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Bing To Become Default iPhone Search?

Posted by samzenpus on from the strange-bedfellows dept.

snydeq writes "BusinessWeek reports ongoing talks between Apple and Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine for the iPhone. The discussions reflect an accelerating rivalry between Apple and Google, one that some believe will be the most important rivalry in tech in the years to come. 'Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy,' says one person familiar with Apple's thinking. 'Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle.'"

47 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Big Battle by sopssa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even more than just Apple vs Google fight, this is serious battle between Microsoft and Google. MS has actually made their search engine better than Google (the different categories and combining them together shows this, and it's greatly improved over Live search).

    Immediately when Bing was released Google tried to answer back with its sidebar options. But it never really got where Bing is. And now Bing keeps gaining marketshare faster than ever before. It is actually a good product, and actually something MS has left alone from their other marketing efforts (for example, they use flash instead of silverlight, because flash is installed on so many machines, and do not try to promote silverlight on cost of their search engine).

    I hate microsofts business practices as much as the next guy on slashdot, but Bing is something they're actually done really good. Yesterdays news about Bing deleting user data in 6 months just shows that bitter battle with Google is getting even better and better. Bing keeps gaining market share every month, faster and faster. Google pulls out from China market. Google CEO says privacy doesn't matter. This is something to watch while drinking cola and making some popcorns - two giants fighting to death.

    This shows competition is good. It surely leads to innovations.

    1. Re:Big Battle by kregg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the thought of using bing makes me cringe

    2. Re:Big Battle by contrapunctus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know what you mean.
      I hate this one person who works for subway (just a nasty personality). The thought of her preparing my food makes me ill.
      I once went in and saw that she was working and walked right out.
      That's how I feel about bing. (she would be microsoft)

    3. Re:Big Battle by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      MS has actually made their search engine better than Google (the different categories and combining them together shows this, and it's greatly improved over Live search).

      Citation needed. Live search was crap, being better than crap doesn't make something great. And I've compared the search results, 80% of the time I prefer Google's results (there was this site that compared Bing/Google/Yahoo and had you pick your favorite and then told you what it was, don't know the URL at the time)

      And now Bing keeps gaining marketshare faster than ever before.

      And I would imagine that most of that growth is caused by people using the default IE search option which uses Bing.

      It is actually a good product,

      Again, Citation needed. Is there really anything that Bing does better than Google for the general user?

      and actually something MS has left alone from their other marketing efforts (for example, they use flash instead of silverlight, because flash is installed on so many machines, and do not try to promote silverlight on cost of their search engine).

      Isn't that how -all- Microsoft's products start? First as nice, good projects with open standards, etc. Then they release that one program that breaks the standard and suddenly that becomes the new standard and then close it off to non-MS products.

      Google pulls out from China market.

      Um, not exactly sure what you meant by this statement, but assuming its anti-Google, I don't really see your point. Basically Google said that they are sick of being the pawns of the Chinese government which is a -good thing-, I really don't think Microsoft would have the guts to say that.

      This shows competition is good. It surely leads to innovations.

      Competition is good, but corrupt competition is not. Both Microsoft and Google use software patents to discourage competition, both don't care about privacy, and both are willing to be tossed along and won't fight for their user's rights.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    4. Re:Big Battle by iVtec · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A 3% marketshare for Bing is hardly anything to get excited about. Bing is seriously terrible compared to Google. Try any other language than english and you're fucked.

      Also, Microsoft is terrible at privacy compared to Google. You may be too young to remember Google fighting off a subpoena to hand over user information, while Yahoo and Microsoft caved:

      http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39248192,00.htm
      http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2006/01/19

      Also, where was microsoft when Google was making a stand in China? Yup, nowhere...

      Lastly, you mention that microsoft is deleting user data within 6 months as if it's a policy used today. If you read their own announcement, what they're saying is that they'll remove IP addresses from queries after 6 months and remaining cross-session IDs after 18 months. But they plan to implement this policy a year to a year and a half from now!

      http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2010/01/19/microsoft-advances-search-privacy-with-bing.aspx

    5. Re:Big Battle by DerPflanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the thought of using bing makes me cringe

      What happened to judging products on their merits? Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe? And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?

      On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?

      --
      -- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
    6. Re:Big Battle by __aajfby9338 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe?

      Yes. I hate everything about their software products. I will not use them unless I have no viable alternative, and I will go out of my way to use not-quite-viable alternatives instead if I have to.

      And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?

      Nothing. My respect is not available to them.

      On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?

      He may no longer be a thief, but I still won't trust him. There are plenty of other people who have not already demonstrated their untrustworthiness, so I can get by without that former thief just fine.

    7. Re:Big Battle by node+3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?

      The thief will have always done the thieving, regardless of what he does later in life. In order for the thief to regain trust, he'll have to admit to that. Has Microsoft done that?

      Microsoft hasn't "shown remorse and changed their ways". And this is all assuming one accepts the premise that corporations deserve forgiveness or a second chance in the same way a human does. I'm not convinced they do. Not so readily or so easily, at least.

    8. Re:Big Battle by Nikker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just because Microsoft might actually get off their collective asses for once in their lives doesn't get them a cookie in my book. You are talking about a multi billion dollar corporation that has done nothing but hinder an entire industry. There will always be competition where large sums of money are involved and Microsoft while being an extremely 'innovative' and cunning business wise they have coasted happily when it has become the path of least resistance product wise. The entanglement of these three massive companies so directly will evolve some amazing solutions across the board but thanking Microsoft for getting up for Google after they were pissing on their lawn doesn't get them any more from me then before. Microsoft is like a world heavy weight boxing champion that won't get off their chair to dance in the ring, sure they win but they put on a really shitty event. Now Google comes along and they finally have to get off the chair to connect a punch and we all become enthralled but we are supposed to thank a boxer for boxing? I don't think so.

      --
      A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
    9. Re:Big Battle by pydev · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What happened to judging products on their merits? Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe?

      Every single product I have ever bought from Microsoft has sucked to some degree (some more than others), so, yes, I do cringe.

      I gave Bing a serious try since I don't like all my data going to Google. And? Same thing as with other Microsoft products: it sounds good in theory, it has lots of features, but it doesn't do its primary function very well.

      See, people hate Microsoft not because of business strategy, they hate Microsoft because they don't like their products and Microsoft is using business strategy to force them to use those products anyway.

      I dislike Microsoft a lot less since their monopoly has started crumbling and I don't have to use them anymore.

    10. Re:Big Battle by pydev · · Score: 4, Funny

      But it may so happen that she is really good at work (in case of Bing) despite having nasty personality (she would be microsoft).

      The analogy is false; it's not about one employee at a business, it's about a business and a monopoly.

      In the restaurant analogy, we're talking about a restaurant (Microsoft) that has a monopoly in your town, there's no other. Most of the employees are nasty to you and their food is generally bad. Now they have one desert on the menu that's good, the apple cobbler (search engine). WIth that, they are actually trying to drive the nice, new cafe around the corner (Google) out of business as well. Does it make sense to leave your nice neighborhood cafe and start going to this restaurant for your deserts? I don't think so. You know what's going to happen: after they've driven the cafe out of business, they are going to revert to their old ways, and even their apple cobbler is going to go bad.

      (Of course, I don't think Bing is actually very good.)

    11. Re:Big Battle by EzInKy · · Score: 4, Informative


      What happened to judging products on their merits?

      It is quite common to judge products based on the manufacturer's reputation.


      Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe?

      Absolutely, and their EULAs are even worse today.


      And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?

      Honestly it would take quite a lot, but acknowledging that using software has no greater relationship to copying than using a book does would be a good start.


      On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?

      Once a whore always a whore is probably the better analogy, particularly considering who Microsoft is in bed with. They make it well known that they continue play for sure.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    12. Re:Big Battle by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What happened to judging products on their merits? Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe?

      I'm not the original poster, but for me, yes. It absolutely does matter what relationship I have with the company I buy products from. And I won't buy anything from Microsoft.

      And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?

      25 years into their dirty habits, they are beyond redemption. Hopefully they'll take a gradual fade into oblivion.

    13. Re:Big Battle by rtfa-troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I had moderator points, I would mod you up.

      You and so many people that forget how Microsoft got here. Any other search engine as garbage as MSN would have been forgotten by now. Microsoft has driven their search engines through many generations each of which was terrible. If there was real competition in the IT market, other search companies than MS would be able to compete with Google.

      The thing to remember is that Bing is great at everything except actually delivering search results. In your search results you want something you can trust and understand, but as we've discussed before. Even today, when Microsoft has tried to hide these problems, when you search for "Why is Microsoft Windows so expensive?" you'll find that on Microsoft's results the page "Why are Macs so expensive?" is high in the top ten whilst doing the same search on Google manages to find plenty more on topic material.

      Microsoft amnesia is astounding. Take the last example; Microsoft has biased results, they get caught; they change their results to hide the bias better. Within days we have postings all over the internet denying they were ever biased.

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    14. Re:Big Battle by FreeUser · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He may no longer be a thief, but I still won't trust him. There are plenty of other people who have not already demonstrated their untrustworthiness, so I can get by without that former thief just fine.

      Exactly right. As a middle-eastern friend of mine once said: "If someone steals from you, forgive them. But tie up your camel." Or put in more familiar terms: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Microsoft has fooled everyone at least once. Let them do it to you again, and you have only yourself to blame.

      --
      The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
    15. Re:Big Battle by DJRumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why is the parent modded troll? The results are easily reproducible:

      http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Why+is+Microsoft+Windows+so+expensive%3F%22&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n&sc=1-40

      http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=%22Why+is+Microsoft+Windows+so+expensive%3F%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=%22Why+is+Microsoft+Windows+so+expensive%3F%22&fp=e8d6ef47431c6a4a

      The specific first hit on Bing is the specific answers.yahoo.com question "Why are Mac's So Expensive".

    16. Re:Big Battle by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes...
      Microsoft have done a huge amount of damage to their customers and the industry as a whole...

      They have stifled innovation for years (for an example see IE6 - allowed to totally stagnate once it had a dominant marketshare, only updated again once its share was threatened several years later).
      They have locked thousands of individuals and businesses into their products, removing those peoples freedom to choose the best product for the job. Even worse is that the lockin extends to those who aren't their customers, it's common to send proprietary microsoft format files around and people are expected to open them.

      In many markets we are unable to judge products in their merits precisely because of microsoft. A competing product may be cheaper (or free), do everything you need better, but lacks compatibility with some proprietary microsoft technology therefore ruling it out.

      To regain any level of respect, they need to undo all of the underhanded anti-consumer actions they have taken, and start competing purely based on the merits of their products in all the markets they operate in.

      As it stands, although they may be trying to compete on merit right now, history has shown that once they gain sufficient market share they revert to their usual underhanded practices of locking people in and allowing the product to stagnate and/or using one product to forcibly push another. Don't forget all the "embrace, extend, extinguish" stuff from a few years back...

      To give an example, the vast majority of MS products are tied to windows (forcibly pushing)..
      By contrast, google simply promote their products, if you use their sites from some non-chrome browsers you will see advertisements for chrome, but the sites will not refuse to work in other browsers and aren't tied to chrome-os etc... This is promotion as opposed to forcibly pushing.

      So that's what MS can do, give us the ability to judge all their products on merit and we will be more likely to judge them all that way.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    17. Re:Big Battle by IICV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They have stifled innovation for years (for an example see IE6 - allowed to totally stagnate once it had a dominant marketshare, only updated again once its share was threatened several years later).

      This is what's really insidious about Bing. What happens if Microsoft wins the current search engine wars, like they did the browser wars or the operating system wars? Will they keep on innovating, or will search stagnate for a decade?

      Whenever Microsoft wins, everyone else loses.

  2. Marketshare gains misleading... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like competition as much as the next guy.

    However, I am really suspicious of Bing's marketshare numbers. Has no-one else noticed that many of those demonic hoverover underline word links pull up Bing now? How much of the increase is because people lingered a little too long over a word on a web page?

    Furthermore, anything with a small marketshare can easily post impressive percentage gains quickly...

    Bing's results are as you say pretty decent, however I really don't like the super-heavy home page with the ginormous image. It's cool once but I just can't have that for a page I pull up so often... even if cached, the image is just too annoying over time. Goolge has the simplicity aspect right.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by sopssa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I never see either Bing's or Google's homepage. I just search using my browsers search bar. Actually I was surprised to see Google's fade-in homepage manually after friend told about it.

    2. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by jhol13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Goolge has the simplicity aspect right.

      I *really* hate Google for destroying the right-click copy-link-location. Maybe I'll change to Bing, it does not do that.

    3. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Another factor could be Club Bing. They allow you to earn prizes by playing their games. The games? They are games that do searches on bing.com. So for instance, every word you enter into a crossword puzzle gets a search on bing. If you click for a clue, it does another search. One game easily makes 45 searches or more even if you don't use any hints. Because of the prizes, people are always finding ways to set up bots on multiple accounts to try to get more and more points. Even if Microsoft catches them and invalidates their points, I imagine the searches done still count toward how often Bing is used. It doesn't matter that no one bothers to look at the search results (except briefly if they need a clue).

    4. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by lorenlal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The other thing that bothers me about the marketshare numbers is that Microsoft is working the Bing advertising to a point where I can't avoid seeing it. I also notice that somehow Bing seems to be popping up in places that I didn't even think they could. Notice what's powering the map on that page?

      Add in the $500 Bing agreement with Verizon.

      Add in the fact that Bing is really doing well taking share from their partner.

      To me, it boils down to this: I don't trust many people.

      I hardly trust Google, but I have yet to see them engage in practices where they abuse their market share. Please correct me if I've missed something.

      I know what Microsoft does when they dominate market share... And right now, this product is gaining market share because MS is pouring money into it at a pace that they can't intend on maintaining. I don't know what their plan is, but I have a feeling that this one's not following the "embrace" part of their normal business model. I can't wait to see what they do once Bing closes in on 30% (assuming it keeps gaining). My guess is that they'll find a way to blend it with the desktop OS, and "integrate" it with the desktop search. I'm also sure that desktop search will extend to the general web.

    5. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by icebraining · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/47300

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    6. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by derGoldstein · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ditto. Whenever I hear (usually reported somewhere) that google is pushing something, or they've added new features/options, I'm surprised even though I used it almost exclusively. This goes for youtube and google news as well. They'll occasionally throw something on one of the front pages, even though most users that are even moderately experienced will dispense with those entry/landing pages as soon as they figure out how. The same goes for Wikipedia -- if I want to find something, I'll just prefix the search term with "wikipedia", I won't actually go to wikipedia.org. I didn't know where *was* a beta interface until someone mentioned it to me (though to be fair, there's a small "try beta" link on every wikipedia page now).

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    7. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Have you looked over the hacks that Google Analytics uses? You think that click tracking is an issue? They make the browser effectively "watch you back" with that stuff. If you go over the source, you'll see a nice sliding scale of technology: The first options are always basic HTML, often with deprecated tags, for old/slow machines. As you progress upwards, more and more layers of interface interaction are added, along with huge amounts of data collection. After browsing through enough of their page sources, I'm starting to think that the privacy nuts aren't as nuts as I used to think.
      If you want to try this yourself, download Firebug, and add a bunch of monitoring add-ons to it. You'll be amazed at how "chatty" google pages are.

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    8. Re:Marketshare gains misleading... by michaelhood · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you're logged in and have web history disabled, you should never see this sort of behavior.. drove me nuts until I figured that out. If you're logged out I'm not sure what the situation is, I'm always logged in for gmail.

  3. Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Apple is also working on ways to manage ad placement on its mobile devices"

    What the hell is that line about. Apple better not be spamming the fuck out fo me when i'm paying for their fucking devices and software AND cell service.

    FUCK YOU APPLE.. Dont even try it.

    1. Re:Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by DirtyCanuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The million dollar question is would you still object if you had a reduced bill?

      Discounting phone bills in exchange for AD space is a quick way to have everybody consider it.

      They can make those losses back with ad revenue and data mining ;)

    2. Re:Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by arose · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Has it actually ever worked that way when ads get introduced to a previously ad free service? It sure seems to gravitate to 'free money' instead of 'pass along the savings'.

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
    3. Re:Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? by derGoldstein · · Score: 4, Funny

      Getting an iPhone is like walking into a cool, refreshing pond, which just happens to be full of leeches. You'll be comfortable as long as your body can generate blood fast enough.

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  4. Re:It's not a search engine by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Microsoft saved Apple. Microsoft kept Apple viable in the workplace by continuing to release Office for Mac (indeed, Office on a Mac is much nicer than Office on a PC.) Apple produces great hardware to run Microsoft software, even their OS, on. And while Jobs is an avid competitor, I seriously doubt that the has any animus for Microsoft.

    Google, on the other hand, is threatening Apple in its biggest growth market: mobile devices. Google offers an alternate ecosystem to Apple, to .Mac and now iDisk. Google is encroaching, encroaching, encroaching more into Apple territory than Microsoft is. Apple probably feels betrayed by Google (and vice versa, after the rejection of Google's app in the AppStore.)

    All three are competing with each other in various sectors, but I think if there is bad blood anywhere right now, it is between Apple and Google.

  5. Human sacrifice by RevWaldo · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apple and Microsoft working together - mass hysteria!

    --
    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
  6. If so, Apple is hurting themselves more by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple should realize that once MS comes on strong with Bing in this space, that they will use it on their phone. The issue here is that MS is composed of total idiots, HOWEVER, they like to throw money and their already established monopolies at other ones. As such, MS will go after Apple's iphone. And they will slowly eat away at them. OTH, if Apple either works with a different company, or even with Google, they will still remain the leader.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  7. Re:Microsoft a pawn? by mevets · · Score: 4, Funny

    to say nothing of her transmittable diseases....

  8. Re:Microsoft a pawn? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MS is hardly anyones fool. what is far more likely is that MS will play the 2 off against each other. Apple's piss weak market share makes them less of a threat, so initally siding wiht them is logical. Next i bet you'll see MS leverage this into a windows mobile version of the iphone. mark my words children....

    Wha'? I know people don't read the articles here - but you should at least consider reading the summary. We're talking about the iPhone and mobile devices and search - not personal computers. Apple's marketshare is pretty darn good (to say the least). As far as Windows Mobile goes... I know some guys that work in that group, and they don't currently expect it to even exist in another year or two. It is not Microsoft's golden child by any stretch of the imagination.

    Seriously - Microsoft hasn't managed to leverage their Windows near-monopoly into a dominant position in any of these spaces. I'm glad you're happy with your Zune, but... wow. Seriously.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  9. Re:Microsoft a pawn? by jim_v2000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    >a Jobs search engine.

    It would be like Google, but the only button would be the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

    --
    Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
  10. 'Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle.' by NoPantsJim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure. The corporation with the $271.6 billion market cap is the pawn in the battle between two corps with market caps around $190 billion. That makes sense.

    --
    Name...That...Autocomplete!
  11. Re:It's not a search engine by westlake · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm pretty positive that Steve hates Microsoft, what it stands for, and the way it does its business. Pretty much like many Linux folks do

    Apple and Microsoft have had a mutually profitable - symbiotic - relationship for thirty years.

    Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle.

    Microsoft solid middle class value.

    Both have a very clear notion of how to profitably leverage the other's platform. Windows gets iTunes. The Mac gets MS Office.

    Hate makes good theater - but rarely good business - and the geek needs to remember when he is watching a show.

  12. Re:Blame Firefox by causality · · Score: 4, Informative

    The fact is that Firefox is NOT copying the visible text, and I don't think it's fair to blame that on Google.

    Have you used Firefox? It has two options: one is "Copy" which copies the visible text; the other is "Copy Link Location" which places the URL in the clipboard. In this case, Firefox is not copying the visible text because the user is not telling it to do that.

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  13. Total world domination! by Fished · · Score: 4, Funny
    1. First, they ignored us.
    2. Then, we declared war on them.
    3. Then, they ignored us.
    4. Then, we took the webservers. And they kind of noticed us.
    5. Then, they ignored us.
    6. Then, we took the netbooks. And they really started noticing us.
    7. Then, they ignored us.
    8. Then, we took the mobile phones. And they started to worry.
    9. Then, we ignored them. And they stopped ignoring us. Kind of.
    10. Then, came the next big thing. And it didn't say, "Microsoft," but came from Google or Apple.
    11. Then, we ignored them completely. And it ran Android and OSX/FreeBSD.
    12. And then, we won.
    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  14. Re:Microsoft a pawn? by derGoldstein · · Score: 3, Funny

    There would be no buttons. No buttons at all.

    --
    Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  15. calling bullshit by Tom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm calling bullshit on this one.

    Apple goes for "sexy" in everything it does. Tell me where Bing is sexy? It has no appeal whatsoever to anyone I know. Heck, 80% of the people I know probably don't even know what the heck it is and would guess it's a new clothes shop or something.

    I also think Apple got into bed with MS once and still feels somewhat sorry about it. After initial great support (IE on Mac is said to have been far better than the windos version) MS did to them what they do to everyone: Let them hang. I doubt that brings them much love from Apple.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  16. Re:Blame Firefox by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you used Firefox? It has two options: one is "Copy" which copies the visible text; the other is "Copy Link Location" which places the URL in the clipboard. In this case, Firefox is not copying the visible text because the user is not telling it to do that.

    You still misunderstand. For Google result pages, the href attribute of the links is actually the original URL (which can be trivially checked by looking at the source HTML). However, the page also has some JavaScript which intercepts clicked links, and redirects you via Google so that they detect the click. The problem with Firefox is that its "Copy Link Location" command does not copy the value in a/@href (as all other browsers do it), but tries to be smart, looks for said associated script, and sees where it will forward you to.

  17. What could they do? by Lorien_the_first_one · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To put this post in context, check out this video to see what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YExl9ojclo

    In Microsoft's fantasy world, everyone uses Windows, Microsoft development tools and there is no competition. What could they do to regain my respect? Stop lying about their competition (especially Linux), drop their patents and lawsuit threats, embrace and support open standards without extending them with proprietary lock-in. Put customers first before the egos of executives and shareholders. Quit trying to embrace, extend and extinguish FOSS.

    Oh, and they could try making better software instead of spin.

    I know. They have a business model they are trying to support, and shareholders to satisfy. But their all-encompassing, over-arching, take-no-prisoners attitude has gotta go.

    --
    The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
  18. Re:not even in the same league / market by radish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sorry - are you high? You claim that iPhone has "1%" of the smart phone market, and that Android has more? Utter crap. The most recent data I could find from the end of last year gives Apple 18%, behind Symbian and RIM. Android is showing a whopping 3.5%. Now I'm sure Android did much better in Q4 and will continue to rise, but I would bet my house they won't even reach iPhone by the end of 2010, never mind pass them.

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    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  19. Browser defaults by phorm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Notwithstanding the idea of google being a "nice, new cafe", you forgot the part where the own the maker of your car's GPS, or whatever, and when you look up any food the GPS defaults to setting your route to their restaurant.

    Would Bing be nearly as big if it weren't the default search engine in IE? I doubt it. Having an alliance between MS and Apple making it default on iPhones makes it even worse...