Bing is now Microsoft Bing as the search engine gets a rebrand

[surround]

Google got fined for just setting the default search engine on Android as Google. At least you could change it. Meanwhile, Windows 10 uses Bing in the search bar and there’s no option to change or disable it.

It’s pretty irritation when I search for a specific file that I know exists on my computer, but the search bar decides to search Bing for results instead.

The only way to disable it is to edit the registry (!), which I recommend doing because now results from my computer are delivered instantly instead of having to wait for Bing to load.

https://www.howtogeek.com/224159/how-to-disable-bing-in-the-...

People say Windows is more user friendly than Linux. I beg to differ.

[moksly]

I've used Windows as my main operating system since I 3.11. Sure I dabbled with Debian and Gentoo when I first go into CS, and I've had a few runs trying to use Fedora and Ubuntu as my main systems, but when I eventually landed a job in a Microsoft rich environment and got bored with having to screw with settings I settled on windows and OS/X on my laptop. OS/X even became Windows for about a year when WSL came about and I happened to get a surface pro.

But these days I really can't fathom using Windows for anything but video games, and well, work because I have to. It's such a terrible user experience for me, and I wonder where it all went wrong, because I used to genuinely like it.

[nirui]

This is one thing makes me tend to distrust Microsoft regardless how many people are chanting "MiCROsoFt is ReAlLy ChAnGed FoR ThE BeTTer". No, they always tries to grab something from you, little things here, little things there.

I got a Windows 10 Phone, and Edge is the only web browser that is available (Version 38.14393.2551.0 currently). According to my setting, Google should be the default search engine rather than Baidu which is an unremovable option for Chinese user.

However, from time to time (randomly I'd say), when I open Edge, the Baidu homepage pops up with a mystical tail "?tn=<a number>" in it's URL (while my setting is Google remind you).

Now, maybe you're thinking "Ha! this guy got a malwared Windows 10 Phone, kudos!". Well, guess what, thanks my slow Internet, I caught the redirector address hosted on go.microsoft.com right before it opens Baidu.

If you curl the address, which is https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=625115 to be specific, you will found:

    $ curl -v --head https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=625115 
    ......
    * Server certificate:
    *  subject: C=US; ST=WA; L=Redmond; O=Microsoft Corporation; OU=Microsoft Corporation; CN=go.microsoft.com
    *  start date: Sep  6 19:37:21 2019 GMT
    *  expire date: Sep  6 19:37:21 2021 GMT
    *  subjectAltName: host "go.microsoft.com" matched cert's "go.microsoft.com"
    *  issuer: C=US; ST=Washington; L=Redmond; O=Microsoft Corporation; OU=Microsoft IT; CN=Microsoft IT TLS CA 5
    *  SSL certificate verify ok.
    > HEAD /fwlink/?LinkId=625115 HTTP/1.1
    > Host: go.microsoft.com
    > User-Agent: curl/7.58.0
    > Accept: */*
    > 
    < HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
    HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
    < Content-Length: 0
    Content-Length: 0
    < Location: https://www.baidu.com/?tn=80035161_1_dg
    Location: https://www.baidu.com/?tn=80035161_1_dg
    ......

Well, to be completely fair, it's not the dirtiest little game that they've played during their entire existence. And, at the very least, they are indeed redirecting me to the HTTPS service rather than HTTP one. So I guess I should thank them for the merciful and care?

[grugagag]

Windows 10 keeps on installing Edge and luring me to set it the default web browser. It even looks exactly like chrome so users like my mom unknowingly start using it. I find that very deceptive.

Windows 10 is a horrible OS as far as I can tell. It tries to do things for me that I don't want to and I have to spend a few days to remove all the crap and bloat on a fresh setup then I have to figure out how to stop services that try to update and remove all my changes. I am using Windows 10 strictly for work otherwise I'd not touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's sad to see so many young people embrace Microsoft but I know their relationship won't last, I was one of them years and years ago.

[sharpneli]

I’ve had to do it few times now on different machines as having this on has broken the normal search completely. If bing doesn’t respond one cannot do any local search, basically breaking it completely.

[no_wizard]

I don’t think when people say Windows is more user friendly than Linux they’re specifically thinking of bing search on Windows I think that it has to do with the ease of usage and availability of software and familiarity the average person has with it.

To your point though not being able to disable or replace Bing in this capacity isn’t something I’m okay with either. I also wish you could truly turn off telemetry without registry hacks and such

[mtmail]

Bing mobile app (Android) backend leaked 6.5TB of user data in September https://www.wizcase.com/blog/bing-leak-research/ "The exposed data includes: [...] Search Terms in clear text, excluding the ones entered in private mode [...] Location Coordinates"

[z3t4]

I have only entered politically correct search terms, so I have nothing to worry about right?

[threatofrain]

Coincidentally Google recently rebranded Google Apps / G Suite to Google Workspace, and they reworked their pricing.

[snazz]

This is quite literally the first time I heard about Google rebranding G Suite—and I'm the super admin for my org. It seems very strange that I didn't get any emails or anything from Google about rebranding their product.

Edit: I just checked admin.google.com and there aren't any references to the new name or billing model, so I assume that they're still rolling it out beyond the marketing page at https://workspace.google.com.

[nikivi]

Is there anything that Bing does better than any other search engine?

I know DuckDuckGo is supposedly private. And has bangs & cheat sheets. But what is Bing's competitive edge? Heard it's good at images.

[chris_f]

Bing's biggest advantage might be its willingness to power other search engines. DDG, Qwant, Ecosia, Swisscows and about a dozen other alternative search engines [0] are all powered by Bing.

The exceptions are Runnaroo (Google), Startpage (Google), Mojeek, and Gigablast (both use their own index).

[0] https://www.searchenginemap.com/

[simonkafan]

One good thing is, you can officially use it as an API¹. I used it to automatically search for training images for an algorithm.

¹ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...

[overcast]

The image search experience is definitely superior to Google. Google image search is like trying to navigate the Pinterest UI without an account.

[mc32]

One thing they do much much less of is soft censorship. They don’t sanitize their suggested search phrases (as much).

So if a million people Bing for ‘Rob Snob is a carpenter ant eater’ and you type Rob Snob is ... it will dutifully suggest ‘a carpenter ant eater’ unlike google which soft censors such things.

[hn_throwaway_99]

It's much better than Google when searching for porn.

[hkmurakami]

"It's not google" is probably their #1 value proposition (DDG offers the same, but MSFT has better mainstream brand awareness).

This is meant without snark. It's probably the first alternative people will go to if they're wary of the level of tracking Google is capable of.

[x87678r]

Rewards are good, I get about $10/mo. I also like Bing because it brings competition on Google. The results are good for nearly everything I search for.

[luckylion]

> Heard it's good at images.

They have a pretty picture on the front page each day. That was the argument a client gave me once why she used Bing.

[Brendinooo]

I get paid something like $30-35/year in gift cards to use it. I'm not sure I have another reason.

[xnyan]

Bing video search will consider sources other than youtube. Also the lack of (or at least, much less) censorship than google.

[reallifepixel]

You get rewards points for using it and you can redeem them for stuff. That's nice.

[orangepanda]

It doesnt have an annoying popup which google and even DDG insists on.

[Austin_Conlon]

Sports scores are better, for example for tennis it’ll visualize the tournament draw.

[thom]

Right now, not really. But they already own GitHub, could easily acquire Stack Overflow, and probably then make a play at being the best developer focused search engine. Even then though, still probably no.

[warbucks]

Honestly, porn search with Bing is pretty great. It doesn't care where the results come from, so its a great aggregator of multiple porn sites.

[ctingom]

So I’ve been using Bing for 3 years now. I like it a lot.

[known]

Have you tried !g in DDG in Tor Browser ? It sucks;

[mtmail]

What does typing 'g!' in duckduckgo using the Tor Browser show?

[practice9]

Chandler Bing