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Bing Now Nearly As Good As Google — Says Microsoft

Posted by timothy on from the totally-objective dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Harry Shum, who oversees research and development for Microsoft's Bing search engine, believes his company has now matched Google's ability to build software platforms that can harness the power of tens of thousands of servers. — 'For many years, we've really tried to play the catch-up game,' Shum says. 'And now we feel that after a lot of effort, we understand search quality problems better than before, and that if you look at Google and Bing, the quality is beginning to be very comparable.' While his comments might be a little biased, many people do share the same opinion. How do you feel about Bing's search results compared to Google's? For example DuckDuckGo, the privacy oriented search engine, uses Bing's back-end and has gained a small following on Slashdot."

20 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. Holy self-reference! by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had submissions rejected in the past for referencing Slashdot in them. Have the rules changed?

    And while we're at it, would DuckDuckGo's "small following on Slashdot" please enter and sign in with a few posts?

    1. Re:Holy self-reference! by crmarvin42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I use it as my primary search engine. Managed to get it set as the built in search option in Safari. Only go to google if it draws a blank. I'd say about 20% of my searches still go to google on my desktop (google scholar mainly)

      --
      Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:Holy self-reference! by Theolojin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And while we're at it, would DuckDuckGo's "small following on Slashdot" please enter and sign in with a few posts?

      I've been using DuckDuckGo for some time, primarily for the privacy and lack of filtering based on my previous queries (finding political articles that are *not* slanted toward my bias, for example). However, during this time I've discovered that if I really need to find an answer to something I'm entering a `!google' into my search (which forces DuckDuckGo to use Google). :-\

      --
      Life is short; think quickly.
    3. Re:Holy self-reference! by unapersson · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I gave it a go recently when it was mentioned as a way to escape the search bubble and eliminating the bias of a search engine knowing too much about you. Was then surprised how on a search for ubuntu it quite prominently gave a link about how ubuntu was an imperfect alternative to windows. It took me back to "get the facts".

    4. Re:Holy self-reference! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I can't speak for Bing, but DDG uses a few code searches as sources for zero-click info, so if I search for an API I often get the documentation without having to click on any links. I've no idea how well it does with MS APIs.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:Holy self-reference! by justforgetme · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh, and ignoring what I searched for in favor of what they think I meant.

      This was the first thing that irritated me about Google. I think it's been about 2 years now when I
      realized that writing stuff in quotes didn't have the effect it used to.
      Then they just started auto
      correcting you.
      Then pushing the "search for {original query} instead" link stopped making a difference.
      Then there was the excessive bubbling.
      And then my paranoia kicked in when they started merging all their privacy policies and I moved
      away from Google for good.

      I've been on ddg for some time now and (after getting used to the different api & interface) I have
      come to like it and actually a finding it quite powerful.

      Something I want to look into though is how much of the search results are organic and which
      come from yahoo's BOSS infrastructure.

      --
      -- no sig today
    6. Re:Holy self-reference! by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To be fair to the parent my very first reaction to the article was to jump on Bing and type "Linux" into the search field to see if it still directed to Microsoft's results first.

      Looks like they've cleaned up their act, but the parent is right. For the longest time the search was horrendously biased towards Microsoft products and services.

  2. anecdotally.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ... i'd say that bing is actually about on par with google lately. i started using bing a while back as a "not google" alternative a while back when the evil-ness started becoming more obvious. I didn't notice any significant degradation in search results, could still find what I needed. Yes microsoft is evil as well, but they don't own 80-90% of web services at the moment.

    Another alternative is duckduckgo.com, trying that out lately, seems to be alright...

    1. Re:anecdotally.... by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Describing Google as Evil and Microsoft as the better alternative to that seems a little suspect to me. There seems to be a fairly widespread ant-Google campaign going on, and the prevalence of it versus anything they've actually done lately seems extremely out of balance ... almost as if it were being promoted by their competition. FaceBook was caught funding it once .ii I would doubt they or others would drop their plans so quickly. I'm not saying people are annoyed by Google's behaviour, I just think there's a non-grassroots push behind the vast majority of it.

    2. Re:anecdotally.... by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes microsoft is evil as well, but they don't own 80-90% of web services at the moment.

      While I'm no Google fanboy, I recognize that it's a company that gives me not only search results in exchange for my information/attention. It also gives me a fairly good browser, a useful map system and a decent smartphone OS. It was also, if I recall correctly, the first to implement a free web-based office suite and huge inbox storage capacity (2Gb while Hotmail was still limited to 2Mb or 10Mb - I forget). So that's why I use it - someone will use my search information and, frankly, my search history is not the kind of personal information I care about giving away. So I let Google have it and help finance some good products and technologies. Microsoft, on the other hand, rarely gives anything for free, and when they do, it's usually crap. So even if they were equal in terms of search effectiveness, I'd still use Google. For search. Not that I'll ever use Google+, because my personal information I actually care about giving away.

    3. Re:anecdotally.... by Tom · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There seems to be a fairly widespread ant-Google campaign going on, and the prevalence of it versus anything they've actually done lately seems extremely out of balance

      Thank you for saying it.

      I've grown wary of Google, but so far I have not yet seen a reason to actually distrust them. For MS, on the other hand, I can't find a reason not to.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  3. Verbatim search by data2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since discovering the verbatim feature for Google, the search works once more. Most of my searches are now done with it enabled.

  4. I gave up on Google search a long time ago. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Personally, I started using Bing once Google became incapable of trying to correct my every search. Google, unless my search query is "HowdoIfixmyspacebar," maybe you should consider all those missing spaces as intentional?

    But then, I don't have any taste anyway.

  5. Search is fungible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    As soon as Google started requiring me to use Javascript in order to see my search results I started to use Bing. I haven't looked back since.

    Thank goodness "search" is (now) a fungible commodity. Google better start smartening up if it wants to be relevant in the near future. Companies can't rely on the ignorant masses to forever stay ignorant of the competition and their immoral privacy policies.

  6. Maybe by MrDoh! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But whilst G+, Maps, Image search are all as well integrated and continue to work better, both in accuracy of things I want, and speed to get them, why would I bother to change to something that's /almost/ as good. Plus, having saved searches available on the phone to check something after searching on the laptop has been more useful than I thought it'd be. So why use Bing on desktop and Google on phone? Makes no sense.

    For now, Google's still the best for what I need it to do.

    --
    Waiting for an amusing sig.
  7. I Use Bing for the Picture by JoeKlip · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I see no difference between the two search engines. However I like Bing presents a beautiful picture everyday. It's unobtrusive. The only time I use Google is to check my Gmail. I stopped using Google when Google link my Youtube to Google and killed all of my Youtube settings. Since both are the same, I rather not support Google for giving me a hard time. Like some has posted earlier, search engine is just a commodity. Google seem to go out of its ways to pissed of long time customers.

  8. No by Morty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just tried bing on a list of sample (obscure, complicated) queries that are relevant to me, personally. google found the correct page in 3 out of 4. bing got 1 out of 4.

    I wouldn't make any grandiose claims on a sample size of 4. But from a "quick and dirty check" perspective, I won't be trying bing again anytime soon.

    BTW: since when are vendor competitiveness claims newsworthy? It always annoys me when stories like this show up on slashdot. Yes, the high-powered $vendor_X executive whose livelihood depends on $product_X has publically claimed that it is equivalent. This is a story? I don't care which vendor you're talking about: the vendor's own claims about relative competitiveness are not newsworthy. Wait for an (impartial) third party to declare that $vendor_X's products, which historically were viewed as inferior to $vendor_Y, are now equal or superior. Or wait for $vendor_X to announce a new feature. Then you have a story.

  9. So, what they're saying is by Compaqt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    they finished scarfing down Google's search database, and are just working on fine tuning what percent of false negatives to return?

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
  10. Bing is grrreat! if you want...... by ThisIsNotMyHandel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Bing is grrreat! for 99% of my searches. The only thing lacking in Bing is that if you search for something technical - like looking for a programming answer on a message board. Google is far better at providing message board results and therefore usually better for 'technical' questions.

  11. Re:Microsoft confessed? by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually i'd say that both Bing and Yahoo (I personally prefer the UI of Yahoo) really IS better, simply because all the SEOs have been playing whack a mole with Google's search results. i don';t know how many times i did a search on Google and got one SEO'd spampage after another, look up things like reviews or previews and see how many sites instantly have reviews for even made up words like "fleegal fins". The SEOs have been figuring out google's games quicker than Google can respond so naturally their searches has suffered as a result. its just a variation of security through obscurity, in this case functionality through obscurity. It doesn't mean MSFT has found some secret sauce, its just they aren't getting pimp slapped like google is by the SEOs that's all.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.