Go to a website and you will see it. Split a virtual piece of wood and it is there. I’m talking of course about the annoying, omnipresent ads for the search engine Bing, by Microsoft. It/they simply will not leave me alone. I’m sure it’s a fine product, no doubt a great deal of effort and maybe even some love went into it. It’s nothing personal. But I am simply not going to use Bing no matter how much you pester me and that constant pestering is now beginning to irritate me.
Call me stuck in a rut, label me a a closed-minded aging creature of habit, whatevs. But I’m not going to switch unless Google breaks or unless all the techno-kids I work with suddenly start talking Bing up. Neither of those things has happened and the latter would have happened by now if it was going too. Please, MSFT, leave me in peace with one of the few constants I can still count on when using the Internet.
I have a friend who (briefly) switched to Bing because he was uncomfortable with just how much of his online life was being funnelled through Google. It bothered him that one company had that much influence.
It lasted less than two weeks before he switched back. Bing is fine, but it’s going to be mighty hard to top Google.
OTOH, Microsoft’s Bing is doing a much better job of going head to head with the omnipresent G than Apple’s mapping service is…
My present computer came with Bing as the default. I used Bing long enough to load Google and make it my home page. I then moved the Bing icon to a handy desktop folder I have labeled “unused icons”. If something happens to Google then I have bing available.
Totally unrelated to Bing but I love that you call Microsoft “MSFT” after its ticker symbol. I have the same habit, to the point that I was surprised to learn that Research In Motion only has one “M” :)
I have a similar reaction.
If Microsoft were not trying so hard to foist Bing on me, maybe I would give it a test run. But I rebel against the pressure.
DuckDuckGo uses Bing as a background search engine, does a very good job of filtering out irrelevant responses, promises not to send yr personal info out to
The Dark Sidemarketers, and doesn’t push ads at every blink.So far, in a few months of regular use, I’ve been quite happy with it.
(A personal, spontaneous, unsponsored & unremunerated testimonial.)
One of my GPS apps on my iPhone (ironically enough) uses Bing for its search engine. The first year or so, about 4 times out of 5, I would have to go to google maps to actually search for the address, then copy/paste the address into the Bing powered app.
It seems they finally got the search function pretty well up to snuff, but there are still times that I need google maps to find something that the GOS app itself can’t.
I suspect if Apple really does stop using google maps, I’ll just get an Android or similar phone.
I use bing for only one reason. They pay me. Not a lot, I get a point for every 2 searches up to 10 points a day, and it takes 125 points to buy what I want (100 ms points), but since I’m always searching I usually get my points, and every few months I get to use those points to buy a free xbox game.
I don’t use either, or at least not directly; I prefer to use Qrobe.it instead. It’s quite minimalistic and I haven’t heard anything bad about it.
@5 – I also started using DuckDuckGo recently, and I’m loving it. The results are much more relevant than what I’ve seen with either Bing or Google from their front pages.
I haven’t used bing much, nor have I noticed saturation advertising for it. I usually search using google.
But if you just want to find a specific piece of information, I’d advocate for http://www.wolframalpha.com/ It _usually_ just gives you the answer, rather than links to hundreds or millions of webpages that might be what you are looking for. Last time I used it was after a discussion on counterfeit gold wafers with tungsten inserts in them – very difficult to detect, apparently. so I asked wolframalpha density tungsten gold and there was the answer – 19.25 and 19.3 . I also ask for ISS to find when the space station is visible.
Wolf is awesome. I’m sure one day there will be nexgen SE’s that do amazing and useful things … but today is not that day.
I use Bing, DuckDuckGo. Rarely anymore do I use Google. I switched due to the increasing pervasiveness of it’s tracking and what I would call surveilance (sp?). Example. I searched for a cure to a garden plant issue on Google. Up pops 5-6 great blogging sites and discussion on remedies. The next day I searched again as I had forgotten a few things. I used the exact same search words. Up popped as the top searched sites companies selling products. That is not what I want in a search engine.
I use different search engines depending on the browser and the email I have open, in a probably vain attempt to limit the database that anyone search provider has on me. Bing and Yahoo are alright for easy searches, but in my experience, inferior to Google. However, sounds like I should try duck duck go or qrobe.
I haven’t noticed a lot of bing ads on sites, but I’d rather see ads in their standard location on pages rather than ads in my search results like with Google.