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Microsoft Pushing Bing For Search In Schools, With Ad-Removal Hook

Posted by timothy on from the why-can't-they-send-them-all? dept.

rujholla writes "Microsoft has been trying to push Apple's iPad aside in favor of Surface tablets in schools, and now the Windows giant is looking to take on Google when it comes to search for students. Microsoft is including features such as allowing K-12 schools to remove advertisements from search results and enhanced privacy controls. Is this enough to beat the Google search quality edge? Or does that edge even still exist?"

10 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. As much as we love to hate Microsoft... by gameboyhippo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think this is a good thing. Sure its a marketing tactic, but its a good one. By removing ads and perhaps having a more education focused Bing, students will be able to search for what they want without as much noise. Hopefully Google will do the same if they aren't already.

    1. Re:As much as we love to hate Microsoft... by ericloewe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Where's the money for Google? Microsoft can sell all kinds of stuff after using this as a promotional tool. Google can only sell ads, and I don't see them reacting to this until it's proven to have made an impact worth countering.

    2. Re:As much as we love to hate Microsoft... by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But.. What K12 student is going to purchase anything anyway?

      The K12 student isn't going to be purchasing all that much when they are using the school's computer. But when they go home and they go to bing.com do do their searching there, or they change the default search engine on the family computer because "that's what we use at school" then it opens Microsoft up for more visits. Plus down the road when those K12 students have graduated, get jobs, and then have money to spend, maybe they'll be hooked on Bing.

      Or at least in theory that's how it's suppose to work. Didn't work all that well for Apple in the 80s and 90s.

    3. Re:As much as we love to hate Microsoft... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But when they go home and they go to bing.com do do their searching there, or they change the default search engine on the family computer because "that's what we use at school" then it opens Microsoft up for more visits.

      Oh yeah. Because that's what kids do. Use stuff they make them use at school on their free time.

    4. Re:As much as we love to hate Microsoft... by wvmarle · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Kids in school get used to Google, will use it at home. Potential for money for Google.

      Kids in school get used to Bing, will use it at home. No potential money for Google.

  2. Uh, no? by JustAnotherIdiot · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is this enough to beat the Google search quality edge

    Is this a joke?
    Google is less likely to bring up unrelated articles when doing research. I'll suffer through ads for better content quicker.
    Or better yet, use an ad-blocker.

    --
    What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
    1. Re:Uh, no? by Vanderhoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That said, for the stuff K-12 students are likely to *need* to search for in a school environment, Bing is probably fine. It's a less-capable search engine in general, IMHO, but it's good enough for typical searches for "with no ads!!!" to be a reasonable selling point for schools.

      I was with you up to this point.

      "good enough for typical searches for "with no ads!!!"" is not good enough for me. I want my kids to learn to think for themselves and make use of all the tools at their disposal. It's especially important at the grade school level where they develop the habits they'll use for the rest of their academic career and beyond.

      This is a marketing strategy and I would be offended if I found out that my daughter's school was forcing her to use Bing. I won't have MS using my kids education as a marketing tool against their competitor at the cost of her future education and research habits. If the school wanted to provide Bing as the default, but still allowed the students to use Google, Yahooh or DuckDuckGo, I'd be ok with that, but I'm not ok with them choosing one and limiting exposure to other methods and comparing results.

  3. Re:Search engines are a commodity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >Studies show time and time again that there are marginal differences at best between the major search engines.

    What planet are you living on?

    The only 'studies' showing this are only showing that for the most popular queries, there is minimal difference (as this is the relatively trivial-to-clone segment).

    The power of Google is its ability to provide higher quality results for rarer and non-trivial searches. Bing has made no attempt to compete here (and would do a disservice in education).

  4. Re:Search engines are a commodity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Make up your own damn mind!
    I don't need third party statistics to see that every time I give Bing a try I end up wasting more time and end up going back to Google.

    This is across the board. It does not matter if I am looking for help with our Windows Domain (LOL) or if I am looking for info on growing the biggest tomatoes on the block.
    Try searching the Microsoft website for the download location of some service pack vs doing the same on Google. The later tends to get me right where I want to go with ONE click.

    Bing is shit for almost all of my information gathering search queries. Forcing students to use it will hurt their education. Nice move!

  5. Re:Noise by gameboyhippo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I see where you are coming from. The concern is that if kids never see ads, how will they recognize ads as adults? While I recognize that, I purposely keep my children ad free as much as possible and its had a lot of positive effects. When my kids go down the cereal aisle at a supermarket, they're not screaming for the brand name cereal like my siblings and I did as children. I'm able to teach them first to look at nutrition labels, how to spot marketing techniques like greenwashing, etc... And now that they are able to think, we can sit down and discuss an advertisement when they show up.

    A bit of a story. My 3yo son was playing with an app geared for preschoolers when suddenly a full video toy ad played. He was captivated, thought they were the most amazing toy ever, and began repeating the catchphrase of the ad all day that day. My 6yo daughter sat down with him and said, "That's an ad. It looks cool, but in real life it might not be as much fun as the ad makes it out to be." She understood it.

    So my point is to have the parent educate their kids on marketing rather than have them figure it out the hard way by becoming a target of advertising.