Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37%

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!

Comments

Excellent!

[swordgeek]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Right now, I only see the internet google wants me to see.

Re:Excellent!

[H0p313ss]

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?

Re:Excellent!

[elrous0]

Hush you fool! You know they're listening. Do you *want* to be sent back to the camp?

Re:Excellent!

[swordgeek]

Moammar? Is that you?

Yes! But not the Moammar you think I am.

Re:Excellent!

[suprcvic]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Stenchwarrior]

A little bit like our other friends in Redmond, no?

Re:Excellent!

[swordgeek]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[hjf]

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?

Re:Excellent!

[jgtg32a]

Oh it isn't that bad, I've actually found it to be superior when doing Image and Video searches.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[stewbacca]

Content search does suck, but I like the image search much better than the new-ish Google image search.

Re:Excellent!

[commodore6502]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[ifiwereasculptor]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[UnknownSoldier]

Oblg.: Bing Is No Good. :-)

Re:Excellent!

[stewbacca]

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

Re:Excellent!

[poetmatt]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Missing.Matter]

I don't think acronyms can be defined recursively.

Re:Excellent!

[sconeu]

So I can still put hotels on both Boardwalk and Park Place?

Re:Excellent!

[vlm]

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

Re:Excellent!

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, I was under the assumption that Bing Is Not Google.

Re:Excellent!

[fermion]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[cjb658]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Missing.Matter]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[GooberToo]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[BassMan449]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[gstoddart]

I don't think acronyms can be defined recursively.

Well, GNU stands for Gnu's Not UNIX

Re:Excellent!

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Missing.Matter]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[bsDaemon]

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...

Re:Excellent!

[bonch]

Hard-Coded Bias in Google's "Algorithmic" Search Results

Re:Excellent!

[TideX]

wikipedia disagrees http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym

Re:Excellent!

[Harlex]

The makers of PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor might disagree.

Re:Excellent!

[Missing.Matter]

I guess I was wrong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym

Although it doesn't make much sense to me.

Re:Excellent!

[grub]

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

Re:Excellent!

[pjbgravely]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[thetoadwarrior]

Learn to use your computer then and don't rely on others.

Re:Excellent!

[Silfax]

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...

Re:Excellent!

[Nadaka]

googles just want a monogamous robot relationship. Is that so wrong?

Re:Excellent!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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?

Re:Excellent!

[Runaway1956]

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".

Re:Excellent!

[NevarMore]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[geekoid]

no, there are a monopoly, there just not wielding their monopoly in a way that sets up barriers.

Re:Excellent!

[Desler]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Nemyst]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[drinkypoo]

They default to Windows Live Search or Bing or something but then ask you if you want to be offered other options.

Re:Excellent!

[AvitarX]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[GameboyRMH]

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/

Re:Excellent!

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[LanMan04]

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!

Re:Excellent!

[Seumas]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[NeutronCowboy]

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).

Re:Excellent!

[funfail]

What do you expect me to do? Write a spider and create an index of the web on *my* computer?

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be GNU around here

(capture was 'funniest' - just a hint for you mods)

Re:Excellent!

[balbus000]

It seems they changed that motto to Bing Is Nearly Google.

Re:Excellent!

[Chris Burke]

Linux isn't an acronym. It's just "Linus" made UNIX-y.

Re:Excellent!

[gewalker]

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).

Re:Excellent!

[NeutronCowboy]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Av8rjoker]

norobotsexceptgoogles.txt

I really hope I'm not the only one that read "no robot sex 'cept google's".

Re:Excellent!

[BlackSnake112]

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?

Re:Excellent!

[cs96and]

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

Re:Excellent!

[EdIII]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[hjf]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[ynp7]

Google.com already has something similar.

Re:Excellent!

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[zombiechan]

Google still wins for searches related to writing code and interpreting errors.

Actually, I found that Bing does very well with this.

Re:Excellent!

[bberens]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[dwillden]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[bberens]

Were you looking for something on JCPenny? :D

Re:Excellent!

[Jessified]

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?

Re:Excellent!

[bberens]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[dwillden]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[91degrees]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[whereiswaldo]

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...

Re:Excellent!

[whereiswaldo]

Not necessarily. Look at sites like scroogle and ixquick.com which add a privacy layer.

Re:Excellent!

[BranMan]

Microsoft use a recursive acronym? They'd die of apoplexy first!

Re:Excellent!

[Raenex]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[hjf]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[HermMunster]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[marcello_dl]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[marcello_dl]

> 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.

Re:Excellent!

[marcello_dl]

> Microsoft didn't force anyone to use Microsoft.

they did, just like many others do, when their documents` format is not published.

Re:Excellent!

[williamhb]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[gordguide]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[russotto]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[gordguide]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Spy Handler]

Youtube!

Re:Excellent!

[strabo]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[williamhb]

Youtube!

...was also an acquisition!

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

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...

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

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?

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

you must be new here.

and by "here", I mean the internet...

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

haha i love it!

Re:Excellent!

[smash]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[RockDoctor]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[1s44c]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Raenex]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[garaged]

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

Re:Excellent!

[thetoadwarrior]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[poetmatt]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

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...

Re:Excellent!

[Raenex]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[dudpixel]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[Raenex]

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

[Anarke_Incarnate]

"Has overtook Bing"

Cringe..... Maybe they should BING the word overtaken.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[Toad-san]

My initial response as well. [cringe] Overtook? OVERTOOK? What the HELL!

Re:Editing is a lost art

[SavoWood]

I literally did a facepalm when I saw this. The only reason I was going to post was to make the same observation.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[curious.corn]

That's true but it should have been either "has overaken" or "overtook"... "has overtook" is wrong

Re:Editing is a lost art

[schmidt349]

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?

Re:Editing is a lost art

[xaxa]

"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".

Re:Editing is a lost art

[slim]

Yes, I think it's well wrote as well.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[stewbacca]

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.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[slim]

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.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[idontgno]

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.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[stuntpope]

Submitter should of drug his dictionary out of hiding.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[slim]

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?

Re:Editing is a lost art

[quickOnTheUptake]

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

Re:Editing is a lost art

[gfreeman]

Now write it out a hundred times, or I'll cut your balls off.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[base_chakra]

The correct form is, of course, Bing done overtook Yahoo.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[ClickOnThis]

Submitter should of drug his dictionary out of hiding.

Irregardless, has and overtook is both in dictionary. Bing need more internets!

Re:Editing is a lost art

[CheeseTroll]

Or use the passive voice: Yahoo been done overtooken by da Bing.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[Tablizer]

English needs to be refactored. It is unnecessarily complicated and confusing due to history and accidents.

Re:Editing is a lost art

[RancidPeanutOil]

Hopefully with this we can literally, for all intensive purposes, put behind this us.

How many by choice?

[stcdm33]

How many of those are by choice and how many are by devices and/or apps that have Bing forced on them?

Re:How many by choice?

[netdigger]

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

Re:How many by choice?

[Remloc]

Any device or app that forces a search engine, email client, browser, etc. on me is one I will not be using.

Re:How many by choice?

[Alioth]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[Missing.Matter]

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?

Re:How many by choice?

[need4mospd]

And what percentage of searches are people typing google into their default Bing search engine?

Re:How many by choice?

[bcmm]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[im_thatoneguy]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[symbolset]

It's different when Bing does it. Nobody wants Bing. That makes it bad.

Re:How many by choice?

[symbolset]

Verizon Bings your Android phone. Lots of companies Bing their user desktops. There are toolbars that Bing up your browser too.

Re:How many by choice?

[SiChemist]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[GrumblyStuff]

If my mom is any example, they'll search for Google in the search box then search for their site on Google.

Re:How many by choice?

[Tony Isaac]

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?

Re:How many by choice?

[theaceoffire]

I would not be surprised if over 50% of all searches in bing are "Google.com".

Re:How many by choice?

[randallman]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[dwillden]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[ElMiguel]

Really? Is that in the US? I would have thought Microsoft would be a little bit more careful after the antitrust suit.

Re:How many by choice?

[mjwx]

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.

Re:How many by choice?

[shutdown -p now]

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

[XB-70]

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

Overtook?

[NitroWolf]

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.

Re:Overtook?

[towelie-ban]

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays.

Re:Overtook?

[magnamous]

I logged in to write this. Thank you.

Double-surprise

[Toe, The]

Which is more surprising? That 4.37% can land a #2 spot, or that anyone uses Bing?

Both are rather startling, imho.

Re:Double-surprise

[CannonballHead]

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.

Re:Double-surprise

[Asic Eng]

"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.

Re:Double-surprise

[Toe, The]

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.

Re:Double-surprise

[Toe, The]

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/

Re:Double-surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[cforciea]

Since Yahoo is powered by Bing, isn't this a little like saying Bing has "overtook" Bing?

Re:Yahoo = Bing

[Rogerborg]

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".

Re:Yahoo = Bing

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:Yahoo = Bing

[owlstead]

Yeah, so now we know the number of people too lazy to change their default search engine :)

Re:Yahoo = Bing

[c 0xFF]

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

[markass530]

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.

Re:wow

[Kjella]

They haven't figured that out... they've just figured out how to go to google first...

Re:wow

[wile_e8]

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!

Re:wow

[Duncan J Murray]

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

Re:wow

[vlm]

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.

Re:wow

[theskipper]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Bing is getting data from Google doesn't that make Google 94.31%?

Re:Bing = Google

[snookiex]

But Yahoo! uses Bing, so it's actually very close to 100%

Probably due to Verizon / RIM

[Soskywalkr]

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

[Stargoat]

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

Re:Baidu

[danhuby]

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

Re:Baidu

[the linux geek]

The absence of Yandex, the #1 search engine in Russia, is also strange.

In other news

[Celarent Darii]

Most people don't change their defaults. They use what is installed.

Re:In other news

[cjb658]

Which makes it all the more amazing that Google has a ~90% share.

Re:In other news

[Celarent Darii]

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

[ShavedOrangutan]

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

No thanks.

Re:The Irony

[mapkinase]

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

Re:The Irony

[ShavedOrangutan]

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

Re:The Irony

[Tolkien]

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. :/

Re:The Irony

[HappyEngineer]

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.

Bing is over rated when given 2nd place.

[xs650]

At 4.37%, they should say there is no one in 2nd place and give Bing 3rd place at best.

overtook

[nimbius]

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

Google Web == MS Desktop

[Syncerus]

Why is Windows monoculture bad and Google monoculture good?

Monoculture is monoculture.

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[bsDaemon]

Because this is Monoculture 2.0!!!

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[radl33t]

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?

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[Your.Master]

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.

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[BZ]

> 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.

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[BZ]

> 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.

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[shutdown -p now]

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").

Re:Google Web == MS Desktop

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Google alternative: duckduckgo

[lrnj]

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.

Re:Google alternative: duckduckgo

[GameboyRMH]

Cool, seems WAY better than Bing right off the bat.

Re:Google alternative: duckduckgo

[lrnj]

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).

Google is great!

[samwong086]

I love Google than Bing! Hurry up Bing!

The only use of Bing

[lunasee]

I bet most people use the Bing Search in IE to type in Google.com, instead of typing it in the address bar.

Re:The only use of Bing

[AdrianKemp]

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".

Re:The only use of Bing

[drinkypoo]

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?

Re:The only use of Bing

[AdrianKemp]

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.

Re:The only use of Bing

[drinkypoo]

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...

Re:The only use of Bing

[AdrianKemp]

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.

loldot

[AC-x]

Can Bing haz overtook Yahoo!?

Bogus!

[billstewart]

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.

Re:Bogus!

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Bogus!

[Desler]

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.

Re:Bogus!

[shermo]

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.

Re:Bogus!

[ynp7]

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

[hellfire]

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.

Re:Actually they are

[AvitarX]

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.

Pyrrhic Victory

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

Re:Pyrrhic Victory

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

congrats

[geekoid]

on being the top loser.

No robot sex...? (Re:Excellent!)

[Cl1mh4224rd]

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...

Re:No robot sex...? (Re:Excellent!)

[GameboyRMH]

So it wasn't just me then XD

It took a couple of re-reads for me to not see the robot sex...

And still...

[J'raxis]

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

A /\ A

[symbolset]

The above comment is enthusiastically seconded.

Re:Shocker

[symbolset]

They Bing up the Blackberries too? How rude.

What about Altavista?

[Samedi1971]

I thought they were making a big comeback after watching a recent episode of Parks and Recreation.

Where are they getting their numbers?

[Animats]

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).

no robot sex 'cept googles!

[MorbidBBQ]

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

[kervin]

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.

I don't buy it...

[dnebin]

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?

[vampire_baozi]

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.

Re:Erroneous Data?

[BZ]

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...

Re:Erroneous Data?

[BZ]

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).

Re:Erroneous Data?

[wvmarle]

Don't forget that 30% of China (about 400 mln people) is more than 100% of USA (just over 300 mln).

Re:Erroneous Data?

[BZ]

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..

[chrishillman]

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.

Re:Microsoft TV Ads..

[pjbgravely]

Ah, I haven't seen a television commercial in a while. Having a DVR with auto commercial skip is a wonderful thing.

Re:Microsoft TV Ads..

[Transkaren]

My wife and I have actually been watching more and more ads. They're making them funny and/or more interesting these days.

Grammar.

[Tolkien]

Bing has overtook? What? Try overtaken.

Re:Grammar.

[hackingbear]

You insensitive cod! These two words make no differences to us!
Sincerely,
- Your favorite search engine

Re:Browser share ..

[Nadaka]

wait... you used bing... to find google? rather than just adding a damn .com and putting it in the address bar?

Re:How about yahoo has fallen behind bing

[shoor]

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

Advertisers

[massysett]

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.

Err... Huh?

[tmarsh86]

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.

Re:Err... Huh?

[Missing.Matter]

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.

Re: Monopoly

[ozbird]

"You have won 2nd prize in a beauty contest - collect 4.37% market share".

Inflated by MSN

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[billstewart]

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...

They are not the same

[euroq]

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.

Splashtop OS

[sudden.zero]

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.

Bravo

[alcmaeon]

Good call. I assumed it was a Google Translator translation error.

BLING is Number 1 !!!!

[MmmmYah]

Yo I got me some bling bling ! You can keep your bing homeboy!

Angry Birds

[adamofgreyskull]

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.

No. 1?

[otaku244]

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

Re:No. 1?

[IICV]

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.

Re:We're Number Two!

[Narnie]

Damn... if only linux for the desktop could have numbers like that.

Other search engines

[klm1974]

I wonder where Veronica fits in.

Overtook!

[signity]

Really astounding! But still no comparison with Google! Google rocks ! facebook applications development

The Chinese Word for "Disease"...

[cburley]

...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....)