This is on the exact same track as the behaviour that brought them their first major antitrust suit. Perhaps the Bing switch is "an essential part of the operating system". Bunk.
Yes, too bad it couldn't be modded "Sarcastic" And how many times have they even prevailed? Near constant litigation is just a cost of doing business, eh?
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 03, @12:06AM (#28568499)
Microsoft is not bad, it is just misunderstood.
People think that Microsoft is a computer company that is abusive. But that's not true. Microsoft is an abuse company that uses computer equipment as a means of delivering abuse. Seen in that way, Microsoft is completely successful at what it tries to do.
(I am not liable for any damage displaying this opinion causes to your monitor.)
You are clearly not European.
There have been many antitrust suits in the past by the European commission against European companies.
The problem is that building up a case costs a lot of time. The recent antitrust suit against Microsoft was started in 1998, with a first ruling in 2003. Just to give you some kind of perspective.
It's already hard enough to switch to Google. Why is the most popular search engine at the bottom of the list [ieaddons.com]? Could it be that it's weirdly labelled "Google Search Suggestions" unlike the very clear "Bing Search"? I thought that addon was just the suggestions the first time I saw it. If Google had started at the top then it would easily float there. Microsoft probably buried it so the Most Viewed providers would get viewed more and stay at the top.
(subject line courtesy of "Journey of Man - A Genetic Oddysey")
Or... Could it be that that page is relatively new and most people who had IE7 went to a different page before* , where most people will have gotten their Google search provider; rather than this page.
Could it be that most people already know Google (and likely already have it installed) and are less-inclined to click on it than the more exotic search providers?
Could it be that Bing! was recently-launched, causing most people to click on it just to see what all the fuss was about?
* The old page sucked quite badly as well. I wanted to add Google from a Dutch IE7, which landed me at an English-language search providers page, and after adding Google it always landed the machine at google.co.uk(!). Took some manual registry mangling to get it to point to google.nl (not my machine, tyvm) instead. Looks like the IE8 points things to a dutch page, at least; though only 4 providers seem to be offered there... Wikipedia, Bing, 'Kenteken opzoeken' ( license plate search ) and Harware.Info price comparison visualiser, along with the 5th option of 'make your own search engine' (love the shoddy translations from English).
Naw, you're right, they probably tried burying the Google option. That's probably why they list it twice, too;)
It is of course possible to formulate the selection criteria so that Google will come extremely unprominently shown somewhere at the bottom. Which Microsoft did in this case, quite successfully.
I actively tried to switch the default search engine to Google, and guess what, it was hard to find even knowing what I'm looking about.
If I was Google, I'd file an antitrust petition against this NOW.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 02, @07:07PM (#28566473)
Well I made the cardinal sin of reading the article. There is no proof and what he "found" was irrelevant. He said the warning came up about when he booted. Guess what? When you boot ALL the services that are installed and set to auto-start do something - they START. Microsoft didn't do this; at least you sure can't prove it by this idiot. He most likely has some stupid malware/spyware/crapware installed that did it. Shoot, you can post any poorly researched crap on the web these days and people will link to it as long as it says "MS is teh evil".
I need to have Digg's "OK this is lame" to bury this article.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 02, @07:15PM (#28566557)
If you actualy read the article, he admits he doesnt know what was trying to change the default search provider, or what it was being set to. All he knows is his google toolbar said a change was being made.
Any atribution of this action to Microsoft, or that the provider was being set to Bing are suppositions - there is no evidence of that provided.
If you actualy read the article, he admits he doesnt know what was trying to change the default search provider, or what it was being set to. All he knows is his google toolbar said a change was being made.
Also, if you look at the timestamps, the Search shows up at 7:41:27.
The oddly named "gupdate1c99e2ec" below it (as in "Google Update" maybe?) fired off at 7:41:26 -- precisely one second before it.
Maybe he should be looking at items before that "gupdate" item to see what happened before that.
(Now, I've had MS change my default browser before -- I'm just not convinced that what he's got shown matches what he saw.)
Funnily enough, everytime my package manager updated Firefox on Ubuntu, my chosen search engine (Yahoo) seems to get bumped back to Google. Google of course being one of the big funders of Mozilla. Same annoying thing. But apparently Microsoft's change only affects IE6, so who cares?
Actually, Microsoft released a new version that can be uninstalled or disabled using the standard Firefox Add-Ons UI.
But, the first version was pretty easy to uninstall...it took me about two minutes after the Firefox restart that highlighted the new add-on to find the registry entry (somewhere under the Mozilla key in the Software hive) and delete it.
Please read the story yourself; It's not Firefox that Vista tries to change but IE8. Google's toolbar caught the action in IE8 and alerted him to the change. He then said that there was no alert option offered in Firefox's Google toolbar.
Software companies have been doing this for years. They get paid to bundle toolbars and other junk with legit software and unless you are careful and remember to untick the necessary check boxes they install. Ask has been the most recent offender in this area, doing it's best to carve out a small niche in the search market.
There are some things Google does very well. Others, not so well.
I'm using Bing now to see if I like it. It's like UNIX. It's like non-Apple MP3 players. I'll give the underdog a try so I don't have to be part of the herd. Besides, most popular doesn't always mean best.
But you explicitly said that you based your decision on "not being part of the herd". I hear that breathing is pretty popular among "the herd" too, perhaps you should try not breathing for a change?
Your "popular doesn't mean good" argument also has corollaries. By the same token, popular does not equal "bad" and unpopular does not equal "good."
You use of the phrase "the herd" also implies that people who choose the popular option do it unthinkingly, that they don't "conduct their own tests and make their own decisions." But, of course, many people do that and make the decision to use the popular item.
I just found your comment amusing, because it reminds me of the "individualists" who flock to subcultures in an effort to become "alternative" - but as soon as their subculture/music/fashion becomes popular they don't like it anymore. They tend to be worse fashion victims and conformists than those in the mainstream, all the while maintaining that they are unique and beholden to nobody. I mean, why did you like that music in the first place? Isn't it still good music if it suddenly becomes a popular hit?
Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect.
His proof is the event view showing the MS Search service "starting". You know, the one that's actually for searching your own computer. And the timing of it was right after start-up.
I'm not saying it was, or it wasn't. But his proof is flimsy at best. His conclusion something I expect from the typical college age/. reader that runs around wearing a T-shirt with a hidden message in binary on it, and refuses to play WoW on anything but a Mac so he can "stick it to the man".
How about some actual proof of what happened. For all we know this tool downloaded something that asked him to change search engines and in his haste to get to porn (which btw Bing is king at), just clicked through without looking, and when he rebooted next time the change tried to happen.
Or it could be that the MS Search service tried to hide a change. But I don't buy it based on his SS of a service starting (wow) and his own "jump" to a conclusion. Especially since if it were true there should be reports of it all over.
I know I'll probably get modded as a troll for this, but the article doesn't offer any actual evidence that Microsoft is changing search engine preferences without users knowing it. Even the author himself doesn't say that there's conclusive evidence. He writes in his article:
"Vista's Event Viewer identified the Windows Search Service as the likely source of the attempt to change my search default."
and
"Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect."
The author of the article doesn't bother to conduct any meaningful research into the purpose of the Windows Search service or what it actually does [microsoft.com]. Now I'm all for throwing the punches at Microsoft for the stupid crap they pull and I wouldn't put it past them to do something shady and underhanded like this. However, this article is little more than the rambling conjecture of a computer illiterate who can't tell the difference between a system service and an online search engine. If you're going to post articles about the devious, dirty deeds of Microsoft at least have the common sense to post articles with at least some level of truth behind them.
This is really annoying. If I pay for a machine, and I pay for the software. then I don't want it changing the options. I want to set what will happen. And I want it to work efficiently, without useless overhead put in simply to increase bragging rights of the vendor.
I have noticed that IE7 and IE8, anything typed into the URL field will go to Bing, unless it is 100% qualified. I know MS has always wanted everything to go through it's servers, but now it seems it is getting more extreme. If you don't type in HTTP it will go to bing. I also recall a time, or maybe not, when you could the URL field to go to google. In any case, the idea that a URL will go to a search engine never made sense to me. If the URL is not sufficiently qualified, then it should return a 404. The security risk of expecting a URL to return something other than the intended target is certainly a securty risk.
But no one else is any better. I have noticed on Adobe updates that they try to sneak in Yahoo tool bar. Apple will change the default browser to Safari with any little excuse, almost at every reboot. I don't know what google is doing, but since I prefer it to other things, I haven't had any issues in trying to get rid of it. I suspect when they begin to lose market share, all hell will break loose.
This is relatively innocuous, compared to the thing everyone seems to be missing - namely, IE8's default setting due to which (if you don't disable it during install) it will send all your search queries, browsed page URLs (except in HTTPS mode and on the intranet) and a few other bits and pieces of data to Microsoft for the purpose of "providing you with related sites". Of course the real purpose is to collect data to feed to Bing and adCenter.
This is why Sergey Brin is running around scared, and this is why Google is releasing their own browser in a hurry (it too sends all your browsing data to Google, for the same purposes).
You see, IE still has something like 70% marketshare, and all that browsing pattern data is hugely useful for things like: 1. Discovering new sites not yet within the crawl graph 2. Improving relevance of search results 3. Fighting spam 4. Establishing true popularity metrics for web resources. 5. Extracting behavioral information for the purposes of ad targeting. 6. Establishing (through correlation with a truth set) your gender, race, ethnicity, age, income bracket and preferences (for ad targeting, too). 7. Geolocation 8. Etc, etc.
This means MSFT now has ginormous amounts of data it didn't have before, and it can sic their PHDs on it and "fucking kill Google". It is no coincidence that they pushed IE8 as a "mandatory" update. I will not be surprised in the least if within a year Bing has substantially higher relevance than everyone else.
Google has no answer to this, short of paying Mozilla a ton of money to embed the same thing into Firefox. Since this pretty much amounts to spyware, I doubt Mozilla will go for it.
I've had msnbot rejected from my site for many years. The just under a year ago I get a request from someone working for MSN Live Search asking to remove the block from robots.txt. I said, "no" and gave her the short version of my falling out with Microsoft (just the 1995 to 1998 subset).
Then I started getting hits from Bing. Their support site only mentioned msnbot gathering information, so how did my site get index? Well, this had to stop.
So, I wrote a filter that would redirect anything with a REFERER from bing.com to google.com with the same search query. After running for a few weeks now, I see that some IP addresses never return, but most come back from Google - often with more specific search queries than the first time. I still haven't heard a word from the confused Bing users about it, though. So I'm guessing that it works well for keeping the completely clueless out.
The guy got this warning when he booted up his computer - then mentions that he didn't give permission to any search engine change. What, after he booted up? I guess not. Perhaps he did so before he shut it down? Perhaps he did so several days ago and whatever he installed* told him that the system would need rebooting to finish installation, and he ignored it (like most people).
* I'm saying "whatever he installed" because I'm looking at my Vista Business N 32bit install with Internet Explorer 8 (upgraded from 7 a day or two back), and.. - Google is still (it was in IE7) my first-listed search provider - I can find no "Windows Search Helper" service (there's a "Windows Search" service; different thing, presumably) - I can find no "Windows Search *anything*" in IE8's Add-ons list.
Hitting Google with "Windows Search Helper" yields the story and... well.. supposed anti-malware sites that are ever-so-useful in telling me what it is or where it comes from (sarcasm.)
So for all we know, he installed.. who knows what, something.. and that something may very well have asked him if he wanted to change the default search to Bing.
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do something like this.. but as of yet, my Vista machine isn't showing any evidence of it; nor does the article.
'course the other part of the article is 'sane'.. letting the google toolbar (if you have that installed anyway) make sure that your default search is Google if you're so-inclined as to have two search fields with the same provider (if I installed it, I'd set the IE8 one to Bing and leave the Google Toolbar one to Google, but that's me... then again, I tend to use Firefox), seems like a pretty good precaution to take.
What happened to the geeks to could reverse engineer executables and actually point to the specific CPU instruction that actually did it?
That sort of died out when video drivers hit 80MB, printer drivers hit 40MB, OSes hit 2+GB and god knows how many MB of bloated code are needed to switch a default search engine. I'd say at least 15MB. No one can be bothered to sift through all that shite anymore. It was easy when programs were 16k.
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.
This isn't Windows - it's entirely up to the installer author whether or not to create icons (desktop, start menu, start menu favorites, quick launch bar (yeah, there's more...)).
Most installers give you the option to install them or not. Okay.. most -older- installers do. Ever since 'usability experts' decreed that users want -less- choice, things just get tossed everywhere, whether you like it or not. More user-friendly to have 20 icons in the quick launch bar, apparently? whatever.
But even if you don't give that option - there's no reason the installer can't detect whether the user removed the icons -after- installation when you're installing an update.. and just not re-install them (or prompt the user). It might not be able to easily figure out -where- a user relocated icons, if that's what they did, but presuming you're only upgrading and not changing anything, those old icons (shortcuts) should still work just fine from wherever the user put them.
The only reason most installers don't is per that usability stuff. Say you removed the icon for QuickTime, now you install the update, so you expect to have QuickTime available... but you search and search on your desktop (as the layman you are), and.. no QuickTime icon. "Did something go wrong during installation?", you might ask yourself, and re-install again. Still no icon. So poste hate-mail in a forum and give Apple some bad press; even though it'd be your own fault, as you decided at some point in the past that you didn't want that icon.
Apple Software Update (automatically installed with itunes and quicktime) presented Safari as a checked-by-default update to users. Read about it [jubjubs.net] on John Lilly's blog. He's the CEO of Mozilla
What's wrong with that? You already have IE installed. IE8 is much faster [betanews.com] and actually secure at all [msdn.com]. Leaving anyone on the planet using IE7 would be a sin and killing it with fire is one of the most honorable things Microsoft has ever done.
I doubt they would even notice anything different. They look for a box to type in words and blue text to click. And Bing's copycat style confuses even somewhat savvy users.
Watch this [youtube.com] and you'll see what I mean. People think Google is a web browser. They probably think Bing is part of Internet Explorer. And I'm sure the overwhelming majority of users have no idea they can change their default provider, or even what that means.
If you're looking for video's I can't imagine using any other search engine then Bing right now. They're better at searching youtube then youtube is, and in a much friendlier manner.
For stuff other then videos, yeah, Google is king and will be for a loooong time.
Once more with feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, too bad it couldn't be modded "Sarcastic" And how many times have they even prevailed? Near constant litigation is just a cost of doing business, eh?
Parent
Poor Microsoft is just misunderstood. (Score:4, Insightful)
People think that Microsoft is a computer company that is abusive. But that's not true. Microsoft is an abuse company that uses computer equipment as a means of delivering abuse. Seen in that way, Microsoft is completely successful at what it tries to do.
(I am not liable for any damage displaying this opinion causes to your monitor.)
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Ock the Knife... (Score:4, Insightful)
(subject line courtesy of "Journey of Man - A Genetic Oddysey")
Or...
Could it be that that page is relatively new and most people who had IE7 went to a different page before* , where most people will have gotten their Google search provider; rather than this page.
Could it be that most people already know Google (and likely already have it installed) and are less-inclined to click on it than the more exotic search providers?
Could it be that Bing! was recently-launched, causing most people to click on it just to see what all the fuss was about?
* The old page sucked quite badly as well. I wanted to add Google from a Dutch IE7, which landed me at an English-language search providers page, and after adding Google it always landed the machine at google.co.uk(!). Took some manual registry mangling to get it to point to google.nl (not my machine, tyvm) instead. Looks like the IE8 points things to a dutch page, at least; though only 4 providers seem to be offered there... Wikipedia, Bing, 'Kenteken opzoeken' ( license plate search ) and Harware.Info price comparison visualiser, along with the 5th option of 'make your own search engine' (love the shoddy translations from English).
Naw, you're right, they probably tried burying the Google option. That's probably why they list it twice, too ;)
Parent
Lies, damn lies, and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
I actively tried to switch the default search engine to Google, and guess what, it was hard to find even knowing what I'm looking about.
If I was Google, I'd file an antitrust petition against this NOW.
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody would care about MS having a monopoly if they actually made the best software. Or if they released all their software for free, as Google does.
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
I need to have Digg's "OK this is lame" to bury this article.
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Informative)
If you actualy read the article, he admits he doesnt know what was trying to change the default search provider, or what it was being set to. All he knows is his google toolbar said a change was being made.
Any atribution of this action to Microsoft, or that the provider was being set to Bing are suppositions - there is no evidence of that provided.
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if you look at the timestamps, the Search shows up at 7:41:27.
The oddly named "gupdate1c99e2ec" below it (as in "Google Update" maybe?) fired off at 7:41:26 -- precisely one second before it.
Maybe he should be looking at items before that "gupdate" item to see what happened before that.
(Now, I've had MS change my default browser before -- I'm just not convinced that what he's got shown matches what he saw.)
Cheers
Parent
Re:Once more with feeling (Score:4, Informative)
Funnily enough, everytime my package manager updated Firefox on Ubuntu, my chosen search engine (Yahoo) seems to get bumped back to Google. Google of course being one of the big funders of Mozilla. Same annoying thing. But apparently Microsoft's change only affects IE6, so who cares?
Parent
Really? (Score:5, Funny)
That's most surprising.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Microsoft released a new version that can be uninstalled or disabled using the standard Firefox Add-Ons UI.
But, the first version was pretty easy to uninstall...it took me about two minutes after the Firefox restart that highlighted the new add-on to find the registry entry (somewhere under the Mozilla key in the Software hive) and delete it.
Parent
BING (Score:5, Funny)
BING = But It's Not Google
Re:BING (Score:5, Funny)
Bing Is Not Google
recursive
Parent
iBing! coming in 2010 (Score:4, Funny)
Icant Believe It's Not Google!
Parent
Wrong Summary! (Score:5, Informative)
Tim,
Please read the story yourself;
It's not Firefox that Vista tries to change but IE8. Google's toolbar caught the action in IE8 and alerted him to the change. He then said that there was no alert option offered in Firefox's Google toolbar.
How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Too late. I already switched my default. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are some things Google does very well. Others, not so well.
I'm using Bing now to see if I like it. It's like UNIX. It's like non-Apple MP3 players. I'll give the underdog a try so I don't have to be part of the herd. Besides, most popular doesn't always mean best.
Re:Too late. I already switched my default. (Score:4, Insightful)
But you explicitly said that you based your decision on "not being part of the herd". I hear that breathing is pretty popular among "the herd" too, perhaps you should try not breathing for a change?
Your "popular doesn't mean good" argument also has corollaries. By the same token, popular does not equal "bad" and unpopular does not equal "good."
You use of the phrase "the herd" also implies that people who choose the popular option do it unthinkingly, that they don't "conduct their own tests and make their own decisions." But, of course, many people do that and make the decision to use the popular item.
I just found your comment amusing, because it reminds me of the "individualists" who flock to subcultures in an effort to become "alternative" - but as soon as their subculture/music/fashion becomes popular they don't like it anymore. They tend to be worse fashion victims and conformists than those in the mainstream, all the while maintaining that they are unique and beholden to nobody. I mean, why did you like that music in the first place? Isn't it still good music if it suddenly becomes a popular hit?
Parent
Google does it too (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe a but more research next time /. ? (Score:4, Interesting)
His proof is the event view showing the MS Search service "starting". You know, the one that's actually for searching your own computer. And the timing of it was right after start-up.
I'm not saying it was, or it wasn't. But his proof is flimsy at best. His conclusion something I expect from the typical college age
How about some actual proof of what happened. For all we know this tool downloaded something that asked him to change search engines and in his haste to get to porn (which btw Bing is king at), just clicked through without looking, and when he rebooted next time the change tried to happen. Or it could be that the MS Search service tried to hide a change. But I don't buy it based on his SS of a service starting (wow) and his own "jump" to a conclusion. Especially since if it were true there should be reports of it all over.
There's no proof... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know I'll probably get modded as a troll for this, but the article doesn't offer any actual evidence that Microsoft is changing search engine preferences without users knowing it. Even the author himself doesn't say that there's conclusive evidence. He writes in his article:
"Vista's Event Viewer identified the Windows Search Service as the likely source of the attempt to change my search default."
and
"Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect."
The author of the article doesn't bother to conduct any meaningful research into the purpose of the Windows Search service or what it actually does [microsoft.com]. Now I'm all for throwing the punches at Microsoft for the stupid crap they pull and I wouldn't put it past them to do something shady and underhanded like this. However, this article is little more than the rambling conjecture of a computer illiterate who can't tell the difference between a system service and an online search engine. If you're going to post articles about the devious, dirty deeds of Microsoft at least have the common sense to post articles with at least some level of truth behind them.
it is all happening agian (Score:4, Informative)
I have noticed that IE7 and IE8, anything typed into the URL field will go to Bing, unless it is 100% qualified. I know MS has always wanted everything to go through it's servers, but now it seems it is getting more extreme. If you don't type in HTTP it will go to bing. I also recall a time, or maybe not, when you could the URL field to go to google. In any case, the idea that a URL will go to a search engine never made sense to me. If the URL is not sufficiently qualified, then it should return a 404. The security risk of expecting a URL to return something other than the intended target is certainly a securty risk.
But no one else is any better. I have noticed on Adobe updates that they try to sneak in Yahoo tool bar. Apple will change the default browser to Safari with any little excuse, almost at every reboot. I don't know what google is doing, but since I prefer it to other things, I haven't had any issues in trying to get rid of it. I suspect when they begin to lose market share, all hell will break loose.
This is relatively innocuous, compared to (Score:5, Insightful)
This is relatively innocuous, compared to the thing everyone seems to be missing - namely, IE8's default setting due to which (if you don't disable it during install) it will send all your search queries, browsed page URLs (except in HTTPS mode and on the intranet) and a few other bits and pieces of data to Microsoft for the purpose of "providing you with related sites". Of course the real purpose is to collect data to feed to Bing and adCenter.
This is why Sergey Brin is running around scared, and this is why Google is releasing their own browser in a hurry (it too sends all your browsing data to Google, for the same purposes).
You see, IE still has something like 70% marketshare, and all that browsing pattern data is hugely useful for things like:
1. Discovering new sites not yet within the crawl graph
2. Improving relevance of search results
3. Fighting spam
4. Establishing true popularity metrics for web resources.
5. Extracting behavioral information for the purposes of ad targeting.
6. Establishing (through correlation with a truth set) your gender, race, ethnicity, age, income bracket and preferences (for ad targeting, too).
7. Geolocation
8. Etc, etc.
This means MSFT now has ginormous amounts of data it didn't have before, and it can sic their PHDs on it and "fucking kill Google". It is no coincidence that they pushed IE8 as a "mandatory" update. I will not be surprised in the least if within a year Bing has substantially higher relevance than everyone else.
Google has no answer to this, short of paying Mozilla a ton of money to embed the same thing into Firefox. Since this pretty much amounts to spyware, I doubt Mozilla will go for it.
Redirect Bing to Google (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had msnbot rejected from my site for many years. The just under a year ago I get a request from someone working for MSN Live Search asking to remove the block from robots.txt. I said, "no" and gave her the short version of my falling out with Microsoft (just the 1995 to 1998 subset).
Then I started getting hits from Bing. Their support site only mentioned msnbot gathering information, so how did my site get index? Well, this had to stop.
So, I wrote a filter that would redirect anything with a REFERER from bing.com to google.com with the same search query. After running for a few weeks now, I see that some IP addresses never return, but most come back from Google - often with more specific search queries than the first time. I still haven't heard a word from the confused Bing users about it, though. So I'm guessing that it works well for keeping the completely clueless out.
Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft ! (Score:4, Informative)
What happened to the geeks to could reverse engineer executables and actually point to the specific CPU instruction that actually did it?
They got legal threats after the DMCA was passed.
Parent
Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft ! (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, but it's entirely relevant to reverse engineering executables. Which means it is directly relevant to the post you replied to.
Parent
Parent does have a point... proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy got this warning when he booted up his computer - then mentions that he didn't give permission to any search engine change. What, after he booted up? I guess not. Perhaps he did so before he shut it down? Perhaps he did so several days ago and whatever he installed* told him that the system would need rebooting to finish installation, and he ignored it (like most people).
* I'm saying "whatever he installed" because I'm looking at my Vista Business N 32bit install with Internet Explorer 8 (upgraded from 7 a day or two back), and..
- Google is still (it was in IE7) my first-listed search provider
- I can find no "Windows Search Helper" service (there's a "Windows Search" service; different thing, presumably)
- I can find no "Windows Search *anything*" in IE8's Add-ons list.
Hitting Google with "Windows Search Helper" yields the story and... well.. supposed anti-malware sites that are ever-so-useful in telling me what it is or where it comes from (sarcasm.)
So for all we know, he installed.. who knows what, something.. and that something may very well have asked him if he wanted to change the default search to Bing.
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do something like this.. but as of yet, my Vista machine isn't showing any evidence of it; nor does the article.
'course the other part of the article is 'sane'.. letting the google toolbar (if you have that installed anyway) make sure that your default search is Google if you're so-inclined as to have two search fields with the same provider (if I installed it, I'd set the IE8 one to Bing and leave the Google Toolbar one to Google, but that's me... then again, I tend to use Firefox), seems like a pretty good precaution to take.
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Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft ! (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to the geeks to could reverse engineer executables and actually point to the specific CPU instruction that actually did it?
That sort of died out when video drivers hit 80MB, printer drivers hit 40MB, OSes hit 2+GB and god knows how many MB of bloated code are needed to switch a default search engine. I'd say at least 15MB. No one can be bothered to sift through all that shite anymore. It was easy when programs were 16k.
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:5, Informative)
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.
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I strongly disagree (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't Windows - it's entirely up to the installer author whether or not to create icons (desktop, start menu, start menu favorites, quick launch bar (yeah, there's more...)).
Most installers give you the option to install them or not. Okay.. most -older- installers do. Ever since 'usability experts' decreed that users want -less- choice, things just get tossed everywhere, whether you like it or not. More user-friendly to have 20 icons in the quick launch bar, apparently? whatever.
But even if you don't give that option - there's no reason the installer can't detect whether the user removed the icons -after- installation when you're installing an update.. and just not re-install them (or prompt the user).
It might not be able to easily figure out -where- a user relocated icons, if that's what they did, but presuming you're only upgrading and not changing anything, those old icons (shortcuts) should still work just fine from wherever the user put them.
The only reason most installers don't is per that usability stuff. Say you removed the icon for QuickTime, now you install the update, so you expect to have QuickTime available... but you search and search on your desktop (as the layman you are), and.. no QuickTime icon. "Did something go wrong during installation?", you might ask yourself, and re-install again. Still no icon. So poste hate-mail in a forum and give Apple some bad press; even though it'd be your own fault, as you decided at some point in the past that you didn't want that icon.
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because IE7 IS a update to IE6. How the heck is Safari an update to Quicktime or iTunes?
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Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Google Owns Search (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch this [youtube.com] and you'll see what I mean. People think Google is a web browser. They probably think Bing is part of Internet Explorer. And I'm sure the overwhelming majority of users have no idea they can change their default provider, or even what that means.
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Re:Google Owns Search (Score:5, Interesting)
They haven't just copied Google either.
The Bing Travel page is almost a pixel-perfect copy of the Kayak travel site [douglassims.org].
It seems imitation is the strategy of the Bing team.
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Re:Also installing unwanted Firefox extension (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately the .Net runtime installer crashes every time it tries to update my Windows machine, so I don't have this problem :).
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it takes a 6 year old to read the article and find out that the story is bullshit.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Google's antitrust is because of a book deal, not search market tomfoolery.
Completely different playground.
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Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it and never will (Score:5, Interesting)
For stuff other then videos, yeah, Google is king and will be for a loooong time.
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