Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37%

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Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37%

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 2, 2011 @04:32AM from the now-that's-a-gap dept.

suraj.sun writes "Bing overtook Yahoo for the first time worldwide in January, and increased its lead in February, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. Its research arm StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37%, in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94% of the global search engine market." Just a little more plagiarizing to go!

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Excellent! by swordgeek · 2011-03-02 04:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

Now if only it didn't suck.
I wish someone - even Microsoft - would come up with a decent alternative to Google. Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt, and by being the gatekeeper, they now own too much of the internet.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
1. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  +1 Right now, I only see the internet google wants me to see.
2. Re:Excellent! by H0p313ss · 2011-03-02 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  Now if only it didn't suck.
  I wish someone - even Microsoft - would come up with a decent alternative to Google. Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt, and by being the gatekeeper, they now own too much of the internet.
  Moammar? Is that you?
  
  --
  XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
3. Re:Excellent! by chrishillman · 2011-03-02 04:37 · Score: 0
  
  I think it is the advertising.
  
  I would use Bing at least once in a while but they have such awful ads that I can't bring myself to even see those letters in that order...
  
  Search plagiarism aside.. If even they are copying Google search results then you know why they can only get 4%...
4. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:37 · Score: 0
  
  Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt, and by being the gatekeeper, they now own too much of the internet.
  What?
5. Re:Excellent! by elrous0 · 2011-03-02 04:45 · Score: 2
  
  Hush you fool! You know they're listening. Do you *want* to be sent back to the camp?
  
  --
  SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
6. Re:Excellent! by swordgeek · 2011-03-02 04:45 · Score: 1
  
  Moammar? Is that you?
  Yes! But not the Moammar you think I am.
  
  --
  
  "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
7. Re:Excellent! by suprcvic · 2011-03-02 04:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  By definition, Google isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only search engine in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other search engines aren't as smart as theirs.
8. Re:Excellent! by Stenchwarrior · 2011-03-02 04:53 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  A little bit like our other friends in Redmond, no?
  
  --
  Loading...
9. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:53 · Score: 0
  
  Have a gander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) because I'm not sure that word means what you think it does.
10. Re:Excellent! by swordgeek · 2011-03-02 04:54 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  They are a near-monopoly. Erecting barriers to entry isn't a sign of a monopoly either, it's a sign of a monopoly that is unfairly using its position/power. (In fact, in most of the western world, anti-monopoly legislation doesn't prevent monopolies, it only prevents them from misusing their monopolistic power.)
  But regardless, it's the lack of a better (or comparable and competing) search engine that I lament.
  
  --
  
  "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
11. Re:Excellent! by hjf · 2011-03-02 04:54 · Score: 1, Flamebait
  
  By definition, Microsoft isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only operating system in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other operating systems aren't as smart as theirs.
  See what I did there?
12. Re:Excellent! by jgtg32a · 2011-03-02 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  Oh it isn't that bad, I've actually found it to be superior when doing Image and Video searches.
13. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share. Being successful simply because you're good at what you do is not a crime. Microsofts agreements with OEMs, other software makers and Intel were used to make it impossible for other OS makers to compete. It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google.
14. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:03 · Score: 0
  
  You've noticed that we're not in a planned economy, and so there are always a few small competitors even to a large, well established main player. Well done.
  Now notice the rest of what's going on.
15. Re:Excellent! by stewbacca · 2011-03-02 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  Content search does suck, but I like the image search much better than the new-ish Google image search.
16. Re:Excellent! by commodore6502 · 2011-03-02 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  I'm more worried about the Comcast* Monopoly at my home, then any imaginary google monopoly. I don't have to go to google.com but I do have to go through Comcast to see Sci-Fi Channel, History Channel, or HBO.
  Ditto for the internet duopoly that exists between Comcast and Verizon. I can't believe state governments have failed to regulate these Utilities like they regulated all the other monopolies (electric, gas, water, phone). The state politicians are collecting big salaries and not doing shit.
  *
  * Or cox, cablevision, time-warner, att, etc.
  
  --
  Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
17. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:09 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  being a monopoly has nothing to do with market practices. Those are "monopoly abuse". You can be "successful simply because you're good at what you do" and still be a monopoly.
18. Re:Excellent! by ifiwereasculptor · 2011-03-02 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, you have put aside the facts that Microsoft is notorious for erecting large barriers to entry and that their software is actually one of the dumbest.
19. Re:Excellent! by UnknownSoldier · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Oblg.: Bing Is No Good. :-)
20. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 0
  
  You stupid.
21. Re:Excellent! by stewbacca · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft is (or at least was) a monopoly by definition. The definition being: losing your case against charges of monopolistic behavior makes you a monopolist.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
22. Re:Excellent! by poetmatt · 2011-03-02 05:11 · Score: 2
  
  Nobody has a problem with copying, not even google. The problem is that they aren't even *improving* anything! If people want copied google search results they will just use google.
23. Re:Excellent! by Missing.Matter · 2011-03-02 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think acronyms can be defined recursively.
24. Re:Excellent! by sconeu · 2011-03-02 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  So I can still put hotels on both Boardwalk and Park Place?
  
  --
  General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
25. Re:Excellent! by vlm · 2011-03-02 05:16 · Score: 2
  
  By definition, Microsoft isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only operating system in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other operating systems aren't as smart as theirs.
  See what I did there?
  I think you may have missed this entire wikipedia article mostly about microsoft, most of which google is not guilty of. Neither are pure saints or pure sinners, but one is certainly way worse than the other, and only the astroturfers claim MS is the better one.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices
  Google is a natural monopoly, looking at the capital costs of gathering all that data. I'm not seeing a cruddy OS, cruddy web browser, or a middle of the road office suite as being natural monopolies, given the evidence that it doesn't take too many people or too much time to do a better job. On the other hand, replicating google would be quite challenging.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
26. Re:Excellent! by Archangel+Michael · 2011-03-02 05:17 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, I was under the assumption that Bing Is Not Google.
  
  --
  Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
27. Re:Excellent! by fermion · 2011-03-02 05:17 · Score: 2
  
  MS has a cash cow in office. Like so many other companies they are going to have to risk the cash cow to insure future relevance. Just imagine what would have happened if American car companies would have moved on from gas guzzling cars of the 70's and innovated instead of basking in their multi-hundred-million dollar profits. Reagan would not have had to give them 1.5 billion, in 1980, tax dollars that althout repaid represented a failure of the free market. Likewise Bush would not again have put 13.4 billion of tax payer money into Chrysler and GM, at a time when all such money was deficiet spending and we all were allegedly worried about the debt.
  The point is that corporations tend to equate profits with health. This is a fallacy as we have seen profits evaporate in a couple quarters on a number of occasions. The MS Software model is quickly becoming obsolete. The closed proprietary OS integrated by a third party is an experiment that has failed, particularly in smart phones. For iOS, for Android, for Symbian, the system builder has full acess to code and the ability to do with as they wish. It is failingThe hardware people do not have go to the software people and beg for fixes, nor do they have to pay crippling license fees.
  More people expect to pay for innovative products, but not to keep paying for legacy products. MS Office will eventually be replaced by Google Docs or OpenOffice.org or the like that run on whatever hardware a company want to buy. This is as sure as MS products replaced IBM integrated products. No one want to be stuck in a single vendor situattion, and anyone who thinks MS is not a single vendor situation is delusional.
  Bing evidently has some good features. One reason people don't use bing is because MS does not provide an integrated environment like Google does. Google rewards with real product form using the search engine. MS could do this, in many ways much better than Google, but they wold have to sacrifice near term profits. They could put office online, and let anyone use it on any OS, but then why would people buy Windows machine when maybe an Android tablet might suit their needs at half the cost? They would lose the MS Windows OEM sales that cover so much of their fixed costs. They are stuck. They can't be innovative without risking short term profits.
  And the entry to the search market is huge now given the data centers that have to be built. I am not one to think of Apple when thinking of innovative internet strategies. They are creative by never had have a real internet product. However, with the data center, and the iOS, they may be able to leverage me.com into something that can compete with google. The google search and google maps seem so last decade. Apple has money to invest in products that rival Google, and if they did they could take a large chunk of the search market, and create an entry point to business, all in one go.
  
  --
  "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
28. Re:Excellent! by cjb658 · 2011-03-02 05:17 · Score: 1
  
  There was one created by some ex-Google employees a couple years ago, I think it was called Cuil. Going to www.cuil.com times out for me, so I guess it wasn't a success.
  I remember trying it a couple times, but I just haven't been able to find another search engine that is good with error messages and technical keywords.
29. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:18 · Score: 0
  
  Well actually in the past they have done everything in their power from preventing alternative OS's on the PC platform from being sold - this includes Linux, DOS, and OS/2 from what I remember. Also take a look at what they did to Word Perfect back in da day.
  See what I did there?
  There is nothing preventing me from using bing or Yahoo as my search engine of choice. There is, however, very real challenges in getting non Microsoft products installed on a PC, thanks in large part to Microsoft.
30. Re:Excellent! by Missing.Matter · 2011-03-02 05:19 · Score: 2
  
  I find Bing maps to be much better than Google's. At least for my area, bing has higher resolution maps, and the Bird's eye view is a nifty feature: view and location from any angle. I also thing Bing maps has better transitions for zooming. Zoom in real far on Google maps, then zoom out very fast. Your old position will be a small square in a sea of gray, where the new images haven't loaded yet. On Bing maps you get more transitions as you zoom out.
  I'm actually using satellite images for part of my research, and I chose Bing's over Google's for just this reason.
  Also, what exactly is wrong with Bing's results? Generally, I don't think I've found any deficiencies from using it. If anything, I've been finding more link farms at the top of Google results lately.
31. Re:Excellent! by GooberToo · 2011-03-02 05:23 · Score: 2
  
  No, not even a little bit.
  Google has a near monopoly (which btw, is not illegal in of itself) because the best product is maintaining its position and crowding out inferior solutions.
  On the other hand, many superior solutions have been illegally barred from entry because of anti-competitive and illegal practices by Microsoft. Google's situation actually encourages competition and an ever improving product. Microsoft's solution destroys competition and ensures product stagnation and inferior products compared to what the market would otherwise bring.
  In short; Microsoft bad, Google good.
32. Re:Excellent! by BassMan449 · 2011-03-02 05:24 · Score: 2
  
  Google may not be a true monopoly but they are an effective monopoly. However that said there is nothing wrong or illegal about being a monopoly. It is illegal however to abuse that monopoly to stop future competitors.
33. Re:Excellent! by gstoddart · 2011-03-02 05:26 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think acronyms can be defined recursively.
  Well, GNU stands for Gnu's Not UNIX
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
34. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:27 · Score: 0
  
  Reagan would not have had to give them 1.5 billion, in 1980, tax dollars that althout repaid represented a failure of the free market. Likewise Bush would not again have put 13.4 billion of tax payer money into Chrysler and GM, at a time when all such money was deficiet spending and we all were allegedly worried about the debt.
  You forgot to mention what Obama did? Oh wait, he has done nothing to even try to help which I guess was your point
35. Re:Excellent! by Nadaka · 2011-03-02 05:29 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  1: You don't have to be anti-competitive to be a monopoly. You just have to be significantly larger than your nearest rival.
  2: Drastically undercutting your opponents prices in a new market by leveraging profits from a different market to support it can be seen as anti-competitive. Many for profit vendors see google pushing open source products as this.
36. Re:Excellent! by Missing.Matter · 2011-03-02 05:30 · Score: 2
  
  That didn't stop the EU from forcing MS to provide a browser ballot. Despite the fact that IE's market share is falling, Window's market share is falling, you can fully uninstall IE8 from W7, and there are at least 4 other big players in the game who are increasing market share, EU still felt the need to step in.
  It would be funny though, if Google was forced to put a ballot on Google.com, which would redirect you to your search engine of choice.
37. Re:Excellent! by bsDaemon · 2011-03-02 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  Some areas of the US were served by a CLEC, not a Bell. I guess Bell wasn't a monopoly, either, cause I had GTE before they merged with Bell Atlantic and became Verizon...
38. Re:Excellent! by bonch · 2011-03-02 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  Hard-Coded Bias in Google's "Algorithmic" Search Results
39. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:35 · Score: 0
  
  And searches for common things: pop culture, sports, weather. Google still wins for searches related to writing code and interpreting errors.
40. Re:Excellent! by TideX · 2011-03-02 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  wikipedia disagrees http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym
41. Re:Excellent! by Harlex · 2011-03-02 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  The makers of PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor might disagree.
42. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:38 · Score: 0
  
  norobotsexceptgoogles.txt
  My god, they really are evil!!!
43. Re:Excellent! by Missing.Matter · 2011-03-02 05:38 · Score: 2
  
  I guess I was wrong
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym
  Although it doesn't make much sense to me.
44. Re:Excellent! by grub · 2011-03-02 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  It's interesting that Microsoft has 4.37% even after making Bing the default search engine on Windows. That's a HUGE number of people changing the default over to other engines
  
  --
  Trolling is a art,
45. Re:Excellent! by pjbgravely · 2011-03-02 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  I just tried it for the first time. The ads I saw were text based, just like Google.
  
  I tried the image search since Google recently ruined their's. It was even worse as they somehow disabled middle click, open in a new tab.
  
  --
  Star Trek, there maybe hope.
46. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:40 · Score: 0
  
  GNU.
47. Re:Excellent! by thetoadwarrior · 2011-03-02 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  Learn to use your computer then and don't rely on others.
48. Re:Excellent! by Silfax · 2011-03-02 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google
  For some reason I read norobotsexceptgoogles.txt as no robot sex except google
  Must be time for new reading glasses, the problem might be caused by all of that robot sex...
49. Re:Excellent! by Nadaka · 2011-03-02 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  googles just want a monogamous robot relationship. Is that so wrong?
50. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:54 · Score: 0
  
  GNU and LINUX are both recursive acronyms that annoy me with their smugness.
51. Re:Excellent! by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-03-02 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt, and by being the gatekeeper, they now own too much of the internet.
  What?
  You didn't get that?
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
52. Re:Excellent! by Runaway1956 · 2011-03-02 05:59 · Score: 2
  
  MOST CERTAINLY NOT. I am unaware of any rival startup that has been squashed, bullied, or suffered a hostile takeover by Google. Nor am I aware of any that have been taken to court over frivolous charges, with little other purpose than to bleed them of money. You may or may not paint Google as evil. I'm not believing it, but I'll listen. But, when you compare them to Microsoft, you've lost your case, and your audience. BTW - you may or may not have noticed, but Microsoft's most innovative stuff has always been acquired in one manner or another. Google, on the other hand, innovates day in, and day out. Not only do they innovate, they host sites where innovative people can get together and create yet more innovative stuff. Compare that to "embrace, extend, extinguish".
  
  --
  "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
53. Re:Excellent! by davev2.0 · 2011-03-02 06:01 · Score: 0
  
  you have put aside the facts that Microsoft is notorious for erecting large barriers to entry
  Erecting a large barrier to entry has nothing to do with whether a company is a monopoly, only with whether a company is anti-competitive and even then it is not definitive. Whether or not a company is a monopoly is based solely on market share.
  
  And, you failed to see what he did there. Specifically, he did "s/Google/Microsft/g" for the GPP.
54. Re:Excellent! by NevarMore · 2011-03-02 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Been a while since I used IE, but I think on first run there is a nag screen that lets you pick and its order is randomized.
55. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:01 · Score: 0
  
  What about GNU, PHP, and Wine?
  (Gnu's Not Unix, PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, Wine Is Not an Emulator)
56. Re:Excellent! by geekoid · 2011-03-02 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  no, there are a monopoly, there just not wielding their monopoly in a way that sets up barriers.
  
  --
  The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
57. Re:Excellent! by Desler · 2011-03-02 06:08 · Score: 1
  
  Also take a look at what they did to Word Perfect back in da day.
  Which was what? Put out Word for Windows when at the same time WordPerfect refused to do so and by the time WordPerfect for Windows came out, which at version 5.1 was unstable and was a pain in the ass to install, no one cared about it anymore because they had long since moved on to Word? How evil of them to provide a product that people wanted!!! They clearly should have done the stupid thing like WordPerfect and be years behind the game.
58. Re:Excellent! by Nemyst · 2011-03-02 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  Considering they've let Verizon lock some of their Android phones to exclusively use Bing as their default search engine, with no way of removing said app without tinkering and/or rooting, I'd say they've been staying far from anything that could put them in trouble in that regard.
59. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:16 · Score: 0
  
  What a pile of bullcrap. Microsoft didn't force anyone to use Microsoft. It provided discounts to OEMs which chose Microsoft for all systems, but what the hell is wrong with that? If alternatives to Windows were so good, then geeks such as yourself would have had no problem succeeding in the market with an OEM which just offered CDE on the desktop... no wait, Linux on the desktop... no wait, Amiga on the desktop... no wait, Mac... scratch that, they won't even licence out their OS... hey, turns out that, from 1981 to 1990, IBM carried MS, and from 1992 onwards (Windows 3.1), MS was just the best choice on software availability and price. Apple's doing a little better, but OS X is simply not a worthwhile option.
  20 years later, MS is still by far the best option on the desktop. In fact, since the late '90s, almost all the competition left the race, and no-one new has appeared.
60. Re:Excellent! by drinkypoo · 2011-03-02 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  They default to Windows Live Search or Bing or something but then ask you if you want to be offered other options.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
61. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:21 · Score: 0
  
  Bing bIng biNg binG
  Wow!
62. Re:Excellent! by AvitarX · 2011-03-02 06:24 · Score: 1
  
  I think i had a box to pick from the last time is installed chrome.
  Considering thats where i do most of my searches, that would be much more relevant. it's also similar to what MS has to do.
  
  --
  Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
63. Re:Excellent! by GameboyRMH · 2011-03-02 06:24 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't know you could uninstall IE8 on Win7, sounds great!
  Anyways, I found the instructions. It's in the form of a video. That requires Silverlight.
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700#stepsforwin7
  But here I found the instructions in text form:
  http://windows7center.com/tutorials/how-to-uninstall-internet-explorer-8-in-windows-7-kinda/
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
64. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:27 · Score: 0
  
  Another GNU denier.
65. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:31 · Score: 0
  
  Bing works very well, is an attractive interface, and returns relevant results.
  Recently I found that a particular site didn't come up at all using Google but it was the top result on Bing.
  It's ridiculous to say Bing sucks.
66. Re:Excellent! by GameboyRMH · 2011-03-02 06:37 · Score: 1
  
  I remember trying Cuil as well.
  I was just trying DuckDuckGo with some technical stuff, it works pretty well but not quite at Google's level.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
67. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:39 · Score: 0
  
  Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt
  I wish someone would take Microsoft's monopoly away. As for Google, there's nothing stopping anyone else from being better than they are. Google isn't stopping anyone from using anything else or locking anyone in to their search. You can even change the search engine used in Chrome.
68. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:45 · Score: 0
  
  Don't tell that to GNU
69. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:46 · Score: 0
  
  It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt...
  It would would indeed be atrocious if Google banned such an important part of the society.
70. Re:Excellent! by LanMan04 · 2011-03-02 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google.
  I happen to be a huge proponent of robot sex! How dare they!
  
  --
  With the first link, the chain is forged.
71. Re:Excellent! by Seumas · 2011-03-02 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  What made Google so great is that they were the little guy doing something incredibly impressive and useful. It's compelling to see a really well done product coming out from a couple of college kids and overthrowing the standard. It's not quite the same when one the most dominant tech giant on the planet spits out a search engine after about twenty five or thirty years.
  It won't be Bing that rises up and gives them solid competition and compels people to switch over. It will be a couple of other kids in their garage. Or a couple college kids. When they do, it won't be just essentially copying Google plus throwing a picture on the background of the search page, either. It'll be something revolutionary.
72. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:50 · Score: 0
  
  https://duckduckgo.com/
73. Re:Excellent! by NeutronCowboy · 2011-03-02 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  1: You don't have to be anti-competitive to be a monopoly. You just have to be significantly larger than your nearest rival.
  Wrong. A monopoly exists when one provider has enough market share to control access to the goods or services in questions. Merely owning 100% of a specific market means nothing if customers can instantly switch to someone else if they so desire.
  
  Drastically undercutting your opponents prices in a new market by leveraging profits from a different market to support it can be seen as anti-competitive. Many for profit vendors see google pushing open source products as this.
  Correct. However, when said open source products are pushed by corporations and people who offer nothing else, it is hard to argue that Google is engaging in anti-competitive behavior. In this case, it is more like the other corporations are so far behind the curve that they can't compete with new business models. That's being super-competitive, not anti-competitive (please forgive the buzzword).
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
74. Re:Excellent! by funfail · 2011-03-02 06:59 · Score: 2
  
  What do you expect me to do? Write a spider and create an index of the web on *my* computer?
  
  --
  Search RapidShare and MegaUpload!
75. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 07:02 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  you must be GNU around here
  (capture was 'funniest' - just a hint for you mods)
76. Re:Excellent! by balbus000 · 2011-03-02 07:06 · Score: 1
  
  It seems they changed that motto to Bing Is Nearly Google.
77. Re:Excellent! by Chris+Burke · 2011-03-02 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  Linux isn't an acronym. It's just "Linus" made UNIX-y.
  
  --
  
  The enemies of Democracy are
78. Re:Excellent! by gewalker · 2011-03-02 07:17 · Score: 1
  
  Just for the sake of argument, assume Bing was exactly equivalent to Google in terms of search quality. How many people would switch to using Bing -- very few. People did not switch in droves from Detroit to Japanese autos until Detroit autos sucked in comparison for years.
  Most Bing users are likely not using Bing because Bing is better (I sure don't think it is), but because it is the default browser and they are too clueless, indifferent to lazy to switch to Google (or IT has made the decision for them).
79. Re:Excellent! by NeutronCowboy · 2011-03-02 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, wow. Someone figured that when searching for a string of letters, displaying stock information when that string matches a stock symbol indicates hard coding of said result. Color me shocked. And there I thought that the semantic information available in the Internet about CSCO would always lead to a stock ticker. Not only that, it would lead to the daily stock ticker. The same for all the other specific information that is displayed from search results.
  Note that Google has the good sense of prominently and directly linking to a host of other financial services when displaying the Google Finance link.
  Now if you had some evidence that Google is hardcoding anything in its actual search results, we'd have something. In the meantime, this is nothing but someone stating the patently obvious.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
80. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 07:33 · Score: 0
  
  >That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry
  Most of google's game the past decade has been about building an as large barrier to entrance as possible, to make sure what they did to altavista wouldn't happen to them. If you're thinking about buying google stock, this is what you'll find in the company info that is provided by google. Reminds me of Apple fanboys, who always claim Apple products are not overpriced. Skip to Apple's site for shareholders, and Apple says you should buy AAPL because their profit-margins are better than the competition. Please stick your head out of Google's ass. Thank you.
81. Re:Excellent! by Av8rjoker · 2011-03-02 07:40 · Score: 1
  
  norobotsexceptgoogles.txt
  I really hope I'm not the only one that read "no robot sex 'cept google's".
82. Re:Excellent! by BlackSnake112 · 2011-03-02 07:41 · Score: 1
  
  What do you expect me to do? Write a spider and create an index of the web on *my* computer?
  Yes. Well you could have a secondary computer index the web for you. Then just search *that* computer. At least you should have fast search results.
  Then you could allow other people to use your search engine.
  Then you allow (and charge) companies to place their ads on your search engine.
  Then profit!
  Wait? So the ... step is allow people to place ads on your search engine?
83. Re:Excellent! by cs96and · 2011-03-02 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  Now if only it didn't suck.
  I wish someone - even Microsoft - would come up with a decent alternative to Google. Being a monopoly is making them more and more corrupt, and by being the gatekeeper, they now own too much of the internet.
  Try duckduckgo.com. It's pretty good
84. Re:Excellent! by EdIII · 2011-03-02 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  Now if only it didn't suck.
  How can it? It's Google skinned by Microsoft :P
  I read the article as Google having ~95% of the market.
85. Re:Excellent! by hjf · 2011-03-02 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  LOL, dude, don't worry. This is slashdot, we are anti microsoft, pro linux, and pro apple. Nerds don't have a sense of sarcasm.
  I've got karma to burn anyway.
86. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:06 · Score: 0
  
  Don't you get it? Bonch's same claims were debunked in /. troll stories months ago, but he simply ignores counter-claims and reposts them in the next story.
  At this point I'm half-convinced he works for Microsoft, because 99% of his posts are about Google, and they're always negative.
  His FUD against Native Client was hilarious to read though, I admit.
87. Re:Excellent! by ynp7 · 2011-03-02 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  Google.com already has something similar.
88. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:17 · Score: 0
  
  Half the stuff I'm searching for has literally 0 results in Bing.
  Bing's forum crawling also sucks: it doesn't index most of the sites I've searched.
  Anytime I'm searching for something programming related it usually fails.
89. Re:Excellent! by Sir_Sri · 2011-03-02 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  Not quite. They're big because they're big, and even when other search engines produce good results (including Bing), they don't get hits. Google has established a brand (not entirely undeserved) that they produce the best results, with the cleanest interface.
  Take a simple example. Now when I do this I'm from home in canada. A search for "tech news" on google.com (which forcibly redirects me to google.ca, and yes there's ways around that but I'm specifically letting it do that for me), and "tech news" on Bing.
  Bing has a picture and a blurb from news. Then it has two links, in the same order as google. Then things go completely different. Google has engadget, wired and /. in that order. Bing has Technews.org (Which shows up lower in the google result), yahoo technews, again, in the google result but lower ranked. The globe and Mail (a canadian paper based in Toronto, I'm searching from London ontario which is about 2.5 hours west of there), some cycling and bike tech news, waterloo tech news, which from a location perspective makes sense.
  So right off the bat it looks like google provides roughly the same search results everywhere (US/canada). I'm not sure that's good, but bing, even without asking, and without it telling me, is trying to give more local information, and if I want tech news, I would think Wired, /. and Engadget are all good results, which don't even make the front page of Bing. Very different algorithms clearly, and very different style of results. That radical difference is probably confusing to consumers, while they are both search, they are trying to solve two different problems, in different ways.
  Now lets try something more fun. I'm a game developer and I'm writing a 5 sentence blurb on dependency trees for something, so lets see. Bing vs. Google dependency trees go. Wow. Completely different. Not even kind of similar results. Bing is a bunch of software on dependency trees, google is a bunch of scholarly articles on the topic. Unlike the previous search, where I'd give the edge to google for better providing generic tech news and not risking bings Bicycle shop or newspapers (which might have an ideological bias users really don't like), on this one it's not clear, at all, if one is better. They're both pretty on topic, but in very different ways.
  So what am I getting at? Google isn't at the top because it necessarily produces the best results, because clearly the results have very different styles to them, but they aren't being anti-competitive either. I think consumers will trend towards centralization and unless googles algorithm gets crushed somehow they seem to have a pretty firm hold on the market. Wal Mart may not be the best retailer, or even the cheapest, but they do a good job keeping that market. And the Bing guys haven't done a good job communicating what they do differently.
  MS is used to competing with itself (XP vs 98, 7 vs Vista, Vista vs XP etc.), where you can say how your product is clearly better than your old product. What did you add, what did you fix? But they don't seem to know how to compete in marketting with anyone else anymore.
90. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:27 · Score: 0
  
  It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt
  no robot sex 'cept googles . txt? You are a sick man sir.
91. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:36 · Score: 0
  
  Bing is seriously kicking google's ass for users looking for porn videos.
  Google sucks for porn. Porn companies know the SEO game.
92. Re:Excellent! by zombiechan · 2011-03-02 08:41 · Score: 1
  
  Google still wins for searches related to writing code and interpreting errors.
  
  Actually, I found that Bing does very well with this.
93. Re:Excellent! by bberens · 2011-03-02 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  I haven't really found much of a difference in quality between Bing's or Google's maps themselves but (IMHO) Bing's APIs are far superior to Google's. My company migrated last year from a proprietary mapping system to Bing because of this. Not that it matters, but we're not a MSFT shop, we're a *nix/java shop.
  
  --
  Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
94. Re:Excellent! by dwillden · 2011-03-02 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  Not only is it the default, but whenever a update or significant patch is pushed out at work (the only place I use IE and then only because I have no choice), the default search engine used by the search bar gets magically switched back to Bing, resulting in at least a couple searches a month in bing. That alone may account for a small but still significant portion of the 4.37% of searches Bing is getting.
  
  --
  I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
95. Re:Excellent! by bberens · 2011-03-02 08:46 · Score: 1
  
  Were you looking for something on JCPenny? :D
  
  --
  Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
96. Re:Excellent! by Jessified · 2011-03-02 08:48 · Score: 1
  
  Doesn't a monopoly require a significant barrier to entry? What's stopping everyone from migrating to Bing other than that they don't want to?
97. Re:Excellent! by bberens · 2011-03-02 08:48 · Score: 1
  
  You may appreciate Metacrawler. They aren't so much a search engine as they are a search engine aggregator. They query quite a few search engines for your query and provide some mix of all the results.
  
  --
  Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
98. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:51 · Score: 0
  
  Which Google hasn't done (yet), and Microsoft did, got convicted of it, and got out of punishment by contributing lots of money to George Bush's political campaigns through Bill Gates.
99. Re:Excellent! by dwillden · 2011-03-02 09:03 · Score: 1
  
  From Dictionary.com
  
  Monopoly:
  1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. Compare duopoly, oligopoly.
  2. an exclusive privilege to carry on a business, traffic, or service, granted by a government.
  3. the exclusive possession or control of something.
  4. something that is the subject of such control, as a commodity or service.
  5. a company or group that has such control.
  6. the market condition that exists when there is only one seller.
  (emphasis added by me)
  
  Not a monopoly at all, just a majority share due to earned popularity. Popularity earned by performance far in excess of the competition. If I decide I'm tired of Google, I can at no cost and with no limitations switch to yahoo, or Bing or one of the other engines out there. There is no cost to the customer, there are no restrictions in choosing to use other options that are equally free. There is no exclusive privilege granted to Google by any government entity, they don't control the search engine market, They just dominate due to excellent service, yet options are freely available. By definition, Google does not hold a monopoly.
  
  Guess we need to start doing a few Yahoo or Altavista searches each month to help them push Bing back into it's place.
  
  --
  I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
100. Re:Excellent! by 91degrees · 2011-03-02 09:16 · Score: 1
  
  It "sucks"? How so? Personally, I don't see the results to be substantially different from those from Google, the interface is similar so is the speed, and the feature set.
101. Re:Excellent! by amolapacificapaloma · 2011-03-02 09:34 · Score: 0
  1. But being a monopoly is not illegal, while anti-competitive practices sometimes are.
  2. A company pushing open source is not only undercutting its rivals, it is also working for them for free. They can embrace open source too... ;)
  Google is kind of scary, but it's difficult to deny that they seem to be trying to "not be evil".
  --
  exp(i*pi)+1=0
102. Re:Excellent! by whereiswaldo · 2011-03-02 09:40 · Score: 1
  
  I wonder what sort of legal troubles a individual could get themselves into while crawling the web. You'd hit pirate sites, illegal sex sites, all sorts of stuff...
103. Re:Excellent! by whereiswaldo · 2011-03-02 09:42 · Score: 1
  
  Not necessarily. Look at sites like scroogle and ixquick.com which add a privacy layer.
104. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 09:59 · Score: 0
  
  I would assume otherwise, after reading Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results.
  Perhaps Bing Imitates Nifty Google???
105. Re:Excellent! by BranMan · 2011-03-02 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft use a recursive acronym? They'd die of apoplexy first!
106. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 10:47 · Score: 0
  
  1. no, but if you have a rival you are by definition (or, rather, etymology) not a monopoly.
  2. no, it can't. competing on price is *competitive*, not anti-.
  Buy a f*ing dictionary.
107. Re:Excellent! by Raenex · 2011-03-02 11:24 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Even when Microsoft was at the top of it's position in the 90s, it didn't have exclusive control. You could always get a Mac or use Linux.
  
  If I decide I'm tired of Google, I can at no cost and with no limitations switch to yahoo, or Bing or one of the other engines out there. There is no cost to the customer, there are no restrictions in choosing to use other options that are equally free.
  As has been pointed out on Slashdot before, you aren't the customer. You are what is being sold to advertisers. The advertisers are the Google's customers, and from their point of view, if they want to pay for search engine advertisements, Google is the monopoly equivalent of Microsoft.
  I was actually shocked when I read the headline. I knew Google was popular, but the number two position is only at 4%? Wow.
108. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 11:42 · Score: 0
  
  Nice try Ballmer!
109. Re:Excellent! by hjf · 2011-03-02 11:53 · Score: 1
  
  Google is a natural monopoly, looking at the capital costs of gathering all that data. I'm not seeing a cruddy OS, cruddy web browser, or a middle of the road office suite as being natural monopolies, given the evidence that it doesn't take too many people or too much time to do a better job.
  
  I'm seeing a cruddy OS. It's called Android, I have it on my phone, and being linux and all, it runs fucking slow on a 600MHz processor (it takes TEN FUCKING SECONDS to load the SMS, and I don't even have games on it), reboots itself for no reason, 3G stops working, etc.
  I'm also seeing a "cruddy web browser": they try to force whathever THEY like into us, by not supporting, gee, H.264 in Chrome? They say it's not a standard, it's not free, whatever. Fuck them. I live in Argentina, and we use ISDB-T with H.264 as the default codec. It's a standard here. They also bought a codec (VP8) and gave it away for free, just to screw everyone else. I'm not sure, but I think this article would be of interest to you, since you seem to be so kind about linking to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy). Also: they try to shove Chrome down your throat ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Chrome comes with a default search engine: GOOGLE! And people complain about IE9 using Bing as the default, What the fuck is wrong with you guys?
  Third, a middle of the road office suite? Office is way beyond whatever that bullshit "google docs" is trying to force on us. Have you used Word? Have you used that crap Google calls a "text editor", which is really just a mid-90s HTML editor, with some collaborative shit added on top? Really? I can't even use my own fonts, or adjust margins lines so it won't print 1 page for just half a line of text. BTW, whenever someone attachs a .doc file, Gmail wants me to open it with Docs. Gee, isn't that a monopoly? Microsoft was sued by having IE as the default browser, Google isn't being sued by 'suggesting' you use their product. I don't even see how to make it open files through Office Live, which is microsoft's answer to Google Docs, should Microsoft sue them for using their position blah blah blah...
  I know this is slashdot, full of anti-microsoft google-cocksuckers or apple-fanboi-fags but dude, seriously, just LOOK at what google is doing. Your argument is "google is good because microsoft is bad". What are you, 15? Or do you work for google? Really. And let's not even get started on privacy. Try to sign up for a Gmail acount. Guess what? Google wants your phone number! What the fuck is that? Hotmail doesn't ask me for a phone number to have just an email account.
  Disclaimer: I don't use Office at home. I have a student license of Windows. In college I worked mostly on Google Docs, and my mail is hosted in Google Apps. I run Solaris, Linux or Windows - whichever is the best for the job. I run Windows because I'm a hobbyist photographer, and I'm used to Adobe Lightroom.
110. Re:Excellent! by Anthony+Mouse · 2011-03-02 12:14 · Score: 0
  
  Drastically undercutting your opponents prices in a new market by leveraging profits from a different market to support it can be seen as anti-competitive. Many for profit vendors see google pushing open source products as this.
  Except that that doesn't make any sense. The point of undercutting competitors in a secondary market is that once they go out of business, you can charge monopoly prices in the secondary market. If you support open source software and the competing proprietary software goes out of business, you still can't charge monopoly prices in the secondary market because somebody will just fork your code and distribute it for free.
111. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 12:15 · Score: 0
  
  No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share.
  Yes, it has! Google cried like a baby when MS "borrowed" their search results. Information wants to be free. Right? RIGHT?
112. Re:Excellent! by HermMunster · 2011-03-02 12:15 · Score: 1
  
  One has to rightly point out that Yahoo uses Bing's search engine and Yahoo gets paid by Microsoft.
  Microsoft's market-share comes mostly from those that don't change their search engine because they don't know how or why. Microsoft also gets share with drive-by installs of that bing bar. Both Microsoft and Yahoo participate in a practice that makes it difficult to change your search provider through something called Search Protection (which is a program that's installed). Their purpose isn't to keep the malicious toolbars and search engines from being used, but to keep you from switching to Google. Most people seeing that warning are unsure and don't act on the change because of the warning.
  
  --
  You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
113. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 12:19 · Score: 0
  
  Doesn't a monopoly require a significant barrier to entry? What's stopping everyone from migrating to Bing other than that they don't want to?
  I know this one. It's because Bing sucks, right?
114. Re:Excellent! by marcello_dl · 2011-03-02 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  Your objection has deep implications: google can do it? yes; if you cannot, competition is not possible; if you cannot, corporations are more privileged than lesser enterprises. No democracy tolerates that explicitly... unfortunately they cave in to powerful interests and subject both your startup and google to regulations. Google has lawyers and funds so you either give up, get bought or resort to credit: you have losr control, checkmate.
  
  --
  ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
115. Re:Excellent! by marcello_dl · 2011-03-02 12:34 · Score: 1
  
  > 2: Drastically undercutting your opponents prices in a new market by leveraging profits from a different market to support it can be seen as anti-competitive
  umm but that happens every time VC or banks are involved, money has no memory.
  
  --
  ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
116. Re:Excellent! by marcello_dl · 2011-03-02 12:42 · Score: 1
  
  > Microsoft didn't force anyone to use Microsoft.
  they did, just like many others do, when their documents` format is not published.
  
  --
  ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
117. Re:Excellent! by williamhb · 2011-03-02 12:44 · Score: 1
  
  MOST CERTAINLY NOT. I am unaware of any rival startup that has been squashed, bullied, or suffered a hostile takeover by Google.
  Then you should read the news a bit more.
  Yelp, Foundem, and 1plusV have all made complaints in the last 3 months.
  
  BTW - you may or may not have noticed, but Microsoft's most innovative stuff has always been acquired in one manner or another. Google, on the other hand, innovates day in, and day out.
  Like Google Docs... oops, no that was an acquisition (Writely). Or Android... oops, no, an acquisition again. Or Google Maps ... blast that was another acquisition... hang on, I'm sure I'll think of an example to back up your case soon.
118. Re:Excellent! by gordguide · 2011-03-02 12:46 · Score: 1
  
  By definition, Google isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only search engine in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other search engines aren't as smart as theirs.
  Not sure what "definition" you are using. A monopoly doesn't necessarily have to be the only game in town; what it has to be is the player who calls the shots; an effective monopoly, if you will. Google qualifies, easily.
  Now, with computer tech, to a large extent, the regulatory forces have embraced the idea that it is a fast moving, embryonic, evolving space, and thus not necessarily subject to monopoly restrictions that other, more mature, markets are subject to. They let the oil companies and the telecos run with it for a while, too, you know. Put another way, they are looking the other way, for now.
  This is consistent with history and legal precedent ... for a while, everyone gets to be a monopoly while the market sorts things out ... after all it's not a crime to be the first to figure something out. But you could say that the regulatory patience is limited; that essentially sums up how this whole thing has worked out in the past.
  Fear not, at some point in time the regulators will use the usual tests, and if at this moment in time they did (or in some future moment assuming nothing has changed), Google gets painted with the monopoly brush, and the courts surely must agree, since they fit the model.
119. Re:Excellent! by russotto · 2011-03-02 12:50 · Score: 1
  
  Some areas of the US were served by a CLEC, not a Bell. I guess Bell wasn't a monopoly, either, cause I had GTE before they merged with Bell Atlantic and became Verizon...
  Some areas of the US were served by a company other than Bell, but those companies were still ILECs, not CLECs. For there to be a CLEC, there have to be at least two Local Exchange Carriers serving an area. GTE just had a local monopoly in a few areas not served by Ma Bell.
120. Re:Excellent! by monkyyy · 2011-03-02 13:02 · Score: 0
  
  and open source ur code, and allow a few(note the word few, otherwise this is the worse idea ever) others to upload (then tested in a sandbox) and run their own version of it
  
  --
  warning pointless sig
121. Re:Excellent! by gordguide · 2011-03-02 13:07 · Score: 1
  
  No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share. Being successful simply because you're good at what you do is not a crime. Microsofts agreements with OEMs, other software makers and Intel were used to make it impossible for other OS makers to compete. It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google.
  You've hit the nail on the head. There is nothing wrong with being a monopoly ... they are perfectly legal.
  The statutes don't accuse you of being a monopoly, they accuse you of being an "illegal monopoly" ... one who engages in anti-competitive behaviour. Monopolies who play by the rules are free to carry on; those that don't are subject to restrictions and penalties which can include forced divesture.
122. Re:Excellent! by Spy+Handler · 2011-03-02 13:28 · Score: 1
  
  Youtube!
123. Re:Excellent! by strabo · 2011-03-02 13:45 · Score: 1
  
  That's because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's not just because the other operating systems aren't as smart as theirs.
  FTFY.
124. Re:Excellent! by williamhb · 2011-03-02 14:09 · Score: 1
  
  Youtube!
  ...was also an acquisition!
125. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-02 14:18 · Score: 1
  
  I dont understand.
  So you claim that there is some of the internet which is inaccessible via google, inferring that there may be sites google doesn't want you to see, so it blocks them.
  Well how did you find out about these sites in the first place? and once you know about them, couldn't you just type the ip or web address in and go right there?
  Or maybe you're just ASSUMING that there are sites that google is stopping you from seeing, which are so important to you (even though you dont know what they are), and so creating a conspiracy theory against google is clearly the obvious choice, instead of realizing that google might be the biggest search engine but you dont have to use it...and people dont have to submit their sites to google, but they do so by choice.
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
126. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-02 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  1: You don't have to be anti-competitive to be a monopoly. You just have to be significantly larger than your nearest rival.
  2: Drastically undercutting your opponents prices in a new market by leveraging profits from a different market to support it can be seen as anti-competitive. Many for profit vendors see google pushing open source products as this.
  ?? but their competitors can use the same open source products without fees...and some do.
  Nothing wrong with undercutting your opponents prices either, so long as you are not selling below cost (or at a loss). undercutting your opponents prices is called "competition" - I dont see how "competition" can be anti-competitive...
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
127. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-02 14:28 · Score: 1
  
  I dont understand what the solution is.
  Advertisers will go to where the biggest return is. and if 90% of the public is searching on google, it makes sense to advertise there. Google isn't making people advertise with them. No one is forced to do business with Google.
  Google are in this position because no one else has managed to draw a crowd yet. if all the web surfers went elsewhere then the advertisers would switch too.
  where is the lock-in with google?
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
128. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-02 14:30 · Score: 1
  
  you must be new here.
  and by "here", I mean the internet...
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
129. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-02 14:32 · Score: 1
  
  haha i love it!
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
130. Re:Excellent! by smash · 2011-03-02 15:05 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, bing has a few neat features. Yes, on the surface its a google clone, but their image search is far superior (live previews, scrolling list) and they also have visual search (search bing for visual search). I'm making a point to try and use alternatives lately as I don't like google's monopoly. I've been relying soley on bing at work for the past few weeks (to get acquainted with it for a proper evaluation) and can't say i've had any major issues.
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
131. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 15:39 · Score: 0
  
  microsoft's bitch...aren't you?
132. Re:Excellent! by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-03-02 16:05 · Score: 1
  
  There's a dialog on first start of IE (8 or higher, I believe) which will ask if you want to go with "recommended settings" (Bing etc) or "customize your search". The latter will let you choose. You can also close the dialog and continue without choosing, in which case the default is indeed Bing, but next time you run IE the dialog will pop up again.
133. Re:Excellent! by RockDoctor · 2011-03-02 16:15 · Score: 1
  
  Now if only it didn't suck.
  I'll take your word for it, since you've obviously used it so extensively. Personally, I've never used it, so I wouldn't know.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
134. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 16:49 · Score: 0
  
  Would you consider threatening to delist Yelp unless they allowed full use of their user's reviews in Google Place Pages an anticompetitive practice?
  http://searchengineland.com/yelp-google-told-us-its-our-way-or-the-highway-66417
135. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 17:18 · Score: 0
  
  MS has put Office online, since quite awhile now, and its actually pretty decent.
136. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 18:07 · Score: 0
  
  Actually Google sucks. I've used Bing for the last 3 months. No more nextag links. That's right google, everything I type is not available to be purchased. Overall a lot less scripted webpages, you know the ones that a generated based on search criteria. Quite frankly I am sick and tired of webpages using googleapis. It's not that good. I find it funny that everyone is so trusting of their scripts that they embed them everywhere without knowing what the do, without realizing that that can compromise your webserver. Google will be broken up just like the telephone industry.
137. Re:Excellent! by 1s44c · 2011-03-02 19:31 · Score: 1
  
  Google must hide some sites in order to comply with the laws of the countries it operates in. This process isn't vetted publicly but by some closed policy making committee. As we saw the Australian internet blocklist made it illegal to access the website of a dentist among other harmless things.
  It is highly likely the US government has a secret blocklist.
138. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 20:51 · Score: 0
  
  I'm more worried about the Comcast* Monopoly at my home, then any imaginary google monopoly. I don't have to go to google.com but I do have to go through Comcast to see Sci-Fi Channel, History Channel, or HBO.
  What about DirecTV? Dish Network?
  For cable where I live, there is a monopoly with Time Warner, but satellite is not out of the question if you want broadcast TV. Hell, while cable can go out any random time on even the nicest, calmest and brightest of summer days, it takes some wicked storms and cloud cover for the satellite signal to even start breaking. Cable service, at least here, just sucks; at least when satellite goes out, there is a real reason.
  The only problem: I am forced to go through Time Warner for Internet service. Why? I tried AT&T DSL and was extremely disappointed by the service in general (its download speeds were all over the place), and the only other "alternative" is dial-up. Fuck that shit! I guess you could also consider a phone with Internet access an alternative... if you like fucking around with retardedly-small keyboards, annoying touch screens, ridiculously small and low-res screens, and paying for a "service" that is tied to a single device, and none of that bothers you, then I guess you could browse the Internet on your cell phone--but that option is certainly not for me. [Between cable providers and cell phone companies, I honestly don't know which is worse at gouging their customers... but I would bet cell phone providers. Cable's tendency to raise their rates steeply every year is pretty bad though.]
  So until something different, non-cable comes along with good speed, overall service and monthly rates, cable is the only decent choice here for Internet.
  I don't even watch TV, and I would have no intention of subscribing to it myself, but if I had to... I would *ALWAYS* choose satellite over cable.
139. Re:Excellent! by Raenex · 2011-03-02 21:35 · Score: 1
  
  I dont understand what the solution is.
  I think you mean problem.
  
  Advertisers will go to where the biggest return is. and if 90% of the public is searching on google, it makes sense to advertise there. Google isn't making people advertise with them. No one is forced to do business with Google.
  And nobody was forced to use Microsoft. You could always use Linux or a Mac. Some places would even install Linux for you. Telling advertisers that they could just ignore a company with 90% of the market is similar to telling people they could ignore Microsoft. Yeah, you could do it, but it isn't easy and would probably cost you in opportunities.
140. Re:Excellent! by garaged · 2011-03-03 14:32 · Score: 1
  
  you obviously don't use google too much, all you mention is already done at google search portal, and the visual search, well, the first hit at bing doesn't even work
  www.bing.com/visualsearch
  no wonder google keeps the monopoly
  
  --
  I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
141. Re:Excellent! by thetoadwarrior · 2011-03-04 07:55 · Score: 1
  
  You can't complain about seeing the web how others want you to see it and then moan that you can't do it yourself. All search engines will filter something out even if it is simply child pornography. If you want the full freedom of seeing it all then you need to do it yourself. Don't ask me for the best way to go about it because quite frankly I'm happy with Google but if you want it all then sort it out yourself. Hell, query a list of all the registered domains and then go from there. Maybe sell it on as the unfiltered web and make money.
142. Re:Excellent! by poetmatt · 2011-03-06 01:15 · Score: 1
  
  as mentioned, nothing you mention isn't already in google, so how is this a "strength for bing"?
  you need to wake up to reality.
143. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-09 15:20 · Score: 1
  
  No I meant solution.
  See, just being the best or being popular isn't illegal (how could it be?)...but if you are the most popular by a long way, it can automatically lock out your competitors...I think this is what we're seeing here.
  Google will probably also do what it can to maintain the situation, but I cant see anything illegal in just being the most popular. If that does become illegal, then that is why I said I cant see what the solution would be...
  to use your analogy - people ARE forced to use Microsoft. retailers were penalized by microsoft if they shipped anything other than windows etc. Its not because MS is popular, its because they used anti-competitive practices to lock competitors out, and they used the market power to lock others out too.
  Whether Google is doing the same remains to be seen...but on the surface it just looks like people are complaining because everyone uses google...
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
144. Re:Excellent! by Raenex · 2011-03-10 15:33 · Score: 1
  
  Google has used their market powers to thwart competitors. For example, they used their dominance in search to advertise Chrome to IE users. Chrome is tied into Google search. They've also bought up competitors like DoubleClick and content providers like YouTube.
  If the Feds wanted to knock Google down a size they could do a lot by paring them back into their original form and prohibit anti-competitive practices.
145. Re:Excellent! by dudpixel · 2011-03-12 00:09 · Score: 1
  
  hmmm, well, is there any problem advertising their product on their own website? i mean, people choose to go to google, right? MS advertise a lot more products on their websites, and no doubt they advertise MS products on bing.com from time to time too. I doubt this is illegal practice.
  Buying out competitors is legal - and I'm pretty sure such buyouts are required to have government approval before they can go ahead.
  Most companies do this now - even Apple has bought several other companies in areas it wants to move into. Nothing wrong with it, so long as it doesn't lock out competition.
  I certainly dont think DoubleClick had a monopoly at the time of purchase, and youtube didn't either.
  anyway, I dont think any examples you've given point to illegal activity. It seems you just dont like Google being as successful as they are.
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
146. Re:Excellent! by Raenex · 2011-03-12 01:47 · Score: 1
  
  is there any problem advertising their product on their own website? i mean, people choose to go to google, right?
  People chose to buy Microsoft, right? They didn't have to. Yet Microsoft has gotten into trouble in both the United States and Europe by bundling IE for free in with their operating system.
  
  Buying out competitors is legal - and I'm pretty sure such buyouts are required to have government approval before they can go ahead.
  Yes, they do, but it's rare for the government to prevent a buyout, especially during the Bush era.
  
  Nothing wrong with it, so long as it doesn't lock out competition.
  By buying the competition, they have locked out another competitor. One less competitor means less choice, means more market power, and less chance that a company can overtake them. Big fish eating little fish.
  
  I certainly dont think DoubleClick had a monopoly at the time of purchase, and youtube didn't either.
  DoubleClick was probably Google's biggest competitor for selling web advertisements at the time of its purchase. YouTube was and still is the huge player in video sites. Those were just a couple of examples, by the way. They've also bought AdMob for mobile, push their services with Android, started a payment service, bought up Blogger (blogspot), tried to enter an exclusive deal to usurp book copyrights, and etc.
  They are empire building, just like Microsoft was, by using their near-monopoly position in one area to expand into others.
  This is my last reply.
Editing is a lost art by Anarke_Incarnate · 2011-03-02 04:35 · Score: 5, Informative

"Has overtook Bing"
Cringe..... Maybe they should BING the word overtaken.
1. Re:Editing is a lost art by Toad-san · 2011-03-02 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  My initial response as well. [cringe] Overtook? OVERTOOK? What the HELL!
2. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:41 · Score: 0
  
  overtook is the past tense of overtake.
3. Re:Editing is a lost art by SavoWood · 2011-03-02 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  I literally did a facepalm when I saw this. The only reason I was going to post was to make the same observation.
  
  --
  Plant a tree in a developing country.
4. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:43 · Score: 0
  
  'Has overtaken' is the past perfect of 'overtake'.
5. Re:Editing is a lost art by curious.corn · 2011-03-02 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  That's true but it should have been either "has overaken" or "overtook"... "has overtook" is wrong
  
  --
  Mi domando chi Ã il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
6. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:52 · Score: 0
  
  *Present* Perfect. The past perfect would be "had overtaken".
  - An AC working as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in Brazil on his spare time.
7. Re:Editing is a lost art by schmidt349 · 2011-03-02 04:53 · Score: 2
  
  No, "has overtaken" is the _present_ perfect of "overtake." The _past_ perfect (or pluperfect) is "had overtaken."
  Jesus, I had to know these things to get through 2nd grade. Just what are they teaching in schools nowadays?
8. Re:Editing is a lost art by xaxa · 2011-03-02 04:57 · Score: 2
  
  "Bing has overtook Yahoo"
  
  overtook is the past tense of overtake.
  Overtook is the past simple tense: "Bing overtook Yahoo".
  Overtaken is the past participle, and is needed here: "Bing has overtaken Yahoo".
9. Re:Editing is a lost art by slim · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yes, I think it's well wrote as well.
10. Re:Editing is a lost art by stewbacca · 2011-03-02 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  2nd grade? I call bs. College freshman don't get that stuff right.I only know those English rules because I had to learn them while earning my two foreign language degrees.
11. Re:Editing is a lost art by slim · 2011-03-02 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  If you read enough (and that's not much), you don't need to know the fancy grammatical terminology. The bad grammar just sounds wrong.
  That said, I'm having to lighten up and accept that the world at large is going to keep saying "less" instead of "fewer", and the word "gotten" is going to continue to encroach upon British English.
12. Re:Editing is a lost art by idontgno · 2011-03-02 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  I suspect that horrid phrasing was an improvement. I imagine the earliest versions of that phrase were something like "has overtookened".
  Hm. That word is perfectly cromulent.
  
  --
  Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
13. Re:Editing is a lost art by stuntpope · 2011-03-02 05:21 · Score: 2
  
  Submitter should of drug his dictionary out of hiding.
14. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  The summary awkwardly juxtaposes usage of the past participle to describe action that occurred in the more distant past ("has overtaken Yahoo... in January", as corrected), with the past tense for action that has just finished ("increased its lead in February").
  Now are you sorry that you brought this up?
15. Re:Editing is a lost art by Drethon · 2011-03-02 05:28 · Score: 0
  
  See Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/overtook
16. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:29 · Score: 0
  
  And, by the way, since they provided a time frame ("January"), they shouldn't be using the present perfect; the correct tense for an event in a definite moment in the past is the simple past. ("Bing overtook Yahoo"). BTW, TFA has made this correction already.
  - An AC working as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in Brazil on his spare time.
17. Re:Editing is a lost art by snspdaarf · 2011-03-02 05:47 · Score: 0
  
  "Has overtook Bing"
  Cringe..... Maybe they should BING the word overtaken.
  Having used Bing (once), I strongly suspect they did.
  
  --
  Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
18. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:54 · Score: 0
  
  "Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people’s usage and in which they show off their own superior ‘knowledge’ of how language should be. I hate that, and I particularly hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their side. When asked to join in a “let’s persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their ‘five items or less’ sign” I never join in. Yes, I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me.
  [...]
  Pedants will also claim, with what I am sure is eye-popping insincerity and shameless disingenuousness, that their fight is only for ‘clarity’. This is all very well, but there is no doubt what ‘Five items or less’ means, just as only a dolt can’t tell from the context and from the age and education of the speaker, whether ‘disinterested’ is used in the ‘proper’ sense of non-partisan, or in the ‘improper’ sense of uninterested. No, the claim to be defending language for the sake of clarity almost never, ever holds water."
  Stephen Fry
19. Re:Editing is a lost art by sexconker · 2011-03-02 05:56 · Score: 0
  
  College Freshman TODAY don't get that stuff right because they let any idiot into college now.
  And of course, there's the whole war against grammar (and spelling) that started in the 1980s.
  Teachers couldn't teach it because they were inept.
  Parents were offended when their kids failed.
  Kids were frustrated when they didn't understand (or couldn't even speak English to begin with).
  The solution?
  Throw grammar out! It's useless! Language "evolves"! You're culturally insensitive if you cater to kids who speak Spanish and "African-American Vernacular"!
  99% of people under the age of 30 think someone who has a lovely singing voice sings lovely. They sing lovelily, damn it! I don't care if that word makes you feel gay because of the double syllable at the end.
  If something is as serious as death, which of the following is it?
  A) Dead serious
  B) Deadly serious
  C) Deathly serious
  D) Deadlily serious
  E) Deathlily serious
  (The answer is Deathlily. Deathly is not an adverb, despite modern dictionaries claiming to be so. Deathlily is the adverb.)
20. Re:Editing is a lost art by slim · 2011-03-02 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  It's possible to disagree with Stephen Fry, you know.
  In the case of "less" vs "fewer", for me -- presumably because of lots of exposure to 'correct' English -- it jars and makes me feel uncomfortable when I hear it.
  You'd think it odd if I asked for "fewer sugar" in my coffee, or that due to cuts the local council is getting "fewer money". For many of us it jars the same way if someone says the library is getting "less books". However, as I said, it seems to be a lost cause and I'm having to get used to it.
  Quite why Fry would defend people using "infer" when they mean "imply", or vice versa, mystifies me. There are plenty of ways you could do that such that your meaning would *not* be obvious from context, and confusion *could* arise.
  "Disinterested" is an interesting one. Its adoption to mean "uninterested" seems to be robbing us of a useful word -- just as, now that "enormity" just means "bigness", we have no word to mean enormity any more.
  What if I were to say "windmill" instead of "window" throughout a conversation with you, or other spurious substitutions? "Yeah, I was looking out of the windmill yesterday, and I noticed a big stamen on it. So I went to get the windmill creamer from my creaming cupboard, and gave it a good shrub with a cloth; came up gloaming."
  Would you feel it worth pointing out that I was misusing words willy nilly, or would I be justified in saying that only a dolt can't tell from context that I was telling a boring story about cleaning a stain off a window?
21. Re:Editing is a lost art by quickOnTheUptake · 2011-03-02 06:18 · Score: 1
  
  Since I'm among grammarnazis:
  
  Deathly is not an adverb, despite modern dictionaries claiming to be so
  dictionaries claiming to be what? Modern?
  Oh, you meant, "despite modern dictionaries' claiming it to be such."
  : P
  
  --
  Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
  Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
22. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:21 · Score: 0
  
  Thank you - I'm not the only one!! I hear/see the inability to use past or present perfect forms more and more. First I thought it was just a Southern thing, but I hear and read it more and more everyday as in "I had ran it before" or "I have already ate". Horrible.
23. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:51 · Score: 0
  
  Well, they done overtook'em.
  What's your problem and what's that overtaken you talking about?
24. Re:Editing is a lost art by gfreeman · 2011-03-02 07:02 · Score: 1
  
  Now write it out a hundred times, or I'll cut your balls off.
  
  --
  Ceci n'est pas un sig.
25. Re:Editing is a lost art by base_chakra · 2011-03-02 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  The correct form is, of course, Bing done overtook Yahoo.
26. Re:Editing is a lost art by ClickOnThis · 2011-03-02 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Submitter should of drug his dictionary out of hiding.
  Irregardless, has and overtook is both in dictionary. Bing need more internets!
  
  --
  If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
27. Re:Editing is a lost art by CheeseTroll · 2011-03-02 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Or use the passive voice: Yahoo been done overtooken by da Bing.
  
  --
  A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
28. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 12:21 · Score: 0
  
  Or perhaps he should HAVE drug his dictionary out of hiding.
29. Re:Editing is a lost art by Tablizer · 2011-03-02 17:42 · Score: 1
  
  English needs to be refactored. It is unnecessarily complicated and confusing due to history and accidents.
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
30. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 19:03 · Score: 0
  
  I am so tired of seeing "should of" in place of the contraction of should have: "should've". There is no such thing as should OF and could OF.
31. Re:Editing is a lost art by RancidPeanutOil · 2011-03-02 22:28 · Score: 1
  
  Hopefully with this we can literally, for all intensive purposes, put behind this us.
32. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 01:19 · Score: 0
  
  Lost art of editing? Slashdot's editors have never possessed it. Are you new here?
33. Re:Editing is a lost art by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 01:49 · Score: 0
  
  All your bing now belong to us!
How many by choice? by stcdm33 · 2011-03-02 04:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

How many of those are by choice and how many are by devices and/or apps that have Bing forced on them?
1. Re:How many by choice? by netdigger · 2011-03-02 04:44 · Score: 2
  
  I actually really want to know this. A few people have asked me how to remove Bing from their phones. And lets not mention the Windows 7 phones. LOL
2. Re:How many by choice? by Moderator · 2011-03-02 04:45 · Score: 0
  
  And how many Google search results are by devices/apps that Google has forced? Do you even get a choice with Android?
  Seriously, this works both ways. For me, Bing is better. Google had fallen subject to link-spamming the past year, although they are now starting to rectify the problem. I also don't like what Google has done with its interface (both search results and Image search).
  Posting this from Opera 11 running on Fedora with Bing as the default search.
  
  --
  The World is Yours.
3. Re:How many by choice? by Remloc · 2011-03-02 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  Any device or app that forces a search engine, email client, browser, etc. on me is one I will not be using.
4. Re:How many by choice? by Alioth · 2011-03-02 04:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Where I live, all the goverment employees computers are set to use Bing in the IE search box (and this cannot be changed, it is enforced by group policy) because Microsoft gave the government a discount if they made all government employees use Bing on their work machines.
  Of course government employees can type in "google.com" into the address bar and use Google (or whoever else) if they wish, but I would imagine most just enter things into the search bar.
  
  --
  Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
5. Re:How many by choice? by Missing.Matter · 2011-03-02 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  Couldn't the same be said for Google? Isn't Google the default search engine for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera? Doesn't Google toolbar come pre-installed on some machines? Isn't Google the default search engine on every iPhone and Android device?
6. Re:How many by choice? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:32 · Score: 0
  
  How many of those are by choice and how many are by devices and/or apps that have Bing forced on them?
  And how is this different than Google? Google is forced on many more devices/browsers than Bing is.
7. Re:How many by choice? by need4mospd · 2011-03-02 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  And what percentage of searches are people typing google into their default Bing search engine?
8. Re:How many by choice? by bcmm · 2011-03-02 05:54 · Score: 1
  
  I'm surprised there are so few yahoo users - after all, the Yahoo Toolbar is bundled with the Java installer for Windows, and with Yahoo Messenger, and at least in Firefox, it automatically hijacks the search bar, which most users don't know how to configure.
  
  --
  # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
  Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
9. Re:How many by choice? by im_thatoneguy · 2011-03-02 06:01 · Score: 2
  
  You mean like Android or Chrome or...
  The search Business is all about defaults. Google developed an operating system in order to be the default search engine.
10. Re:How many by choice? by symbolset · 2011-03-02 06:06 · Score: 1
  
  It's different when Bing does it. Nobody wants Bing. That makes it bad.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
11. Re:How many by choice? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:06 · Score: 0
  
  I use Bing by choice. Google's UI often breaks when using noscript to block google, googleapis, googlesyndication, etc. Bing always works, no matter what scripting is allowed or not.
  For instance sometimes google will go into 'instant results' mode and not show any results for searches. It's just as easy to redo the search in Bing as it is to figure out what scripting needs to be enabled.
12. Re:How many by choice? by symbolset · 2011-03-02 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  Verizon Bings your Android phone. Lots of companies Bing their user desktops. There are toolbars that Bing up your browser too.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
13. Re:How many by choice? by SiChemist · 2011-03-02 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  You can download the Bing app from the Android market. The Google apps are not given away for free with Android. Phone manufacturers pay for them.
  Every so often, I try Bing out to see if it's worth switching to, but so far I prefer Google.
  
  --
  God is imaginary
14. Re:How many by choice? by GrumblyStuff · 2011-03-02 06:31 · Score: 1
  
  If my mom is any example, they'll search for Google in the search box then search for their site on Google.
15. Re:How many by choice? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:40 · Score: 0
  
  lol indeed netdigger, lol indeed
16. Re:How many by choice? by Tony+Isaac · 2011-03-02 07:28 · Score: 1
  
  Of course government employees can type in "google.com" into the address bar and use Google (or whoever else) if they wish, but I would imagine most just enter things into the search bar.
  You are giving government employees a lot of credit for intelligence, don't you think?
17. Re:How many by choice? by theaceoffire · 2011-03-02 08:41 · Score: 1
  
  I would not be surprised if over 50% of all searches in bing are "Google.com".
  
  --
  I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
18. Re:How many by choice? by randallman · 2011-03-02 08:47 · Score: 2
  
  Microsoft abusing their monopoly yet again, using their desktop OS to force their way into the search (advertising) market. They haven't changed a bit.
19. Re:How many by choice? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 09:35 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, because Google hasn't done the same. Oh, that's right! Every Android handset is defaulted to Google! That alone probably takes up more marketshare than Bing users total.
20. Re:How many by choice? by dwillden · 2011-03-02 09:38 · Score: 1
  
  Are you sure they can't change?
  
  I say this because while every patch and update to IE resets the search box to Bing as default, it only takes seconds to change back. I too work for the Government, and am forced to use IE but I do have access privileges sufficient to change it, once I've discovered an update has switched it back to Bing.
  
  Actually I do believe you in the setting being locked in. Sysadmins are notorious for implementing such strict settings.
  
  Has anyone submitted a request for permission to change the setting? I doubt it is actually due to any contractual agreement, (if it was Google and the other search engines would scream about it in court, as the government shouldn't be seen favoring a single service provider.) but rather they just locked in the default setting because they don't trust the users with anything.
  
  --
  I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
21. Re:How many by choice? by ElMiguel · 2011-03-02 09:42 · Score: 1
  
  Really? Is that in the US? I would have thought Microsoft would be a little bit more careful after the antitrust suit.
22. Re:How many by choice? by mjwx · 2011-03-02 15:03 · Score: 1
  
  You mean like Android or Chrome or...
  The search Business is all about defaults. Google developed an operating system in order to be the default search engine.
  Right,
  
  How many people use Internet Exploiter, now how many people change the home page from $MSN (different for each nation, Australia is ninemsn.com) to Google.com.
  
  With search its all about results. Google provides the best results for most people.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
23. Re:How many by choice? by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-03-02 16:15 · Score: 1
  
  It's kinda funny - Verizon does that stuff on Google's Android, but then manufacturers put Google as the default (and unchangeable) search on their Windows Phone models. My Dell Venue Pro does that (and I like it that way), and I've heard that some others (HTC HD7?) do, too.
And I has by XB-70 · 2011-03-02 04:39 · Score: 2

...and I has been over-took by yous's bad grammar!

--
*** Don't be dull.***
Overtook? by NitroWolf · 2011-03-02 04:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Overtook? Really? Why do we have editors? Why not just vote on the news items that get posted, since the editors apparently are incapable of doing their job. On top of that, the whole first sentence is a complete mess, not to mention the rest of the summary. Did a 5th grader write it?
Maybe the submitter should have plagiarized someone competent in grammar and spelling.
1. Re:Overtook? by towelie-ban · 2011-03-02 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays.
2. Re:Overtook? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:40 · Score: 0
  
  You mean, like the Firehose? Done and done.
3. Re:Overtook? by antdude · 2011-03-02 08:16 · Score: 0
  
  Today isn't Monday. It's Wednesday (well in USA) and other countries.
  
  --
  Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
4. Re:Overtook? by magnamous · 2011-03-02 13:03 · Score: 1
  
  I logged in to write this. Thank you.
Double-surprise by Toe,+The · 2011-03-02 04:42 · Score: 5, Funny

Which is more surprising? That 4.37% can land a #2 spot, or that anyone uses Bing?
Both are rather startling, imho.
1. Re:Double-surprise by CannonballHead · 2011-03-02 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  I actually use travel.bing.com... I like the UI and it seems to get it's prices pretty well. And the historical data is nice to have access to, even if you can only see 3 months ahead.
2. Re:Double-surprise by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:00 · Score: 0
  
  It's not all that surprising. People who can't be arsed to change their default search engine probably can't be arsed to look things up themselves by using it either, or at least are considerably less prone to do so.
3. Re:Double-surprise by Asic+Eng · 2011-03-02 05:05 · Score: 1
  
  "I actually use travel.bing.com..."
  Well I have a young child, so I'd prefer if I could search for children's fares as well. Interface is ok otherwise, but not better or worse than your average flight search site.
4. Re:Double-surprise by Toe,+The · 2011-03-02 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  I think the article is strictly about internet search.
  Otherwise, you could count in Google maps and Gmail and so on... that would get rather messy.
5. Re:Double-surprise by Toe,+The · 2011-03-02 05:16 · Score: 1
  
  P.S. Just looked at Bing Travel, and it seems like a cheap knockoff of Kayak, which is much more robust: http://www.kayak.com/
6. Re:Double-surprise by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Bing Travel and Kayak are both wrappers around the same third party air fare search engine.
  Amusingly, Google is in the process of buying the company that makes that air fare search engine (ITA Software).
Yahoo = Bing by cforciea · 2011-03-02 04:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Since Yahoo is powered by Bing, isn't this a little like saying Bing has "overtook" Bing?
1. Re:Yahoo = Bing by Rogerborg · 2011-03-02 04:51 · Score: 2
  
  Damn, just ran out of +1 Insightful, Article Submitter and Editards Are A Bunch of Marketdroid Cretins Who Don't Know The Difference Between An Engine And A Brand ratings points.
  I make that 4.37% + 3.93% = 8.3% for Bing, the "search engine".
  
  --
  If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
2. Re:Yahoo = Bing by rolfwind · 2011-03-02 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  Since Yahoo is powered by Bing, isn't this a little like saying Bing has "overtook" Bing?
  In one sense, yes. But in another, no. Yahoo was once powered by Google. Since Yahoo can just switch out what they use relatively seamlessly from the perspective of the average user, it's implicitly understood that the numbers are just comparing what the internet population uses as a portal/url for search.
3. Re:Yahoo = Bing by owlstead · 2011-03-02 04:59 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Yeah, so now we know the number of people too lazy to change their default search engine :)
4. Re:Yahoo = Bing by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:09 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not sure, maybe you should ask Jeeves.
5. Re:Yahoo = Bing by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 0
  
  sup dawg, we heard you like to bing, so we put a bing in your bing, so can bing while you bing!
6. Re:Yahoo = Bing by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:57 · Score: 0
  
  Yahoo gives different results to Bing, so are they really the same thing?
7. Re:Yahoo = Bing by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:59 · Score: 0
  
  You should change people with IE users. Google comes as default in other browsers.
8. Re:Yahoo = Bing by c++0xFF · 2011-03-03 06:46 · Score: 1
  
  The real question is "Where do people go for searches" not "What back end is handling the searches." Most people don't care if Yahoo is powered by Bing, just that they find what they want when they go to www.yahoo.com.
  Of course, now you'll probably see Yahoo plastering their page with "Powered by Bing!" to take advantage of public perception.
wow by markass530 · 2011-03-02 04:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Considering it's the default search engine on I.E. and we all know how loathe people are to change defaults (IE6 market share anyone) this is a pretty sad number.
1. Re:wow by Kjella · 2011-03-02 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  They haven't figured that out... they've just figured out how to go to google first...
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
2. Re:wow by wile_e8 · 2011-03-02 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  Speaking of how loathe people are to change defaults, how many people actually use the search bar instead of straight up visiting Google?
  I ask this as someone that has seen his wife bring up Google in the Firefox browser window to do a search when the Google search bar is right! frickin! there!
3. Re:wow by Duncan+J+Murray · 2011-03-02 05:25 · Score: 1
  
  Yes - this is the case in the large organisation I work for - we share terminals briefly for looking up data, and sometimes search the web. It isn't time-worthwhile to go through changing the default search engine to google, although I still do it every now and then.
  I have seen people 'bing' for 'google'
  D
4. Re:wow by vlm · 2011-03-02 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  I ask this as someone that has seen his wife bring up Google in the Firefox browser window to do a search when the Google search bar is right! frickin! there!
  She probably used web browsers for awhile before search bars were "invented". I certainly did.
  Its much more of a pain to delete your history in the search bar than just "X" a tab. Some things I search for are best forgotten, as best as possible, I guess.
  It also annoys me that once I'm "done" with searching something, the search bar does not blank and I've gotta keep looking at something I'm done with. Poor UI. Its like not being allowed to kill a browser tab or not being allowed to delete an email. Boy that would be annoying. "well just don't look at it" "well just don't click it". No, I want it to go AWAY. Bye Bye. Blank.
  Also windows users are used to having their toolbars hijacked by malware and psuedo-malware and otherwise F-ed with constantly, your media player changes your default search engine to bing, windows update change your default when upgrading MSIE, at least historically. If you share a PC or a browser, even temporarily, who knows how they've (mis)configured it, so you have to manually go to your favorite engine. One thing for sure, if you are stuck with windows and you want to go to google you probably can't use the google search bar. So they simply don't depend upon nor use them, they're just unusable visual noise.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
5. Re:wow by theskipper · 2011-03-02 06:47 · Score: 1
  
  I get to google.com by typing it into Bing and clicking on the top result. That way I can encourage competition by supporting Bing's search volume, but get the best results by using Google.
  Win-win ;)
Bing = Google by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Since Bing is getting data from Google doesn't that make Google 94.31%?
1. Re:Bing = Google by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:45 · Score: 0
  
  To assume that Bing's results have been sourced from Google through the BingBar...to make such a large scale copies would require a huge number of installations of Bing Bar. No way that could be true.
2. Re:Bing = Google by snookiex · 2011-03-02 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  But Yahoo! uses Bing, so it's actually very close to 100%
  
  --
  Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
Probably due to Verizon / RIM by Soskywalkr · 2011-03-02 04:53 · Score: 2

I'd bet that most of this increase is due the switch by Verizon to force Bing as the default search provider. Every so often, I forget to go to google.com first -- seeing the lack of usable results I'm instantly reminded and switch back to google, but I'm sure that still counts in Bing's favor.... perl @+?*.-&'_:$#/%!"
Baidu by Stargoat · 2011-03-02 04:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

The fact that this article does not mention Baidu makes me very suspicious. Its information is fallacious.

--
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
1. Re:Baidu by danhuby · 2011-03-02 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  Not necessarily. According to their figures, Baidu is pretty insignificant globally - although it's huge in China. Maybe only a relatively small percentage of Chinese people browse the web compared to other countries.
  Have a look at:
  http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-monthly-201002-201102
  http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-CN-monthly-201002-201102
  Dan
2. Re:Baidu by the+linux+geek · 2011-03-02 06:07 · Score: 1
  
  The absence of Yandex, the #1 search engine in Russia, is also strange.
3. Re:Baidu by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 07:21 · Score: 0
  
  The fact that this article does not mention Baidu makes me very suspicious.
  The easy (and entirely harmless) answer: this is about marketshare in the USA. Baidu's big in China, but not necessarily elsewhere.
  Yes, this should have been specified, but there is really no reason to get "very suspicious".
4. Re:Baidu by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 02:50 · Score: 0
  
  I think you mean fellatious... because it sucks.
We're Number Two! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 04:56 · Score: 0

Yay!
Soon we might even have 5% of the market.
1. Re:We're Number Two! by Narnie · 2011-03-02 16:05 · Score: 1
  
  Damn... if only linux for the desktop could have numbers like that.
  
  --
  greed@All_Evils:~#
In other news by Celarent+Darii · 2011-03-02 04:59 · Score: 1

Most people don't change their defaults. They use what is installed.
1. Re:In other news by cjb658 · 2011-03-02 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  Which makes it all the more amazing that Google has a ~90% share.
2. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 07:30 · Score: 0
  
  I don't know about that. I bet lots of manufacturers put Google on as the default for Windows installs.
3. Re:In other news by Celarent+Darii · 2011-03-02 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  Google is so synonymous with search that almost every device uses it as default. Even Firefox uses google as default search page. Safari and Chrome as well.
The Irony by ShavedOrangutan · 2011-03-02 05:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

The company that brought us Windows Search and Sharepoint has started an internet search engine.

No thanks.

--
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
1. Re:The Irony by mapkinase · 2011-03-02 05:27 · Score: 1
  
  I think you got it backwards:
  MSN Search first launched in the third quarter of 1998 and used search results from Inktomi
  Windows Search first popped up in XT (after that) and it is a rather decent search. I am using it all the time at work.
  Microsoft SharePoint 2003 - the first commercial release of SharePoint
  
  --
  I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
2. Re:The Irony by ShavedOrangutan · 2011-03-02 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  The default Window Search in XP just does not work. It can't find anything. Simple text in a .txt file doesn't come up. It's like nobody ever tested it at all before release.
  
  And then there's Sharepoint. Again, I can "search" for a term that I know is somewhere and it won't show up. Since search doesn't work, I have to send raw URLs out to people and they're always something like "https://monkey.spank.org/gtfo/wtf/LAME/sites/Guides%20or%20Documents%20Blah.aspx?RootFolder=%2asdf%2zxcv%2fGTFO%2fSites%20Guides32%1a1%1eSome%20Document&AreaCDIF=&brain=hurts&View=%8dffsdg9erg8erga8as8df8ew8avdsdfklsdlkgjsdlfgahsdf8". I actually find these links in printed documentation, like I'm supposed to type the whole thing in.
  
  Anyways, I'll give Microsoft credit for a lot of things, but search and indexing? No way.
  
  /rant
  
  --
  Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
3. Re:The Irony by Tolkien · 2011-03-02 07:13 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure what this says about me, but I was able to read that link without a problem despite the url encoded hex codes. :/
  
  --
  how is babby formed?
4. Re:The Irony by HappyEngineer · 2011-03-02 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  If MSN Search was first it's too bad they didn't transfer some of that search knowledge to other products. In my experience searching in sharepoint is utterly unreliable when it comes to actually finding things because it often just reports back that it found nothing rather than indicate that it limited the scope of the search because you happened to be on some particular page. I have always needed to navigate out to the root and then search from there to make sure I'm searching everything.
  
  In outlook the search is ridiculous. At home I can search years of email in seconds using Thunderbird. In outlook it takes many minutes to just search the last year worth of email.
  
  Windows search is not decent (although I haven't used Windows 7 yet). Nothing is indexed, so searching millions of files takes forever.
  
  Microsoft is so big that it is impossible for it to transfer any useful knowledge from one part of the company to another.
  
  --
  Cow Cube
Bing is over rated when given 2nd place. by xs650 · 2011-03-02 05:04 · Score: 1

At 4.37%, they should say there is no one in 2nd place and give Bing 3rd place at best.
Bing and WIndows Update by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:08 · Score: 0

How often does Windows Update change the default search engine to Bing?
overtook by nimbius · 2011-03-02 05:09 · Score: 2

and with this sentence, the cries of a thousand editors were silence in one fell swoop.

--
Good people go to bed earlier.
Ads? Whats an ad? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 0

I don't understand how, in March of 2011, people still see ads on the internet. Firefox and Adblock Plus are your friends, people.
Also, I like google, it gives me exactly what I want, in a clear and quick manner. Also, isn't it overtaken, not overtook? /English?
Google Web == MS Desktop by Syncerus · 2011-03-02 05:10 · Score: 2

Why is Windows monoculture bad and Google monoculture good?
Monoculture is monoculture.

--
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
1. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by bsDaemon · 2011-03-02 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  Because this is Monoculture 2.0!!!
2. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by radl33t · 2011-03-02 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  Monoculture is not inherently good or bad. It can be leveraged for good and bad. Corporate monoculture is generally bad because corporations are amoral and hence act unethically and illegally. Microsoft's behavior is infamous. I disagree with many choices made at the Googleplex, but to me it doesn't appear they have yet leveraged their monoculture in anyway that rivals Microsoft.
  
  Windows is an inferior product (especially in the past), which has lent significant ammunition to critics of Microsoft. Is there a competing search product that Google stymies using anti competitive practices?
3. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2011-03-02 05:55 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Because the interface to Google monoculture is just a standard compliant browser. So the cost of switching away from Google, when its demands are onerous, is practically zero. The only way Google can maintain its leadership position is by making sure its customers are happy. Otherwise they will just walk away. The foundation of Microsoft monoculture was interlocking monopolies between the OS and the application stack (mainly MSOffice) and the switching costs were enormous.
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
4. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by Your.Master · 2011-03-02 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  Google doesn't sell searches, it sells ads. You aren't the consumer, you are the product.
  The costs of a Google consumer switching are not negligible. What's different is that the raw materials being sold (people's attention span) is a rivalrous good: the more Google has, the less everybody else has, which inherently perpetuates the monopoly. Contrast to Windows, where the only significantly rivalrous cost to production is employing software developers.
5. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by BZ · 2011-03-02 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  > Because the interface to Google monoculture is just
  > a standard compliant browser.
  For now. Until the fail to push through standardization of NaCl, say, but decide to use it anyway.
6. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 10:07 · Score: 0
  
  Bah. People drone that same line pretty frequently, but it's still garbage. The users are the prime movers of this system; as the poll shows, they can't be replaced - either you've got a crapload of users, or a trickle of users, and there is no in-between. The advertisers, however, are a neverending churn of expendable entities buzzing around whichever search engine has the most users.
  To draw a similar comparison: individual people are the customers of the medical industry, even though their employers and/or governments are paying most of the money. Notice, like in search, the middle layers are fluid and replaceable, but the customers and the service aren't; you and I can change jobs or change insurance companies, but if we don't exist or the doctor doesn't exist, the transaction doesn't happen.
  
  The costs of a Google consumer switching are not negligible. What's different is that the raw materials being sold (people's attention span) is a rivalrous good: the more Google has, the less everybody else has, which inherently perpetuates the monopoly. Contrast to Windows, where the only significantly rivalrous cost to production is employing software developers.
  This is hilariously backwards. The cost to your or I of switching to another theoretical good search engine is negligible. Windows, on the other hand, thrives of lock-in; you can't switch from Windows because you're also stuck using your windows-only programs, and often you can't switch to other-OS programs either because you're stuck on Windows already, and of course Microsoft owns all of it. You're stuck in Windows-Office-Exchange land, your games require DirectX, you can't leave unless you can replace your entire software infrastructure (possibly hardware too), at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars (the combination of whatever the new stuff costs, and the lost money spent on the Windows stuff you're discarding). Add then you can't interact with any other people because THEY are all still stuck in the same windows trap.
  You want to switch from google? It's a couple mouseclicks in your browser. Done. Free. It didn't cost you anything to start using google and it doesn't cost you anything to stop using google.
7. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 11:30 · Score: 0
  
  People can switch away from Google any time they like (if/when there's a decent competitor out there). Switching OSes, on the other hand, is either a lot of work (Linux*) or a lot of money (Mac).
  *or other open OSes and kernels and whatever else you want to call them.
8. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2011-03-02 14:00 · Score: 0
  
  NaCl is designed to let corporations stuck with old IE6 based apps that do not run unless all the bugs in IE6 are present. Badly written code, that will work only on a badly broken browser. NaCl is basically an infrastructure to do virtualization in a browser.
  There is nothing to stop malicious web sites asking users to give them permission to run NaCl based content "for exciting new great web experience". But no user should/would give untrusted servers on the web to dish out raw x86 instructions and execute it. The plan of google is to punch a hole in the walled garden of Microsoft.
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
9. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by BZ · 2011-03-02 14:46 · Score: 1
  
  > NaCl is designed to let corporations stuck with
  > old IE6 based apps
  From http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/ :
  "We believe that Native Client technology will help web developers to create richer and more dynamic browser-based applications."
  http://code.google.com/games/technology-nacl.html explicitly talks about using it for new games, not for IE6 compat.
  If you read the various NaCl marketing Google has been doing, that sends the same message: NaCl is for "cool new stuff".
  Also, there is no indication that they plan to have NaCl in Chrome require any user opt-in. It needs opt-in for now while it's experimental, of course.
  I'd really like to see a reference for your "IE6 compat" claim, if you have one, since it contradicts everything I've read coming out of Google about NaCl.
10. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-03-02 16:23 · Score: 1
  
  Because the interface to Google monoculture is just a standard compliant browser.
  Usually, but not always. E.g. GMail will bug you to install a plugin to enable voice & video chat. Also, they aren't particularly fond of coding to standards, but rather to specific browsers - which is why e.g. Opera is almost always broken by major updates of Google web apps; and they will in fact do browser detection and tell you to go away (or "proceed in unsupported mode").
11. Re:Google Web == MS Desktop by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2011-03-03 00:55 · Score: 1
  
  You seem to know more about the issue than I do. Slashdot does not allow me to unpost anything. I will stop making these claims about NaCl in future. Thanks for correcting my misunderstandings.
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Google alternative: duckduckgo by lrnj · 2011-03-02 05:11 · Score: 3, Informative

I wish someone - even Microsoft - would come up with a decent alternative to Google.
I've switched recently from google to DuckDuckGo. I'd call it a decent alternative with a few advantages over Google, and a few disadvantages.
All in all, I consider it a slight downgrade, but google was starting to creep me out too much.

--
Learn Japanese RPG -- lrnj.com
1. Re:Google alternative: duckduckgo by GameboyRMH · 2011-03-02 06:32 · Score: 1
  
  Cool, seems WAY better than Bing right off the bat.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
2. Re:Google alternative: duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:41 · Score: 0
  
  Except that they censor out entire blocks of sites that they don't approve of. I'd rather have choice than a heavily filtered engine like Duckduckgo.
3. Re:Google alternative: duckduckgo by lrnj · 2011-03-02 08:23 · Score: 1
  
  Have you got them mixed up with Yippy? Yippy was promising until lunatics bought them out and started censoring "offensive" results.
  AFAIK, DDG just tries to recognize and disregard content-free linkfarms (i.e. smarter pagerank).
  
  --
  Learn Japanese RPG -- lrnj.com
4. Re:Google alternative: duckduckgo by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 23:03 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah except for the fact that the creator of DuckDuckGo is also the creator of a social network that relied on harvested email address's and abusive practices to increase their list of address's - his work on Names Database will follow him no matter how many times you plug the site.
  If you're worries about Google practices on privacy then the history of DuckDuckGo should leave you shitting yourself over privacy concerns.
Google is great! by samwong086 · 2011-03-02 05:18 · Score: 1

I love Google than Bing! Hurry up Bing!
The only use of Bing by lunasee · 2011-03-02 05:27 · Score: 1

I bet most people use the Bing Search in IE to type in Google.com, instead of typing it in the address bar.
1. Re:The only use of Bing by AdrianKemp · 2011-03-02 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  Actually I and everyone I know that uses Bing is quite the opposite. I've gone through and changed all of my default searches from Google to Bing (safari, chrome, firefox, etc). I have chrome installed in a vm that's not allowed to contact google in any way shape or form and have blocked every little google tentacle I possibly can.
  I don't need advertising companies watching everything I do under the guise of "free stuff".
2. Re:The only use of Bing by drinkypoo · 2011-03-02 06:23 · Score: 2
  
  I don't need advertising companies watching everything I do under the guise of "free stuff".
  So, which crawler are you using to operate your own search engine, and how many pages are you indexing?
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3. Re:The only use of Bing by AdrianKemp · 2011-03-03 01:17 · Score: 1
  
  I don't need advertising companies watching everything I do. Google doesn't just watch my searches, they watch my traffic from every site with google analytics or google ads on it or anything else. Bing watches my searches, I'm fine with that. When Google stops being creepy I'll be happy to use their search again, until then they don't get any of my information so long as I can help it.
  Frankly I'd almost use Google search anyways and just try to block the information vampire part, but it's so prevalent that it's easiest to just block google completely.
4. Re:The only use of Bing by drinkypoo · 2011-03-03 02:32 · Score: 1
  
  Google is doing you a favor, because their tracking stuff is in the open and relatively trivial to stop. Most of their competitors depend on hiding their bugs. Just wait until Bing starts being creepy...
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
5. Re:The only use of Bing by AdrianKemp · 2011-03-03 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  Oh I'm sure the day will come, probably sooner rather than later... They'll start running checks to see if I'm using genuine windows despite me running osx/linux and such. But when it does, hopefully there will be another option for me to use until it starts being creepy, and so on and so on.
  But the fact that Bing will start doing it eventually doesn't excuse Google doing it.
  For the record, yes I am willing to pay a nominal fee for the use of a really good search engine that isn't creepy; I just don't think any exist.
Shocker by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 05:33 · Score: 0

Wow! I wonder if forcing a Bing app on most Blackberries helped this? Naw.
1. Re:Shocker by symbolset · 2011-03-02 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  They Bing up the Blackberries too? How rude.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
loldot by AC-x · 2011-03-02 05:37 · Score: 1

Can Bing haz overtook Yahoo!?
Bogus! by billstewart · 2011-03-02 05:38 · Score: 1

You don't get to call monopoly-sized-things "bad" if they aren't acting anti-competitively, and the term "monopoly" has a negative connotation.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
1. Re:Bogus! by Nadaka · 2011-03-02 05:45 · Score: 2
  
  No. you are incorrectly believing that monopoly has a negative connotation because you only ever hear about it when preceded by "abuse of".
  Monopolies are not inherently bad. Its just that it puts an entity solely motivated to profit in a position of inequitable power that can be leveraged to further that goal at the expense of everyone else. Abusing that power is negative.
  The only inherent bad quality of a monopoly is in the homogeneous qualities of a monoculture being slow or unable to adapt to rapid change. And that does not necessarily apply to corporate entities in the way it applies to evolving populations.
2. Re:Bogus! by Desler · 2011-03-02 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  and the term "monopoly" has a negative connotation.
  So what? That it has a negative connotation doesn't change the fact that Google is effectively a monopoly.
3. Re:Bogus! by shermo · 2011-03-02 07:14 · Score: 1
  
  No. you are incorrectly believing that monopoly has a negative connotation
  I dunno. That game was pretty evil. It caused of hundreds of arguments in our household.
  
  --
  Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
4. Re:Bogus! by ynp7 · 2011-03-02 08:00 · Score: 2
  
  Perhaps you don't understand what connotation means. "Monopoly" certainly suggests or implies something negative to the vast majority of people. Whether or not that is justified is another matter. Though the answer to that is probably, "when in doubt."
Actually they are by hellfire · 2011-03-02 05:44 · Score: 1

Google has not been taken to court and been declared a monopoly, but by definition they have an overwhelming market share in searching, and are by definition a monopoly. In this case they are a natural monopoly, one that has simply grown up by having all their users consume their product over competitors (and by users I mean people who search their site).
Microsoft became a monopoly in the same way, in that they tied MS DOS and then windows to IBM PC, compatibles, and clones and everyone bought them. However once they became a monopoly, they had to play by a different set of rules. Microsoft chose not to follow those rules and bullied companies into installing software onto PCs that they wanted and excluded other pieces of software, and charged higher rates for those who didn't comply with their demands. That's anti-competitive practices.
I'm not really clear if Google has done something similar, but by the laws of the US, Google is a monopoly, it just needs to make sure that it doesn't use it's dominance in one market to gain dominance in another market, like Microsoft did. It is not illegal to simply be a Monopoly unless congress passes a law saying so. By current US laws, it's illegal to be a monopoly, and then to commit anti-competitive behavior to crush competition using your monopoly power, rather than competing on quality of goods and services.

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"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
1. Re:Actually they are by AvitarX · 2011-03-02 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  I think in the US you need to demonstrate consumer harm from the monopoly.
  In the EU competitor harm is all that needs to be shown.
  Generally, less competitors can be seen as harming consumers.
  
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Pyrrhic Victory by l0ungeb0y · 2011-03-02 05:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

How many tens of millions of dollars in development hours and PR efforts has this cost them? And for what? To say they are a bit better than Yahoo which is quite literally a zombie?
Once again, Microsoft makes much hyperbole about obtaining dominance, rolls out it's big new weapon of terror, fires it's salvo and calls it a victory when it manages to only barely scratch the armor of it's target.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
1. Re:Pyrrhic Victory by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2011-03-02 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  To say they are a bit better than Yahoo which is quite literally a zombie?
  It is even more pathetic than that. Yahoo is actually using Bing as its search engine provider for quite some time. So the migration is not due to any inherent superiority of Bing over Yahoo, noticed by the users. The computers set to use yahoo by default, which happened when the users installed yahoo instant messenger some four or five years ago, are dying. They are being replaced by new ones that use Bing by default. This set of users, about 8% of the total, are clueless about search engines. These chumps would not recognize a search engine if it was served to them on a silver platter with watercress around it and a side of fish curry.
  
  --
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2. Re:Pyrrhic Victory by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:43 · Score: 0
  
  Microsoft [...] calls it a victory when it manages to only barely scratch the armor of it's target.
  I don't recall the TFA stating that Microsoft was claiming this as a victory. But I guess we live in a time when making up facts is second nature.
3. Re:Pyrrhic Victory by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:43 · Score: 0
  
  While that is true, google has experienced the same thing with things like wave.
  The problem they have is Google is doing a really good job. Unless things change pretty drastically (either in the nature of what "search" means online, or google just stops caring about their quality) no one will be able to beat them. Right now, it just isn't possible to do a vastly better job than what Google is doing, and thus you can't beat them. The best you can do is be the same, and its too late for that to work. So either MS finds a backdoor way to win (backroom agreements with government regulators perhaps?) which wouldn't be the first time for them, or they stop trying until they really make some kind of breakthrough in AI. Just a bit better isn't good enough when the 600 lbs gorilla is doing 99% of what people need.
4. Re:Pyrrhic Victory by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 07:09 · Score: 0
  
  See, that's not how it works. They're attempting to eat into Google's main revenue source, just as Google is trying to eat into their Office revenue with Google Docs (which I'm sure they've poured some millions into as well; at Google salaries + perks, 5 engineers = a million/year, while they probably have more working on Google docs). Neither effort has been too successful by conventional standards, but even a fraction of a percentage point taken in billion dollar markets means the rival potentially loses out on millions in revenues.
  IMO, with search being almost all of Google revenue, even with so much investment for such a small market share, Bing is probably hurting Google more than Google is hurting MSFT. However, Google is doing more damage in the mobile space, where a big chunk of MS's future revenues may lie.
"Glad" to see stealing from Google is paying off by Phizzle · 2011-03-02 05:48 · Score: 0

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html . Now if would only rip off other cool things from Google like the Froogle merchant feeds to allow online resellers submit their catalogs for free, they would be even more popular.

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congrats by geekoid · 2011-03-02 06:00 · Score: 1

on being the top loser.

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No robot sex...? (Re:Excellent!) by Cl1mh4224rd · 2011-03-02 06:08 · Score: 2

No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share. Being successful simply because you're good at what you do is not a crime. Microsofts agreements with OEMs, other software makers and Intel were used to make it impossible for other OS makers to compete. It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsex—
My brain instinctively paused right there...

--
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
1. Re:No robot sex...? (Re:Excellent!) by GameboyRMH · 2011-03-02 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  So it wasn't just me then XD
  It took a couple of re-reads for me to not see the robot sex...
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
2. Re:No robot sex...? (Re:Excellent!) by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:18 · Score: 0
  
  I did the same thing, although i'm not proud of it
3. Re:No robot sex...? (Re:Excellent!) by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:29 · Score: 0
  
  It's no-robots-exept, etc.
Browser share .. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:10 · Score: 0

.. and the only reason they have that share is from browsers & other software having a "Search Bing" text box somewhere in the chrome.
I've even used it on a colleagues computer, but that was only to type in 'google'.
1. Re:Browser share .. by Nadaka · 2011-03-02 07:18 · Score: 1
  
  wait... you used bing... to find google? rather than just adding a damn .com and putting it in the address bar?
And still... by J'raxis · 2011-03-02 06:15 · Score: 1

And yet still on all the websites I maintain, I see zero referers from anything but Google. People actually use these other search engines?

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Liberty in your lifetime
A /\ A by symbolset · 2011-03-02 06:17 · Score: 1

The above comment is enthusiastically seconded.

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What about Altavista? by Samedi1971 · 2011-03-02 06:22 · Score: 1

I thought they were making a big comeback after watching a recent episode of Parks and Recreation.
Where are they getting their numbers? by Animats · 2011-03-02 06:26 · Score: 3, Interesting
ComScore reports search engine market share for the US each month. They report, for January 2011:
- Google: 66.6%, down 1% since last month.
- Yahoo: 16.1%, up 0.1%.
- Microsoft: 13.1%, up 1.1%.
- Ask: 3.4%, down 0.1%.
- AOL: 1.7%, down 0.2%.
Yahoo is just reselling Bing now. Yahoo no longer has a search engine. So Bing's total is 29.2%. The US market has been split about like that for the last several years - Google with 2/3 of the market, Microsoft + Yahoo with 1/3, and the rest nowhere.
Outside the US, Google is dominant in most countries other than China (Baidu) and Russia (Yandex).
1. Re:Where are they getting their numbers? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 11:30 · Score: 0
  
  BING is in no way a better product than Google, all Microsoft have is the ability to supply a DEFAULT option for the Windows search engine
  Through the number of *everyday* users who a supplied the out of the box config of Windows, and don't know how to change their default search options in IE are rail roaded into using this product.
  If Microsoft shipped its product with Google as the default search engine, these stats would be vastly different
2. Re:Where are they getting their numbers? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 11:41 · Score: 0
  
  Read this: http://advertising.microsoft.com/comscore-collaboration and ask yourself who's paying for those numbers.
you are a pirate by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:29 · Score: 0

Bing, Ask, Google, AOL,
First thing that I type after I wake up (wake up)
Bing, Ask, Google, AOL,
I type those words before I go to sleep
Log on in it's time to browse yeah
It's so much fun being sat on my ass.
Bing, Ask, Google, AOL,
Funny names I use when I am searching (searching)
Bing, Ask, Google, AOL,
Funny names that can find anything.
Log on in it's time to browse yeah
It's so much fun being sat on my ass.
So we go
Un-zip -- double-click
F11, clasp your hands together
Knock, knock -- turn around
Mom's walked in and you've removed your pants.
Ooohh
One two -- Bing and you,
F11, clasp your hands together
Three four -- Google more,
Watching porn is what it's all about.
no robot sex 'cept googles! by MorbidBBQ · 2011-03-02 06:43 · Score: 2

Where else do I get my robot sex fix?
37.com just doesn't cut it for bender vs fembots.
Kartoo.com no longer exists for action like RepliCarter scissors Terminatrix.
sad abuse of moderation by kervin · 2011-03-02 06:43 · Score: 1

Grandparent post asking how much of Bing's traffic is forced is modded up to the maximum. Parent post which correctly points out that Google does the same thing is modded '0'
Slashdot complains about group think, but I don't know of a single online forum that encourages group think more than Slashdot. ( Fox News maybe? )
I've always been a Firefox user, and Google has always been integrated into the browser as the default search with no confirmation from me. At least Microsoft gives the user a choice the first time IE is run.
When I go to Google, it constantly reminds me to "upgrade" to Chrome.
Google pays anyone who would direct traffic to them very good money. To the point that's how Mozilla and even Opera keep their browsers free. They'll pay for Chrome installs, use to pay for toolbar installs, Android installs etc.
I'm not complaining, nice way for many businesses to increase revenue without burdening users. But it's crazy to even imagine Bing as the biggest practitioner of this.
IE 8 Defaults to Bing by Froggels · 2011-03-02 06:44 · Score: 0

Could the reason for these results be that the default search engine under IE 8 is Bing? When using Windows I have caught myself "accidentally" using Bing simply because that is what was the default for Internet Explorer was set for. There are surely a lot of people out there who just type in search terms in the search bar not knowing or caring what search engine the browser is set to use. That could easily account for %4.37.
I don't buy it... by dnebin · 2011-03-02 06:47 · Score: 1

The reason - my galaxy S. It's an android-based phone, but it has this big 'bing' page and bing is set as the default search engine. I've looked for how to change to google, but it doesn't seem to be that easy...

So if my device is included in their percentage, it's not because I want to be there...
Erroneous Data? by vampire_baozi · 2011-03-02 06:47 · Score: 1

By their own numbers, Baidu has 70% of the Chinese search market. Naver is similar for Korea, and Yandex has 50% of Russia. Given that all three of these nations are wired out the wazoo and have large populations of internet users, I have a hard time believing that their market shares add up to less than 10% of the global search market.
1. Re:Erroneous Data? by BZ · 2011-03-02 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  If you can believe http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm and http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm#asia and http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm#europe then there are 1.967 billion total internet users in the world, of whom .0597 billion are in Russia, 0.42 billion are in China, and 0.0394 billion in South Korea.
  So between the three of them, that's 26.4% of global users. What fraction of global searchers that is will depend on how search frequency varies. That's assuming that we trust the numbers above and "search engine market share" is fraction of number of searches done...
2. Re:Erroneous Data? by BZ · 2011-03-02 08:28 · Score: 1
  
  One other note. China's internet penetration is about 30%. Russia's is 43%. Neither one is really "wired out the wazoo" (for comparison, Iceland is at 97.6%, the US is at 77%, South Korea is at 81%; again if you believe the numbers).
3. Re:Erroneous Data? by wvmarle · 2011-03-02 15:37 · Score: 1
  
  Don't forget that 30% of China (about 400 mln people) is more than 100% of USA (just over 300 mln).
4. Re:Erroneous Data? by BZ · 2011-03-02 16:16 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not forgetting that at all. That would square quite nicely with China at about 25% of total internet users for the moment, in fact.
Microsoft TV Ads.. by chrishillman · 2011-03-02 06:49 · Score: 1

The ads on the TeeVee.. for Bing (or any Microsoft product in general). It is like they specialize in making ads that are more annoying than the products they are selling. The latest Bing Ad I have watched is the "Animal House" food fight in the grocery store.. so Google makes you a meme shouting zombie? And the Windows Phone ads.. other phones are so sexxy you prefer it to your hot wife in lingerie? (Then that would say the Windows phone is so un-sexy that you have no problem putting it down?) Then the "To the cloud" nonsense? Windows 7 is where users are supposed to discover what *everyone else* has been doing for years?

No, the ads on the TV are worse than any Microsoft product EVER.. the are the visual entertainment equivelent of Windows Me or even (dare I say it) Bob..

Horrible.. I can't visit a URL because of bad feelings I have about it from TV watching.
1. Re:Microsoft TV Ads.. by pjbgravely · 2011-03-02 07:17 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, I haven't seen a television commercial in a while. Having a DVR with auto commercial skip is a wonderful thing.
  
  --
  Star Trek, there maybe hope.
2. Re:Microsoft TV Ads.. by Transkaren · 2011-03-02 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  My wife and I have actually been watching more and more ads. They're making them funny and/or more interesting these days.
  
  --
  -If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
3. Re:Microsoft TV Ads.. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 10:33 · Score: 0
  
  Your comment really depressed me. So so sad.
4. Re:Microsoft TV Ads.. by monkyyy · 2011-03-02 13:09 · Score: 0
  
  "auto"
  hmmmm who has that?(beside tpb)
  
  --
  warning pointless sig
MSN stories, often links to Bing by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 06:56 · Score: 0

Not as much now but the homepage at http://uk.msn.com/ used to be mostly links to searches at Bing. Wonder if this raised it's ranking...
Grammar. by Tolkien · 2011-03-02 07:00 · Score: 2

Bing has overtook? What? Try overtaken.

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how is babby formed?
1. Re:Grammar. by hackingbear · 2011-03-02 11:49 · Score: 1
  
  You insensitive cod! These two words make no differences to us!
  Sincerely,
  - Your favorite search engine
2. Re:Grammar. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 01:43 · Score: 0
  
  "Fool of a Took!"
Re:How about yahoo has fallen behind bing by shoor · 2011-03-02 07:31 · Score: 1

Yeah, I noticed the 'overtook' too. But is it really Bing surging ahead or Yahoo falling behind?

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In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Advertisers by massysett · 2011-03-02 08:10 · Score: 1

People often discuss whether Google is a monopoly in regards to its share of the search market. A more interesting question is whether Google has a monopoly in the search advertising market. Yeah, as a search engine user I can easily switch to Bing or Yahoo. As an advertiser, though, if I want to get in front of people who are doing searches before they buy online, I haven't got much choice but to advertise on Google.

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Penny - plain text accounting
norobotsexceptgoogles.txt by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:29 · Score: 0

Am I the only one who read that as NoRobotSexGoggles.txt
Err... Huh? by tmarsh86 · 2011-03-02 08:32 · Score: 1

I just searched for the same area on both Bing and Google Maps and I discovered that Bing is using sat images that are AT LEAST 3 years old, while Google is showing sat images that are around a year old. There's a shopping complex that has been there for just about 3 years and Bing only shows the area having just been cleared for development. So I'm guessing you live in an area with no new development or you just weren't paying attention to the difference in the actual image detail between the two map engines.
1. Re:Err... Huh? by Missing.Matter · 2011-03-02 09:08 · Score: 1
  
  It depends on the area. For example, a brand new building just opened on my campus. Using Bing's bird's eye view and rotating around that spot, I can see before construction, during construction, and post construction. It also depends on the depth. A new shopping center opened down the road. Zoomed out, there's still a field there. Zooming in it suddenly appears. This data is constantly evolving. Regardless, I'm guessing the majority of the area you live in hasn't changed drastically in the last 3 years. I know my area hasn't. The high resolution data is still appreciated.
2. Re:Err... Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 09:24 · Score: 0
  
  Ditto, I just did a similar comparison, and the Bing images for my area are about three or four years old and missing a lot of recent construction, whereas Google's images were taken sometime in June of last year. I can tell because the Google images have my camper trailer that I purchased last May sitting in my yard.
Re: Monopoly by ozbird · 2011-03-02 08:54 · Score: 2

"You have won 2nd prize in a beauty contest - collect 4.37% market share".
Inflated by MSN by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 08:58 · Score: 1

MSN is infamous for linking content in their articles to Bing searches, rather than an actual content page. I think it would be interesting to see how many of those Bing searched originated from a url with search criteria in the string, as opposed to actual searches that users intended to perform. Bing was Microsoft's 10-years-too-late attempt to make their search engine name into a verb, like Google did. Whenever I hear someone say "Just Bing it!" I typically push them into traffic. However, I'm still here writing this today, because no one ever says that.
MS Anti-Trust was a major cause of the Crash by billstewart · 2011-03-02 08:58 · Score: 1
The anti-trust suit against Microsoft was a major cause of the post-2000 crash. The Silicon Valley startup business model included cashing out, either by IPO, or by Selling Out, either to Cisco if you made hardware or Microsoft if you did software and services (e.g. Hotmail's $400M), and once the anti-trust action started, Microsoft wasn't buying anybody, not only because they didn't want to look any bigger or more powerful, but also because Al Gore was threatening to break them into pieces, and it wasn't clear which pieces would have the money to buy anybody. And if you can't cash out by selling out, venture capitalists were less likely to give you $4M to fund your startup, especially when IPOs were slowing down also, and it was a downward spiral.
There were other major factors as well, of course
- The Y2K Rush was over, which had been a lot of short-term business
- Alan Greenspan raised interest rates by 2% in about six steps in early 2000 to cool down the bubbling economy, which is rough on a capital-intensive business. It made it harder for venture capitalists to raise cash, and gave them other places to put it besides Silicon Valley startups. (And draw your own conclusions about how much cooling down a bubbling economy is partisan politics when "It's the Economy, Stupid!".)
- The late-90s Internet Bubble was largely about discovering the value of web-based advertising when the Internet lets you talk to anybody in the world. The answer that it was worth enough to fund free website space by advertising, but not enough to fund delivering dogfood online.
- "Increase market share by losing money delivering dogfood online" as a business model? What were we thinking? :-) Sure, half the startup business ideas were below average, but there was a tendency to mix up coolness and shiny-ness with profitability, and just because the other VCs were funding better ideas didn't mean you should jump on the bandwagon just to be there...
--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yahoo has a search engine? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 09:06 · Score: 0

who knew.
They are not the same by euroq · 2011-03-02 09:12 · Score: 1

Regardless of the controversy about using the Bing toolbar to monitor Google search results, I use Bing separately from Google for hard to find searches. They often give VERY different results. Sometimes I find what I need higher in Bing's results than Google's. Granted, this would be less than 5% of my searches, which seems to fit the statistics.

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Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Splashtop OS by sudden.zero · 2011-03-02 10:03 · Score: 1

This might have something to do with the fact that Splashtop OS (a lightweight os based off of chrome os) is comming preinstalled on new Dell and IBM laptops and by default it uses bing search http://www.splashtop.com/os . It is a boot option on these laptops and can be used to get quick internet related tasks done without having to wait for windows to boot.
Bing: the choice of fine robots everywhere by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 10:14 · Score: 0

Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37% in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94% of the global search engine market
And most of the Bing and Yahoo searches were conducted by TrackMeNot (a Firefox addon that makes random searches to muddy the data that they're all collecting).
Probably a couple hundred searches a day from my LAN alone. (Google gets more, though.)
Bravo by alcmaeon · 2011-03-02 10:16 · Score: 1

Good call. I assumed it was a Google Translator translation error.
BLING is Number 1 !!!! by MmmmYah · 2011-03-02 10:42 · Score: 1

Yo I got me some bling bling ! You can keep your bing homeboy!
Angry Birds by adamofgreyskull · 2011-03-02 12:19 · Score: 1

Another "default search" tale: Angry Birds has the option to hit a button and search Bing for walkthroughs etc. At least it does on my Android version of the game.
Bing + Chrome == excellent browsing experience by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 13:41 · Score: 0

Everytime I install Chrome, I do this just for the excitement of potentially annoying or confusing whoever at google looks at whatever metrics they get from the search engine ballot thingy in Chrome.
Especially when they see how many times, search for something with Bing in URL bar, then repeat same terms on google.com. Or maybe I'm just masochist.
No. 1? by otaku244 · 2011-03-02 13:43 · Score: 1

Bing... Number 1 with people who like crappy search engines

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Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
1. Re:No. 1? by IICV · 2011-03-02 14:52 · Score: 1
  
  More like "Number 1 with people who have no other choice" - Microsoft will occasionally cut a deal with large organizations if they'll force the browser search provider to be Bing.
  So - it would be interesting to see a breakdown of where the Bing IP addresses are coming from. Are they mostly from residential areas, where people presumably have a choice in the matter? Or are a lot of them from corporate IP addresses, where people might have less of a choice?
  It would be fun to see those stats, but I doubt it would be at all legal.
it's like... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-02 14:15 · Score: 0

"Both trail far behind Google's 89.94%"
Nelson Muntz: "ha-ha!"
Other search engines by klm1974 · 2011-03-02 17:28 · Score: 1

I wonder where Veronica fits in.
Overtook! by signity · 2011-03-02 20:40 · Score: 1

Really astounding! But still no comparison with Google! Google rocks ! facebook applications development
Why does google search suck so much? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 00:13 · Score: 0

If you're reading this on slashdot.. sure you've already learnt to deal with its sucky nature by crafting your queries in an unnatural way. You probably have learnt to use quotes and 'site:' and 'url:' and whatnot.
But try searching for something simple like 'free iphone ringtones' or 'dvd ripper' or thousands of simple search queries that a non-geek might employ. And then prepare to be repulsed by the "SEO" thats been done to give to the most crappiest ad-infested results. Despite hiring all those phds it seems to be ridiculously easy to game Google OR secretly google love to serve this crap because the google ads in these content farms makes them a ton of money.
MSN.com by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 01:14 · Score: 0

Sometimes after I sign out of hotmail I click an interesting link on the MSN.com homepage that I am redirected to. Recently it has turned out that around 60-70% of the time these are just links to Bing searches (although the description of the link itself gives no indication that this would be the case).
I assumed that they were just doing this to increase market share and it got really annoying after a while so I stopped clicking on things altogether.
Trickery by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 01:23 · Score: 0

If Microsoft did not force users to use it then it would have never made it anywhere. Bing is the worst search I have ever used. When Bing first came out if you were unlucky enough and did not catch it it would load tons of crap to your computer even not it will do that but Microsoft even now you have to watch what you install, Bing comes in so many different programs. I don't need an app on my computer to browse the internet.
Bing Default Search Engine by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-03 04:25 · Score: 0

I find it interesting that at the Community College, where I teach, Bing became the default search engine in IE. I am not sure if the school set it up that way, or if Microsoft did this in one of their many updates.
The Chinese Word for "Disease"... by cburley · 2011-03-03 10:51 · Score: 1

...is "Bing"! (Discovered in a fortune cookie that came with sushi bought in a cafeteria in a building housing a Microsoft R&D team. When I saw it, I found a Chinese coworker and asked her what was the Chinese word for "disease", and she cheerfully responded "Bing!" -- at which point other coworkers in earshot cracked up and she said something like "Wow, I never thought of that!". This was only a few months after the Bing launch....)

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