a chance to win VALUABLE PRIZES by searching. What I've always said: "Anybody can generate $1 million in revenue, if they are given a $2 million marketing budget to do it with." Like our current job creation which is driven almost completely by government deficit spending, I'm not sure increasing search engine market share really counts if you are losing money on every search.

Re:Of course

[Kadin2048]

I did this a few weeks ago and Microsoft makes it intentionally difficult — first, most casual users don't even know that the "Find more providers" list is there. Second, it's not obviously clear that you'd use the "Find more providers" option to change providers; i.e. get rid of Bing completely and use Google instead, rather than add additional options to the menu. Third, if and when you do get to the Microsoft page of search providers, when I went there, Google wasn't even on the front page. It took a number of subsequent clicks to even find it, which seems totally inappropriate given Google's popularity.

This is 100% the usual Microsoft monopoly-leveraging SOP.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

And here's how that goes down with Joe Sixpack, and why it works.

"It's actually pretty easy to change providers in IE - you just click on the drop down beside the search field and select 'Find more providers'. Brings up a page with numerous other sea- Bah too complicated."

Re:Of course

[Moridineas]

Is it really hard to change your browser in IE7/8? I would have said it was just as easy to change the search provider in IE as it is in Firefox. What makes you claim that it's "difficult to add or change this option" ??

Re:Of course

[Lunix Nutcase]

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

How is it hard to change the default web browser for IE? It takes less than 5 seconds to do.

Re:Of course

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Because it's not like when you first run IE, it prompts you if you want to change your default search provider or anything.

Oh wait. It does.

Re:Of course

[ByOhTek]

So, clicking the drop down next to the search bar in IE, and selecting 'manage search providers' or whatever it is, is more difficult than clicking the drop down next to the search bar in FireFox and selecting 'Manage Search Engines'.

Funny, their methods seem identical except for Firefox has its drop down on the left, MS is on the right, and there's a bit of synonymous noun/verb switching.

Re:Of course

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Oh, come on. The first time you run IE8 it prompts you to pick a search provider or to use the default of Bing- and it keeps prompting every time you launch until you make a choice or tell it to go away. It lists Google right there, no need to search for more providers. It really can't be made any easier than that.

For an existing install, I can't say as I haven't tried it. But it seems odd to me that the first run would have data that a subsequent run would not.

Re:Of course

[Nerdfest]

Have a look at Google Squared for those searches ... it's pretty cool, although you need to add a price column yourself.

Re:Of course

[BrianRoach]

Including Verizon, which MS paid to change the search on all their smartphones to bing (including blackberry).

Without telling their users, or offering a way to opt out.

Oh, and on several (including blackberry) it changed the search field in the browser app to ONLY use bing. You can't change it back or to a different one.

So yeah, I would expect their usage went up a couple points.

Re:Of course

[lorenlal]

Also - If you go to to weather.com, it now uses Bing for the weather radar. Does that factor into this at all?

Re:Of course

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Come on. Just admit you dont like microsoft. It is very easy to change the default search engine in IE and Firefox. BTW Firefox comes default with google...

If firefox can default to google, IE can default to bing.

Both can be changed. There is little difference, just microsoft hate.

Re:Of course

[PaladinAlpha]

Yes, I've always found it difficult to click the picture of google with the drop-down arrow and select another search provider from the many options present. And even worse is when I want to add another one, like MS's latest cash cow, requiring me to then click "Manage search engines..." and then "Get more search engines". Whole thing is counter-intuitive, I tell ya.

On the gains, didn't something happen recently to lock a lot of smartphones into Bing? Can't remember the article.

Re:Of course

[jhoegl]

Like Firefox, Opera and Chrome do with Google? It's not hard to change search engine in IE, btw

Hey....

Shut up.

Re:Of course

[dougisfunny]

a bunch of Verizon blackberrys

Re:Of course

[Joce640k]

Assuming that Joe Sixpack knows that "Find more providers" really means "Change search engine"...and then after he;s added google via the tortuous web page he can navigate his way around to change the default setting (most users I've seen select google from the drop-down list and assume it changed the default - which it ought to, but this is Microsoft). And assuming he didn't install windows live or anything like that which will change it back again...then yes, it's really easy to change.

Re:Of course

[Idiomatick]

One thing I noticed was when you get something from Windows live including MSN messenger, movie maker or like 15 other products. Is that towards the end of the install it offers to make bing the default search provider and ("make it impossible for this to be changed back"). Which seemed a bit worrisome. I mean, it was easy to un-check but still.

Re:Of course

[Gadget_Guy]

I was surprised to find a google search returned no hits from M$ itself, but when I switched to bing, it worked. It seems that M$ is blocking google from searching it's site.

Really? I just copied the phrase from your post "Exchange Certificate on a winmo smartphone" into Google and the first result was a technet article at Microsoft. The best that Bing could do with the same phrase was some press release stuff about the phones (at least on the first page).

I know the results vary depending on your country and phase of the moon, but it seems a bit premature to suggest that Microsoft are blocking google when a million other test searches could easily prove that wrong.

Then after installing XP on another computer, and updating everything (since she wouldnt) I found that in the newest IE I couldnt use google as my search, the "easy" way of adding it was gone.

In other branches of this thread, everyone else has already mentioned the Find more providers option (which really doesn't seem that hard), but what "easy" way has been removed?

Re:Of course

[GerardAtJob]

Perhaps you know how to change the default search engine... but I can garantee you that 75% (AT LEAST) of all computer users DOESN'T KNOW HOW... Even if the buttons/options are correctly labeled...

Re:Of course

[Gerzel]

And all the OS's that include those as their default browser over IE and the vast market share those OS's have.

Re:Of course

[Unequivocal]

I search Google all the time and get MS knowledge base articles coming up frequently as well as links to other parts of their site. So, no, MS is not blocking Google from their site. Your search probably just had more relevant first page links from other sites, for whatever reasons.

Re:Of course

[BlackSnake112]

Google is on the first page for the 4 machines I just tried it on.

Also if one read the stupid wizard instead of clicking straight through, they have a chance to change the default search providers the first time they start IE. Option 1 is select all defaults, option 2 is custom. Then select an option to bring up a page allow one to select the search provider.

Re:Of course

[Gadget_Guy]

So what is the answer? Make the interface to only allow Google to be added? Seems a bit unfair on the other search engines out there.

Re:Of course

[caubert]

I like Bings image search better. Still use both, Google and Bing. And I agree, w7 has increased the popularity of Bing.

Re:Of course

[jittles]

Exactly. I suspect the increased search traffic is due to BCB, or Bing Cash Back if you're not into deals websites. Almost every single slickdeal post in the month of December had BCB as part of their slick prices. I used it myself for several purchases I was planning on making anyway.

Basically when I wanted to get 20% cash back on a purchase at Walmart I went to bing and searched "Walmart Bluray" and it returned an ad offering cash back at Walmart.

Re:Of course

[XxtraLarGe]

So, clicking the drop down next to the search bar in IE, and selecting 'manage search providers' or whatever it is, is more difficult than clicking the drop down next to the search bar in FireFox and selecting 'Manage Search Engines'.

I'm not going to say that it's more difficult, but rather it's less obvious. People who download & install FF will tend to be more tech savvy than those who use IE because that's what came with their computer. One nice thing that FF does is provide a list of icons for some more common search engines, whereas IE gives you live search or "Find more providers...", and it is a separate drop-down control on a button next to, not within the search window.

I think by and large it's new Windows 7 computer sales with IE 8 that's driving Bing's growth, not that people are saying "Bing is a superior search engine, I think I will use that instead." If you're Joe Sixpack who doesn't know much about computers, you don't care about your web browser or search engine, you just want to be able to surf the web. You buy a new PC, and now instead of typing in your search box, you get Bing search results instead of Google.

Re:Of course

[jittles]

Perhaps you should try it again with Internet Explorer 8. The first thing it has you do is select a search provider, you can't use the browser until you select one. Yes the default is bing, but all the major search engines are there and they are listed in Alphabetical order. Maybe that's why they changed their name to Bing, though.

Re:Of course

[kjart]

What I've always said: "Anybody can generate $1 million in revenue, if they are given a $2 million marketing budget to do it with."

I will counter with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil. Money may make things easier, but nothing is a sure thing.

Re:Of course

[Hunter0000]

Actually, the last time I installed chrome on a fresh system it asked me if I wanted to change the default search provider to anything else (gave me a list). The default search at the time was Bing! due to the fresh windows install...

Re:Of course

[sopssa]

That is the same what Google does with their products. Just try to install Google Earth, Google Desktop or anything else they offer.

Re:Of course

[Junior J. Junior III]

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

Duh!

Indeed. It would be very interesting to know the number of Bing searches that originate from the search toolbar widget in IE.

And of those, what percentage are for non-savvy users searching Bing for "google.com".

Re:Of course

[sopssa]

Perhaps you know how to change the default search engine... but I can garantee you that 75% (AT LEAST) of all computer users DOESN'T KNOW HOW... Even if the buttons/options are correctly labeled...

And your point is exactly what? What makes you think it's the more right thing to do to have Google as the default engine? Or should they remove search boxes all together from IE? Should Google set Chrome have Bing as the default search engine instead of themself? Should firefox change to Bing instead of Google too? Should they all set to altavista? Should they just ditch the whole thing and have no searching at all?

Think a little, please.

Re:Of course

[spyrochaete]

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

Duh!

Give Microsoft credit where it's due. One of the very first screens you see when you start up Internet Explorer for the first time is the search engine selection menu. It tells you the default engine (Bing), offers a list of alternatives, and gives you instructions on how you can add any other engine that's not in the list. If anything Microsoft is overly gracious in this respect.

Compare this procedure to Chrome. It's far more difficult and nowhere near as transparent in this regard. It's possible but not obvious.

Re:Of course

[BitZtream]

Maybe you got stuck on a bad index/cluster of Googles machines. I never have any issue finding info on MS sites in Google.

I also haven't had a problem clicking the little link when you first run IE 8 that pops up the dialog that says 'Would you like to add Google as a search provider?'.

Note to mods:

Interesting is not the proper moderation for 'Wrong'. If you don't know anything about what the post is about and you can't confirm it yourself, don't fucking mod something up, stop being fanboys and get a freaking clue.

Re:Of course

[prestomation]

Two(?) words:
Windows 7

Re:Of course

[Androclese]

I did the "Mom Test"; it has been pretty reliable for testing tech things.

Here is the exact conversation:
me : 'Mom, I want you to change your IE search engine from Bing to Google.'
Mom: 'Why? What's the difference?'
me : 'Google is better.'
Mom: 'Nah, it doesn't matter to me, I just type what I want in there and the results show'
me : 'Can you at least try?'
Mom: 'Fine, where do I do it?'
me : '(start explaining)'
Mom: 'No, no, no, forget it, that's too complicated. Stop with the geek talk; I'm still confused on how Foxfire (sic) can use the same Internet as Windows... how do you expect me to figure this out?'
me : ...

Re:Of course

[Waffle Iron]

Anybody can generate $1 million in revenue, if they are given a $2 million marketing budget to do it with

True... unless you happen to spend your $2M on something like cat-shaped barcode scanners.

Re:Of course

[GerardAtJob]

My point is : They're is nothing impressive with Bing gaining market shares... with the release of Win7 (with BING as default search engine) and the reset of the default search engine to Bing in IE via Windows Update... They're just waiting for a family member to set it back to google... since they don't know how to do it. Just wait and see :)

Re:Of course

[John Hasler]

> Yes the default is bing, but all the major search engines are there and they
> are listed in Alphabetical order. Maybe that's why they changed their name
> to Bing, though.

No, then they would have changed it to Aardvark.

Re:Of course

[ByOhTek]

I don't disagree that Win 7 sales are probably what's driving up bing, but your first point is rather invalid. Less tech savvy users do not make something better than a competing thing that only differs by having more tech savvy users.

OK, yes, MS doesn't list any alternatives directly, but 'find another search provider' isn't really /that/ bad. It's not like it doesn't describe exactly, and plainly what it does. Now if it said something like "Clicking here can result in your computer being infected by malicious software", I might side with you, but this is kind silly.

Funny. I don't see Bing as an option in this Firefox browser I have open. That doesn't make it more difficult to use.

Re:Of course

[jbengt]

Give Microsoft credit where it's due. One of the very first screens you see when you start up Internet Explorer for the first time is the search engine selection menu.

Should I really give Microsoft credit for doing what the anit-trust regulators forced them to do?

Re:Of course

[XxtraLarGe]

OK, yes, MS doesn't list any alternatives directly, but 'find another search provider' isn't really /that/ bad. It's not like it doesn't describe exactly, and plainly what it does. Now if it said something like "Clicking here can result in your computer being infected by malicious software", I might side with you, but this is kind silly.

I said it's less obvious, not harder. Those are different things. Firefox explicitly puts the search engine icon along with the search engine name in the search box, and the icon is also the control. IE has the icon & engine name, followed by a magnifying glass and then the drop down box. Clicking on the icon in Firefox gives you a choice of search engines, clicking on the icon in IE gives you a list of past search terms. This is only my anecdotal observation, I didn't run a usability test before posting to slashdot.

Re:Of course

[Archangel Michael]

Like our current job creation which is driven almost completely by government deficit spending

Job Creation? REALLY? (and not, this isn't a bash on Obama, but rather on all the idiots in charge in Washington for the last 12 years).

Only one way to "create" jobs, that is to get DC and the State Capitols out of the way of small businesses.

Re:Of course

[AnotherUsername]

Tools->Internet Options->Type in the new home page in the big box.

You can even make tabbed homepages, if that's your thing.

Man, that was hard.

Re:Of course

[Locke2005]

I agree that it makes sense for the government to do deficit spending in time of recession (it would make sense to rebuild infrastructure during a time when it isn't competing as much with private industry for resources). My point was that gains made so far appear to be the direct result of government spending, and do not indicate that the economy itself is able to sustain these gains without continued government spending. In much the same way, Bing's increases due to Microsoft paying people to use their search engine may not be sustainable once those supports are removed. Despite registering as a Libertarian, I voted for Obama. I believe he will go down in history as one of our best presidents, whereas his predecessor will be regarded by historians as one of the worst if not the worst. But Obama's power is not absolute; there are limits to what he can accomplish, and it is virtually impossible for him to meet all of the high and conflicting expectations that were placed on him.

My biggest disappointment with Obama is that he hasn't undone more of Bush's mistakes. Also, despite having the power to terminate the "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy, he has chosen not to expend the political capital to do so. This policy is counter to our national security interests since personel that are forced to lie and keep secrets about themselves in order to keep their jobs are much more susceptible to being blackmailed.

Re:Of course

[shutdown -p now]

It still doesn't explain anything, because IE6 also uses Bing as default search out of the box. Well, technically, it uses Live, but that redirects all search queries to Bing now.

Re:Of course

[adbge]

The OP isn't trying to bash Microsoft or IE for having bing as the default search engine, but is instead pointing out that if you release a new search engine, and then make it the default in a large percent of Internet browsers, of course it will gain ground quickly. This further implies that Bing is gaining market share not on merit, but rather because of its default behavior.

Re:Of course

[V!NCENT]

Chrome defaults to Google and asks you on the first startup if you're OK with it or if you want to change it to another search engine. At least with the latest public build...

Re:Of course

[adbge]

I think it would be safe to say that his mother understands that two vehicles can operate on the same road.

But you knew that, didn't you?

Re:Of course

[A12m0v]

It is not a bad thing. The more share Bing gains the more this proves that Google isn't a monopoly and averts any possible antitrust suit.

Re:Of course

[h4rm0ny]

You need to upgrade to a smarter mother. Mine's fine with that.

Re:Of course

[spyrochaete]

Give Microsoft credit where it's due. One of the very first screens you see when you start up Internet Explorer for the first time is the search engine selection menu.

Should I really give Microsoft credit for doing what the anit-trust regulators forced them to do?

If you're like the OP and you accuse Microsoft of failing to do something that they did a long time ago, then yes.

Re:Of course

[anonymousNR]

Yahoo takes this further. if Yahoo toolbar is installed, no matter which provider you select in IE, your search results are opened in Yahoo.

Re:Of course

[V!NCENT]

I think that they changed it to bing because it's a name with four characters. Google is six characters long and thus bing.com types much faster than Google. Both are strange names and bing just sound like good marketing to me. search.live.com was just realy confusing and horribly long. That entire Live thing is so fucked up. Not because it sucks, but because there is no central websites for anything Live. It either live.apps.com/live_messenger or search.live.microsoft.com and all that crap. They realy made a good choice by just going with bing.com to me.

Sometimes Bing finds something that I can't find with Google, but the backgrounds and the BS and the fact that it's run by Microsoft just make me go to Google everytime.

Re:Of course

[zehaeva]

As an avid blackberry user and enthusiast on Verizon, in an office full of blackberry addicts, I will tell you you are dead wrong sir.

I can not change the default search provider on my Storm 2, I have tried.

I did not install it either. When I purchased the Storm 2 Google was the default search engine, literally over night it was changed, with out my permission and against my wishes. The same happened to every single blackberry in my office.

The only option I have is to type google into my blackberry's browser to use it. That is hardly an option at all.

Also I did not want the Bing application installed to my blackberry and yet it was done for me over the air. I have not been able to uninstall it either. It does not show up in the applications in the options at all.

What option is this?

~Zehaeva

Re:Of course

[recoiledsnake]

I stop arguing with someone's post once I see a 'M$'. It's obvious that they're either 12, a zealot, or a karma whore making up stuff that moderators want to hear. (It worked well here, the GP is at +4 interesting right now).

Re:Of course

[God_TM]

Unfortunately, you're trying to push your agenda without listening to the person with the 'problem'. You even quoted her: "Why? What's the difference? I just type what I want in there and the results show". So you want to take a system that works fine for your mother, and have her conform to the way you do things? Why? It's better? Would your mom *really* notice a difference in the results? I don't see a problem here, other than fanboyism.

Re:Of course

[u-235-sentinel]

Two(?) words:
Windows 7

I'm horrified that someone would even suggest that Microsoft would try to inflate their numbers to get press releases and try to convince people that Microsoft products are better than anyone else's in the world. But what I do I know about Microsoft. I use their competition as often as possible :-)

Re:Of course

[V!NCENT]

Is it realy hard to change your OS? No it isn't. But what if somebody told you "Is it so hard to just replace this tiny engine part? It only costs you 30 dollars and your engine will run 10 times cleaner! Not to mention 4% faster."?

Would you awnser be "Hey that's cool! Where can I find the manual to do this?" or "Bah... My car drives me from A to B and it simply works. I don't want to mess with it because maybe it voids my warrenty* or something or I'll fsck it up and I am driving on public roads only in traffic jams so I'll never go faster than 30 miles per hour anyway..."

*Yes. Try sending back your Dell pc with Fedora Core on it... See what happens...

For me; as long as Google doesn't get inaccessable and Linux doesn't get embrased, extended and extinguished I'm perfectly fine with Microsofts marketshare. Bing's succes isn't a limiting facter in using my computer so I don't care...

Re:Of course

[adiposity]

Google is on the front page (for now), but for about a year it wasn't on the front page of:

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/searchproviders

Ask.com, WikiPedia and ESPN were beating it out, and you had to scroll down the second page about halfway to find it. I'm glad to see it is showing up on the front page.

Honestly, I can't blame them for not wanting to help you find google, but any browser these days has to be able to add a google search engine in less than 2 clicks or it's very annoying for most people.

-Dan

Re:Of course

[V!NCENT]

True. You can see the innapropriate (-1, Troll) and (5, Insightful) ratings above both the Google and Bing fanboy posts everywhere.

Most people here probably use Linux, BSD and/or Mac OS X (and some Haiku, ReactOS or insert other tiny OS here) and Microsoft is just the black sheep to bash at. Not everyone here still has up-to-date experience with the Windows developments and it's for a reason....

I, for one, has probably used and tested all thye latest OSs out there (even the Hurd live CD) and everybody is pretty right about Microsoft sucking so much. The people that have never learned about other OSs just don't understand them and see Windows as 'the only working OS' and see improvements on that as totally pro and awesome. "Windows 7 is so much more awesome than Windows XP and Vista" and "Have you tried Vista? Then you know it's awesome". This is the 'problematic group on /. because they don't have the faintest clue that what makes for example Windows 7 bearable is just a fraction of the awesomeness that other OSs have head for years...

Re:Of course

[FatdogHaiku]

Don't forget the volume of searching done inside the microsoft.com domain! They have made bing the default search tool for the site itself, including support and the KB. By leaving the old "in-house" search system behind and using bing (an out-house search system?) they instantly gave themselves tons of extra traffic statistics for work they were already doing anyway... Likewise for MSDN. I'd love to know what volume of the bing total comes from pages owned by MS and it brood.

Re:Of course

[Duncan J Murray]

That may be the case on IE8, but in most organisations running older versions of IE, it is not so straightforward, and these browsers direct to bing. At my work I have run several bing searches purely by accident by mistyping the url.

Re:Of course

[stimpleton]

If i was to try this with my manager at work(laptops are fairly autonomous at our work), it would have progressed no further than 'I want you to change your IE search engine from Bing to Google.'. Manager tests are like the mom test without the advantage that thee are born of thine mother, and hence have a bit more grace period.

Re:Of course

[Maniacal]

I have a Blackberry Curve through Verizon. My search provider for the browser app was changed to Bing without anyway to change it (I use Opera Mini so it didn't really affect me). I also now have a Bing icon in my apps that I did not install or give permission for. I haven't tried to uninstall it yet but that may be an option.

I don't know where you're getting your info but it is not correct.

Re:Of course

[ByOhTek]

Yes, putting a box on the table with a sign "fruit in here!" is less obvious than just putting the fruit on the table.

But not to such a degree that it's actually worth being mentioned.

Re:Of course

[icebraining]

If you don't try the alternatives, you can't know what's "best".

I agree that in this case it may not make much of a difference, but if he was trying to move her from IE6 to any other major browser (including IE7), can you really say it wouldn't be best for her to move, even though IE6 "works"?

Just because something isn't "broken" doesn't mean there aren't better ways to do it.

Re:Of course

[ByOhTek]

Addendum, so you have to click a little arrow next to the icon, as with so many things that have options. It's a standard user interface thing, only a challenge for the terminally stupid.

Re:Of course

[AXE7540]

According to a recent AP piece I read government spending has not created any real jobs. You can Bing the article if you don't believe me.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Verizon started giving users the option of a Bing based blackberry application, but it's not installed automatically nor is it even added as an optional search provider in the default browser.

As several others have pointed out, the article was correct. The Bing app was pushed to my Verizon Blackberry without notification or consent.

Re:Of course

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That may be the case on IE8, but in most organisations running older versions of IE, it is not so straightforward, and these browsers direct to bing. At my work I have run several bing searches purely by accident by mistyping the url.

There's some truth to that, but I don't think that was what was under discussion. (In my case, I am stuck with IE6 at work, and have checked "Do not search from address bar" - so I don't actually know if the default behavior would take me to Bing otherwise.)

Besides that, though, I wouldn't expect them to update older versions of IE to add it. As long as it doesn't disappear in future versions , I'm happy. (Well, technically, I don't actually care since I use FF except for places where it won't work on our intranet, and from home on HP's crappy support site because it doesn't work there either. But I digress... )

Re:Of course

[DesertBlade]

Hompage Searching

It is more like ALT to show the menu.

Tools -> Settings

Click on Settings under Search.

Look at the screen for a minute to figure out how to add one. BTW it is at the bottom Find more search providers

It opens up a add-on window, with incidentally no competitors on the front page, just sites like ebay or New York Times. Try navigating to google, couldn't find it.

Searched for google, there it is. Added it.

Go back to tools->settings, open up search settings

Right Click on Google and set as default.

Easy to follow 20 steps to change search provider in IE8. Wonder how many people do it, since it is easier to download firefox or chrome.

Re:Of course

[Moridineas]

You're talking about physical modifications vs a dropdown box that is located immediately next to the search bar? Or the prompt that comes up when you install a new version of IE, that asks what search engine you want to use? I don't think that is remotely a fair comparison.

Let me put it this way--I would hazard a guess that just about anybody in the world who is tech savvy enough to know that there's a difference between bing and google is savy enough to use a dropdown box located right next to the search provider box, or to select google over bing during the install. Yes, for a complete newb who doesn't have a clue what google or bing is, they might not mess with defaults.

I tried bing for a solid 2 months. I didn't like it.

Re:Of course

[dbcad7]

There is also something going on with browsers these days.. As a support person, I have a heck of a time getting people to actually browse to a URL.. 9 times out of 10 they enter it in, and they end up doing a search for it... It's annoying.. So the fact that all these people can't just go where they want and end up searching for everything they type, and there is a corresponding increase in Bing usage is not surprising at all to me.

Re:Of course

[hrimhari]

Yes, but criticisms apart, this may well be the reason of the growth. Especially if they're not counting redirects from Live Search. Or you didn't notice that they're not stealing market share from Google (yet)?

Re:Of course

[asc99c]

I had this problem when selecting a default search engine on one particular install (on a Vista Home Basic machine). Google wasn't listed, and searching for Google didn't find the correct results. Eventually, I had to load google, then search that for a Google search provider for IE, which finally worked. But I'd guess that ploy would have stopped 90% of people choosing to use google.

Re:Of course

[Tarsir]

Of course, this diagnostic test is useless without knowing the contents of '(start explaining)'.

Re:Of course

[mopower70]

Sure it does. Just push out a service pack that fixes a bug or adds a feature to existing installations of IE6/7/8 and also changes your default browser from MSN to Bing. Instant acceleration of use.

Re:Of course

[asc99c]

Possibly in a similar way to the GP, searching that site for google doesn't always give you a result for the google search add on. I found I had to search google to find it.

Re:Of course

[cyberthanasis12]

Oh, come on. The first time you run IE8 it prompts you to pick a search provider

Funny
I installed Windows 7-64 in my son's computer (no sound - WinXP had sound, All versions of SuSE had and PCLINUXOS too), and I fired IE in order to download firefox. IE asked nothing about search providers. It just used BING.

Re:Of course

[farble1670]

it's probably about the same option that i have on my android phone. google search is tightly integrated into the OS. not that i mind, i'm just saying ...

Re:Of course

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Funny I installed Windows 7-64 in my son's computer (no sound - WinXP had sound, All versions of SuSE had and PCLINUXOS too), and I fired IE in order to download firefox. IE asked nothing about search providers. It just used BING.

That's odd. You didn't get a 'choose your features' page or prompt? I've done a handful of win7 installs and several IE8 upgrades and have always seen that when first launching IE (to download firefox). I usually click through it because it's in my way, but it's definitely there.

Re:Of course

[jeffmeden]

The browser settings are something I have never yet seen in person, my own blackberry nor the blackberry of anyone I know had their search provider switched out from under them. As for the bing app, verizon did push down a loader icon (not an application) to let you load the Bing app. It is still your choice to use it or not.

Either my luck is good, or yours is terrible. Who knows?

Re:Of course

[cyberthanasis12]

Like Firefox, Opera and Chrome do with Google? It's not hard to change search engine in IE, btw

Well, there are fundamental differences.
At first, Firefox and Opera are created by organizations independent to Google.
Then, nobody preinstalls Firefox, or Opera or Chrome by default to your Windows computer. On the other hand, IE comes preinstalled and it happens to have BING as a default. And this also happens to be a practice that Microsoft, a convicted monopoly, has done in the past.

Re:Of course

[Magic5Ball]

I use Safari, Chrome, and Camino. And I switched to Bing.

Bing's image search UI reminds me that GIS was designed in the 1990s.

Re:Of course

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Why is this modded flamebait?!

Re:Of course

[clarkn0va]

It is different. On a first run, if you choose the non-default provider, it opens your choices in a hidden tab. That it, it puts search providers in the second tab, then opens a third tab at the same time and makes the third tab active. Subtle manipulation, but some users will either not notice or close the browser, forgetting to change their provider. If you do go back to the second tab to choose your search provider, you will find google about half way down.

By contrast, if you want to change providers after the first run, you will find google on the second page. It's silly because the search provider icons are much bigger than they need to be and there aren't very many on the second page. They could have easily included them all on the first page by making the icons smaller and/or leaving it to the user to scroll down. Further, it's unnecessarily different from the first run provider choice page.

Back to IE's first run. What a ridiculous dialogue. Have you ever tried using hotkeys to get through this interrogation? There's the easy way, just hit enter a bunch of times and you'll be quickly saddled with all kinds of safety tools, update checkers, and--of course--Bing as your search provider. Note that the search provider isn't the first choice or the last, it's couched somewhere in the middle of the whole process. Now try hotkeying through and choose the non-default answers: ...dang. First run is disabled on this domain, so I don't know all the keystrokes. But it's ridiculous. There's a different alt key for every non-default option, and one of them doesn't even have a hotkey, so you have to grab the mouse in the middle and click on a single option.

On the surface, these might have the appearance of minor inconveniences, but we all know that people are inherently lazy, or conditioned rather, to ignore computer popups or just click through or hit enter. MS has trained users this way. Google will lose its position as defualt search provider on a percentage of IE user's profiles due to this fact, and MS knows it.

Re:Of course

[mbuimbui]

Like our current job creation which is driven almost completely by government deficit spending, I'm not sure increasing search engine market share really counts if you are losing money on every search.

Thats a false equality. Much of the government stimulus spending each $1 spent on spending helped boost GDP by up to $1.73 (except for tax cuts to appease the right - which didnt really work as they don't seem very appeased). http://policyinpractice.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/bang-for-the-buck.jpg $1:$1.73 is much better than $2:$1 with Bing ... if that is in fact the actual numbers. I wouldnt be surprised if it is more like $5:1 for bing.

Re:Of course

[fbjon]

I think Google was the default for many people before it was made a default in browsers.

Re:Of course

[RobertM1968]

That is not the reason. Take a good look at the figures. Bing has gained no market share overall from Google. Bing has gained market share by Yahoo and others using Bing for their search services. Hence the drop in other search providers.

This article is (a) misleading, (b) draws incorrect conclusions and (c) is written by someone who knows nothing about the topic at hand.

What we are actually seeing means nothing about Bing since there is no breakout to show how many of Yahoo's (and others') searches are being handled by Bing. Actually, what it does show about Bing is that Google is still gaining ground at the expense of all others... Calculate that by adding up "all others" and comparing to Google: "all others" share is decreasing.

Or one can take this route... add up Bing and "all others now using Bing for search" (since we are likely to never get a breakdown of how many of Yahoo's and others' searches are being attributed to Bing) and compare... same results... Google is gaining marketshare at their expense.

The fact that Google is still gaining marketshare even with Bing being the default in IE (and Google once again being relegated to an "add-on" selection - while other Bing search providers such as Yahoo are less likely not to be relegated to such) makes it even more impressive that Google is still gaining (albeit slowly) marketshare.

Re:Of course

[BitZtream]

Its always been on the page that shows up in IE when you first run it asking you which ones you want to use. Its not suprising its not on some secondary page that probably sorts by how often they are downloaded. Since everyone just selects it by default, the ranking on that site probably doesn't realize the difference, MS site or otherwise.

Re:Of course

[AmberBlackCat]

I just clicked the dropdown menu on Firefox. I didn't see Bing at all.

Re:Of course

[Techtoucian]

click "Manage search engines..." and then "Get more search engines".

And after “Get More Search Engines” you have to actually search for “Google” and then install something called “Google Search Suggestions,” whatever that means. It's definitely not a simple task to replace Bing in IE8.

Re:Of course

[AmberBlackCat]

Have you considered the possibility that Bing might actually be better for her (or at least just as good), and forcing the switch actually hindered her just so you could take a stand against Microsoft?

Re:Of course

[AmberBlackCat]

Wasn't there something about Google customizing its search to give different results to different people? Maybe you both really did get the results you claim.

Re:Of course

[BitZtream]

Except ... MSN IS Bing.

Jesus, you really don't realize that MSN Search, Live Search, and all the other MS search sites have all been the same thing?

You really haven't figured out that MS just changes the names so people don't realize its the same shitty product?

Let me guess, you also think all those registry cleaner popups on websites are honest and really good programs too?

Re:Of course

[Deathlizard]

Yeah. Because that MS search integration they put in place since IE3 has really worked for MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search, and Bing.

Their Illegal Monopoly abuse will finally get them to a unbelievable 15% market share in no time flat. There's no way that they could have actually made a decent search engine for once. Nope.

Re:Of course

[BitZtream]

You can use the browser just fine without doing the new user setup, you have used the address bar on your browser before haven't you? 7 or 8, doesn't matter.

Re:Of course

[RobNich]

In addition, the provider is labeled "Google Search Suggestions", while Bing is labeled "Bing Search". The description doesn't lead one to believe that it is actually a search provider. When I first started with IE8, I ran into this and was livid.

Re:Of course

[drougie]

bump, that was not flamebait

Re:Of course

[BikeHelmet]

Like Firefox, Opera and Chrome do with Google? It's not hard to change search engine in IE, btw

That's totally different.

In Firefox you just click "Manage Search Engines" and then "Get More Search Engines". You're taken to a webpage where you can search out other search engines and add them to Firefox.

In IE it's very similar, except that it doesn't always work. Someone brought me a Win7 laptop (HP Compaq) and asked me to set the search to Google. I tried, but the Google search engine wouldn't add itself. Other ones worked - just not Google. In the end I installed Google Toolbar to get it set, then removed it. (for obvious reasons)

I would've written it off as a possible virus, except that it was a brand new laptop. I did however install MalwareBytes AntiMalware just in case. It wouldn't update - something about error 732, 0, 0. Turned out it was because the Internet Explorer checkbox to Auto Detect Proxy Settings had been unticked by a recently applied hotfix. Once I figured that out and ticked it, MalwareBytes could update, and of course it found nothing nasty.

I figured it was HP adding shit to the OS, but a few weeks back someone brought me two Acer Aspire netbooks with Win7 Starter that had the exact same issues. Now I'm inclined to believe that perhaps a faulty update was sent out, which misconfigured some things. Anyone that happened to download that update before it was replaced with a fixed one might have the issue.

Oh - weirdest issue I ever had to fix - Windows claiming its DVD drive driver wasn't suitable for a DVD drive, leaving it with no driver installed. It's amazing what you can tweak in Vista's registry...

Re:Of course

[tokul]

default in a large percent of Internet browsers,

And only search option on sites related to Microsoft. Maybe those 10% of searches are people hopelessly trying to find stuff in Microsoft KB, download center and MSN.

Re:Of course

[h4rm0ny]

And do you understand that the parent poster was pointing out an easy analogy for his mom that would explain how two different browsers can use the same "Internet". Honestly, anyone that can't understand the principle that different browsers are akin to, say, different types of telephone (you're still talking to the same person), has some serious remedial problems when it comes to technology.

Re:Of course

[walt-sjc]

A little late AC, since when he bought the phone it had Google on it, and Verizon installed Bing after the fact (which is fraud in my mind.) Users not only have the right to whine, they have an obligation when a company behaves like this - to let people know, and pressure a the misbehaving company. Switching away has costs - since you are probably dealing with contracts (early termination fees,) an investment in the hardware itself, phone number migrations, etc. etc. Switching is expensive and users should not have to bear the costs when a provider damages their phone / service in this way. In fact, the cost of migration is likely several times more expensive than the phone itself.

Sure wish there was a "clueless" mod for posts like yours, AC...

Re:Of course

[V!NCENT]

For some people a computer is just like a car. For us, a dropdown menu is easy. For the general noob, it's all options. It's "changing how the computer works". For us that's an easy difference, but for other people it's not.

Re:Of course

[reiisi]

I dunno.

"Search engines" sounds more like search to me than "providers".

Re:Of course

[Lunzo]

My easy way is to use google is to make google search the home page. That way I just open a new tab and away I go if I need to search for something.

Re:Of course

[adiposity]

Yes, that "initial startup" page works great. Unfortunately, if you don't take advantage of it, or just just "default settings," it's not so easy to get back to that page later. That's why the ieaddons.com site is so important. Many times I have used a browser after the user installed it with default settings, and I couldn't believe google wasn't on the front page (on a page that lists the top 12 engines, it's not one of the "most downloaded"? Come on.)

Like I said, it's on the front now, but it used to be about #18 or so (it's still only #6, to Bing's #1 status).

-Dan

When you're at the bottom, the only place you can

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're at the bottom, the only place you can go is up.

yes!

[nomadic]

Go Microsoft!!!

Re:yes!

[Tablizer]

There's a sign stuck to your back that says, "Spam Me"

Re:yes!

[Hymer]

Considering the efficiency of Bings webcrawler it is really sad to see.
Bings webcrawler is indexing new pages in weeks where Googles webcrawler does it in hours...
...and this is btw. known by Microsoft

Sure...

[TrippTDF]

When you pay off everyone and their brother to default to your service, you'll pick up a little momentum...

Re:Sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Including people who use Bing cash. The people I know who use Bing use it only to shop for things they can get Bing cash from. This is a whole new dimension to "paying people off" in order to get them to use your product.

Re:Sure...

[grahamsz]

I actually prefer Bing's product search to googles, i think they do a better job of presenting stuff. Otoh i use google for all my searching.

That being said, I wouldn't have used bing in the first place if it weren't for the cashback. Earned $455 to date.

Re:Sure...

[Lunix Nutcase]

You mean like with Google and Firefox?

Re:Sure...

[Idiomatick]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/11/24/0112201

Might be interesting if you haven't read it.

Re:Sure...

[grahamsz]

It's definitely interesting, though hardly unsurprising - i'm pretty cautious about the prices i pay for the things I buy. When i built my new computer i had a spreadsheet tracking the prices of the parts and got over $200 back by using bing.

In some cases i did pay more up front for something, but the cashback more than made up the difference.

Re:Sure...

[RealTime]

Except that a "Buy It Now" item on eBay does not change in price. So:

1. find item you were planning to buy on eBay anyway for the "Buy It Now" price
2. "search" for it on Bing and click on the eBay ad (even an unrelated eBay ad will work)
3. buy the original item in question (even if you have to search within eBay or access it from your "Watched" list)
4. Profit!

This is the only Bing searching I ever do, and I maxxed out the $2500 from Bing (and it was often instant cashback straight into my PayPal account, with no 60-day wait).

Re:Sure...

[flabordec]

Yeah, it's not fair that Microsoft is using IE to promote Bing and is paying off other people to use it.

Take Google for example, they set their own search engine as default in Chrome and pay Mozilla to use Google.

That is what Microsoft should do. Go Google!

Re:Sure...

[future assassin]

Yah started to notice this more and more, big business out of the blue using Bing. Noticed this yesterday http://cibc.via.infonow.net/locator/inter/?LOC=en_CA

Re:Sure...

[Lunix Nutcase]

You can still use google. You just have to navigate to their webpage instead of using the built in search.

Re:Sure...

[gurps_npc]

When you ignore your customer's privacy (like Google), your opponents pick up mommentum.

Bing is pretty good

[DogDude]

Bing is actually pretty darn good. They don't have the countless integrated features that Google has, but for good, solid search results, in some cases, Bing returns better results than Google. Where I work, people there have set about half of the desktops' home pages to Bing, with the other half being Google.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[johnlcallaway]

Bing is annoying as hell, and I will never use it on purpose. There are way too many websites that seem to create hover points for every other word in an article, so Bing pops up all the time. Which could also account for their 'increased search results' .. people accidentally getting bing results because of hover points in web pages.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[lorenlal]

Wasn't there a story about results in Bing being manipulated not too long ago?

Re:Bing is pretty good

[jgtg32a]

I don't make a habit of searching for reasons to hate MS so meh

Re:Bing is pretty good

[jellomizer]

These are all valid concerns unless of course Google implements such features then Bing has a new set of issues.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[Radhruin]

I've found that bing is useful in specific circumstances. For example, try searching for a restaurant in Bing. I find the interface much better, and the conglomeration of reviews to be far more helpful and interesting. This goes for most product searches as well. Bing maps also has a cool feature where you can get directions based on current traffic conditions. Handy for when you want to get someplace when the city is gridlocked in rush hour.

Searching for programming related questions, though, it's next to worthless for some reason.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[Antony-Kyre]

Half use Bing, and half use Google? That's a 100%! Where are the AltaVista users?

Re:Bing is pretty good

[adbge]

I find Bing horribly annoying simply because I anticipate certain results when I enter a phrase into Google, but Bing returns results that I don't want -- simply because I'm so used to what I would get if I Googled it instead.

I am unable to actually critique Bing as a search engine because I'm constantly thrown off by the search results. I'm not sure if Bing simply has an inferior search algorithm, or if it's simply myself equating different with bad.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[lgarner]

A better approach: stop using those annoying websites.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[ArsonSmith]

The other half use AltaVista.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[Rockoon]

Isnt the point of search engines to manipulate the results?

Re:Bing is pretty good

[DriedClexler]

What was that? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you with Bill Gates's dick in your mouth like that.

Want to provide some ACTUAL examples for us, or did you just want to shill today?

Remember to swallow.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[Russianspi]

Bing is actually pretty darn good. They don't have the countless integrated features that Google has, but for good, solid search results, in some cases, Bing returns better results than Google. Where I work, people there have set about half of the desktops' home pages to Bing, with the other half being Google.

Wait, you work for Microsoft!? **ducks**

Re:Bing is pretty good

[Ritontor]

Bing results pretty good? Sure, if you don't mind them actively filtering search results to remove anti-MS content: http://advice.cio.com/shane_oneill/bing_search_tainted_by_pro_microsoft_results

Market Variety

[Thunderstruck]

While we should probably be happy to see more than one viable candidate for the search engine market, none seem to address privacy very well. Both Bing/Yahoo and Google are quite happy to tell you that they'll track user activity and use it to make a profit. Are there any viable alternatives left with more favorable privacy policies?

Re:Market Variety

[sopssa]

Not alternatives, but Scroogle hides your searches among thousands of others (and removes Google's click-tracking javascripts and so on).

Re:Market Variety

[wukka]

IXquick/StartPage don't use tracking nonsense. http://ixquick.com/ http://startpage.com/ cheers!

Look, it's actually not bad

[sc7]

I run all OSes, Linux, Mac, Windows, and I set Bing as my default browser where ever I can. I can accept when Microsoft does something well (I also have a Zune HD). Bing is a great search engine, I find for specific queries, especially academic searches, it provides more accurate, as well as seperated results. Go ahead, type in "Honda Civic", and watch how it divides it based on more specific topics related to the car. The mighty Google has stagnated on its search engine like MS did on IE6 for too long, I'm glad to see some competition, and glad to see Microsoft trying again (as they are with IE8/9 and Windows 7).

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[superstick58]

I haven't used the basic search much, but I've been much happier with the maps tool. I used to use google maps, but bing has been much more accurate and up-to-date with maps for some locations. I'm tired of searching for an address I know exists, but get no results because it was built in the last 2 years. So bing increases their market share not just with search, but with their other services as well.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[clampolo]

Yeah, it's not bad. My main gripe with it, is having to wait for the download of their daily picture. It makes using Bing pretty sluggish as opposed to google which pops up very quickly thanks to the minimalistic page.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

... (I also have a Zune HD)....

Talk about presenting a good case and then shooting yourself in the foot....

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[sopssa]

This is also true for me. Google Maps can't even show satellite images closely, while Bing's maps tool has close-up bird-eye views and a lot more info about businesses and places.

Google is starting to lag behind.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[MosX]

You don't have to wait for the picture to load to do your search. Notice how the search box comes up before the picture?

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[BuckaBooBob]

Setting Bing as your default browser?

Hmm.. Are you for real? Bing is a search engine... Firefox/IE/Opera/Safari ect are browsers..

So before your first sentence is complete I have deducted that you have nothing of value to say what so ever since you seem to be unable to differentiate between a browser and a search engine.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[sopssa]

And even more so, who actually types in www.bing.com or www.google.com to do a search, now that every browser has a search box you just tab to? or just write the search query to address box.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Angst Badger]

Not that I'm remotely a fan of Microsoft or their business practices, but to the extent that they do compete on their merits, they don't always suck, and Google could certainly use some competition. I haven't tried Bing yet, but I'll get around to it eventually, and if it's better than Google, at least for some things, I'll use it. And quite frankly, I have been increasingly dismayed by Google's search results lately, which seem to be slanted more and more to driving sales. That would be fine if the only thing I used search engines for was finding products, but I'm often looking for actual information.

In any case, market competition is usually beneficial to the consumer, and having a market overwhelmingly dominated by a single player is usually bad for the consumer. Even when the dominant player is reasonably ethical, as Google is, you end up with the same situation that arises in monarchies: the current king may be a wise and just ruler, but all bets are off on his heirs. Google is a publicly owned company, and if they stick around long enough, it's a statistical certainty that their leadership roles will eventually be filled by someone less competent and/or less ethical than the current incumbents. When that happens, it would be a lot better to have many competitors ready to take their place. (And certainly, we can't count on Microsoft to play the enlightened despot role.)

As far as the present goes, though, I don't think it really matters a lot whether people find their porn and other, less popular products through Bing or Google.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[dfxk]

I call astroturfing! Go ahead and type in "heart attack symptoms" ör "Heimlich maneuver" and watch the useless information it brings up. MS sets Bing as default search and thereby kills people in need of vital information fast. You read it here first.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[NeutronCowboy]

Just for fun, I tried Honda Civic as a search. Actually, Bing sucks. Where the results differ, Bing has either a comparison between Civic and Integra windshields, or an ungodly list of used car sites. The one bonus item: it actually has sites that show the manuals for various Honda/Acura cars. Here's the deal though: if I type in "Honda Civic", I want information about the car, not about a manual for it, and I don't want to buy one. Especially not a used one. Google on the other hand presents me with sites that have information about the car - edmunds review, price comparisons, guide sites, etc. Stuff that will help me know more about the car.

If I want specific topics, I'll search for them, thank you very much.

I found similar issues with the maps site: directions are easier to manipulate in Google, and Google lets me search by public transit, or by walking. One good feature in Bing: get directions based on traffic. Google does something similar with "avoid highways", but it's not the same thing.

You are right, Google hasn't evolved much in its core business of search - but that's good, because there isn't much that can happen, until the semantic web (ha!) comes along. Bing tries to pretend it can do semantics, but it really can't. It's just faking it fairly badly. Oh, and final gripe: the stuff it does to wikipedia pages is nasty, and on its own a reason to avoid it like a plague. Yes, I don't have to use the readability feature, but I can't turn off the side bar where that option sits. If I go to a site, I either run my own scripts, or I want to see the page as the site creators intended. Not what MS thinks would be a good version.

In tl;dr format: Google gets out of my way. Bing is and stays in my face. Google wins.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[smooth wombat]

And even more so, who actually types in www.bing.com or www.google.com to do a search,

If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect upwards of 93% of people, including me, still type in those addresses.

Why you ask? Force of habit, don't want the extra space of the search box taking up room, don't know that you can usually do a search from the address bar, don't care about the fancy way of doing things, don't have ADD and think they need to shave .29 seconds off their ability to do a search.

Shall I go on?

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[BitZtream]

I just search for honda civic on both. The only difference I can see is that Bing incorporates MSN auto into the mix and allows you to see some of the categories on MSN.

I also compared Google and Bing maps. In my location, they are identical.

If I go to a location that I know has been photographed from the air for surveying purposes I find that Google has higher res images, but there is no Birds-Eye view option on Bing. So all you've found here is that Google has some arial photographs that Bing doesn't have and vice-versa, which pretty much everyone already knew.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[NeutronCowboy]

Umm? I'll give you the point about bird-eye view. What you don't mention though is that this is still VERY sparse. I tried a few areas in the Bay Area, and no Bird's eye view was available. As for info about businesses and places, Google beats the crap out of Bing - to the point I have to actually do more specific searches in Google, because it tends to show everything. Search for Food or movie theaters - Bing shows about 10 hits for each on a 6 mile scale in my area, while Google shows about 30 for theaters and about 100 for Food.

Not to mention that I find street view far more useful than what the bird's eye view looked like in the preview. Street view is a god send for navigating to a new destination in a dense, urban environment. Bird's eye view is nice to look at.... but doesn't help me navigate.

If Bing would actually be more useful, I'd be all over it. But right now, it just isn't.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[spyrochaete]

Go to your address bar, type bing, and press ctrl-enter. Suddenly instead of talking AROUND the issue you are qualified to talk ABOUT it.

You're welcome.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[swb]

That problem is going away -- since the economy and real estate collapsed, the map makers will catch up.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[pjbgravely]

It all depends, I just tried Bing maps to get to my house from a nearby village. It did show my house on the correct road but a bit off from where it really is. The worst thing is it shows to take a seasonal road which doesn't get snow plowed at all.

Google maps show the way I would have taken, longer but you won't get stuck. Even better my house is in the correct location.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[clampolo]

Well Opera has some nifty searching. Let's say you want to search for "gorillas" If you want to use google, you type "g gorillas". If you want to use wikipedia, you type "w gorillas". I added a b command for bing. So I get to choose where I want to search but don't have to type in big addresses.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[flabordec]

I just entered Bing and the daily picture today is this.

According to Firefox the file size is 81.98 KB (83950 bytes). Which would take a whole 15 seconds to download on a 56k modem. Using the average 5.1 mbps connection speed in the US it would take far less than 1 second. Does the image really make it that much slower?

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[shutdown -p now]

The pic can be turned off, it's just that the option to do so is tucked away in the most unintuitive place: open the main Bing page, and click on "Help".

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[sopssa]

I must note that I'm living in Europe and Bing's maps services are using local providers to populate their data. Bird-eye view, local businesses and restaurants and their more detailed street view. It's definitely better here than what Google provides.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[NeutronCowboy]

Ah - that's quite possible. I've noticed that Google is hit and miss outside the US.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Kjella]

I doubt it's as high as 93%, my impression is that quite a few fall into one of two categories - people who have zero clue on configuring their browser and will use the search box which is there by default or they will have figured out the shortcut and use that. To me creating searches is the difference between an address bar and an awesome bar. "g [whatever]" for google, "wp [whatever]" for wikipedia, a pricewatch-like site, a map/directions site, basically anything that I use quite regularly. I don't need those shortcuts, I type like a wiz and it's the hunt-and-peck typers who should have had shortcuts but never do. To me it's just working a little smarter, not harder.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Blakey Rat]

This is Slashdot, so I'll assume you're a bit technical.

If you take a look at Bing's Javascript, you'll see that the background image and mouseovers only get loaded *after* the rest of the site is fully loaded and functional. It's not affecting load time at all, in a practical sense.

That said, you might have highlighted a usability flaw: because of the way the background image is loaded, people might *think* that the page isn't fully loaded until it appears. I'm not sure if that's the case with your experience-- and I doubt there's anything Bing could do to fix it, short of *actually* slowing down load times by adding some kind of placeholder image.

That also said, most people are going to use Bing from a toolbar or search box and it's a moot point for them anyway.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Inda]

The missus still types "facebook" into Google's search box on Firefox's default homepage. Every. Single. Day.

You can't educate some people.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[epine]

Google is a publicly owned company, and if they stick around long enough, it's a statistical certainty that their leadership roles will eventually be filled by someone less competent and/or less ethical than the current incumbents.

But according to Raymond Kurzweil it's an exponential certainty that we'll long have forgotten about Google by then, in favour of the next big thing. Conquest ain't what it used to be.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Jeng]

I found similar issues with the maps site: directions are easier to manipulate in Google, and Google lets me search by public transit, or by walking. One good feature in Bing: get directions based on traffic. Google does something similar with "avoid highways", but it's not the same thing.

Just tried to double check what you said regarding googles choices regarding traffic. Google gave me three different routes to choose from with time estimates and a second time estimate that takes into account traffic. It's not the same as Bing, but Google maps is still evolving.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

This seems to me to be the key issue here: do you know how to search for what you want, or do you not? Do you want a decision engine or a search engine? I'm actually sort of surprised that more hasnt been made of the 'decision engine' business. Microsoft seems pretty up front about their 'we're making this search engine for people who either dont know how or are too lazy to properly seek out the information they want' strategy. And in a way, i actually support this. I was back home over christmas, helpin dad with some internets, and watching him fail to use google properly was really quite painful. he should be using bing. However, I, too, will continue using the search engine that both works and respects my intelligence.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[Amorymeltzer]

Wait, I'm a bit confused by your post there. It sounds like you just implied the Zune was something done well.

Yeah, I'm lost.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[wumpus188]

Wouldn't it be easier to just set your home page to google.com? Just sayin..

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[PPCAvenger]

I've only used Bing a few times as I see no compelling reason to not use Google but your Honda Civic test sounded odd to me so I decided to reproduce it myself.

  I typed Honda Civic into Google in one tab and then opened Bing in another and typed Honda Civic. You are correct in that it does provide information about the Honda Civic, Used Civics, Manuals, etc.. but the way you presented the information leads one to believe that Bing is providing a mish mash of links/data but that's not what's happening at all.

  Google provides results in the flat way that everybody knows, it simply presents what it thinks are the most relevant links based on your search query. It then presents other possibly relevant search queries as a footer to the search results.

    Bing takes the approach of providing the user with what it deems are the most relevant categorized search results based on the original query. In other words, it's not just jumbling used cars and manuals in with product information, it clearly categorized the results into Used Civics, Manuals, Product information, etc.. and provided a link to see more results like those after the top hits in each category.

  I didn't spend much time on this comparing each specific category result on each engine but they seemed to provide similar results in each category based on a quick glance at the top hits.

    Bing, Google, whatever. They all find information. Pick the layout you like best, the one you think provides you with better results or the one from the company you hate the least.

  Personally, I'll stick with Google just because it seems smarter and has more conveniences. The ability to quickly solve a math equation or get a word definition with just a single search query, for example. Then there's the awesome freebies like 411-GOOG; I used that when my battery died one day to call around for quotes to decide if I should just get a jump or buy a new one from AAA.

  Google is better at figuring out what you meant when you misspell. I typed in the name of a local pizza joint to see if they'd both find it. I inserted a simple misspelling (one letter added) on Bing and it couldn't find any results. I then typed the same misspelling into Google and it gave me the result I wanted with the misspelling as well as providing me a "did you mean?" link with the proper spelling.

  Bing did find it when I provided the proper spelling but the place has an odd name that's easy to get wrong. Google would have found exactly what I wanted where Bing would essentially be useless unless I manually played with alternate spellings.

  Bing wins on pointless visual fluff but Google is just smarter about helping you find what you want as quickly as possible, IMO.

Easy to do

[Smidge204]

Gaining market share for Bing is easy when you:

1) Already have the market for browsers (IE)

2) Make Bing the default search for said browsers

3) Direct all search traffic from all sites even remotely Microsoft affiliated through Bing

So what we would expect is everyone who just uses whatever is in front of them to start using Bing, because that's what Microsoft is putting in front of them.
=Smidge=

Re:Easy to do

[Thornkin]

Wasn't all that being done for Live Search too though? And that market share was way below Bing's and dropping. It's something more than just those 3 items.

Re:Easy to do

[lorenlal]

Very true, but I don't think Microsoft paid enough people to lock in Live Search on their sites.

Re:Easy to do

[nine-times]

It also helps if you don't have much market share to begin with. It's easier to make gains when you have nowhere to go but up.

Re:Easy to do

[Idbar]

Until December 2009, when they offered discounts when buying from several online stores referenced from their search engine. When giving money away hasn't worked to attract people? That has helped Google before too, with their "checkout" service.

Re:Easy to do

[Thaelon]

All Verizon blackberry storms now default (unchangably) to Bing. I'm sure that helps.

Re:Easy to do

[unusual_id]

Isn't this the case with Google as well. All the default homepages with Firefox installs have surely helped?

Re:Easy to do

[qoncept]

Wow. I expected to see this, since the same thing is posted every time Bing market share is brought up.. but how do you explain the growth accelerating? I can see it accelerating due to those explanations for a week, maybe 2, but months? That's just nonsense.

Re:Easy to do

[Lendrick]

5) Fake search traffic by loading sites with referrer spam.

I'm serious. Do a google search for "Bing referrer spam" and see how many results you come up with. My semi-popular website was getting Bing hits for really generic terms like "art" and "audio". The number of these fake hits eclipsed the number of legitimate Bing searches, by a factor of at least a hundred to one. Every single one of these hits came from a Microsoft IP address, and even more maddeningly, every single one of them sent a browser ID string of IE6, thus inflating my IE6 numbers (I've since stopped officially supporting IE6 on my site, although it's possible that it still works. I just don't care enough to check, as *real* IE6 usage is less than 2%).

tl;dr: in one fell swoop, Microsoft is spamming websites and making it look like both Bing and IE6 are being used far more than they actually are. Any numbers about Bing usage are suspect.

Re:Easy to do

[rsborg]

Wasn't all that being done for Live Search too though? And that market share was way below Bing's and dropping. It's something more than just those 3 items.

Like the yahoo acquisition^W partnership?

Re:Easy to do

[nurb432]

Don't forget searching ON Microsoft site is also hitting bing in the process.

Re:Easy to do

[jwhitener]

Except that Live searched sucked. Even the non-technical could be quickly convinced that Live was worse than Google. And once a techie convinces 1 non techie, it spreads to the non techie's office. Rinse repeat.

Now that Bing is almost as good as Google (to what degree is debatable), it is harder to convince someone to switch. Especially when non-technical people generally don't care if it is "good enough".

Monopoly + "barely good enough" will always trump "the best".

Re:Easy to do

[BitZtream]

So we just had a post not too long ago about how FireFox was more popular than IE ... So if thats the case, whats the excuse now?

Re:Easy to do

[Smidge204]

"Most popular browser version"

Add up IE6, 7 and 8 and they're still dominating the market share. Don't forget that every time you mistype a URL it routes it through Microsoft (and thus Bing) too.
=Smidge=

Stupid reporting

[Anonymusing]

In other news, my 1-year-old child has gained massive weight and height, while I, unfortunately, have not gotten even a millimeter taller.

Google is the established leader, with a massive market share that is unlikely to grow much further. Bing is the new kid on the block, starting at zero. Of course Bing is going to grow. There is nothing else for it to do. Even if it's lousy, it is impossible for it to not gain share. This is like comparing the Zune marketshare with the iPod.

Re:Stupid reporting

[Thyamine]

This is exactly what I was thinking. They started out with nothing (not considering the previous MS search engine options), so of course there will be growth. Come back in a year or two's time and then lets talk about how much/litte their growth is. That's when it will be more impressive. Of course, since my Blackberry was 'updated' to allow only Bing to be the default search option, I doubt they'll have problems with getting initial numbers. But because of that type of 'marketing' I refuse to use them myself.

Re:Stupid reporting

[krou]

Your analogy is flawed. It only works if you and your son share a pool of height, and the gain of one could induce a reduction in the other. As it stands, your respective heights are completely unrelated, unlike Google and Bing's share of the market. I agree with most of the rest of your statement, except that the interesting point in the article is not necessarily the gaining of market share, but the rate at which it did so.

Re:Stupid reporting

[farlukar]

News at eleven:slashdot editor posts non-story.

Re:Stupid reporting

[david_thornley]

However, your case is not quite analogous. As TFS says, Bing gained 0.4% while Google gained 0.2%. Presumably Bing is gaining market share from search engines other than Google, and doing so faster because it has such a small share and is being massively promoted.

Re:Stupid reporting

[Anonymusing]

Your analogy is flawed. It only works if you and your son share a pool of height, and the gain of one could induce a reduction in the other. As it stands, your respective heights are completely unrelated, unlike Google and Bing's share of the market.

You're right. I was being facetious.

But just to add one comment... I've read in the past that a surprising number of people will try a different search engine rather than wade through multiple pages of results on the same search engine. In short, you should be suspicious of any "market share" analysis of the search engine industry that adds up to a concise 100%: the numbers should actually add up to 110% or more, to account for these search engine polygamists. (Don't have a link handy for this, sorry. Mark me troll if you like.)

Re:Stupid reporting

[hondo77]

Your analogy is flawed.

-1 Whoosh!

Re:Stupid reporting

[krou]

That's a good point, and I would agree. Where I work, we use multiple search engines all the time. I view most statistics purely as being interesting, but certainly not something I'd take as fact (lies, damn lies etc.) This story is pretty worthless anyway, and not worth the effort (a comment down below sums it up nicely).

Re:Stupid reporting

[spyrochaete]

When you and your child go to the doctor does he give you your heights in separate units of measure, or does he compare them to you on an all-inclusive pie chart?

Also, have you heard of Cuil? Wikia search? Yauba? Those search engines started at zero as well. Why isn't their fame acclaimed the way you insist Bing's is?

Re:Stupid reporting

[sopssa]

doing so faster because it has such a small share

This doesn't make sense. The percents aren't relative, they're absolute percents shared between all search engines. Having small share doesn't have any advantage on that.

Strange..

[Anonymous Coward]

i look after quite a few sites in the UK and Bing is nowhere, less than 1% for most of them

Re:Strange..

[Locke2005]

Sure, but if it increases from 0.5% to 1% usage, then that is a 100% GAIN in market share... let's see Google match that!

Strange..

[msimm]

Strange right! An advertisement about the growth of Bing trumpeting the growth of Bing! And on an unrelated note, can we stop slashvertising Microsoft shit?

Good

[DesScorp]

Google needs the competition at this point. Google search has become the Windows of search engines.

Re:Good

[PaulMeigh]

Agreed. Internet search is too important to be so dominated by a single corporation. Would love to see someone else mount a viable challenge to Google, but if it has to be MS for now, so be it.

Re:Good

[loudmax]

I agree that competition is good. The analogy with Window's isn't quite accurate though, since Google doesn't (or can't) lock out competitors the way Microsoft can.

Ideally, Bing and other search engines will continue will continue to improve and gain market share at Google's expense, and Google Chrome and other OS's will also gain market share at Window's expense.

Re:Good

[Blakey Rat]

The analogy with Window's isn't quite accurate though, since Google doesn't (or can't) lock out competitors the way Microsoft can.

They can on paid search advertising spend. At least practically. They can also inflate their inventory's value by taking advantage of the fact that the majority of people use their search engine like a URL bar. (Google does nothing to compensate/correct for this, and their attribution model seems specifically designed to take advantage of it.)

The simple fact is that Google's paid search business is... kind of sleazy. Exactly what you'd expect from a company with very little competition. If Bing can get their share in the 30-40% range, I think we'll see a lot more fairness from Google when it comes to their paid search product.

Re:Good

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

They can also inflate their inventory's value by taking advantage of the fact that the majority of people use their search engine like a URL bar.

Is this google's business model, or is the the general public being stupid with browsers, and in what way is this unique to Google? What about bing will make my internet illiterate (i still can't convince him that he doesnt need to double-click links) father decide that, unlike the google search pane in firefox, the bing search pane in IE isn't for entering urls?

nothing. obviously. and as Bing corners the market on people not internet skilled enough to know better, i have a feeling that this particular behavior will tend to skew toward it over Google.

Re:Good

[Blakey Rat]

Is this google's business model, or is the the general public being stupid with browsers, and in what way is this unique to Google?

As far as user behavior, nothing.

But as far as ad attribution, Microsoft uses an attribution model that doesn't give all conversion credit to the last interaction. (Which is typically a "user uses search engine as URL bar"-type interaction.) In other words, they already correct for this.

Note that if you're an Atlas (Microsoft's advertising technology) customer, you can get this attribution correction with Google as well, and you can independently verify whether Google's rates are fair. (Hint: they're inflated.)

Re:Good

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

Yeah, I think part of my problem with this is the blending of the paid search and user experience arguments. I've got a couple buddies at atlas who can go on about attribution for longer than is really credible, but dont seem to understand my 'but the actual search experience on bing is nearly unbearable to me' response. I know (from getting almost immediately lost when they get into the behind the scenes workings of it on their end) that the intricacies of paid search are more complicated than i really have a handle on. However:

I rarely if ever click on a paid link, and cannot think of any instance off the top of my head where a paid link looked more appropriate than one of the top organic search results. I occasionally see a word or two in a paid link that might have improved original search - so i refine my search.

Search is a very strange business to be in. the user and the customer aren't the same person. I will use which ever search engine gives me the best results, not which ever one has the least sleazy billing method for paid links. Really, it strikes me that Search is itself a sleazy business, insofar as it necessarily can only make money by enticing the user to click not on the result it deems to be the most relevant to the user's search criteria, but rather to the result that has paid to be displayed in conjunction with the user's search criteria.

I love my buddies at Atlas dearly, but I'm not their customer, and as such, that they provide better service and value to their customers than google really couldnt concern me less. I find Bing's search engine inferior.

Re:Good

[Blakey Rat]

Well, you do have a point that judging "Google Search the product" is a really different experience from judging "Google Search the tool."

but dont seem to understand my 'but the actual search experience on bing is nearly unbearable to me' response.

Well, with all due respect:

1) That's because it's irrelevant to how Google and Bing do business. I mean, I can't stand Lotus Notes as a product, but it doesn't influence how I'd look at IBM if I were thinking about investing in them. (For example.)

2) With all due respect, you're probably knee-jerking anyway. From my experience working in usability, when people say phrases like "nearly unbearable" without any solid reasons to dislike it, they're just reacting out of habit. People hate change. But that says nothing about the quality of the product.

I rarely if ever click on a paid link, and cannot think of any instance off the top of my head where a paid link looked more appropriate than one of the top organic search results.

Yes, but millions of people do. Billions, perhaps.

Really, it strikes me that Search is itself a sleazy business, insofar as it necessarily can only make money by enticing the user to click not on the result it deems to be the most relevant to the user's search criteria, but rather to the result that has paid to be displayed in conjunction with the user's search criteria.

True dat.

Re:Good

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

2) With all due respect, you're probably knee-jerking anyway. From my experience working in usability, when people say phrases like "nearly unbearable" without any solid reasons to dislike it, they're just reacting out of habit. People hate change. But that says nothing about the quality of the product.

haha, there *may* have been some hyperbole in there. ok, there obviously was. mainly its a sort of low level feeling that i'm being disrespected. At the atlas-buddies' urging, i used bing for a week, and just got sick of having to bully it into giving me what i wanted every time. the tendency of bing to give precedence to links selling me things rather than informing me about things got old.

I'm well aware that i'm not exactly in the majority with the paid search click-through and i wholly understand that it facilitates my preferred search engine's existence. I dont watch commercials on tv, either. shrug.

bing = disease

[Anonymous Coward]

The other day I opened a fortune cookie..."Learn chinese: bing = disease".

Windows 7 Defaults to Bing on Fresh Install

[caffeinejolt]

Makes me wonder how much if this is due to people switching from Google vs just buying a new PC (at least when I set up my Dad's PC it did). Bing market share growth follows a very similar trend to Windows 7 market share growth.

Re:Windows 7 Defaults to Bing on Fresh Install

[shutdown -p now]

Anyone using any version of IE gets Bing search by default (since it replaced MSN/Live search, which used to be the default in earlier IE versions). So, no, upgrading to 7 (or generally to IE8) doesn't account for this growth.

Do you YAHOO!?

[Sebilrazen]

Apparently the answer is a resounding "NO."

That's a copout

[DesScorp]

no wonder... it's set as default on all the IE 8 and windows 7 installations i have made.

That's a copout. On IE8, when you first run it, it specifically gives you choices on things like search engine defaults, and even offers to download a list of more providers if you don't like the current choices (of which Google is one).

Re:That's a copout

[SebaSOFT]

Even with that, why you assume that people actively chosen Bing over any other engine? It defaults to that, they just click Next. Don't show off those statistics if people doesn't actually prefer the search engine.

Re:That's a copout

[spyrochaete]

I just upgraded my sister's WinXP laptop from IE7 to IE8 just yesterday and the wizard appeared on the first launch asking which search engine I preferred. Her default on IE7 was Google so that's what it recommended first, but gave the option to change to Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, and several others. Did you skip that wizard?

Re:That's a copout

[BitZtream]

We just had an article (last week?) telling use that FireFox had more market share than IE. Since FF defaults too Google, if Bing was #1 just because its the Default on IE than that means FF and Chrome users must be switching to Bing.

One of these two stats is wrong, only in in the slashdot world is a product that isn't the most popular also using its monopoly power to push other products.

Seriously, give up, you guys twist your stats as bad as MS and all sit around pretending you are right and they are wrong and bad.

How much would you pay for it?

[grahamsz]

Obviously the costs of operating a search engine are pretty significant and the market for people who'd pay for privacy is quite small. I suspect it'd need to be in the $20-50/month range, and i think that would deter a lot of people.

Little in life is free, and businesses that run on millions of dollars of hardware and fast internet connections are going to need to finance that.

In any event, if i'm going to have to deal with ads online then i'd PREFER that they were tailored to things i'm interested in.

Re:How much would you pay for it?

[Gaffod]

It's not about ads, it's about where the data goes after they're done showing you ads.

Meanwhile, on the Internet

[RazZziel]

Random websites are being mysteriously slaughtered.

Re:For IE users, Bing lockin is assured

[LBArrettAnderson]

It takes 3 or 4 clicks to change. And none of those clicks are hidden.

Possible explanation for Bing's results...

[gklinger]

I would like to know what percentage of non-technical people use IE's integrated Bing search function to search for "Google" and then click on the first link which takes them to Google where they make their actual query. Laugh if you will but I have observed this behaviour on more than one occasion.

Re:Possible explanation for Bing's results...

[sudden.zero]

Yes, I too have seen this more the once. There are quite a few people in my office on the non-technical side who I have seen do this. I then immediately explained to them that all you need to do is type www.google.com in the address bar and click go to get to Google. I also explained to them that there is this thing called a book mark that will allow you to click a "link" if that is what they desire.

Contradicting numbers

[trazan]

This completely contradicts two other reports from the last few days, which has Bing losing market share in December.

http://searchengineland.com/nielsen-yahoo-bing-down-google-up-in-december-33464

http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/search-enginedec2009/

And another thing

[Weaselmancer]

MSDN is now powered by Bing too. So every windows programmer in the world is now making Bing queries by default. That's got to boost things a bit.

Re:And another thing

[chainz]

Do you really think the search queries of a tiny group of professionals while on a single website is going to make any difference at all?

Let's see...
Programmers as a fraction of professions in the world
x Windows Programmers as a fraction of Overall Programmers
x Users of MSDN as a fraction of Windows Programmers
x searches on MSDN as a fraction of their daily searches
= No boost at all to the market share of Bing

Re:And another thing

[Digero]

The chart in TFA is tracking search volume of "Microsoft Sites". The MSDN search has always been through Microsoft (Bing or not), so the switch to Bing on MSDN shouldn't affect the search volume through Microsoft sites, assuming the same volume of searches are going through search bar on MSDN. That said, I personally used to use google with "site:msdn.microsoft.com" before MSDN switched to Bing, so in that way, the switch to Bing on MSDN at least brought in a few more searches by me.

Re:And another thing

[shutdown -p now]

MSDN is now powered by Bing too. So every windows programmer in the world is now making Bing queries by default.

I actually know quite a few people who prefer "g site:msdn.microsoft.com ...".

Re:And another thing

[shutdown -p now]

Who doesn't use Google to search MSDN? I haven't tried MSDN's own search recently, but at least it used to be utter shit. Slow and bad results. You search for an API function, it turns up the Windows CE version near the top, with the normal one maybe buried software. Fucking useless.

I'm not sure what engine it was using before. Perhaps it was MSN/Live Search, actually, as that was also rather infamous for poor search results.

Now that it uses Bing as a backend, it actually works fine. For example, searching for CreateWindow gets the Win32 function on top, then the WinCE one, then a bunch of other links that are quite relevant (WM_CREATE, a sample application etc). It also has a decent presentation of search results with no information overload - just a very simplistic link listing, and no ads etc.

Re:And another thing

[wumpus188]

Not for me. Clicking your "CreateWindow" link from Safari on Mac shows "Administering Team Foundation" as a top result. So either search is still a shit, or it is actually a conspiracy to confuse us Mac users.

Re:And another thing

[marcosdumay]

Your result / market share of bing = NAN.

My computer doesn't know how to calculate 0/0.

Re:And another thing

[BitZtream]

Wrong, this Windows user still uses Google for searching, its not hard.

Someone actually uses the search field on an MS site? WTF for, don't you want to find what you're looking for?

Re:And another thing

[BitZtream]

Actually, its worse now, I search using Google for MSDN topics from Safari on a Mac using XP in a VM to build/test the Windows version of an app that builds/runs on OSX and FBSD as well (sorry, I'm lazy and don't have any Linux boxes to build it on).

Of course, we do Windows dev, so we pay MS a fortune for software anyway so I doubt they care that I'm not using Bing.

Course they are, they are paying people to use it!

[Kagato]

I use bing. When I go to buy something. I've collected hundreds of dollars from their cash back program. Outside of that, google is superior.

Hitwise

[DollyTheSheep]

Market research fiirm Hitwise thinks, that Bing's market share is (was?) actually falling.

Once again a misleading story about Bing

[pdboddy]

That total you see in the image in the article is for Microsoft Sites. This number includes searches from ALL of Microsoft's search boxes: Bing, Live, microsoft.com, etc etc.

If you look at the Nielsen report here: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/nielsen-reports-december-u-s-search-rankings/

You'll see that they list Microsofts search sites as "MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search", which is a bit more explanatory I would say.

And if you check Hitwise, where they list searches BY domain name, www.bing.com LOST 4%. (http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/search-enginedec2009/)

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[Ramirozz]

I was going to ask about that... growing from where? because people assumes Bing is new while in reality it is a replacement of Live so counting from zero is like a distorted point of view. This sounds like economy... after loosing 20% of something then gain 5% at fast peace and claim WE ARE GROWING! ... lame.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[krou]

Would give you mod points if I had 'em. Thanks for the info.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[spyrochaete]

Live, MSN, and Bing all use the Bing search engine, though. Try it yourself. Live.com redirects to Bing, and MSN.com and its subdomains use the Bing searhc engine. They're all exactly the same service. Why should they be broken apart?

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[pdboddy]

I just wish that they'd either separate the numbers out per site, and report on that, or say that the numbers represent searches from all of MS's properties (or Google's or Yahoo's, etc).

And it would be more relevant to compare each search engine/site to each other, rather than tally their total searches. If Google were to grow 5% this month in total number of searches, it would be much larger than if Bing were to grow 50%. That's how big Google is.

However, if Bing were to capture 50% of the entire search market, THAT would be big news.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[spyrochaete]

I was going to ask about that... growing from where? because people assumes Bing is new while in reality it is a replacement of Live so counting from zero is like a distorted point of view.

This sounds like economy... after loosing 20% of something then gain 5% at fast peace and claim WE ARE GROWING! ... lame.

Okay, so provide the statistics that show Bing is less popular that Live.com. Also, show in the article where the things "people assumes" changed the raw numbers on their statistics charts.

Finally - and this is the most perplexing one of all - please explain how if something shrinks and then gets bigger it doesn't mean that it's growing.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[Ramirozz]

Because if I have 3 services and have... lets put a number 10% market share and then I unify all three and say about this new one: we are almost at %10 market share... it is a lie! yo are only regaining / recounting what you already have... speed is relative there, there is no strength in that, they are not gaining. They are regaining and marketing it as an achievement.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[Blakey Rat]

That total you see in the image in the article is for Microsoft Sites. This number includes searches from ALL of Microsoft's search boxes: Bing, Live, microsoft.com, etc etc.

Uh, all of those use Bing, though.

If you're trying to report on Bing usage, you'd obviously include all domains that use Bing... right? I mean... duh? I'd also expect that if they were counting Google usage, they'd throw in (for example) Mozilla.org's search box, which uses Google.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[spyrochaete]

Because if I have 3 services and have... lets put a number 10% market share and then I unify all three and say about this new one: we are almost at %10 market share... it is a lie! yo are only regaining / recounting what you already have... speed is relative there, there is no strength in that, they are not gaining. They are regaining and marketing it as an achievement.

How is it lying? All those websites make it very clear that Bing is the name of their search engine. If anything is inaccurate it's the fact that anyone is still using the retired names MSN and Live.

Re:Once again a misleading story about Bing

[BitZtream]

Just curious as to if there was actually anyone on slashdot who was so out of touch that they thought that MS used something OTHER than Bing for its sites search.

Do these same people find it shocking that you use Google when search on the various Google sites?

I don't really think anyone needed it pointed out to them that this was the case.

Let me modify that, I'm sure someone wasn't aware of that fact, but they problem aren't important anyway since they must have been living in a deep dark cave in the bottom of some ocean trench.

How Many Real?

[notnAP]

Trying to check on the configuration of one of my switches using its built in html interface, I entered 10.0.0.101
Switch somehow had gone back to its default IP address, so it didn't respond.
Moments later, I was given a very helpful list of search queries for 10.0.0.101 by Bing.
Thank you Bing!!! Thank you for reminding me why I prefer Firefox over IE.

Re:How Many Real?

[Gadget_Guy]

There is a configuration option to switch off searching from the address bar. It is a feature that predates the separate search field. Still, it hardly seems like a deal breaker just because you have done one search instead of receiving an error message.

But Google didn't lose - it gained!

[twoallbeefpatties]

You know, when I look at the graph in TFA the Search Share for Google increased just as much as Bing did! In Dec-08, MS sites were at 8.3%, up to 10.7% in Dec-09. During that same timespan, Google went from 63.5% to 65.7%.

And in that timespan, Yahoo dropped from 20.5% to 17.3%. AOL also dropped from 3.8% to 2.6%. Guess what - MSN isn't stealing Google's shares yet. It's stealing from Google's competitors.

Re:But Google didn't lose - it gained!

[spyrochaete]

So where in the article does it claim that Bing is stealing Google's market share? The only claim made is that Bing is increasing in popularity and that its growth is accelerating. Your points are valid but not as a rebuttal.

Re:But Google didn't lose - it gained!

[twoallbeefpatties]

I wasn't so much arguing with the article as I was with the 80% of comments to the article that seem to act like any gain for Bing must be a loss for Google. You know, not like I expect slashdotters to RTFA or anything.

It's the first page.

[tjstork]

A lot of people I know that like Bing, like the Bing picture on the 1st page. It was well market researched.

Isn't the real issue the base number?

[Suki I]

The report is "Bing Gains Market Share Faster" It is all the way up to 10.7% now. Fine. Google has 65.7%. You can show HUGE increases in your rate of market gain when hardly anybody is looking at you and then a few more look at you. The same number of eyeballs for Google is a small increase. Am I wrong, or did someone cherry pick the most appealing metric for Bing to write a story about?

Re:Isn't the real issue the base number?

[recoiledsnake]

The report is "Bing Gains Market Share Faster"

It is all the way up to 10.7% now. Fine. Google has 65.7%.

You can show HUGE increases in your rate of market gain when hardly anybody is looking at you and then a few more look at you. The same number of eyeballs for Google is a small increase.

Am I wrong, or did someone cherry pick the most appealing metric for Bing to write a story about?

You're wrong.

Did you RTFA or are you acting dumb to get some moderator love? All the percentages quoted are based on the 100% of overall search users, NOT relative growth of a particular search engine.. Since you won't RTFA, here it is http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/searchsharedec09.jpg

Your argument only applies to the last line of the summary, the 49.7% growth in search volume for Bing.

Re:Isn't the real issue the base number?

[Suki I]

My comment was based on the title of the post and the content of the post. You even quoted what I wrote.

Re:Isn't the real issue the base number?

[recoiledsnake]

By 'post' you mean the Slashdot summary or the article. Either way, both quote absolute percentages of search share which treats all engines fairly, not relative to the particular engine which would reflect a higher growth rate for Bing because it's smaller . I am not sure what you're trying to argue here.

Re:Isn't the real issue the base number?

[A Perkins]

The issue is the small base, which can more easily be affected. But the interesting thing that has been missed in all the discussion about Blackberries and Google is where the share is coming from. Bing isn't taking share from Google, which continues to grow. Rather, it's eating up AOL and Yahoo. That's the real story. You won't see a customer satisfaction questionnaire anytime soon from Yahoo.

Google will win anyway

[Baldrson]

Microsoft is excluding the best technical talent from their search group. Google isn't. Pretty wallpaper only goes so far in search.

Re:Google will win anyway

[Blakey Rat]

Microsoft is excluding the best technical talent from their search group. Google isn't.

Are you seriously suggesting that, if I'm the greatest worldwide expert on Internet search, and I ask Microsoft for a job, they're going to say "fuck off, we'd rather hire idiots that don't know what they're doing"? Is that what you honestly think is happening?

The brain of the average Slashdotter is a scary place. I can't even imagine what strange mis-wiring makes you believe Microsoft would purposefully only use amateurs for a flagship product.

The *generous* explanation is that you're making shit up, and hoped nobody would call you on it.

Re:Google will win anyway

[Baldrson]

No, the problem isn't deliberate suicide. It's just institutional. Microsoft has more institutional baggage. Their only way out of their trap would be to pull a kind of Netflix Prize for search but even that requires overcoming a lot of institutional baggage. They're trapped.

The only place I use Bing is on my mobile phone

[ohithere]

Unfortunately, since Danger/Microsoft now own the Sidekick, Bing is now the default GPS/location search program on my device. While I have changed my mobile internet options to search Google rather than Bing, Google does not have a free application that will identify stores and their locations effectively. Navigating to maps.google.com will not work on my device, even on the mobile version. Whether this was intentionally broken by MSFT or is just a failure of mobile internet remains to be seen.

Bing isn't ridiculously terrible, but I really hate Microsoft. I can't wait for my contract to end so that I can get a different phone (that isn't a Microsoft POS).

Looked at differently...Who is converting more?

[DragonWriter]

According to the TFA, Google had about 65.6% of searches in November, and gained 0.2% additional in December; Microsoft had 10.3% in November, and gained 0.4% additional in December. So who is doing better? Well, if you operationalize that question as "who is converting a greater share of the searches that they don't already have?":

Google gained 0.2% of searches in December, out of the 34.4% of searches that weren't already being done on Google sites -- converting just about 0.58% of non-Google searches.

Microsoft gained 0.4% of searches in December, out of the 89.7% of searches that weren't already being done on Microsoft sites -- converting 0.45% of non-Microsoft searches.

And...?

[zztong]

Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but the story seems to be trying to sensationalize things. Look at the numbers they cite. You can see the following changes from Dec 08 to Dec 09.

Bing +2.4%
Google +2.2%

Yahoo -3.3%
AOL -1.2%
Ask -0.2%

So it looks to me like Bing and Google are just gobbling up market share from the weak. Google grew at approximately the same rate as Bing. Yet the article seized on relative growth, which of course is going to favor growing new services.

Ixquick uses Bing and much more!

[Bragador]

If you value your privacy, use Ixquick.

It's a meta search engine that goes through Bing, Yahoo, and many others. Then, Ixquick sorts the results by how popular the results were with all of the search engines.

Ixquick has NO logs of your searches.

Ixquick does NOT keep IP addresses.

The only downside is that Ixquick is ugly.

https://us2.ixquick.com/eng/

My search engine is beating both!

[cain]

My search engine went from 1 user month year to 2 users this month. My %100 growth rate smashes the piddling growth of all others!

That's not market share.

[John Hasler]

Percentage of queries is not market share: it's user share. Market share would be percentage of advertising revenue.

Let's get one thing straight

[XB-70]

Bing wasn't 'Launched' it was INSTALLED *. There's a huge difference.

*Yes, I realise that some people have actually switched to it - but I'm sure that 98% of Bing users upgraded IE or are turning on Win7 for the first time.

Another bad search engine.

[Tei]

I have made a webpage, that is just a js withouth html, and it score the first, and second on bing movile, and first for normal devices.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=fotos+de+perritos&go=&form=QBRE&filt=all

this page:
http://www.servicios-dpi.com/fun/perritos.htm

It used to score well in Yahoo too. It seems these primitive search engine ( Bing, Yahoo, ) are more confident on meta data like title, than in the actual data of the website. AND/OR these search engines are easy cheated because use %, so if the 100% of your webpage is relevant, your page is awesome, so your page made of only the search term will be the best page.

The algorithm of Bing is poor.

The algorithm of Google started as rather good, and Is getting better and better, because is good, and because is need to fight spam. Any other search engine is way behing.

I'll admit it, I like the pretty pictures.

[PinchDuck]

and the info-boxes inside them.
An interesting co-trend: Firefox market share is increasing. So we should have a tiny overlap and have an increasing number of firefox users switching to Bing.

Re:For IE users, Bing lockin is assured

[spyrochaete]

IE keeps your previous default search engine when you upgrade it, actually.

Good for Microsoft

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

At some point, after many failed attempts, Microsoft is bound to get something right. At the core of all of this debate, remember that Google and Microsoft are both publicly traded companies and their only obligation is to make a profit for shareholders. Historically the difference between the two has been that Google has been a smooth Las Vegas hooker taking your money while Microsoft has been more like a crackhead in Atlantic City taking your money with a lead pipe. Google has something like 80% of the search market and the time for backlash is past due. Bing isn't all that bad. They do need credit where credit is due.

CTRL+ENTER

[crevistontj]

Before Bing went live, CTRL+ENTER in Internet Explorer was a shortcut to surround the text in the address field with "www." and ".com" and then go. So I could type "amazon" then hit CTRL+ENTER and it would go to www.amazon.com. I used that shortcut all the time. After Bing went live, this shortcut magically changed from a useful tool to a Bing query for "amazon". I know it's possible to change it back with a reg hack or something but 95% of IE users aren't going to do this. Instead they'll just use Bing and click the first link, gaining ad revenue and perceived market share for MS. This is the kind of underhand crap that MS does that ticks me off. The fact that they were able to remotely change my keyboard shortcut without asking me or notifying me or telling me how to change it back is pretty shade.

Re:CTRL+ENTER

[Gadget_Guy]

I just typed amazon and pressed CTRL+ENTER and I went straight to http://www.amazon.com/. Pressing just ENTER resulted in a Bing search.

Maybe they stuffed up the feature in IE7, but IE8 does exactly what you want. And I didn't even know about any reg hacks, so I certainly haven't done it on this computer.

Re:CTRL+ENTER

[Duncan J Murray]

This is the kind of stuff that finally made me move to linux!

In other breaking news, Bing Drops, Google Grows

[alteran]

Saw this a few days ago, never can tell what to believe.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10434099-17.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Re:EU Browsers Antitrust will fix this.

[spyrochaete]

IE has been doing this since version 7, yet Bing is still increasing in popularity.

Meaningless Analysis

[xactuary]

Here's another take, just as meaningless:

Using bing to find "google search" yields 121,000,000 results.
Using google to find "bing search" yields 41,300,000.

Google wins hands down!

It's just the U.S. market share that went up

[fadir]

Globally Bing is turning the other direction. Microsoft was always a bit stronger in the U.S., so nothing too exciting here.

And of course it went up in December when you see all the Windows 7 boxes that got sold before Christmas. They all default to Bing until the user changes it to something sane, which usually takes a bit. Wait for the January/February numbers and you'll probably see a nice dent in that curve again.

Verizon Wireless set Bing to default.

[aristotle-dude]

MSFT has been paying companies like Verizon to make Bing the default search on their devices.

Of course it's up

[HalAtWork]

Of course it's been up every month. Bing is replacing Live/MSN/etc, and Yahoo is now using it as their search engine. It's gone from 0% to replacing 2 of the top 3 search engines. Of course this seems like rapid growth. How much of these users are NEW users being attracted from the competition? Probably not as interesting a story.

Buying the stairway to market-share

[Tablizer]

I've seen promotional crap for Bing all over the place. Any website remotely connected to Microsoft smooshes your face in Bing ads, deals, and prize contests. MS is practically bribing people to use Bing. Whether they will keep their market-share when they run out of ad money remains to be seen. Google is still better in my opinion.

21+ Bing links on MSN home page

[DodgeRules]

When I looked at the homepage of MSN (which many IE browsers use as the default home page), I found a minimum of 21 links that you thought were links to articles but were only links to Bing searches. This is why they are gaining ground, not because of a better search engine but because of the sneaky way they get people to use their search engine.

Seems mostly to be at yahoo's expense

[wrencherd]

The chart in TFA seems to reflect (to my untrained eyes) a rise in MS/bing-le's market share mostly as a matter of eroding that of yahoo!

The chart also seems to show google(-site-)'s share growing as much as MS/bing-le's over the same period.

Maybe I'm missing something . . .

Blackberrys

[bl968]

What is not noted as well is the contract with RIM which made all Blackberries default to using Bing.

Bing is ok

[Front Line Assembly]

I see no problem with bing, it is actually quite good.
Used it because it was the default in windows 7 at least.

Bing maps also was much better for my town (the aerial views). They apparently used Navtec data which was superior to googles blurry views.

Luckily it's easy to use whatever search engine you like, no costs in changing between them or using both or whatever.

I normally use Google because bing search doesn't offer anything better, just out of habit I guess.

Re:When you're at the bottom, the only place you c

[Arthur Grumbine]

When you're at the bottom, the only place you can go is up.

Tell that to AOL and Ask (the two bottom search engines), who have both been losing market share over the last couple months, according to the Barclay's Capital chart from the article.

Hilariously, the title of the /. article is "Bing Gaining Market Share Faster", although the chart clearly shows MS market share increase by 0.4, 0.5, 0.4, 0.1, 0.5, 0.4, and 0.4 percent for each month from June (when Bing was launched) through December, respectively. An honest title would have been "Bing Continues To Gain Market Share At Roughly The Same Rate It Has Since Launch". Of course that's not even taking into account the other reports we've heard recently about Bing supposedly losing market share.

Also, this is my first time seeing query growth being considered as some kind of particularly important/significant statistic. I'm not saying it's not a valid/useful statistic, just that I've never before seen so much importance placed on it.

Re:easy to cheat

[indi0144]

Not needed, you want to find something on one of the many sites of MS?, if what you search it's down or moved, instead of a 404 they redirect you to a bing results page, so even if I dislike and never ever used bing, I have actually done searches in Bing against my will, we all know MS would never forge purposely wrong links for people to fall on the trap, right?. There is something to do against that?, for the average Joe? I guess not.. the automated scripts doing search queries from Win7 or one of the Live services it's likely to happen.

Who cares, poor people getting biased or bad results only harm themselves, only MS wins more $ for their ads revenues on Bing and advertiser will be happy since Bing users would be the most gullible, it´s a win/win for them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Amazing

[petronije]

I have made bing.com startup page in my firefox (linux box, of course) just to drain their resources, and look what happened - they actually gained more publicity. I'll go now and shoot myself in the foot...

Bing buying market share?

[jowifi]

The hotel I'm staying at is using WiFi that is sponsored by Bing. When I first connect to the network, I get a Bing search page telling me to begin a search or wait 30 seconds to connect. I wouldn't be surprised if many people just type in a term to get connected, generating lots of unneeded searches.

Micorosoft defaults suck

[zarmanto]

Just on general principle, I always change the default search provider from Bing to Google and then delete the Bing search provider altogether, on the computers of my friends and family. If Bing was worthwhile at all, you might think that they would be frustrated with me for dithering with their settings and such, but frankly, most of them never even notice -- or if they do notice, it's with gratitude rather than annoyance.

(Of course, it probably also helps that I'm the resident geek, and they all trust my implicitly with anything technology related.)

Re:easy to cheat

[mindwhip]

Not to mention that Microsoft migrated their various separate search engines (support, msdn, KB, etc... ) onto Bing so if you need any kind of information from the Evil Ones you are using the evil search.

Bing as a name makes me giggle anyway... to most people living in Scotland a 'Bing' is a heap of slag or other waste materials left over from coal mining and is often a toxic hazard to be avoided...

"Find More Providers"

[westlake]

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

The drop down menu in IE 8 Search will take you to this page:

Add-ons Gallery: Search Providers

Here's a sampling of the English language options. You have 25 languages to chose from:

Amazon
Google
Hulu
New Egg
New York Times
Wikipedia
Win 7 Comparability

Create your own Search Provider

Add your own search provider to your copy of Internet Explorer by following these steps:

1. Visit the desired search engine in another window or tab.
2. Use the search engine to search for TEST (all capital letters).
3. Paste the URL of the Search results page here

You can customize the name of your provider. You can select the character encoding, from about 50 or so choices. You can view the XML.

Full of it

[westlake]

Just for fun, I tried Honda Civic as a search. Actually, Bing sucks. Where the results differ, Bing has either a comparison between Civic and Integra windshields, or an ungodly list of used car sites

I have to call BS on this one.

Making the same search I saw - in this order:

2010 Honda Civic: Links To Specs-Safety-Reliability-Reviews
Link To Local Dealer and Service Listings
2010 Honda Civic Sedan - Honda Site
Honda Civic Wikipedia
Honda Civic Family - Honda Site
Images

And then a breakdown into subcategories:

Used Honda Civic
Civic Parts
Acessories
Manuals

Everything is accessible from the first page and very attractively presented.

Re:Full of it

[krunk4ever]

Exactly! I just did a search and the results were everything you claim it didn't have. Mod parent up and Mod grandparent as a troll.

Re:Full of it

[NeutronCowboy]

Note the part "where results differ". Bing and Google return a significant number of the same sites in the same ranking. But what Bing adds is stuff I don't need. Google's specific results, on the other hand, help me.

Re:Full of it

[jim_v2000]

I don't even understand what you're looking for when you type just "Honda Civic". I mean, it's so generic as to be useless for finding anything other than honda.com and wiki page.

Via Fraud

[nurb432]

Microsoft has in place a 'pay to bing' program where you are paid to switch over your companies default search engine to bing.

That will be helping their stats.

Bing Adware

[dkre]

I've just finished a marathon effort to remove some nasty adware. It was never identified/found by several antivirus apps and a fresh install was the only remedy. It was written specifically to target firefox (IE worked fine), hijacking links randomly and not so randomly (ie anything with 'virus' and 'removal' on the page would be redirected to one of a few ad pages. Love calculators etc). I first noticed the infection because it was randomly sending me to bing.com. Not just links off google or other search forms but internal website links (for different sections etc). Seemed pretty strange at the time given I hadn't realised the infection had occured but I think it troubles me more now. I'm assuming adware authors wouldn't bother to do this unless there was a financial benefit, unless they really have alot of love for bing? heh.

Foxfire...

[binary paladin]

I usually give up about the time I hear that too.

Man the moon is bright tonight.

[reiisi]

Why do astroturfers like to work by moonlight?

Brand X, I mean, M

[reiisi]

"And the man comes on to tell me, how bright my teeth should be."

Or is it, "My clothes are 100% whiter with Bing (TM) brand Detergent?"

testimonials, testimonials let's have more testimonials.

beneath the pain threshold.

[reiisi]

Just being a bother isn't enough to figure out the difference between a provider and a search engine.

Re:easy to cheat

[Lunzo]

In other words, the name is apt?

My site data is what I care about

[smagruder]

On the most popular website I run, 90.5% of the organic hits continue to come from Google, with only 4.0% coming from Bing. Until I see _these_ numbers change significantly, I don't care what the overall market shares of these search engines are. In short, I only care about the data that relates to my own sites, and it should behoove everyone to do the same.