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Microsoft Urging Safari Users To Use Bing
New submitter SquarePixel writes "Microsoft is urging Safari users to switch to Bing after Google was fined $22.5 million for violating Safari privacy settings. 'Microsoft is keen to make sure that no-one forgets this, let alone Safari users, and the page summarizes the events that took place.' It tells users how Google promised not to track Safari users, but tracked them without their permission and used this data to serve them advertisement. Lastly, it tells how Google was fined $22.5 million for this and suggests users to try the more privacy oriented Bing search engine."
DuckDuckGo's entire advertising strategy is based off of privacy.
Bing, that integrates with Facebook, who are the champions of privacy, of course.
Perhaps the same could be said of everyone.
It should be bleedingly obvious to all that noone other than yourself is going to protect your privacy.
They're completely altruistic. Bing doesn't want more users because it results in more profit. What do you think Microsoft is, a for-profit corporation?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Profit? Bing doesn't know what profit is. They're like $16B in the red and have never ever seen what black ink looks like. You would have to explain black ink to them as if they were blind from birth.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
simple... bad guys: everyone else ;)
good guys: me
When China told Google to censor or get out, they got out - evacuating to Taiwan.
Eric Schmidt, the Chairman and CEO at the time was for pursuing the business opportunity through minimizing the damage. Larry Page was ambivalent. That day Sergey Brin became Google's moral compass and said something like: "Not just no, but Fuck no. My dad was a Russian dissident and came to America to avoid being sent to a Gulag for speaking his mind. If you do this not only will I take my share and leave, but I'll use it to do my best to defeat the monster you've become."
There was a big fight and Eric Schmidt gave up the CEO spot and his role as the world's best-paid babysitter. Larry Page took it (Sergey didn't want it). And Google moved out of China, abandoning the world's biggest growth market until it's ready to accept at least the human right of free speech. But the question about where Google stood on free speech was forever closed. That issue at least is resolved.
Bing and Yahoo crowed their triumph that day, that they had bested their adversary on at least one field - and an important one. For all of me this was one battle they needed to lose.
Recently there was press about some unnamed person from the White House asking YouTube to check a controversial video to see if it violated their terms of service. The reply: "No, it doesn't - thanks for asking." The implied unofficial implication was that it would be convenient if the video violated the terms. Certainly this didn't come from the President directly as he taught Constitutional Law, so it was a minor official inquiry that by some other company would have been taken as an opportunity to seek some advantage. But Google would have none of that. They don't do that. If pressed (they weren't pressed) the answer would certainly have been "not just no, but Fuck No! We don't do that." America doesn't have anything like the ability to enforce cooperation that China does, and if it happened to gain that power Google would just leave the US too now because organizationally the "free speech" question is completely and forever settled.
For all that some would paint Google as evil, maybe Google is in some aspect preserving our moral compass for when we regain our sanity and come to understand again what's really important. Until then I admire their determination to retain their moral compass and do the right thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
But MS *DID* get caught. Remember the IE Toolbar, it watched users Google searches, and sent the results and the queries back to Microsoft, where Microsoft use it to improve (i.e. copy) for their own search results?
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/google-to-microsoft-search-gotcha/
Google added some fake searches, entered those into IE and it promptly sent that data back to Microsoft HQ where they put it in the Bing results.
Not only that, they denied it, then it turned out they'd denied only the 'copying part', then they claimed it was anonymous data and thus not snooping (it isn't they get the toolbar id, and search data often has addresses, medical conditions and names in it).
So yeh, they got caught. The only bizarre thing is why they weren't prosecuted. I think we're all kind of wary of Microsoft now, if you're using Microsoft products, more fool you.
DuckDuckGo is what I use now.
No, Microsoft doesn't start looking nice. There can be more than one bad company.
Having said that, so far I'd rate Google as a way better company than Microsoft as far as business ethics go.
Who gives a shit if that content is in your search results if it's relevant? I don't care where their data comes from, as long as it's related to what I'm looking for.
If I search for "taco recipe" and one of my friends has recently posted one to G+, shouldn't I want to see that?