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Bing is 'Bigger Than You Think', Says Microsoft (onmsft.com)

Microsoft said this week that Bing is "bigger than you think" and provided some numbers that could be a surprise to many. The company claims that fully one-third of searches in the US are powered by Bing, either directly or through Yahoo or AOL (both of which provide results generated by Microsoft). From a report: With 9% market share worldwide and 12 billion monthly searches, almost half of that (5 billion) comes from the United States where Bing has 33% market share.

35 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Most searched word on Bing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Google"

    1. Re:Most searched word on Bing... by tomxor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You joke... but there are still many people who don't know what a browser is, they go buy a cheap 100$ laptop preloaded with winbloat 10 avengers home business whatever edition it is now, pre-loaded with Edge+Bing by default, they probably end up searching for google in edge's omnibar every single time they want to go to google... Bing counts that as a search of course, not a domain autocorrect. You might even be able to roughly calculate this proportion if Google released their "Google.com via Bing.com" stats you could subtract it from M$ stats.

  2. Re:Umm, yeah, sure by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That and many browsers will have its default search engine as Bing or Yahoo. And still they are #2 behind Google.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    After they weaseled Win10 onto everyone and set it as the default search engine, does this really come as a surprise?

  4. Re:And this matters to me... by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's controlled by a big corporation, so you should use Bing instead.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  5. Re:It's the name by thebullshitpatrol · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Why would they name a service that you use to Google things "Bing"?

  6. Bing VIDEO is really good by Spy+Handler · · Score: 5, Informative

    search Bing for whatever porn you want, let's say tentacle henai, then click on the "Video" tab. It will pull up lots of videos of tentacle hentai. Also you can watch these videos from Bing search results without going to the video's originating website (which can be very sketchy and full of malware)

    1. Re:Bing VIDEO is really good by saider · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm sure Microsoft will talk about this use case in their next commercial.

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
    2. Re:Bing VIDEO is really good by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      "Hay Siri, show me some tentacle porn videos."

      "Alexa, order more man-size kleenex and a mop."

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  7. Commoditization by OrangeTide · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't care how big Google or Bing is. Search is a commodity now. I don't really care which farm grew my morning grapefruit either.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  8. So True by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I suspect many non-porn Bing searches are variations on "How do I set Google as my default search?"

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re: So True by qortra · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would have thought the same thing. However, I've been using Bing since the James Damore incident out of curiosity, and it really isn't that bad. I haven't had to do as many technical (i.e. programming) searches since I switched, and that was always Bing's weakness compared to Google, so I reserve full judgement for later. Regardless of what you feel ethically about Google vs Microsoft, it can't be good for any particular search engine to have a near Monopoly in the US.

    2. Re: So True by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      But with a monopoly it's so much easier for the gov'ment because they only have to "convince" one company to give them access to all their data, instead of having to hassle a bunch of dopey little companies to do so. 'cause terism!

  9. I Switched to Bing by craXORjack · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been proudly using Bing every since Google trampled on Free Speech and fired James Damore.

    --
    Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
    1. Re:I Switched to Bing by GLMDesigns · · Score: 2

      I switched from Chrome to Brave for the same reason. Very happy with the Brave browser. I use DuckDuckGo but it's not as good as Google.

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    2. Re:I Switched to Bing by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's a bit extreme... Maybe protest by setting yourself on fire or something, but using Bing?!

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  10. Bing API is good by Graydyn+Young · · Score: 2

    You would think that Google would own search via API, but actually Google's APIs for searching the whole web are surprisingly shitty. Bing's on the other hand perform just as well, require no configuration, and are far less expensive.

  11. Default by superdave80 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ..." that fully one-third of searches in the US are powered by Bing, ..." Only because there are so many browsers that MS has managed to get Bing setup as the default search engine. The worst was my Thunderbird email client. Not only did it have Bing set as the default search engine, but MS had somehow made it so that Google was not on the list of selectable search engines if you wanted to change from Bing. You actually have to install an add-on to get Google as a search option. I wonder how much they 'donated' to Thunderbird for that one.

    1. Re:Default by green1 · · Score: 2

      The bigger question is why an email client would have a web search function at all. Do you also use your word processor for making spreadsheets and your graphics package for making databases?

  12. Sure by nospam007 · · Score: 2

    "Bing is 'Bigger Than You Think', Says Microsoft"

    Alas nobody else says this.

  13. Re:And this matters to me... by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2

    ... how?

    They put up a story that isn't about Trump or the Google memo, and you're complaining?

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  14. Really, Microsoft? by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, after all these years, Bing remains so irrelevant that you have to resort to proclaiming that it is not irrelevant?

    1. Re:Really, Microsoft? by cybrthng · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's actually super relevant. A lot of people use it, i get ribbed for using it all the time but have no problems using it as my default search engine in the USA. I hear it can suck in foreign countries, but that's not a problem for me.

      Lots of people enjoy bing.. great image search, great SERP design for common topics and they're continuously improving it. They have public conferences once a month where there are thousands of people on the phone hearing about new features and testing new services. It's huge, but written off by so many for reason i fail to understand. (again, unless you don't use US searches.. i can't speak for anywhere else)

      Millions of people use it for bing rewards too.. its nice getting free music, games, xbox live points et all just for doing what you would normally do anyway.

  15. Re:And this matters to me... by Voyager529 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's so horrible about google?

    1. Their search results have gotten progressively worse of late. it's either so fuzzy as to have half the top results completely irrelevant, or "verbatim" won't come up with anything because of spacing or the literal order of words is incorrect.
    2. Search for "driver download" and you'll get some very shady websites, many of which don't actually provide driver downloads...and they do nothing about it. Same for "teamviewer" and other legitimate tools that get hijacked by "your computer has a virus" websites. If they want to perpetuate the blurring between the URL bar and the search bar, that's fine, but literally nobody has Googled for teamviewer and been okay with the sketchy sites that rank very high.
    3. Overall creepiness. They collect *a lot* of data, even if users go out of their way to avoid it. Though they *say* they'll be responsible with it (and to be fair, so far they appear to have done so), it's incredibly difficult to opt out of data collection, because so much of the web depends on them (go ahead, disable Google Fonts and Google AMP and see what happens to the internet...)
    4. Questionable practices - preferring faster sites is understandable, defining 'faster' as 'using Google AMP' is shady. Ad blockers are one thing, but adding an ad blocker to a browser that has a controlling slice of the market when 90% of their revenue comes from ads is 90's Microsoft levels of monopoly.
    5. E-mail is a great thing. Gmail has twisted it very heavily from being an analog of letter-based correspondence to being a de facto chat client, and twisting POP and IMAP to make it less practical to use a third party mail client, and require an obscurely placed setting to allow third party clients to connect via standard protocols...and it's not getting better.
    6. Discontinuing useful services and changing UIs and APIs to make things less useful (Reader, iGoogle, their 1,001 chat clients, none of which are XMPP compliant anymore, the list goes on).
    7. On Android specifically, mandating profitable things ('Play Store' must be on the first page) but not openness-based things (mandating unlocked bootloaders or that shipped apps can be removed if not a core function). Yes, they sell their reference phones, but if they're going to have requirements that are purely for profit reasons, there's no reason they can't mandate Samsung do the same thing.

    Now yes, I know there are rebuts to most of these items, but collectively Google has a stranglehold on the internet advertising market and controls enough of the internet infrastructure that avoiding them is near impossible, I do expect better behavior out of them.

  16. I like Bing by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    He had a real self-effacing humor which played off well against Frank Sinatra's brash cockiness.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  17. Re:And this matters to me... by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

    What's so horrible about google?

    I said google news, not "google". Google is another issue. Figure out what's horrible about Google for yourself. I well help you with google news: it sucks, the format is crap, the concept is crap, the news search is crap, it gets worse with each revision... what the fuck. What are they thinking.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  18. Re:And this matters to me... by KingMotley · · Score: 2

    Well, except google is also a convicted monopolist.

  19. Re:And this matters to me... by penandpaper · · Score: 2

    I'm hazing you for being late to the party

    You don't know any position I have or held particularly so on this topic. Why are you generalizing and treating me as a group instead of an individual?

    ow go vote for some communists

    why would anyone be a communist with such a body count? I also think that I own my labor and can sell it at my discretion and economic transactions are not inherently evil.

    You know. Never mind. I don't want to have a conversation with an ideologue that treats an individual as a group through generalizations and ideological purity tests. You are why we can't have nice things.

  20. Not surprised by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 2

    Microsoft will literally pay you to use Bing. They'll give about a third of a cent per search in rewards. And I still don't use it.

    Bing is the default in a lot of corporate systems. It's like that where I work, and we can't even change the bookmarks.

    But I think the big thing is simply that it's the default to Siri.

  21. Duck Duck Go by JohnFen · · Score: 2

    DDG uses Bing as one of its primary search engines. Just an interesting factoid.

  22. Re:And this matters to me... by JohnFen · · Score: 2

    What's so horrible about google?

    The quality of Google's search results has fallen fairly dramatically over the past few years, to the point where it's no longer superior to engines like Bing.

    Google News recently made changes that has eliminated its usefulness for a lot of people. Bing News has become a better alternative for many of those people.

  23. Re:And this matters to me... by JohnFen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's very strange. One of the pleasant surprises I had when I start using DDG was that the search results I got tended to be much better than what I was getting out of Google.

    Neither are perfect, of course.

  24. Such a shame then by kilodelta · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because I block Bing on my firewall as I discovered Microsoft was using it for the Windows 10 phone home. Just block 65.52.108.210, 204.79.197.200 and 13.107.21.200 - buh bye Bing! And it's funny my firewall logs - it's all hits to those IP's. So I know I blocked the right ones. So far nobody on this network has complained and there are about 8 of us using it. And not a single Windows mobile device either.

  25. Heh... by XSportSeeker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bing comes as a default search engine (as does Edge), it's obligatory to use in Windows 10S, and Microsoft offers freebies for people who use it (a big reason why the percentage is so big in the US - Bing rewards is not available in several countries).
    Sure, some people use and like it, but I'd say 9% worldwide is a huge failure when you are trying to sway the market with agressive strategies like those.

  26. Bing is 'Bigger Than You Think' by AdamStarks · · Score: 2

    That wouldn't be hard

    (stolen from coworker)