Microsoft Urging Safari Users To Use Bing 266
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."
Trust Microsoft. No, really. (Score:5, Informative)
After all, Microsoft is the one technology company that has demonstrated a consistently superior level of trustworthiness and sound ethics. Right? [zdnet.com]
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:4, Informative)
I started using DuckDuckGo exclusively just a couple days ago. So far I'm liking it a lot--search results seem just as good as Google's, if not better in some cases. With that said, I actually miss Google's Instant search in Chrome. On the other hand, the bang keywords are nice on those rare occasions I'm not using Chrome (for the uninitiated, adding "!amazon", for example, opens the Amazon.com search result page for your query).
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Informative)
Things can be relative (Score:5, Informative)
Just because Google does stupid shit does not mean Microsoft does not also deserve to be called out for doing stupid shit.
But we can note when Google is worse.
Google's G+ integration includes G+ results being promoted in the search stream.
Microsoft's Facebook integration does not alter your search results.
And G+ is sucking a lot more of your personal information (including search habits) into Google. At least with Microsoft there remains some division between what Facebook gets and what Microsoft gets.
Re:6 and 1, half a dozen of the other (Score:1, Informative)
where are you two from ?
six of one = half dozen of the other
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:4, Informative)
MS DID get caught, sniffing peoples google search (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Bing Challenge (Score:4, Informative)
I tried that blind comparison test [bingiton.com] that Microsoft set up between Google and Bing, just because I am a nerd who can appreciate that he may be prejudiced and wanted to actually do a test for himself. I still ended up choosing what I later discovered were Google's results as my preferred ones for 3 out of the 5 test searches. Scoring 2-for-5 was not enough to get me to switch to Bing, of course, but it was enough to get me to appreciate the service more.
The Safari issue sucks, of course, and I am a Safari user on my Mac at home (though I hate it on Windows), but it won't be a deciding factor for me.
Re:MS DID get caught, sniffing peoples google sear (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, you really are an idiot. The toolbar installer explained that it could send your searches to Microsoft in order to improve results. It was obviously (except, oddly, to Google's completely brilliant and utterly unbiased engineers) a feature you enabled if you wanted to guide Bing towards better (from your perspective) search results. Google engineers deliberately enabled this behavior, then poisoned the results with nonsense searches that *had* no legit results, so the only info Bing had on those queries were the poisoned values. They then claimed that the fact that Microsoft was using the poisoned values that Google had deliberatesly sent them meant that Microsoft was "copying" Google.
A number of... individuals... such as yourself not only believed Google's absurd bullshit, they kept on repeating it long after Google themselves retreated when they realized their attempt to smear a competitor was having a counterproductive effect.
Also, DuckDuckGo uses Bing (and not in a "Bing copies Google results!!1!" sense, but as in some of its searches are actually directly executed through Bing), among other search engines. So, guess what, you're using Microsoft products. Who's the fool, again?
Re:MS DID get caught, sniffing peoples google sear (Score:4, Informative)
what is the difference between what Bing did and what google does?
http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html [benedelman.org]
Run the Google Toolbar, and it’s strikingly easy to activate “Enhanced Features” -- transmitting to Google the full URL of every page-view, including searches at competing search engines.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/187670/Google_Toolbar_Tracks_You_Even_After_Being_Disabled.html [pcworld.com]
Let me rephrase what happened in reality: A google employee noticed that the bing toolbar reports search terms back to bing -- just like the google toolbar does.. and Google decided score some easy points, and make Bing look like a copycat.
Re:MS DID get caught, sniffing peoples google sear (Score:4, Informative)
The difference between the IE toolbar and the Google toolbar is that the google toolbar cannot be configured to use any search engine other than google.
Now, next time be totally honest about what was happening. I dont think its too hard to do that. Microsoft still looks bad when being honest.. no need to exaggerate.
Interesting spin (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft is sending searches done on GOOGLE to Microsoft, and results chosen from the GOOGLE search to Microsoft.
Google sends the searches on Google toolbar to Google. You know the bar that's for searching GOOGLE!
If I talk to you, I'm not spying on the conversation, I'm PART OF THE CONVERSATION. What Microsoft did was to spy on its users GOOGLE searches, which were none of their business.
So the medical queries you searched Google for were spied on by Microsoft, the addressed you searched for on Google were spied on and sent to Microsoft, the secret perversions you searched for on Google were spied on by Microsoft and sent to Microsoft.
Re:MS DID get caught, sniffing peoples google sear (Score:4, Informative)
what is the difference between what Bing did and what google does?
The difference is that Microsoft has spying technology built right into the browser, it's called compatibility view updates, and their search suggestion system. With Google you have to choose to be tracked.
Rockoon, they also spied on the URLs (Score:2, Informative)
We know they spied on the resulting URLs because they included the URL the user chose as the search result in Bing. You can pretend they didn't spy on the search queries of Google directly, well perhaps they could use the following URL to improve their search results:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=microsoft%27s+moral+compass
You can see that they certainly DID spy on searches made on Google and other search engines. Not just in the toolbar.
I read another Microsoft fluffer's comment below claiming they had permission from the user, no they didn't. Their agreement for that feature said they'd send anonymous usage data for the toolbar, the data they grabbed was not anonymous and not restricted to toolbar usage.
What they did was and is a criminal offense in many countries, yet the blusters and misdirection was enough to save them.