14 ms·

'Google' is most searched word on Bing

331 points by awb 5y ago

blunte 5y ago
People go to the name they know. Since for many (most?) people, the word “google” is a verb meaning to search the web, they naturally will prefer that service even if they don’t know why it might be better than whatever is the default. Meanwhile, it reminds me that we developers don’t understand users or don’t provide understandable interfaces for them. Observe many people and you’ll see a maddening pattern of browser use: they will use any available method to get to google, and then they will put a url into the google search text box. Perhaps the address bar is inconveniently too high on the screen, or maybe they just don’t know what a url is.
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  Not to mention some search “google” in the Google search box which is there on their browser homepage but not labeled as google. They don’t trust text fields unless it’s in google website’s environment.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    Makes me wonder if google might be the most searched term on google as well. I wouldn't be at all surprised.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Facebook was more searched, but not any longer. Probably is some other term still more searched on Google. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=google,amazon,facebook https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
  - morebortplates 5y ago
    If you type 'google' into Google, you will break the internet!!!
- politelemon 5y ago
  > Observe many people and you’ll see a maddening pattern of browser use: they will use any available method to get to google, and then they will put a url into the google search text box. Perhaps the address bar is inconveniently too high on the screen, or maybe they just don’t know what a url is. I would have been dismissive of this a few years ago, but I would have been wrong. I have seen many people including developers, _WEB_ developers, do this. Some of them can't be bothered to change their default search engine even though the option is available, it's almost muscle memory to type 'www.google.com' into the search box, and then click a result, and then search for what they wanted on google.com. Well they are grateful to me when I change their default search engine for convenience. But when pointing out that they can just type their search terms into the address bar, I am given the indulgent, polite "thank you but not interested in this microefficiency" smile.
  - blunte 5y ago
    > "thank you but not interested in this microefficiency" This one. Blows my mind every time.
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    > "thank you but not interested in this micro efficiency" smile I've seen a friend press caps lock, type a letter and press caps again to type capital letters. That's the smile I got when I introduced them the shift key. Also the smile my niece had when the car mechanic was explaining to him how he could spare some gas money by up-shifting early. Also the smile I had when my wife was giving me tips on how to plan meetings better. Humans suck :)
    - blunte 5y ago
      When we follow the good suggestion, we don't suck at all. That's how humans should work. It's when we reject the wise advice because... because we're stubborn?... that is when it sucks. The thing about this url search is that they type the full url, sometimes even with the "http" bit (rarely https, but I digress), into the search field. then they get the results page a second or two later, and then _maybe_ they click the correct result if they didn't get mislead by some crappy SEO magic. That's a lot of extra work just to get to hopefully arrive at the same page they would have arrived at had they typed that url into the address field.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  They don't know what a url is, and to them the address bar is the search box, and the search box is the address bar. Developers of all the major browsers made the two elements work interchangeably. A power user can create a web navigation system with plug-ins and customizations that rival a space shuttle for complexity and sophistication. The novice user, and users that are tech challenged can get stuck on the most basic uses of browsers. The trouble with catering to the "bad users" is that every forced simplification removes an opportunity for learning to be better. Every removed and hidden feature "for their own good" amplifies the feedback loop of dumbing down the user of the software, enabling a stasis of competence hovering around some arbitrarily chosen threshold of functionality. In the case of big tech, keeping users dumb and incompetent is a tool to reinforce the walled gardens. Keeping the consumer ignorant of nuance and flexibility creates artificial problems that are solved with more dumb software, gatekeeping every possible increment of utility by making everything a commercial transaction. I had a user who was proudly showing me a 99 cent app that allowed them to ping things from their phone. When I showed them the command line and that they'd already had the ability to do that from their laptop, they were embarrassed and a little annoyed. Their ignorance was encouraged and cultivated throughout the time they spent trying to find a solution to a problem, guiding them to an app store and to waste money on an app. Artificial incompetence is the defining feature of those who reside in walled gardens. It seems to be the rock bottom to which big tech companies race, because it's the most efficient way to perpetuate a revenue stream. Not only treating people as incompetents, but developing the ux and ui around that core assumption. There's definitely a place for simplicity and user friendly design, but artificial incompetence is a scourge, one of the worst anti-patterns affecting consumers. There needs to be a culture shift away from rent seeking software design and toward making users as competent and knowledgeable as possible.
  - josefx 5y ago
    > Developers of all the major browsers made the two elements work interchangeably. You can still disable that in firefox, but it is so badly tested that it somehow breaks the search field on its default home screen.
  - Kaibeezy 5y ago
    “Artificial incompetence” Good one. I’ll be using it. Thanks for that.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  If I'm not using bookmark, I'm using the same approach. Because of simple reason: If I would make a typo, Google will correct it and I will not land in a some faecbook.com.
  - dagw 5y ago
    I also don't have to try to remember whether or not Widgeco's Sweden site is widgeco.se, se.widgeco.com or widgeco.com/se.
- OJFord 5y ago
  > Since for many (most?) people, the word “google” is a verb meaning to search the web I've started to really oppose that, and avoid it in my own speech. ('search' is fine.) It may sound like a stupid trivial thing, but language is so.. powerful/important, and I don't need Google ingrained in mine. It was difficult/didn't come naturally at first, but now I use 'search' without thinking about it, and if anything it sounds weird to me when others say 'google'. I also think if I were Google ('s lawyer, or in some appropriate/ly-senior position or whatever) I wouldn't feel great about it - it's surely quite damning in any competition law cases on search?
  - stardenburden 5y ago
    Thing is, google doesn't want you to really use the term google because it makes creating a trademark ever so harder. </Fun little side fact> I'm sure they also have concerns about it being coming over as monopolistic behavior
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Good point, I didn't think about trademarking. Bing changing its button label from 'search' (or 'go' or whatever it currently is) to 'google' would be fun to watch play out!
cmarschner 5y ago
So, not “facebook” like it used to?
- malikNF 5y ago
  That crowed probably installed the app on their phone.
oaiey 5y ago
But not the other way around. How embarrassing :)
- erk__ 5y ago
  I wonder how far up "Google" is as a search termon Google
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    FWIW https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today+5-y&q=google,bing https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today+5-y&q=go...
    - josefx 5y ago
      Interest in Google seems to be on a downwards trend, is the company nearing its end?
    - mavhc 5y ago
      I tried to find the same thing on Bing, but they wanted me to login, says it all really.
tpmx 5y ago
But Google says its service is simply the most popular. "We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is, by far, 'Google'" I assume they have collected this evidence from Chrome users?
- mavhc 5y ago
  0 Chrome users use Bing (rounded down)
- luke2m 5y ago
  Probably not, I imagine the vast majority of this would be from Edge for Windows users.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    How would they get that data?
    - reverseblade2 5y ago
      Referrals
      - tpmx 5y ago
        To google.com? Sure, but what about non-google-related searches on Bing?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hermitsings 5y ago
Probably boomers or Gen X
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  Excuse me?! It is disingenuous to infer that a complete demographic doesn't know about how the Internet works. For some late-age Boomers, I would agree that a large percentage of them would do this, but Gen-Xers are in their 40s and 50s, and most of them have literally grown up surrounded by technology.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Old people arent idiots they can learn. My 66 year old mom is cashless, does her banking in an app and orders groceries online.
    - mavhc 5y ago
      To be fair, your mother has a child who posts on HN, she's not the average 66 year old.
    - mattowen_uk 5y ago
      Late-age boomers are in their mid-70s, not mid-60s. Edit: Did my grandparent comment get voted down because people don't know what 'disingenuous' means?
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        No, some of HN is apparently ageist and loves Reddit boomer memes. You got downvoted for calling GP out. I flagged him because it's offensive and a sweeping generalization.
  - indianpianist 5y ago
    What did he say? It just says "[flagged]" now
achairapart 5y ago
No doubt Google is far more popular than Bing, and "to google" is synonymous with search itself. But one important difference to note may be that while "Bing" is almost used only for the search engine, the word "Google" is associated with a very large number of different products: - Google Meet - Google Home - Google Pixel - Google Dooodles And so on...
tgv 5y ago
And most of google's searches are (at least, were) complete URLs, so there's that.
Kaibeezy 5y ago
What’s the most commonly entered URL in Edge? The only one I’ve ever typed is google.com/chrome
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Given that Edge is Chromium based, what exactly makes you pick Chrome over Edge?
  - mavhc 5y ago
    All my stuff is in Chrome, history, cookies, passwords
    - mrweasel 5y ago
      Some how not the answer I expected, but I can see the argument. I keep nothing in my browser, besides a few bookmarks, so it didn't occur to me that someone would care about those things being automatically transferred over.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        It can be transferred. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/what-s-imported-to-the-new-microsoft-edge-ab7d9fa1-4586-23ce-8116-e46f44987ac2 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/what-s-im...
        mavhc 5y ago
        Then I'd have to sign in to MS instead of Google to store everything, I've acheived nothing.
  - Kaibeezy 5y ago
    Force of habit. Inertia. Familiarity. Bad aftertaste from IE.
ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
Part of the problem Microsoft have is that they just set the default to bing, people open it and don’t know what it is so search google. These same people don’t know how to change their default search so keep searching for google. If they wanted these people to stay they should get rid of their background image and just give a search box like google does - basically trick people into staying.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  Something I've noticed with my work machine. The homepage in Edge is some mangled mash up of Bing News tiles and my works' SharePoint activity, and is just branded 'Microsoft'. Non technical people stuck with this homepage are very likely to just type 'Google' into it to "get them out onto the Internet".
  - notimetorelax 5y ago
    And technical people might prefer faster loading lightweight pages to Bing’s. Target audience for bing is weird.
    - altacc 5y ago
      The target audience for Bing's homepage is a bunch of product owners in MS who want their crap on the homepage to try to increase their interaction metrics.
    - iso1210 5y ago
      I used google maps the other day on my phone for the first in in ages (to see if they had anything for the fuel issues in the UK at the moment). I was amazed how full of junk I wasn't interested in getting in the way of the actual map. I remember when google beat places like yahoo and excite because it had a simple clean interface.
  - dagw 5y ago
    Yea, the Edge homepage is atrocious and looks like a spam site. I don't blame people for wanting to get away from it and to something that looks more trustworthy ASAP.
qalmakka 5y ago
To be fair, Bing search is pretty much at a level comparable to google in the early '10s in my experience, so I understand why people are not thrilled by it. It's _fine_, but it's definitely not up to par with Google, not even close.
nix23 5y ago
Hey! That was my joke for years.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cblconfederate 5y ago
Dear Microsoft, You fools, you own a gate to the internet. When i search 8*9 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9". Make the menu auto-complete with the titles of the first 5 web results instead of random ads. Make it work well as an actually useful extension of search. Forget about edge and bing.com, you will care about the brand name later. (You can thank me later with a sizeable compensation package)
- rawoke083600 5y ago
  Ja, the best advice I ever heard was, "do something right and the money will (probably) follow". Sure it's a massive generalization and doesn't always "work" but dammit it's a very good starting point. Much better than: "How do we get the most money for a user ?"
- reedf1 5y ago
  >show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9" As far as I can tell - it already does this. Now I hate how it works and it looks bad, but it does show web search results for what I type in the start menu. And I will actually push back a bit on the start menu because I hate that the start menu searches the web. I want it to search my computer, I have a browser for web searches.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    i must be doing something wrong. I get a list of suggested web searches, not a list of results. like "search for 8*9", "search for 8*96" etc
    - reedf1 5y ago
      Huh - when I type 8*9 I get a search pane (that shows what you are describing) and a web pane. The web pane shows bing results.
      - cblconfederate 5y ago
trabant00 5y ago
I find weird to say, but I actually like Bing. It has a LOT less bullshit compared to google. It searches for what I asked it, not about what it thinks I actually want, image search and in general the interface has less dark patterns. My main SE is duckduckgo, but using Bing out of curiosity I was surprised to say "not bad". Compared to google without adblocker which is just awful.
- Thev00d00 5y ago
  AFAIK duckduckgo is mostly powered by Bing. Do you see a substantial difference?
  - trabant00 5y ago
    I see no difference in results, only in interface, Duck being even cleaner than Bing, reason why I use it (the privacy part sounds nice but is not actually verifiable)
    - bogwog 5y ago
      > the privacy part sounds nice but is not actually verifiable For what it’s worth, ive been a DDG user for many years, including their mobile browser. Not once have I ever seen a targeted ad. The only ads are search ads; if I search for shoes, I’ll get ads for shoes.
- zz865 5y ago
  Another good thing with bing is rewards - I get about $5-$10 a month in Amazon vouchers. Was better when I could get skype credit but they stopped it.
- soniman 5y ago
  Bing is my homepage, beautiful photos every day. Search results in US are fine.
makerofthings 5y ago
Reading the article, the worrying question that jumps out at me is how do google know what the top search on Bing is?
- icemelt8 5y ago
  Google analytics, most sites have it installed, plus Chrome is also sending telemetry, so they know when any site is opened, what was the referrer search engine. Through some stats magic, it can be inferred
- pverghese 5y ago
  Searches coming from domain
  - makerofthings 5y ago
    Good point! I guess that would give them the number of people searching for google on bing. Maybe there is enough public information about the totals to say this was the most searched term.
    - rjh29 5y ago
      In addition they have Google Analytics on a huge % of pages, so they can track referrals from Bing to those pages, and if the referrals to Google's homepage eclipse those, that's a strong indication. ...assuming Bing isn't preventing that behaviour.
  - chopin 5y ago
    That gives you the number but not a comparison. To claim "most searched word on Bing" requires knowledge how much other terms are searched on Bing.
  - oars 5y ago
    Could you elaborate on this? Is there a mechanism (e.g. HTTP header) which tells Google this when someone types in "Google" in Bing and presses enter? What if they don't click on the google.com search result?
dspillett 5y ago
I'm sure most of it isn't people searching for google though, it is people using the default search box in Edge or where-ever else Bing is the default search provider as if it is a smart address box, hammering in “google” without the .com (or other tld) and getting what they want as the first answer. I bet “facebook” is a very popular search term too for the same reason.
- dade_ 5y ago
  I do this all the time, I am used to the browser autocompleting the URL from history, but I think Edge was designed to maximize Bing searches to pump up usage numbers.
- bogwog 5y ago
  Whenever I end up on Bing, I go out of my way to search for “Google” (and click the link) before closing it. If I also happen to be in Edge (because microsoft ignored/changed the defaults again), then I also make sure to search for “Chrome”. It’s petty and childish, but it’s my way of coping with the fact that I have no power when I’m using Windows. And I don’t even use Google or Chrome.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
I don't use Google on my phone because of the ridiculous US copyright law that destroyed their image search. Still upset over that. Luckily Startpage doesn't care about Getty.
- hbn 5y ago
  The Google Image Search nerf is so tragic. It used to be incredible, and now it can barely find anything. And there's nothing that comes close to how it was before. I'll usually go through the course of Google, Bing, Tineye, and Yandex to reverse photos but I'll regularly get no hits on things I know should exist somewhere online
tim333 5y ago
People underestimate the value of familiarity. I use Google rather than Bing not because I know it's better or such like but I'm used to it and can't be bothered to learn the quirks of some other system. So if I had to search on a computer with Bing as default I'd probably type Google and use that. Bit like I use English rather than French not because it's a better language but because I don't want to spend ages learning a new one. In the discussion the other day on why people use Chrome rather than Firefox was Firefox changes the user interface and disabled the extensions they use. On the other hand as far as I can tell Chrome works basically the same it always did.
fredgrott 5y ago
It would be nice to see where the search for Microsoft or any of its product names placed..
abhayhegde 5y ago
Similar to how IE was used in Windows to download some other browser. That makes something like Firefox the most searched first item on IE.
wodenokoto 5y ago
Isn't it also the most searched-for term on Google? People just type "google" in the address bar when they want to go to a search engine.
- krapp 5y ago
  >People just type "google" in the address bar when they want to go to a search engine. Is this still common? Modern browsers will give an option to run a search directly from the URL bar, or automatically search anything not a URL... I haven't actually had to "go to a search engine" to search in a long time.
  - ezekg 5y ago
    Non-technical people do weird things.
    - airstrike 5y ago
      Early into my career I had a corporate job and virtually all of my coworkers would follow the same approach: 1. type 'google' into the address bar 2. type the name of a major website into the search bar, e.g. 'cnn' 3. click on the cnn link at the top of the search results I always asked them why they wouldn't simply type cnn.com in the address bar, but the only response I got was a confused look People simply don't understand URLs. Google has made it so easy to find their destination that they'd rather waste 3 clicks than learn how to browse the web efficiently
      - rchaud 5y ago
        Older users have probably been burned by mistyping the URL and ending up on a spam site that owns a proximal address like "googl.co". I myself remember having it happen back in the day. These days big companies with scammable audiences like FB and Google buy up any domain name that could reasonably be associated with them.
      - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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JimWestergren 5y ago
Google is also searched a lot on Google ... 80M/month from USA according to Ahrefs.com. Compare to youtube 166M, facebook 170M and netflix 15M.
nolok 5y ago
And I'm willing to bet "chrome" or "google chrome" is also near the top, or at least a significant number, typed by users in edge/bing right after install. I'm not the biggest fan of Chrome domination for the future of the web, BUT I found microsoft insistances on trying to force edge/bing down my throat really pushing me away from trying them. If they do that when they're behind, how am I supposed to think they will be any better if they ever get back on top.
edumucelli 5y ago
Instead of typing "google.com" on the address bar one goes to bing.com and type "google". How lazy we have become?
optimalsolver 5y ago
And "Reddit" is probably added to most searches on Google.
- citboin 5y ago
  Seriously, Reddit should integrate googles search bar. Reddit’s default search results SUCK 100% of the time.
  - oars 5y ago
    I 100% agree with you.
- RistrettoMike 5y ago
  I've been shocked how consistently this improves the quality of search results. Searching something like "get new cats to adjust to one another" on Google returns nothing but list-icle, SEO-laden crap with incredibly low information density and no mention of personal experience with the search subject from the ethereal "author" of such posts. Adding site:reddit.com does wonders, but even just typing "get new cats to adjust to one another *reddit* " will return threads going back almost a decade with loads of suggestions, personal experience, and more. It's not always useful (not anywhere near everything on reddit is worth being sourced) but just chucking the word reddit into search seems to be the most straightforward way to dredge up actual user-generated content that's not 100% crap. Wish there were search engines designed to crawl more of that side of the internet and less of Google's schlocky results. I'm so sick of list-icles.
  - johnaspden 5y ago
    That's a good tip. I just speculatively typed "!r cats adjust" into the search thingy in firefox and got lots of nice reddit threads. Someone somewhere (probably duckduckgo) thinks 'search on reddit' is useful enough that there's a shortcut for it.
    - schmorptron 5y ago
chinaev 5y ago
I can only imagine what kind of images Bing would show for this search
MR4D 5y ago
Heheh. If there was ever proof they were a monopoly….
sysihyk 5y ago
This sounds like IT Crowd joke.
Jedd 5y ago
Alt-F2 on KDE brings up krunner - a small text input floating dialog in which you could type, say, 8 * 9 , and be gifted the value 72. No spam accompanies this result. Alternatively if I type 'hacker', I shall be shown the three windows I currently have open, along with the 7 bookmarks, that match that string. Otherwise it's a handy shortcut to launch any application I know is installed on the local host. I believe it's consistently been providing this service for more than twenty years. Compare ctrl-escape on Microsoft Windows, which should offer much the same experience. Often while using Microsoft Windows I am trying to find a way back to a fleeting pop-up that graced a corner of my screen before I could fully read or act upon it. This invariably fails to provide a sensible result. For example, type 'update' if you wish to search for, but certainly not find, the source of the various noisy 'Windows Update' notifications. Prepare thyself for disappointment.*
- jraph 5y ago
  KRunner is one of the many areas where KDE is "secretly amazing". The level of polish, robustness, ease-of-use and efficiency of today's KDE versions is incredible. It is lightweight, too. This is the desktop environment that stays out of the way, but here when you need it. There are no strong decisions that surprises anyone, things are familiar, there is no hostility towards users requesting obvious features. The user interface does not change so much from versions to versions, but is rather improved (a lot, in tiny ways). Only, it is secretly so. Nobody seem to know. I don't know what can be done about this. KRunner is doubly affected by this. It is not quite discoverable, does not get in the way of users not using it, yet is so convenient. I'm lost whenever I'm using another environment just because KRunner is not here. (it can also be brought up by alt+space, which matches the keys of Launchpad on Macs)
  - account42 5y ago
    > The level of polish, robustness, ease-of-use and efficiency of today's KDE versions is incredible. It is lightweight, too. This is the desktop environment that stays out of the way, but here when you need it. There are no strong decisions that surprises anyone, things are familiar, there is no hostility towards users requesting obvious features. The user interface does not change so much from versions to versions, but is rather improved (a lot, in tiny ways). KDE 4 was pretty messy - from instability to questionable features or lack of features - 4.0 "released" too early, nepomuk (and later baloo) being a resource hog, the PIM suite pulling in two database servers, amarok only supporting fuzzy filters, virtual desktop support stagnating in favor of "activities", kwin compositing had lots of glitches. Even krunner used to crash or hang frequently. I still have ~/.p script to quickly kill and restart plasma (via krunner, hah) from those days because it would fuck up so often. Really glad that they spend the time since then motly polishing and KDE 5 has been much better about not shoving unwanted crap down users throats.
DeathArrow 5y ago
Actually both Google and Bing suck. I miss the times when the search results were actually relevant. The worst is Google, even if I try to verbatim search something, the results are about what Google thinks I should be interested in, not about what I am actually looking for. I see here a huge market for search engines which deliver relevant results.
- MarkLowenstein 5y ago
  Dear Bing, want to have me as a full-time user? (1) When I search for two words like OpenIDConnect replyUrlsWithType, only give me results that have both those terms. Don't make me put pluses on everything. And when I do give you pluses, please honor those pluses. (2) When you ask me "Did you mean [blah]?" give me a button to push: yes, no. You could literally do this by next week. I'll check in next Friday to give it a try.
captaincrunch 5y ago
I gave Bing an honest try, and I wanted it to work for me... but it is just horrible at finding what I am looking for.
mule1 5y ago
On a side note i recently tried duckduckgo again. 5 years ago I thought the searching was unusable today I've seen insane improvements haven't used google in 3 months.
costcofries 5y ago
This is similar to safari being used to download and install chrome :)
- herbturbo 5y ago
  Would love to know how many people's Safari has been used only once to download Chrome. But of course Apple will never tell us that.
  - costcofries 5y ago
    Or for that matter on iOS, the App Store used to download the chrome app to then delete the safari app :) Also LOL - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4260837 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4260837
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
Edge had a clean start page like Google. Looks like the MBAs over at Microsoft prevailed over the engineers and UX people to make it look like msn.com of the late 90s.
- hbn 5y ago
  There's customization options to allow you to turn off everything. Settings cog in the top right -> custom, then set "Quick links" and "Content" to off. Just leaves a search bar and the weather widget
AlbertCory 5y ago
When I joined Google in 2005, "yahoo" was the most popular query. How times have changed. "Navigational queries" was what we called them. There's actually a semi-rational reason why you'd want to do them: if you misspell a bank's URL, for instance, Google will fix it for you, while there could be sleazebags camping on the domains with the common misspellings.
0xmarcin 5y ago
I don't use Bing, but I use Yandex from time to time. It's not that bad (not counting being hosted in quasi-democratic country). If Google stopped working one day I would switch to Yandex without much regret. Bing for me became a meme, a search engine that nobody wants to use but that is nevertheless pushed down your throat by Microsoft (just like IE a few years ago). I tried to use Bing a few times, one thing that I find absolutely annoying are the pictures - every day a new image - I find it very distracting. I am not going to search engine website to watch pictures. I have the same feelings about Doodles, the last one (Olimpic games) really got on my nerves. Maybe there should be a two versions of Google - one for casual browsing and one for actually doing work. As EU citizen I am really ashamed of EU inability to do big tech. Europe should have its own search engine. US, Russia and China seem superior in that regard. Search engine is no longer a simple indexing app, now it can be used to shape worldviews and do propaganda. Still I do not believe EU can do anything in this regard...
uniqueid 5y ago
'Google' is not the most common query on Google, just the most common search result.

331 points by awb 5y ago

People go to the name they know. Since for many (most?) people, the word “google” is a verb meaning to search the web, they naturally will prefer that service even if they don’t know why it might be better than whatever is the default. Meanwhile, it reminds me that we developers don’t understand users or don’t provide understandable interfaces for them. Observe many people and you’ll see a maddening pattern of browser use: they will use any available method to get to google, and then they will put a url into the google search text box. Perhaps the address bar is inconveniently too high on the screen, or maybe they just don’t know what a url is.

gigglesupstairs 5y ago
Not to mention some search “google” in the Google search box which is there on their browser homepage but not labeled as google. They don’t trust text fields unless it’s in google website’s environment.
- tempestn 5y ago
  Makes me wonder if google might be the most searched term on google as well. I wouldn't be at all surprised.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Facebook was more searched, but not any longer. Probably is some other term still more searched on Google. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=google,amazon,facebook https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
- morebortplates 5y ago
  If you type 'google' into Google, you will break the internet!!!
politelemon 5y ago
> Observe many people and you’ll see a maddening pattern of browser use: they will use any available method to get to google, and then they will put a url into the google search text box. Perhaps the address bar is inconveniently too high on the screen, or maybe they just don’t know what a url is. I would have been dismissive of this a few years ago, but I would have been wrong. I have seen many people including developers, _WEB_ developers, do this. Some of them can't be bothered to change their default search engine even though the option is available, it's almost muscle memory to type 'www.google.com' into the search box, and then click a result, and then search for what they wanted on google.com. Well they are grateful to me when I change their default search engine for convenience. But when pointing out that they can just type their search terms into the address bar, I am given the indulgent, polite "thank you but not interested in this microefficiency" smile.
- blunte 5y ago
  > "thank you but not interested in this microefficiency" This one. Blows my mind every time.
- egeozcan 5y ago
  > "thank you but not interested in this micro efficiency" smile I've seen a friend press caps lock, type a letter and press caps again to type capital letters. That's the smile I got when I introduced them the shift key. Also the smile my niece had when the car mechanic was explaining to him how he could spare some gas money by up-shifting early. Also the smile I had when my wife was giving me tips on how to plan meetings better. Humans suck :)
  - blunte 5y ago
    When we follow the good suggestion, we don't suck at all. That's how humans should work. It's when we reject the wise advice because... because we're stubborn?... that is when it sucks. The thing about this url search is that they type the full url, sometimes even with the "http" bit (rarely https, but I digress), into the search field. then they get the results page a second or two later, and then _maybe_ they click the correct result if they didn't get mislead by some crappy SEO magic. That's a lot of extra work just to get to hopefully arrive at the same page they would have arrived at had they typed that url into the address field.
robbedpeter 5y ago
They don't know what a url is, and to them the address bar is the search box, and the search box is the address bar. Developers of all the major browsers made the two elements work interchangeably. A power user can create a web navigation system with plug-ins and customizations that rival a space shuttle for complexity and sophistication. The novice user, and users that are tech challenged can get stuck on the most basic uses of browsers. The trouble with catering to the "bad users" is that every forced simplification removes an opportunity for learning to be better. Every removed and hidden feature "for their own good" amplifies the feedback loop of dumbing down the user of the software, enabling a stasis of competence hovering around some arbitrarily chosen threshold of functionality. In the case of big tech, keeping users dumb and incompetent is a tool to reinforce the walled gardens. Keeping the consumer ignorant of nuance and flexibility creates artificial problems that are solved with more dumb software, gatekeeping every possible increment of utility by making everything a commercial transaction. I had a user who was proudly showing me a 99 cent app that allowed them to ping things from their phone. When I showed them the command line and that they'd already had the ability to do that from their laptop, they were embarrassed and a little annoyed. Their ignorance was encouraged and cultivated throughout the time they spent trying to find a solution to a problem, guiding them to an app store and to waste money on an app. Artificial incompetence is the defining feature of those who reside in walled gardens. It seems to be the rock bottom to which big tech companies race, because it's the most efficient way to perpetuate a revenue stream. Not only treating people as incompetents, but developing the ux and ui around that core assumption. There's definitely a place for simplicity and user friendly design, but artificial incompetence is a scourge, one of the worst anti-patterns affecting consumers. There needs to be a culture shift away from rent seeking software design and toward making users as competent and knowledgeable as possible.
- josefx 5y ago
  > Developers of all the major browsers made the two elements work interchangeably. You can still disable that in firefox, but it is so badly tested that it somehow breaks the search field on its default home screen.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  “Artificial incompetence” Good one. I’ll be using it. Thanks for that.
vbezhenar 5y ago
If I'm not using bookmark, I'm using the same approach. Because of simple reason: If I would make a typo, Google will correct it and I will not land in a some faecbook.com.
- dagw 5y ago
  I also don't have to try to remember whether or not Widgeco's Sweden site is widgeco.se, se.widgeco.com or widgeco.com/se.
OJFord 5y ago
> Since for many (most?) people, the word “google” is a verb meaning to search the web I've started to really oppose that, and avoid it in my own speech. ('search' is fine.) It may sound like a stupid trivial thing, but language is so.. powerful/important, and I don't need Google ingrained in mine. It was difficult/didn't come naturally at first, but now I use 'search' without thinking about it, and if anything it sounds weird to me when others say 'google'. I also think if I were Google ('s lawyer, or in some appropriate/ly-senior position or whatever) I wouldn't feel great about it - it's surely quite damning in any competition law cases on search?
- stardenburden 5y ago
  Thing is, google doesn't want you to really use the term google because it makes creating a trademark ever so harder. </Fun little side fact> I'm sure they also have concerns about it being coming over as monopolistic behavior
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Good point, I didn't think about trademarking. Bing changing its button label from 'search' (or 'go' or whatever it currently is) to 'google' would be fun to watch play out!

cmarschner 5y ago

So, not “facebook” like it used to?

malikNF 5y ago
That crowed probably installed the app on their phone.

oaiey 5y ago

But not the other way around. How embarrassing :)

erk__ 5y ago
I wonder how far up "Google" is as a search termon Google
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  FWIW https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today+5-y&q=google,bing https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today+5-y&q=go...
  - josefx 5y ago
    Interest in Google seems to be on a downwards trend, is the company nearing its end?
  - mavhc 5y ago
    I tried to find the same thing on Bing, but they wanted me to login, says it all really.

tpmx 5y ago

But Google says its service is simply the most popular. "We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is, by far, 'Google'" I assume they have collected this evidence from Chrome users?

mavhc 5y ago
0 Chrome users use Bing (rounded down)
luke2m 5y ago
Probably not, I imagine the vast majority of this would be from Edge for Windows users.
- tpmx 5y ago
  How would they get that data?
  - reverseblade2 5y ago
    Referrals
    - tpmx 5y ago
      To google.com? Sure, but what about non-google-related searches on Bing?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hermitsings 5y ago

Probably boomers or Gen X

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Excuse me?! It is disingenuous to infer that a complete demographic doesn't know about how the Internet works. For some late-age Boomers, I would agree that a large percentage of them would do this, but Gen-Xers are in their 40s and 50s, and most of them have literally grown up surrounded by technology.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Old people arent idiots they can learn. My 66 year old mom is cashless, does her banking in an app and orders groceries online.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    To be fair, your mother has a child who posts on HN, she's not the average 66 year old.
  - mattowen_uk 5y ago
    Late-age boomers are in their mid-70s, not mid-60s. Edit: Did my grandparent comment get voted down because people don't know what 'disingenuous' means?
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      No, some of HN is apparently ageist and loves Reddit boomer memes. You got downvoted for calling GP out. I flagged him because it's offensive and a sweeping generalization.
- indianpianist 5y ago
  What did he say? It just says "[flagged]" now

achairapart 5y ago

No doubt Google is far more popular than Bing, and "to google" is synonymous with search itself. But one important difference to note may be that while "Bing" is almost used only for the search engine, the word "Google" is associated with a very large number of different products: - Google Meet - Google Home - Google Pixel - Google Dooodles And so on...

tgv 5y ago

And most of google's searches are (at least, were) complete URLs, so there's that.

Kaibeezy 5y ago

What’s the most commonly entered URL in Edge? The only one I’ve ever typed is google.com/chrome

mrweasel 5y ago
Given that Edge is Chromium based, what exactly makes you pick Chrome over Edge?
- mavhc 5y ago
  All my stuff is in Chrome, history, cookies, passwords
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Some how not the answer I expected, but I can see the argument. I keep nothing in my browser, besides a few bookmarks, so it didn't occur to me that someone would care about those things being automatically transferred over.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      It can be transferred. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/what-s-imported-to-the-new-microsoft-edge-ab7d9fa1-4586-23ce-8116-e46f44987ac2 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/what-s-im...
      - mavhc 5y ago
        Then I'd have to sign in to MS instead of Google to store everything, I've acheived nothing.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  Force of habit. Inertia. Familiarity. Bad aftertaste from IE.

ed_elliott_asc 5y ago

Part of the problem Microsoft have is that they just set the default to bing, people open it and don’t know what it is so search google. These same people don’t know how to change their default search so keep searching for google. If they wanted these people to stay they should get rid of their background image and just give a search box like google does - basically trick people into staying.

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Something I've noticed with my work machine. The homepage in Edge is some mangled mash up of Bing News tiles and my works' SharePoint activity, and is just branded 'Microsoft'. Non technical people stuck with this homepage are very likely to just type 'Google' into it to "get them out onto the Internet".
- notimetorelax 5y ago
  And technical people might prefer faster loading lightweight pages to Bing’s. Target audience for bing is weird.
  - altacc 5y ago
    The target audience for Bing's homepage is a bunch of product owners in MS who want their crap on the homepage to try to increase their interaction metrics.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    I used google maps the other day on my phone for the first in in ages (to see if they had anything for the fuel issues in the UK at the moment). I was amazed how full of junk I wasn't interested in getting in the way of the actual map. I remember when google beat places like yahoo and excite because it had a simple clean interface.
- dagw 5y ago
  Yea, the Edge homepage is atrocious and looks like a spam site. I don't blame people for wanting to get away from it and to something that looks more trustworthy ASAP.

qalmakka 5y ago

To be fair, Bing search is pretty much at a level comparable to google in the early '10s in my experience, so I understand why people are not thrilled by it. It's _fine_, but it's definitely not up to par with Google, not even close.

nix23 5y ago

Hey! That was my joke for years.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cblconfederate 5y ago

Dear Microsoft, You fools, you own a gate to the internet. When i search 8*9 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9". Make the menu auto-complete with the titles of the first 5 web results instead of random ads. Make it work well as an actually useful extension of search. Forget about edge and bing.com, you will care about the brand name later. (You can thank me later with a sizeable compensation package)

rawoke083600 5y ago
Ja, the best advice I ever heard was, "do something right and the money will (probably) follow". Sure it's a massive generalization and doesn't always "work" but dammit it's a very good starting point. Much better than: "How do we get the most money for a user ?"
reedf1 5y ago
>show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9" As far as I can tell - it already does this. Now I hate how it works and it looks bad, but it does show web search results for what I type in the start menu. And I will actually push back a bit on the start menu because I hate that the start menu searches the web. I want it to search my computer, I have a browser for web searches.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  i must be doing something wrong. I get a list of suggested web searches, not a list of results. like "search for 8*9", "search for 8*96" etc
  - reedf1 5y ago
    Huh - when I type 8*9 I get a search pane (that shows what you are describing) and a web pane. The web pane shows bing results.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago

trabant00 5y ago

I find weird to say, but I actually like Bing. It has a LOT less bullshit compared to google. It searches for what I asked it, not about what it thinks I actually want, image search and in general the interface has less dark patterns. My main SE is duckduckgo, but using Bing out of curiosity I was surprised to say "not bad". Compared to google without adblocker which is just awful.

Thev00d00 5y ago
AFAIK duckduckgo is mostly powered by Bing. Do you see a substantial difference?
- trabant00 5y ago
  I see no difference in results, only in interface, Duck being even cleaner than Bing, reason why I use it (the privacy part sounds nice but is not actually verifiable)
  - bogwog 5y ago
    > the privacy part sounds nice but is not actually verifiable For what it’s worth, ive been a DDG user for many years, including their mobile browser. Not once have I ever seen a targeted ad. The only ads are search ads; if I search for shoes, I’ll get ads for shoes.
zz865 5y ago
Another good thing with bing is rewards - I get about $5-$10 a month in Amazon vouchers. Was better when I could get skype credit but they stopped it.
soniman 5y ago
Bing is my homepage, beautiful photos every day. Search results in US are fine.

makerofthings 5y ago

Reading the article, the worrying question that jumps out at me is how do google know what the top search on Bing is?

icemelt8 5y ago
Google analytics, most sites have it installed, plus Chrome is also sending telemetry, so they know when any site is opened, what was the referrer search engine. Through some stats magic, it can be inferred
pverghese 5y ago
Searches coming from domain
- makerofthings 5y ago
  Good point! I guess that would give them the number of people searching for google on bing. Maybe there is enough public information about the totals to say this was the most searched term.
  - rjh29 5y ago
    In addition they have Google Analytics on a huge % of pages, so they can track referrals from Bing to those pages, and if the referrals to Google's homepage eclipse those, that's a strong indication. ...assuming Bing isn't preventing that behaviour.
- chopin 5y ago
  That gives you the number but not a comparison. To claim "most searched word on Bing" requires knowledge how much other terms are searched on Bing.
- oars 5y ago
  Could you elaborate on this? Is there a mechanism (e.g. HTTP header) which tells Google this when someone types in "Google" in Bing and presses enter? What if they don't click on the google.com search result?

dspillett 5y ago

I'm sure most of it isn't people searching for google though, it is people using the default search box in Edge or where-ever else Bing is the default search provider as if it is a smart address box, hammering in “google” without the .com (or other tld) and getting what they want as the first answer. I bet “facebook” is a very popular search term too for the same reason.

dade_ 5y ago
I do this all the time, I am used to the browser autocompleting the URL from history, but I think Edge was designed to maximize Bing searches to pump up usage numbers.
bogwog 5y ago
Whenever I end up on Bing, I go out of my way to search for “Google” (and click the link) before closing it. If I also happen to be in Edge (because microsoft ignored/changed the defaults again), then I also make sure to search for “Chrome”. It’s petty and childish, but it’s my way of coping with the fact that I have no power when I’m using Windows. And I don’t even use Google or Chrome.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

I don't use Google on my phone because of the ridiculous US copyright law that destroyed their image search. Still upset over that. Luckily Startpage doesn't care about Getty.

hbn 5y ago
The Google Image Search nerf is so tragic. It used to be incredible, and now it can barely find anything. And there's nothing that comes close to how it was before. I'll usually go through the course of Google, Bing, Tineye, and Yandex to reverse photos but I'll regularly get no hits on things I know should exist somewhere online

tim333 5y ago

People underestimate the value of familiarity. I use Google rather than Bing not because I know it's better or such like but I'm used to it and can't be bothered to learn the quirks of some other system. So if I had to search on a computer with Bing as default I'd probably type Google and use that. Bit like I use English rather than French not because it's a better language but because I don't want to spend ages learning a new one. In the discussion the other day on why people use Chrome rather than Firefox was Firefox changes the user interface and disabled the extensions they use. On the other hand as far as I can tell Chrome works basically the same it always did.

fredgrott 5y ago

It would be nice to see where the search for Microsoft or any of its product names placed..

abhayhegde 5y ago

Similar to how IE was used in Windows to download some other browser. That makes something like Firefox the most searched first item on IE.

wodenokoto 5y ago

Isn't it also the most searched-for term on Google? People just type "google" in the address bar when they want to go to a search engine.

krapp 5y ago
>People just type "google" in the address bar when they want to go to a search engine. Is this still common? Modern browsers will give an option to run a search directly from the URL bar, or automatically search anything not a URL... I haven't actually had to "go to a search engine" to search in a long time.
- ezekg 5y ago
  Non-technical people do weird things.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Early into my career I had a corporate job and virtually all of my coworkers would follow the same approach: 1. type 'google' into the address bar 2. type the name of a major website into the search bar, e.g. 'cnn' 3. click on the cnn link at the top of the search results I always asked them why they wouldn't simply type cnn.com in the address bar, but the only response I got was a confused look People simply don't understand URLs. Google has made it so easy to find their destination that they'd rather waste 3 clicks than learn how to browse the web efficiently
    - rchaud 5y ago
      Older users have probably been burned by mistyping the URL and ending up on a spam site that owns a proximal address like "googl.co". I myself remember having it happen back in the day. These days big companies with scammable audiences like FB and Google buy up any domain name that could reasonably be associated with them.
    - baobabKoodaa 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

JimWestergren 5y ago

Google is also searched a lot on Google ... 80M/month from USA according to Ahrefs.com. Compare to youtube 166M, facebook 170M and netflix 15M.

nolok 5y ago

And I'm willing to bet "chrome" or "google chrome" is also near the top, or at least a significant number, typed by users in edge/bing right after install. I'm not the biggest fan of Chrome domination for the future of the web, BUT I found microsoft insistances on trying to force edge/bing down my throat really pushing me away from trying them. If they do that when they're behind, how am I supposed to think they will be any better if they ever get back on top.

edumucelli 5y ago

Instead of typing "google.com" on the address bar one goes to bing.com and type "google". How lazy we have become?

optimalsolver 5y ago

And "Reddit" is probably added to most searches on Google.

citboin 5y ago
Seriously, Reddit should integrate googles search bar. Reddit’s default search results SUCK 100% of the time.
- oars 5y ago
  I 100% agree with you.
RistrettoMike 5y ago
I've been shocked how consistently this improves the quality of search results. Searching something like "get new cats to adjust to one another" on Google returns nothing but list-icle, SEO-laden crap with incredibly low information density and no mention of personal experience with the search subject from the ethereal "author" of such posts. Adding site:reddit.com does wonders, but even just typing "get new cats to adjust to one another *reddit* " will return threads going back almost a decade with loads of suggestions, personal experience, and more. It's not always useful (not anywhere near everything on reddit is worth being sourced) but just chucking the word reddit into search seems to be the most straightforward way to dredge up actual user-generated content that's not 100% crap. Wish there were search engines designed to crawl more of that side of the internet and less of Google's schlocky results. I'm so sick of list-icles.
- johnaspden 5y ago
  That's a good tip. I just speculatively typed "!r cats adjust" into the search thingy in firefox and got lots of nice reddit threads. Someone somewhere (probably duckduckgo) thinks 'search on reddit' is useful enough that there's a shortcut for it.
  - schmorptron 5y ago

chinaev 5y ago

I can only imagine what kind of images Bing would show for this search

MR4D 5y ago

Heheh. If there was ever proof they were a monopoly….

sysihyk 5y ago

This sounds like IT Crowd joke.

Jedd 5y ago

Alt-F2 on KDE brings up krunner - a small text input floating dialog in which you could type, say, 8 * 9 , and be gifted the value 72. No spam accompanies this result. Alternatively if I type 'hacker', I shall be shown the three windows I currently have open, along with the 7 bookmarks, that match that string. Otherwise it's a handy shortcut to launch any application I know is installed on the local host. I believe it's consistently been providing this service for more than twenty years. Compare ctrl-escape on Microsoft Windows, which should offer much the same experience. Often while using Microsoft Windows I am trying to find a way back to a fleeting pop-up that graced a corner of my screen before I could fully read or act upon it. This invariably fails to provide a sensible result. For example, type 'update' if you wish to search for, but certainly not find, the source of the various noisy 'Windows Update' notifications. Prepare thyself for disappointment.*

jraph 5y ago
KRunner is one of the many areas where KDE is "secretly amazing". The level of polish, robustness, ease-of-use and efficiency of today's KDE versions is incredible. It is lightweight, too. This is the desktop environment that stays out of the way, but here when you need it. There are no strong decisions that surprises anyone, things are familiar, there is no hostility towards users requesting obvious features. The user interface does not change so much from versions to versions, but is rather improved (a lot, in tiny ways). Only, it is secretly so. Nobody seem to know. I don't know what can be done about this. KRunner is doubly affected by this. It is not quite discoverable, does not get in the way of users not using it, yet is so convenient. I'm lost whenever I'm using another environment just because KRunner is not here. (it can also be brought up by alt+space, which matches the keys of Launchpad on Macs)
- account42 5y ago
  > The level of polish, robustness, ease-of-use and efficiency of today's KDE versions is incredible. It is lightweight, too. This is the desktop environment that stays out of the way, but here when you need it. There are no strong decisions that surprises anyone, things are familiar, there is no hostility towards users requesting obvious features. The user interface does not change so much from versions to versions, but is rather improved (a lot, in tiny ways). KDE 4 was pretty messy - from instability to questionable features or lack of features - 4.0 "released" too early, nepomuk (and later baloo) being a resource hog, the PIM suite pulling in two database servers, amarok only supporting fuzzy filters, virtual desktop support stagnating in favor of "activities", kwin compositing had lots of glitches. Even krunner used to crash or hang frequently. I still have ~/.p script to quickly kill and restart plasma (via krunner, hah) from those days because it would fuck up so often. Really glad that they spend the time since then motly polishing and KDE 5 has been much better about not shoving unwanted crap down users throats.

DeathArrow 5y ago

Actually both Google and Bing suck. I miss the times when the search results were actually relevant. The worst is Google, even if I try to verbatim search something, the results are about what Google thinks I should be interested in, not about what I am actually looking for. I see here a huge market for search engines which deliver relevant results.

MarkLowenstein 5y ago
Dear Bing, want to have me as a full-time user? (1) When I search for two words like OpenIDConnect replyUrlsWithType, only give me results that have both those terms. Don't make me put pluses on everything. And when I do give you pluses, please honor those pluses. (2) When you ask me "Did you mean [blah]?" give me a button to push: yes, no. You could literally do this by next week. I'll check in next Friday to give it a try.

captaincrunch 5y ago

I gave Bing an honest try, and I wanted it to work for me... but it is just horrible at finding what I am looking for.

mule1 5y ago

On a side note i recently tried duckduckgo again. 5 years ago I thought the searching was unusable today I've seen insane improvements haven't used google in 3 months.

costcofries 5y ago

This is similar to safari being used to download and install chrome :)

herbturbo 5y ago
Would love to know how many people's Safari has been used only once to download Chrome. But of course Apple will never tell us that.
- costcofries 5y ago
  Or for that matter on iOS, the App Store used to download the chrome app to then delete the safari app :) Also LOL - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4260837 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4260837

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

Edge had a clean start page like Google. Looks like the MBAs over at Microsoft prevailed over the engineers and UX people to make it look like msn.com of the late 90s.

hbn 5y ago
There's customization options to allow you to turn off everything. Settings cog in the top right -> custom, then set "Quick links" and "Content" to off. Just leaves a search bar and the weather widget

AlbertCory 5y ago

When I joined Google in 2005, "yahoo" was the most popular query. How times have changed. "Navigational queries" was what we called them. There's actually a semi-rational reason why you'd want to do them: if you misspell a bank's URL, for instance, Google will fix it for you, while there could be sleazebags camping on the domains with the common misspellings.

0xmarcin 5y ago

I don't use Bing, but I use Yandex from time to time. It's not that bad (not counting being hosted in quasi-democratic country). If Google stopped working one day I would switch to Yandex without much regret. Bing for me became a meme, a search engine that nobody wants to use but that is nevertheless pushed down your throat by Microsoft (just like IE a few years ago). I tried to use Bing a few times, one thing that I find absolutely annoying are the pictures - every day a new image - I find it very distracting. I am not going to search engine website to watch pictures. I have the same feelings about Doodles, the last one (Olimpic games) really got on my nerves. Maybe there should be a two versions of Google - one for casual browsing and one for actually doing work. As EU citizen I am really ashamed of EU inability to do big tech. Europe should have its own search engine. US, Russia and China seem superior in that regard. Search engine is no longer a simple indexing app, now it can be used to shape worldviews and do propaganda. Still I do not believe EU can do anything in this regard...

uniqueid 5y ago

'Google' is not the most common query on Google, just the most common search result.