16 ms·
Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers
- mrayycombi 2y agoThey'd have to disguise themselves as duckduckgo to fool me. Maybe throw a weird looking duck on their landing page or something. I've avoided Google for years. Quack.
- funOtter 2y agoSo google owns the "image and text box on a web page" design?
- dewey 2y agoIt’s about the doodle, not the image and text box. As the article explains.
- saalweachter 2y agoI would say it's more that you get to this page by typing "Google" into the URL/search bar: > This morning, users are discovering that if they search for “Google” in the primary Bing interface, they’re shown a special Bing search page. Before you scroll down to the actual search results, you’re presented with an all-white page with a centered, unbranded search bar and a multicolored doodle above it that’s heavy on yellow, red, blue, and green.
- macspoofing 2y agoNo - google doesn't own the "image and text box on a web page design" ... but it is very odd what Microsoft/Bing is doing when you search 'google' .. they even 'scroll' the page down to hide the primary bing search bar. It's odd.
- killingtime74 2y agoIt looks like they came up with the headline first then worked backwards to present something that fit as a thesis.
- rtkwe 2y ago> " users are discovering that if they search for “Google” in the primary Bing interface, they’re shown a special Bing search page." That's a little more than just aping the design of Google. It's a pretty intentional effort to deceive users into remaining on Bing.
- fullshark 2y agoThe story isn't "Bing is copying Google's amazing design." The story is bing devised a specialized search result page for the query "google" which is intentionally designed to trick its own users.
- Sephr 2y agoThis only comes up after searching for Google
- notfed 2y agoCan't reproduce. Does it only happen from Edge?
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoI reproduced in both Firefox on Windows 11 and Firefox on Debian.
- mrweasel 2y agoWorks in Firefox on macOS. Interestingly enough, you can already use Bings settings to disable all the cruft on bing.com. If you do that, I think the majority of users would not know the difference between Google and Bing, other than a more pleasant search experience and fewer ads (or no ads, I'm currently see zero ads or trackers on bing.com without any ad blocker). Seems hard to justify staying on Google, when Bing yields the same or better results, and less ads.
- franczesko 2y agoThe copilot feature is pretty handy.
- arielcostas 2y agoAnd, at least in the EU, we get LLM responses (via MS Copilot) on Bing, but no "AI Overview" on Google. Though seeing how poorly Google AI Overview on search works, I'd rather not have that offered to me.
- asdff 2y agoYou can just scroll past it you know
- mrweasel 2y agoYou can disable it entirely apparently. I just checked the settings on Bing and there is a "Copilot response on result page" which can simply be turned off. That one good thing about Microsoft, they aren't afraid of offering the users settings.
- unethical_ban 2y agoI'm usually not a fan of user deception. But I can't bring myself to care much that Bing is trying to play off the masses' pavlovian trust of the google interface.
- ballenf 2y agoI bet this is 100x+ more effective at keeping people on Bing than anything else MS has tried. Same idea as knock-off brands with labels and designs inspired by the name brand. People may eventually realize they're not on Google, but probably only after being not displeased in Bing's results. If they have a bad experience, oh well, they were planning on using google anyway.
- foobiekr 2y agoHonestly whatever the hell Google offers at this point has been disguising itself as google search for years. It sure as shit is not what people expect from google.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoI had similar thoughts; my gut says that this is bad behavior by Microsoft, but that what Google has done to their own supposed product is bad enough to justify it.
- zb3 2y agoNothing can keep me on Bing unless the results improve. Or am I the only one who regularily gives Bing a try only to find out the results are irrelevant?
- permo-w 2y agoyeah I also did this again recently. Google was getting too heavy-handed with their impossible captchas, so I switched to Bing for a while, once again thinking that it can't be as bad as I remembered. honestly it was okay for a while, but Bing - and every other alternative I've tried - still really struggles with any query where a vital part of the meaning is captured by the structure of the sentence rather than the keywords alone.
- littlecranky67 2y agoI use bing chat (ChatGPT something) cos it works without login. I have it on a shortcut search trigger in Firefox with temporary tab containers. Replaced more than 50% of my searches, I use Kagi for the rest.
- Dylan16807 2y agoThis removes a step for someone that would have searched for google and then clicked on the link and then done their real search, so overall it sounds like a nice improvement in the vast majority of cases. I don't expect many people that care about the difference between search engines to be using this method.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoThey're not actually making a google search if they use that search field. Microsoft is just presenting another Bing search field when people search "google" and showing that at the top of the page instead of the link they are ostensibly looking for.
- Dylan16807 2y agoAnd what fraction of the people this affects do you think care about the difference? What fraction even know the difference? My guesses are not very big.
- ClassyJacket 2y agoIf they didn't care about the difference they obviously wouldn't have searched for Google in the first place
- recursive 2y agoNot obvious to me. People that search for Google probably don't have a solid grasp on what the difference is between Google and a search engine. Perhaps it's muscle memory.
- Arnavion 2y agoYou can also see it for yourself without needing Windows or Edge by opening https://www.bing.com/search?q=google https://www.bing.com/search?q=google in Linux Chromium for example.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PessimalDecimal 2y agoThe only other search query I have found that provides a similar "spoofed Google" look is https://www.bing.com/search?q=yandex https://www.bing.com/search?q=yandex.
- riiii 2y ago"Fuck Microsoft! Fuck!" -- Dr. Adrian Mallard
- shepherdjerred 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zpCOYkdvTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zpCOYkdvTQ
- bangaladore 2y agoInterestingly that doesn't work on Brave Windows (Chromium) but works on Chrome Windows. I wonder if Brave is specifically deleting this element.
- do_not_redeem 2y agoInteresting. uBlock Origin is hiding the element. At first I wasn't able to see the search box, but I can see it if I toggle cosmetic filtering. Looks like it's targeting #b_pole ("Promoted by Microsoft")
- bangaladore 2y agoGood catch. I use Brave daily so I don't have any extensions on my Chrome install. I am using UBlock with Brave.
- dsissitka 2y agoRemoved. I see the scrolling happens for me in Chromium so that's not PCWorld's doing.
- Arnavion 2y agoYour second screenshot is scrolled up to show the top header bar that mentions Bing. The default page load scrolls down just enough to hide it (intentionally or otherwise).
- pie_flavor 2y agoThe page automatically scrolls, 9to5google's article has a gif of it in action. https://9to5google.com/2025/01/06/bing-trick-users-google/ https://9to5google.com/2025/01/06/bing-trick-users-google/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Sephr 2y ago> the scrolling probably isn't intentional What makes you believe that? It's pretty clearly intentional even if it only applies to Chromium browsers.
- dsissitka 2y agoI was referring to PCWorld there. I've rephrased it. Hopefully it's a little clearer now.
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoNever quite understood the hate for Bing. I despise Microsoft, but Bing is fine. It's one of the least shit Microsoft products there is. It definitely wasn't competitive on release, but it's fine now. To be fair I think this is a function of both Bing having gotten better and Google having gotten worse.
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoGoogle and bing suck about equally at search these days.
- franczesko 2y agoBing is ok. DDG is pretty much its anonymized version.
- asdff 2y agoInitially it reeked of IE by association. But then internet communities realized it was better than google for porn. So now its OK in some circles at least.
- datavirtue 2y agoIf I land on a Google page I search for Bing now. Colipot is included with Office and I'm signed in. Copilot is far more useful than Google search. I would use Bard (Gemini) but I don't have a work login for Google properties. Microsoft wins.
- mrweasel 2y agoHonestly I feel like Bing has been the better search engine for 6 - 8 years at this point.
- sumtechguy 2y agoHonestly, this is what I want bing's 'homepage' to look like and I usually configure it to be as close to that as I can. The default was/is a ton of news and other junk. I just want a search bar and maybe an identifier picture. It was one of the things I liked when google first came out. It was 'simple' as many of the other search engines from years ago had tons of 'helpful' things on the front page that I just did not want.
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- asdasdsddd 2y agoThis is only funny because no one takes bing seriously.
- cptskippy 2y agoI think it's hilarious because they're doing the same shenanigans that Google does. When you search on Google everything above the fold is not "a list of search results". Often it's a definition or conversion calculator or some other custom UI that isn't "a list of search results". Microsoft has programmed Bing to do the exact same thing. Everything above the fold is a custom UI that coincidentally looks a lot like the Google Search engine. The Chef's kiss is that it scrolls down just the tiniest bit to put the Bing UI above the fold rather than hide it. This gives them plausible deniability. It's brilliant and hilarious. I love it. I'm still not using Bing (or Google for that matter) but I love it.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoHuh? Everyone's UX is miles better than Google. Heck even Yahoo search is now better than Google. You need to get your head out of sand.
- TacticalCoder 2y ago> This is only funny because no one takes bing seriously. But Microsoft is way more dangerous than Google. They've been using all the dirtiest tricks in the books since decades longer than Google. MSFT also has a market cap 30% greater than the one of GOOG. Microsoft is known in the industry, all around the world, for illegal kickbacks (including to officials). Google may be bad but Microsoft is just downright an evil company. In addition to that, as the old saying goes, the day Microsoft produces a product that won't suck, it's going to be a vacuum cleaner. At least Google gave back a lot to open source and contributed a huge lot to Linux and to Linux's success. I'm not saying Google is clean but they're not anywhere near as dirty as Microsoft. The whole agenda / narrative that pushed by Microsoft shills atm is also all too obvious "You must break Google". I don't think so. I think it's Microsoft that should be broken up by anti-trust regulations enforcement. Shittiest company on earth.
- 2y ago
- dec0dedab0de 2y agoI started a new job where I have to use windows, and more than once I didn’t realize I was using bing until I went to turn on verbatim and it wasn’t an option. Side note, I miss search engines from 20 years ago, I can’t believe it’s gotten this bad.
- _mlbt 2y agoDuckDuckGo has served me pretty well for the past couple of years. Also, their AI offering duck.ai is pretty solid as well.
- jokethrowaway 2y agoIt's my daily driver too. Quality is ok but not as good as Google from a few years ago. Snippets (especially code) and shortcuts are cool. It's less censored than Google, but then they went on and censored russian propaganda during the war. They completely lost all their credibility. I don't care how bad or good the content it is, I want a service without censorship. For copyrighted content they are a bit better than Google but worse than Yandex - simply because 90% of DMCA strikers agencies bother reporting a google search result, 50% bother with duckduckgo, 10% bother with Yandex.
- recursive 2y agoKagi is pretty good.
- 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 2y agoI love being able to raise, lower, and remove sites across all my searches. No need to include things such as -stackoverflow for every search. I can choose to have it appear only when there are not quality results by lowering its priority.
- lupusreal 2y agoBing earns my use simply by virtue of them not captcha-hell banning me for having privacy features enable and using a VPN. Google can go to hell.
- Sephr 2y agoBoth companies are known for highly invasive tracking.
- lupusreal 2y agoBing lets me search even though I block their cookies, trackers, etc. Google doesn't. If I even wanted to use Google I'd have to go through the hassle of whitelisting their crap, and for what?
- pessimizer 2y agoI remember people arguing on HN over a decade ago about how awful it was that on Google News you wouldn't get direct links, but instead links to their tracking system that would forward you to the story. Now, they'll even refuse to forward the links unless you do a captcha, and you can't escape from captcha hell unless you accept cookies and you don't forge (or refuse to send) your referer. We were talking about how most of the internet got locked behind walled gardens, but we didn't notice how much of the "open" internet secretly became a walled garden. Starting with that Facebook like button, Google Analytics, and Google ads everywhere, and culminating in Cloudflare MITMing everything. aside: One of my personal conspiracy theories is that when the government wants deep activity on a site to be tracked, they DDOS the site until there's no other option than to add Cloudflare.
- jmclnx 2y agoTrue, that alone keeps me away from google.
- ricoche 2y agoThis is so desperate I feel bad for them
- olyjohn 2y agoI don't feel bad for them. Fuck them. It's a delicious taste of their own medicine.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoIt deeply saddens people still use anything Google. GMail and Youtube are big ones that are difficult to switch. But browsers and search engines are eons better now.
- ehsankia 2y agoEverything they've done for the past few years has been desperate. If you try to download Chrome on a new Windows install, at every step of the way, it begs you to reconsider, shit talking Chrome, saying Edge runs on Chromium so it won't make a difference, trying to throw pop ups at you to distract you. At some point, Edge would literally open a tooltip in the top right corner of the page where the download button on chrome.com used to be. And it continues as you try to make Chrome the default browser. After all that, there are still plenty of tasks in Windows that still open Edge...
- ryandrake 2y agoIt feels really sad and pathetic when a massive company desperately begs you to do something, not just Microsoft. Please install this! Please don't disable that! Please allow this permission! We really want you to do this! I would say "have some class" but class doesn't make stonk price go up.
- croisillon 2y ago"i'm appalled that i ended up searching google on bing when i honestly believed i was searching google on google" - no one ever
- zb3 2y agoI'll immediately switch to Bing if you allow me to search by regex, or at least "literally literally".
- londons_explore 2y agotrue regex search of the internet is a "more compute than on all of earth" type problem. They could at least get closer tho...
- cynicalpeace 2y agoI'm surprised more startups don't just copy the most famous landing page of all time.
- meltyness 2y agoI was wondering why Google hadn't replaced 'I'm Feeling Lucky' with something to do with LLMs, or just added an LLM-generate option. I came to the conclusion that they're in corporate denialism over the whole thing. They'd be happier if their finger slipped and made Anthropic and OpenAI vanish until they could resurface and capture the market. Possibly not a great strategy. It seems all of their years of letting the open web decay and vanish has caught up with the fact that many requests can be serviced with an inverse thesaurus manual snippet soup.
- extraduder_ire 2y agoThe "I'm feeling lucky" button has been obsolete for over a decade, with the introduction of search-as-you-type on google.com. Clicking on it still takes you to a random google thing, usually doodles. It's a branding thing at this point. If it still worked, it'd be interesting to know if what they consider the highest ranked result is the topmost placed ad or the first result that's not an ad.
- meltyness 2y agoIt still works, you can click on something non-focusable like the background or hit Esc and still get the "first page" thing. Like a touch interface. Funny that's already so intuitive for how touch interfaces works, I guess it would take maybe a week to change but forever to decide what specifically precisely should be done, so if it's not something epoch-defining, world-changing and comparable to search itself, then maybe just leave it, lest you make a mistake that half the customers likes.
- politelemon 2y agoWell currently, every chatbot has seemingly copied the now famous chatgpt layout. Making it a defacto.
- JohnMakin 2y agoI prefer bing + copilot as a search engine over google if I must use one. Been using it since the beta, have a corporate/business account now. It (usually) provides a good description of my answer and gives sources I can click on to verify. No other search engine I am aware of is doing this right now, although I know chatGPT has recently introduced or talked about a feature like this (I don't really use chatGPT). This is exactly what I want in a good search tool. However, my frustration with bing arises in that from one day to the next there is absolutely no consistency in how "good" the tool feels - almost like there are times they downgraded the underlying model to reduce load/cost without informing the user. They should focus on a better user experience than google, which if I can interject my opinion, is a shockingly low bar these days, and let growth happen by simply being a good tool - all the gimmicks and attempts they've made at mass adoption has seemed very forced. And yes, I'm aware of the natural lock-in advantage google has and how hard that is to surmount, but bing has a large enough percentage of search userbase by now to achieve its own critical mass if it needed to, IMO. Forcing adoption and locking it into microsoft ecosystem will probably eventually be the reason I stop using it.
- interestica 2y agoThis only happens if one searches for “google” in the Bing search bar. This is less deception and more a fun dig. Try searching for “askew” in google.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoIt also only lands because Google has so thoroughly genericised its brand as to be unrecognisable at a glance.
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoNo, this is 1000x more deceptive than the askew thing.
- ralferoo 2y agoEntirely changing the format of the results page based on a keyword match for a competitor is very much deception. Although they've been doing similar for years when you search for Chrome as the very first thing you do on a new install and there the entire screen is basically full of tricks to try to make you stay on Edge and pushing the actual search results down so far you need to scroll. I guess they've got away with that a long time, they probably don't think anyone will care. It all feels a bit like the "I'm feeling lucky" button from years ago on Google when it was kind of the default choice for everyone because back then Google actually cared about putting the most useful page at the very top... Remember when one of the best tricks was searching "French military victories" and pressing "I'm feeling lucky" took you to a page that looked exactly like the google results but said "No results found, maybe you meant 'French military defeats'". Classic stuff!
- flerchin 2y agoIs there something I'm supposed to be noticing with "askew"? Seems the same as cattywampus.
- Arnavion 2y agoThe page gets a CSS filter applied that tilts it by 1deg. <style> body { transform: rotate(1deg) } </style>
- londons_explore 2y agoThis is partly preying on the fact googles 'doodles' weaken their brand/trademark. Back when every google doodle clearly had the word "Google" in, that was okay. But often now, the doodles are just some random picture. At that point, there is no brand recognition to their homepage beyond a blank white background and centered search box, which microsoft has copied here because those elements alone are not enough to form a legally protectable brand.
- comex 2y agoI agree, but for the record, if Google wanted to sue, they wouldn’t be completely out of luck. They could make claims under the Lanham Act §1125(a), state unfair competition laws, or other fraud-adjacent laws. But they would have to prove that Microsoft was deceiving customers, and it would be a lot harder without an actual case of trademark infringement. They could also try to claim trademark infringement based on the fact that Microsoft is hijacking searches for the keyword “google”. Courts have previously rejected trademark claims when a company takes out search ads using its competitor’s name as a keyword, but Google could argue that what Microsoft is doing here is more deceptive than that. (IANAL and have only passing familiarity, but I’m fairly confident in the above.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mrayycombi 2y agoMicrosoft has been breaking the law for years and was found guilty of antitrust violations, among others. Bill Gates, the friendly philanthropist, was/is a business criminal. His company hasn't changed. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/microsoft-agrees-pay-20-million-civil-penalty-alleged-violations-children-s-privacy-laws https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/microsoft-agrees-pay-20-milli... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C.... They waged a war of "FUD" against open-source software. https://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/57261/index.html https://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/57261/index.html And so on. And Google is hardly a saint either. "Do no evil" was just marketing from that surveillance advertising firm.
- granzymes 2y agoI would’ve asked to be taken off of this project if someone had asked me to build this. How embarrassing to need to stoop to this level.
- grumpykitten 2y agotbh, if you're working on bing you probably don't really care about the work
- Tistron 2y agoLooking at it charitably, it doesn't seem very different than going to some outdoor shop NatureLand(r), asking for a Thermos and them showing you a NatureLand(r) thermo flask. Sure, maybe you really wanted a thermo flask of the Thermos brand, but most people just want an insulated bottle for tea or some such. I mean, I wouldn't react more to somebody saying that they googled something with bing than I react when somebody offers me tea but it's herbal infusion. I'll have some reaction that is wrong, but it's also expected and common.
- jjcm 2y agoDisclaimer - I used to work on Bing like... 8 years ago. There's probably some debate around whether this is nefarious or genius, but I'd lead towards the later. "google" has always been one of the number one search terms, and the amount of people who would open chrome, search for google in the address bar, then open google in the google search results, then do their search, was wild. There's a very large percentage of less technical people who aren't looking for Google, they're looking for search, and in their mind the two are the same. They likely don't care what search engine they're using, so I suspect this actually captures a very large amount of search volume, while still solving the intent of the user.
- szundi 2y agoWith all due respect, still feels bs to rationalizing the intentional misleding of these poor people. It is not a coincidence that Google and search is the same in their heads.
- ocdtrekkie 2y agoIs it bad to mislead these poor people when the outcome is better? Google is not good at returning results and is exceptionally good at directing nontechnical users to malicious ads. Bing is saving people. If a user is not equipped to determine the difference between Google and Bing, you should not redirect them to a website which is 80% ads.
- jrochkind1 2y agoIf they didn't care what search engine they were using, would it be necessary to make it look so much like the google homepage?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- linuxftw 2y agoI love it. If a user doesn't understand how web browsers work, they're deserving of this behavior by MS and Bing. Genius.
- nine_k 2y ago— Hey, waiter! That cup that you've brought me, is it tea or coffee? — Sorry, sir, you mean you cannot tell by the taste? — I can't. — Then what difference does it make?
- noman-land 2y agoIt makes a difference because if I drink coffee I'll die. Since you know nothing about me, how about you let me decide what I want and why.
- nine_k 2y agoIt's a joke, and not a serious dialog, exactly because there may be a difference (not necessarily life and death, but maybe the price), but it fades beside the fact that the drink is so bad that its taste is incomprehensible.
- Dylan16807 2y agoThen it was pretty foolish of you to just say "I can't." with no elaboration when the waiter asked about telling by taste. Well, either foolish or a deliberate bait so you could berate him more easily. Neither option looks good. If you wouldn't have answered like that, then the story isn't about you.
- jhanschoo 2y agoIf MS hasn't changed the result in the meantime, the screenshot in the article is slightly dishonest by omission. The journalist has manipulated the browser window's size and scrolled down a bit so that only the "promoted result" is visible and without any indication. The journalist's characterization > Before you scroll down to the actual search results, you’re presented with an all-white page with a centered, unbranded search bar and a multicolored doodle above it that’s heavy on yellow, red, blue, and green. is dishonest. In actuality, Google-like interface appears as a full-width promoted result/ad before the organic results. There is vaguely the words "Promoted by Microsoft" by the top-left, and a 'X' by the top-right. For large enough viewports, the 'X' and organic search results are visible. The "Promoted by Microsoft" is visible without scrolling at any size. Note nevertheless that the journalist has also failed to point out a particular interaction that would support their thesis. For searches that trigger this "promotion", the window immediately scrolls the page so that the promotion is aligned to the top of the viewport, and the search bar in the promotion is focused. (The "Promoted by Microsoft" is visible without scrolling at any size.) If one is logged in (and on Edge?), this promotion is still present, but as a tiny search box before the organic results.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pornel 2y agoI've tried myself (in Firefox on macOS even), and Bing really scrolled down automatically to hide its logo from the top of the page.
- jhanschoo 2y ago> Note nevertheless that the journalist has also failed to point out a particular interaction that would support their thesis. For searches that trigger this "promotion", the window immediately scrolls the page so that the promotion is aligned to the top of the viewport, and the search bar in the promotion is focused. (The "Promoted by Microsoft" is visible without scrolling at any size.) That's what I said. This is still in contradiction with the screenshot, which I described as: > The journalist has manipulated the browser window's size and scrolled down a bit so that only the "promoted result" is visible and without any indication. where the "Promoted by Microsoft" is NOT visible. I find that dishonest.
- cj 2y agoFun fact: Microsoft Ads (the place you go to buy ads on Bing) is essentially a carbon copy of Google Ads in every way imaginable. The UI is, quite literally, exactly the same. The names of the features are nearly identical. There is very little differentiation, and it's 100% by design - doing this makes it very easy for marketing people to switch between ad platforms without needing to learn a completely new interface. It's quite entertaining to watch. Google will release a feature, and then a few weeks later Microsoft announces the exact same thing. Microsoft is learning that copying success is often easier than creating it from scratch. Making their products look identical to Google's makes it a lot easier to switch between the 2.
- solarkraft 2y agoThis is smart and I don’t see anything wrong with it. They are familiar with malicious compatibility, though usually from the other side. Props for one of the rare times they apparently thought a UI through.
- theonemind 2y agoThey've always used copying as one of their signature moves, see zune vs ipod, win3/95 vs mac, early Internet explorer based on spyglass/NCSA mosaic, Novell eDirectory vs ActiveDirectory, C# vs Java, F# vs Ocaml, and many more I would have to think hard about and take a long time to remember. They tend to enter late with a me-too product, whether they copy, acquire, or embrace-extend-extinguish, but copying does play as large a role as any of their strategies, none of which generally involve actual innovation and often lean heavily on illegal, underhanded, or unethical business tactics.
- neonsunset 2y agoPlease try using F# or C# for once and you'll see how incorrect this statement is. Both had huge amounts of novel work that influenced the whole industry.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- baxtr 2y agoI bet this was initially an A/B test idea of a product manager eager for promotion.
- LightBug1 2y agoI watch Groundhog Day at least once a year at Christmas. Bing.com will never not be associated with Ned Ryerson ... Doesn't matter how much they disguise it!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KoolKat23 2y agoIt's so sleazy. The logical next step for Microsoft's Bing, MSN and advertising network is their very own online gambling.
- gardenhedge 2y agoIs Bing the worst brand name ever? They tried so hard to make it work but it just doesn't. I feel like any other name would be better.
- qgin 2y agoBard
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rlpb 2y agoGiven the tricks that Google play (or at least played) in hijacking their own search results to scare users into switching to Chrome, I shed no tears here. Google set a new lower standard in deceitful behaviour, and Microsoft are simply following.
- netsharc 2y agoSheesh, if what you say is true I guess decency is headed towards extinction, and even big companies are acting like the supposed con-men sellers of a Middle Eastern bazaar...
- nathanmills 2y agoActually, this is a brilliant move by Microsoft. As a developer, I can tell you that user interface mimicry is a time-honored tradition in software. Remember how Facebook copied Snapchat's stories? And plus, Google's monopoly needs to be challenged, and if users can't tell the difference in quality between Bing and Google anyway, then what's the problem? The real problem is that people are too used to Google. This might help break that habit.
- userbinator 2y agoThat's the "offensively inoffensive" Corporate Memphis art which Microsoft is pushing aggressively everywhere, so I recognised it at first glance as being from MS and not Google. Google has a slightly different style.
- SoftTalker 2y agoSeems pointless to me, I haven't used google.com or bing.com's main page in years. My browser search bar just searches my preferred search engine if I enter anything that isn't a URL.
- nneonneo 2y agoI used Bing on mobile for a while, and I quickly noticed a horrible dark pattern: the mobile website has a little banner that pops up at the top prompting you to download their app, but this banner only loads in after a short delay (maybe half a second) after the rest of the page. In particular, it shows up right where the search bar was (pushing the bar downwards) - meaning that if I aim for the search bar right when the page loads, I often end up hitting the banner ad right as it loads in. I’ve probably loaded their App Store page a dozen times at this point by accident - it’s that annoying. I swear this is deliberate. There’s not really any good reason for a delay on the “you should get our app” banner that I can see, and even less of a good reason to have it load at the exact position of the search bar. Some engineer in Redmond is probably feeling really good about tricking people this way…
- null0pointer 2y agoI bet it’s a bug but their metrics suffered when they fixed it so they rolled it back.