3 ms·
I tried Bing the other day because I was curious if Apple was snubbing them legitimately (because bing isn't great and therefore would create a worse experience
by hayst4ck 3y ago
I tried Bing the other day because I was curious if Apple was snubbing them legitimately (because bing isn't great and therefore would create a worse experience for Apple users) or illegitimately (because google offered more money). It's clear to me Microsoft still doesn't understand customers. They are still making all the same mistakes that msn.com made. It is just too busy. Microsoft does not understand UI.
Google won not just because of comparatively quality search results, but because of minimalism. I don't need to see a picture of the day. I don't need an attention grabbing onboarding/news/suggestion box. I don't need a full menu bar. Google is very good about only polluting the search results with extra information when it is confident that that information is relevant to the search. No boxes pop out when you're scrolling down the page on google.
On google, most things that are not the results are pastel, grey, and mildly faded. On bing, everything is thick lines, vivid colors, picture based content. After doing a google search I know exactly where to look. After doing a bing search there are 6 different UI elements all doing battle for my attention. I had to scroll almost 2 full pages to get to the first result that looks like what I expect when I use search on the internet.
Bing is obnoxious, and it's asking me to cognitively process 100 different things other than the only thing I care about: my search results.
More is less.
Microsoft also has a long history of poor security, being in bed with the government, and being a hyper-corporate business-first company. Given that Microsoft is currently loading their operating system with Ads and the history of being in bed with the government (skype), how can anyone trust the Microsoft brand?
Low trust brand + bad UI + par level results = "small" service.
Nobody is actively changing their default away from google unless they think it's to a more privacy respecting search engine.
- habith 3y ago> Bing is obnoxious, and it's asking me to cognitively process 100 different things other than the only thing I care about: my search results. Google (privacy issues aside) is terrible in that regard as well. I just compared Bing, Google and DDG (https://duck.com https://duck.com) for a random query "c++ headers". On my current resolution and scale (1980x1080, 125%) I can only see 1 result on Bing and Google before having to scroll. The rest of the screen is filled with inline answers and other irrelevant content designed to keep you on their site. DDG on the other hand reminds me of the very old Google days, 4 results, no busy layout and when there are ads they're unobtrusive and clearly labeled. All my devices and browsers are actively not using Google. The only Alphabet property I begrudgingly use for personal reasons nowadays is YouTube and the UI/UX there makes me run to TikTok after short sessions. Honestly, between ChatGPT, site specific searches I rarely need to use a search engine to begin with, and when I do it's DDG for its layout and quality results.