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I don’t think this needs to be a conspiracy. Bing is far behind. I worked on a suicide awareness project when I was at Quora, and at least at the time Google ha

I don’t think this needs to be a conspiracy. Bing is far behind. I worked on a suicide awareness project when I was at Quora, and at least at the time Google had help links featured for suicide subjects and Bing had instructions on how to kill yourself. Arguably Bing had the better search results but not the high ground. This could be another one of those cases.

onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>I worked on a suicide awareness project when I was at Quora, and at least at the time Google had help links featured for suicide subjects and Bing had instructions on how to kill yourself. Arguably Bing had the better search results but not the high ground. This is not being behind, it's showing what the user wants. BING should have banners or ads on suicide prevention, that's all. If you want to kill yourself, a suicide prevention page is not the most relevant one. This story is to give a black eye to MSFT, they could have just told them instead of doing studies, but that doesn't bring clicks to their site. A lot of times competitors are behind such stories. Not necessarily google, it could be a vendor hoping that MS hires them.
- codezero 8y ago
  It’s definitely being behind. Helping your users die will affect your ability to profit from them in the future, it also costs almost nothing to show a suicide prevention banner with a help line, and they are known to help prevent suicide. That said, I’m not at all arguing that a competitor or vendor wasn’t the reason for this article.
ickler9 8y ago
Bing is totally behind, agreed. I probably shouldn't have included the part that maybe Google had the issue and fixed it because I actually don't believe that, and it detracts from the point. I totally agree Google has the absolute high ground here. Which, I won't lie, made me suspicious; particularly with Microsoft doing well in the press recently and Google, well, not. I'm biased because I generally like Microsoft better than Google, but this whole thing begs the question: why was this directed to the media before Microsoft? Both could've been made aware. Plenty of disclosure-like articles are written with the claim "at press time, the <problem> is no longer showing" and they're no less impactful. With child pornography, of all things, why the hell is Tech Crunch pushing this story so quickly that they had to issue a warning to not look up the links because you could be liable? Like, Microsoft is going to be rightfully shamed either way, ya really need to maximize the shock value with that extra bit? At the cost of leaving active child pornography in the open. Come on.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

>>I worked on a suicide awareness project when I was at Quora, and at least at the time Google had help links featured for suicide subjects and Bing had instructions on how to kill yourself. Arguably Bing had the better search results but not the high ground. This is not being behind, it's showing what the user wants. BING should have banners or ads on suicide prevention, that's all. If you want to kill yourself, a suicide prevention page is not the most relevant one. This story is to give a black eye to MSFT, they could have just told them instead of doing studies, but that doesn't bring clicks to their site. A lot of times competitors are behind such stories. Not necessarily google, it could be a vendor hoping that MS hires them.

codezero 8y ago
It’s definitely being behind. Helping your users die will affect your ability to profit from them in the future, it also costs almost nothing to show a suicide prevention banner with a help line, and they are known to help prevent suicide. That said, I’m not at all arguing that a competitor or vendor wasn’t the reason for this article.

ickler9 8y ago

Bing is totally behind, agreed. I probably shouldn't have included the part that maybe Google had the issue and fixed it because I actually don't believe that, and it detracts from the point. I totally agree Google has the absolute high ground here. Which, I won't lie, made me suspicious; particularly with Microsoft doing well in the press recently and Google, well, not. I'm biased because I generally like Microsoft better than Google, but this whole thing begs the question: why was this directed to the media before Microsoft? Both could've been made aware. Plenty of disclosure-like articles are written with the claim "at press time, the <problem> is no longer showing" and they're no less impactful. With child pornography, of all things, why the hell is Tech Crunch pushing this story so quickly that they had to issue a warning to not look up the links because you could be liable? Like, Microsoft is going to be rightfully shamed either way, ya really need to maximize the shock value with that extra bit? At the cost of leaving active child pornography in the open. Come on.