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Microsoft tried that. Its market share 15+ years on is probably why no one else tried.

by Kye 1y ago

n1xis10t 1y ago
Yeah, Microsoft tried it by making a product that has (as far as I know) always been smaller and less useful than Google. Do you think it is impossible to make a better product than Google?
- Kye 1y ago
  They did blind "taste tests" that showed people preferred Bing. Even Microsoft can't overcome Google's inertia with a better product even with the marketing blitzes they've done and all their efforts to push it through Windows. It's not impossible but it's clearly a hard problem, and all the other big companies seem to prefer doing something else.
  - n1xis10t 1y ago
    Can you provide a link to these “taste tests”? Personally I could see preferring bing over google just for the UI up until maybe 2018, but back then Google was better too. As for the quality of results, I wasn’t paying attention back then. I am guessing that these “taste tests” were done around that time or before, and I wonder how they would go today.
    - Kye 1y ago
      It was a long time ago. They stripped it of identifying features for the test. Finding information on it is hard on account of the overall decline in search quality. There might be a post on it here on HN but I couldn't find it on a quick search.
      - n1xis10t 1y ago
        Is this what you are remembering? https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing-goes-toe-to-toe-against-google/?amp=1 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing... I found that by searching with DuckDuckGo (which is Bing) for "prefer bing" "taste test". If that is what you are remembering, then I would point out that the article makes it sound like Microsoft conducted the test, and if that is the case I could see the test results being less trustworthy. Also the sample size was only 1000 people, which is really small. Bing it On was what they called the campaign, that’s pretty funny. Hey, you might be able to do a test like this today, as an impartial third party. The Cross Origin Policy might make it harder though, see this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast.com/blog.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast... I could see this statistic combined with Bing’s market share being a reason why companies would decide not to try making a search engine, so you have a point there. Considering how terrible both search engines are though, I think it’s a dumb decision. We need a better search engine.

Microsoft tried that. Its market share 15+ years on is probably why no one else tried.

by Kye 1y ago

Microsoft tried that. Its market share 15+ years on is probably why no one else tried.

Yeah, Microsoft tried it by making a product that has (as far as I know) always been smaller and less useful than Google. Do you think it is impossible to make a better product than Google?

Kye 1y ago
They did blind "taste tests" that showed people preferred Bing. Even Microsoft can't overcome Google's inertia with a better product even with the marketing blitzes they've done and all their efforts to push it through Windows. It's not impossible but it's clearly a hard problem, and all the other big companies seem to prefer doing something else.
- n1xis10t 1y ago
  Can you provide a link to these “taste tests”? Personally I could see preferring bing over google just for the UI up until maybe 2018, but back then Google was better too. As for the quality of results, I wasn’t paying attention back then. I am guessing that these “taste tests” were done around that time or before, and I wonder how they would go today.
  - Kye 1y ago
    It was a long time ago. They stripped it of identifying features for the test. Finding information on it is hard on account of the overall decline in search quality. There might be a post on it here on HN but I couldn't find it on a quick search.
    - n1xis10t 1y ago
      Is this what you are remembering? https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing-goes-toe-to-toe-against-google/?amp=1 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing... I found that by searching with DuckDuckGo (which is Bing) for "prefer bing" "taste test". If that is what you are remembering, then I would point out that the article makes it sound like Microsoft conducted the test, and if that is the case I could see the test results being less trustworthy. Also the sample size was only 1000 people, which is really small. Bing it On was what they called the campaign, that’s pretty funny. Hey, you might be able to do a test like this today, as an impartial third party. The Cross Origin Policy might make it harder though, see this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast.com/blog.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast... I could see this statistic combined with Bing’s market share being a reason why companies would decide not to try making a search engine, so you have a point there. Considering how terrible both search engines are though, I think it’s a dumb decision. We need a better search engine.