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."
more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they haven't gotten caught yet
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the same could be said of everyone.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:3, Funny)
Hey! I know Noone! How is the old rascal doing??
Tell him I said hi!
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:2)
Ask him how his android project is going.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Funny)
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:2)
How is the old rascal doing??
He woke up this morning feelin' fine.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Funny)
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Funny)
fucking WANKERS
I do believe that's an oxymoron.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:2)
Yeah, they haven't gotten caught yet
Heh. Well, technically speaking, doesn't that mean that they really can claim it then?
(I apologize in advance if that's a whosh.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:2)
Well, maybe not Ballmer.
Please don't tell me that Gates is dumber than Monkey Boy, I don't think I could cope.
I'd go into some sort of "does not compute" meltdown like "vger" did on that Star Trek episode I'm sure.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:2)
I think, Ballmer dumber than Gates, but in Gates' opinion Ballmer is smarter.
Gates' ambition was to become a great engineer and programmer, and he could easily see that he is a failure, especially compared to other people he seen in Harvard and computer companies at that time. His greatest engineering achievement was a BASIC interpreter -- at the time it was approximately at the level of what now would be writing an address book in PHP. It sounds complex because no one bothers doing those things now, and many lazy students are allowed to skip classes on languages and parsers, but at the time it was a mundane project, often performed by students as a routine exercise. He was hopelessly outmatched by anyone who had a clue about hardware, operating systems, compilers, CS theory, etc. I don't think, Gates would become such a monster without this inferiority complex eating at him endlessly, forcing him to abuse and subjugate more and more people until whole industries became hostage to his stupidity.
Ballmer's ambition was to be a successful and powerful businessman, and he succeeded at that. When Ballmer acts like abusive moron, he reaffirms his power over people who have to tolerate his antics with monkey dances and chairs. He is exactly where he wants to be -- except, of course, he would prefer to have even more power.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:3)
You're really full of shit and hate.
Gates' ambition was to become a great engineer and programmer, and he could easily see that he is a failure
He's a failure because his direct programming efforts led to a successful company that he parlayed into the dominant computer company for about 20 years?
On his ambitions [vanityfair.com]: "His parents subscribed to Fortune, and Bill read it religiously. One day he showed me the magazine's special annual issue and asked me, "What do you think it's like to run a Fortune 500 company?" I said I had no idea. And Bill said, "Maybe we'll have our own company someday." He was 13 years old and already a budding entrepreneur."
His greatest engineering achievement was a BASIC interpreter
He had to write it for an extremely limited platform in assembly, the kind of optimization that Woz gets accolades for on his early work for Apple. Gates, along with his two partners, was also the first to do it for the Altair. He recognized the opportunity and succeeded first. By the time IBM came knocking, he was already the head of a successful company.
And calling Gates dumb just proves your ignorance and hate: "When Bill got the news that he'd been accepted at Harvard University, he wasn't surprised; he'd been riding high since scoring near the top in the Putnam Competition, where he'd tested his math skills against college undergraduates around the country."
The article goes on to point out that he was humbled at Harvard with regards to math, but calling him "the dumbest person in Harvard" is just hateful assertion on your part.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:4, Insightful)
The can also be good and bad at the same company. No company gets to the size of MS etc. without someone doing something evil. Hell even Linux has had at least one murderer work on it; statistically companies that size must have all sorts.
With the possible exception of Oracle no tech. company sets out to be evil.
Microsoft's bad name has mainly come from their cut-throat approach to competitors (of which OSS is one) and the even worse treatment of their supposed partners. However they have historically treated developers well, and respected privacy.
Despite their motto and their many-many good deeds, this is far from the first time Google have deliberately violated people's privacy (Streetview springs to mind), and even when court have never given wholehearted apologies.
As with all things you have to choose your poison, then take responsibility for limiting your own risks.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:3)
Microsoft has gotten a little nicer lately. Mostly because they are no longer number one. They need to fight much harder to stay relevant in an arguably post PC world.
And what hurt them the most? Not Apple, not Java, not Linux, But the Google and their products.
Why Google, it changed the priorities of the Developers. When Gmail and Google Maps came out, there was a company that wasn't afraid to put a product out there that used newer web technologies to make richer Web Application that run just as well on Linux, Mac, your phone, as it does on Windows. What that did was say THIS Technology is here and enough people are using it to be viable and if you don't have it then you need to upgrade. Now that we had a big player open the flood doors to us, we were allowed to make richer Web Applications. (Yes I hear a collective grone from Slashdot users who still wish that we only Telnet (well maybe SSH now) into a BBS like system vs the web, and did all their browsing via VT100 terminal set) But application and system performance aside this mean more and more software written no longer NEEDS a particular OS, but a standard compliment browser. So for most people now with the exceptions of Games we are buying less software (including the cheap bargain bin stuff) and going to the web to use more services, and companies custom app development has gone more web based too, so your OS for the workstations is less relevant then ever.
Now that this has happen Microsoft needs to adjust, however their history was too abusive. Near the end of it, people used Microsoft products because they had to not because they wanted too. Now that we have choices we are not going to Microsoft. Bing bs Google. Sure Bing is probably just as good if not even a little better then Google but besides a couple lapses in evilness we as the end user never felt wronged by Google.
Re:more privacy oriented Bing search engine (Score:2)
M$ is hopping that safari users will move accross so they can start.
Now I have a mental image of Steve Balmy jumping up and down somewhere in Kenia... Thanks a lot!
DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Interesting)
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, Insightful)
Interesting i would have thought that with the ! symbol meaning "NOT" the rest of th universe that it would display shopping results for every but amazon.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
Yeah, it's kind of an odd choice, especially because I'm sure the average person who uses DDG is of a more tech-oriented nature. Maybe #amazon would be better?
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
! Doesn't mean NOT in CSS :) !important for example....
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
! Doesn't mean NOT in CSS :) !important for example....
Using CSS as an example of right practice is like using Microsoft as an example of right behavior.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
Interesting i would have thought that with the ! symbol meaning "NOT" the rest of th universe that it would display shopping results for every but amazon.
Just like a UNIX shell script should run using any interpreter but the one on the first line?
Granted, that starts with #! [wikipedia.org] not !, but that's because # introduces a comment in shell script and the first line needs to be commented out so the interpreter doesn't try to run it.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:3)
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.
I wish I could say the same. I do everything to minimize google's tracking of me - no cookies, no other google services, no javascript, etc. So as best I can tell, I get google's searches without the filter bubble. [wikipedia.org] But I still found google to be significantly more effective than DDG. I consider myself to have some damn fine google-fu, so maybe I just don't "get" DDG but whatever the reason I found myself using the !g operator so often that I decided to save a step and just start my searches at google to begin with.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
"extended compact genetic algorithm" [google.com]
"extended compact genetic algorithm" [bing.com]
"extended compact genetic algorithm" [google.com]
Proposing a simple scoring mechanism with the score being the number of papers (PDF and PS files) actually linked to in the first page of results:
google.com - score 5
bing.com - score 4
scholar.google.com - score 8
I have mentioned this search term ("extended compact genetic algorithm") before about articles related to google and bing. Pretty much every time a Google vs Bing article comes up, I fire up this search on both to see how things have improved or gotten worse. Regular Google used to be a lot better, and Bing used to be a lot worse. I only add google scholar to show how good things might actually be if these sites stopped allowing pay-walls at the top.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
Bing's app doesn't appear to work on Android tablets (which appears intentional)
What's wrong with this picture?
Verizon (Score:2)
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you need an app to use a web search engine?
(I mean, I know they exist and people use them... but why??)
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:3)
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:3)
You don't have to open Google front page, just open the browser and type the search string into the address bar - worked since forever on Android, and on iOS since v5. Granted, that's still one extra step compared to using a widget, but only assuming that you start at your home screen. I'm far more likely to face the app that I was using last when unlocking my phone.
As a side note, on stock Android 4.x, you're pretty much stuck with a non-configurable & non-removable widget for Google, on the top of the home screen.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:3)
Yah (Score:2)
Yup. Even DDG seems to know this, as they provide links to other search engines with their results. DDG is now even advertising on a rather shocking website, but the point is probably Moot.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:3, Insightful)
why yes, a bing based search aka duck duck go is based on privacy?
do tell! /facepalm
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
DuckDuckGo's entire advertising strategy is based off of privacy.
DuckDuckGo's entire advertising strategy is based on privacy. 'based off of' is nonsense.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
DuckDuckGo's entire advertising strategy is based off of privacy.
It's clearly not based on making a search engine that finds what you're looking for.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:3)
Among others.
http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-sources [duckduckgo.com]
Short version: DuckDuckBot, Yahoo!, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing, and Blekko.
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Funny)
Yahoo!'s boss came from Google. She's not a Google tool, but she did used to date one: Larry Page. Depending on how that ended they may she may be more open to a mutually beneficial relationship than the old boss. Or she may want to kill Google. Or maybe both, depending on the lunar calendar. Who knows? She's knocked up right now and so not as susceptible to lunacy as young owners of her gender usually are.
Oh, God am I going to get hate for this post. It's humor folks. Laugh a little. If we can't enjoy the human condition and find it funny, what have we got?
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
She's knocked up right now and so not as susceptible to lunacy as young owners of her gender usually are.
So, you're not a father then...
Re:DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
Or she's a spy from Google, and works at Yahoo to kill it !
Re:No ... (Score:4, Interesting)
startpage [slashdot.org] is way better for privacy and much better results since it uses google. why the hell do people keep using DuckDuckGo?
Re:No ... (Score:3)
god I've grown old (Score:3, Funny)
Google breaching user privacy and Microsoft advocating privacy
Re:god I've grown old (Score:5, Funny)
Google breaching user privacy and Microsoft advocating privacy
I have to keep a cheat-sheet to remind me who's the good guys and who's the bad guys these days.
Re:god I've grown old (Score:5, Insightful)
simple... bad guys: everyone else ;)
good guys: me
Privacy? Bing? (Score:5, Insightful)
PRC: Censor or go away (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:PRC: Censor or go away (Score:2)
Do you have any citations for any of this, especially for Brin's emotions in this? Everything I've ever found has been more tempered, or did you add emphasis?
Re:PRC: Censor or go away (Score:2)
"Certainly this didn't come from the President directly as he taught Constitutional Law"
Yeah, Obama is Mr. Obama Constitution, right
Re:PRC: Censor or go away (Score:3)
Certainly this didn't come from the President directly as he taught Constitutional Law
I'm sure he had nothing to do with this either, right?
http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-lohier-ndaa-stay-414/ [rt.com]
Re:Privacy? Bing? (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, it's "fuck you peons".
Re:Privacy? Bing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's motto is only 3 words long. Is it really that hard to get right?
Apparently so.
Google seems to be having trouble with it, anyway.
Re:Privacy? Bing? (Score:3)
It's not even their motto. It was just an internal memo with a personal company mantra that got leaked. It's not as though Google has ever publicly pushed that "motto". I'm sure they regret that it even got out given how often it's used as some sort of confirmation that they're twisted liars.
Re:Privacy? Bing? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil [wikipedia.org]
Point #6 of http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ [google.com]
Though you're correct that "Don't do evil" is incorrect and that "Don't be evil" is/was an informal motto.
The philosophy and idea, regardless of the wording of the motto, is still a part of the company though.
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:Things can be relative (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Privacy? Bing? (Score:2)
Yep, I have a Facebook account (that I almost never use), and also use both Google and Bing. Yet, neither of them has any access to that Facebook account; I keep it separate. Bing *offers* to let me connect my searches to Facebook, but doesn't do so automatically in any way.
If you sign into G+ and then go use Google, is the search integration opt-in or opt-out? This is an honest question; I don't use G+ so I have no idea.
Collusion (Score:2)
Re:Privacy? Bing? (Score:3)
And this relates to privacy... how?
For all the bad things that Microsoft has done, abusing user expectations of privacy was not one. As far as I can remember, it have always been upfront about what it does with user information, and generally allow opt-out settings.
I always prefer other search engines because Google have its hooks in too many webpages with Analytics and advertising that it can track back to my gmail account.
6 and 1, half a dozen of the other (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:6 and 1, half a dozen of the other (Score:2)
6 OF 1 you mean? Or am i missing a joke?
Re:6 and 1, half a dozen of the other (Score:3)
7 of 9?
Re:6 and 1, half a dozen of the other (Score:2)
Always wanted to do a 6 of 9 with her.
That's because she's such a clock tease [youtube.com].
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:Trust Microsoft. No, really. (Score:3)
Microsoft competing with someone?! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow.. this is definitely news. A competitor of MS made a mistake, and they're attempting to gain an advantage from it.
It's like... they're competing or something.
More stories like this /.
This is groundbreaking stuff
Choices, choices... (Score:2)
Is it November already?
Lesser of two evils, indeed.
Say what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Say what? (Score:3)
Google was acting like Microsoft and as a result MS expects people to use a Microsoft product instead?
notifications are not that bad (Score:2)
I'm hoping they will not modify current notifications in a bad way. current ones are useful for regular desktop use. I'm sure they're not as useful for FB, twitter announces and that sort of crap and it seems to be what they want to fix.
The stuff nerds like me don't give a rat's ass about.
This could be huge. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This could be huge. (Score:4, Funny)
Converting those users would increase Bings userbase by a significant percent
Wikipedia as a "search engine" (Score:3)
If you're not looking for something only two people and their dogs care about, Wikipedia can provide enough information to get you up to speed. Even with the deletionists, trolls, and shills, I find Wikipedia to be more relevant, if not more accurate, than running a typical Google search which would point to a Wikipedia article anyway.
The reference/links section at the end of an article is often more valuable than the article itself, which is how I use Wikipedia as a "search" engine. Like any large web site, Wikipedia has a site search feature, which, as far as I can tell, has not been outsourced to the two or three search giants. The major browsers can also be configured to use Wikipedia as a search engine.
Of course what we really need is a true crowd-sourced search engine that isn't controlled by a single humongous corporation. But there's already more information in Wikipedia than when Google started indexing the web in the late 1990s. This trove of information can serve as the seed.
and more crap oriented (Score:2)
yay great my search engine has a animated background, and shows me at least one page of kittens for an image search, just what I wanted when I pay out the ass per byte
bling? (Score:3)
In my first scan of the headline I thought it said "Microsoft Urging Safari Users To Use Bling"... which makes just about as much sense.
Google vs Microsoft. (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft sells Software, Google sells You.
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.
I have a little different take on this (Score:3, Insightful)
First, nowhere on that page does Microsoft pledge not to track you. Second, Microsoft has a vested interest in shooting everyone who honors DNT in the head so that they can't get any more revenue by being better at analytics than Microsoft. Third, Microsoft sites fail to honor DNT, even if you are dumb and use IE9. Fourth, the DNT standard was written such that DNT was opt-in, not opt-out, and Microsoft is failing to implement the standard with IE9.
So the business model is:
(1) Ruin every honest web sites analytics by DNT-by-default in IE9
(2) Ignore the DNT sent by IE9 and other browsers when doing their own analytics
(3) Become the sole source of qualified targeted advertising as a result
(4) Profit!
There isn't even a "???" step in there.
Re:I have a little different take on this (Score:3)
First, nowhere on that page does Microsoft pledge not to track you.
They don't have to. Safari has privacy settings, Google was fined $22.5 million for using hacks that managed to get around those privacy settings, so the presumption is that Microsoft isn't going to do anything that will get them a similar fine. The presumption was the same for Google, but Google proved us wrong.
sorry (Score:3)
Sorry, MS, but Google will have to engage in at least a decade of evilness before they are even in the same league as you.
Who the hell... (Score:2)
Fixed that for you (Score:2)
Microsoft is urging... users to switch to Bing
In other news, water is wet!
Dear Lord!! (Score:2)
A large company sees what they perceive as a potential weakness or leverage point in a competitor's product and throws some marketing dollars around to try and take advantage of it.
Will the horrors never cease...
Re:Clunk! (Score:3, Interesting)
For this reason I avoid Bing like the plague and use IE for what it was meant for: a download tool for a real browser.
Re:LOL MS we've learned our lesson. (Score:2)
Re:Google is more evil than Microsoft ever was (Score:5, Insightful)
That linked-to blog is rather full of shit.
I avoid using Google for searching 99% of the time, block AdSense, Google Analytics, and usually Google APIs, but this is over the top:
Just bullshit. They are, if anything overly eager to have content pulled based upon loose matches by copyright bots.
Some of that copyrighted content is posted by the rights holders as advertising too.
Then there's this steaming turd:
Criminally insane? Greedy maybe, but the only one criminally insane is the anonymous blogger that posted this crap.
Of course it isn't.
Oh really? I don't trust them, but they've been remarkably non-evil considering the amount of power they wield.
Agreed.
They push for an open internet with open standards where ever they can; they could push closed standards but don't -- that's relatively noble, for a corporate entity.
Same with all ad-based content.
I don't and help others block their trackers and use other search engines.
They are the lesser of 5 evils (Apple, MS, Oracle, FaceBook, Google). I fear that someday they could become enormously evil, but for now the blogger is a hyperventilating, hyperbolic douche.