[HN Gopher] Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattenti...
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Microsoft disguises Bing as Google to fool inattentive searchers
Author : ungut
Score : 204 points
Date : 2025-01-07 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcworld.com)
| funOtter wrote:
| So google owns the "image and text box on a web page" design?
| dewey wrote:
| It's about the doodle, not the image and text box. As the
| article explains.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| No - 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 wrote:
| It looks like they came up with the headline first then worked
| backwards to present something that fit as a thesis.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > " 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| This only comes up after searching for Google
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I 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.
| zb3 wrote:
| Nothing 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?
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I 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.
| notahacker wrote:
| Honestly, I'm under the impression they've converged so much
| recently I can't be bothered to switch on my work machine,
| and I don't think this is because Bing is getting better.
|
| I think there are a few areas where Google still has an
| advantage (if I search with a city name, Google will match
| results to the city my IP address is located on and not a
| smaller, less significant one in the United States) but I
| think their self promotion and AI Q&A bullshit in results is
| actually worse.
| zb3 wrote:
| Perhaps something like LMArena but for search engines could
| help them understand what underperforms.. is there a tool
| where i could see results side by side? I never thought
| about that..
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I started a new job and the browser default was set to Edge.
| I never bothered to change it and defaulted to using Bing for
| search. TBH, I don't notice a difference in results.
| riiii wrote:
| That's not because Bing is good. It's because Google has
| been enshittified.
| amyames wrote:
| It just seems I'm doing the google -> bing -> yandex thing a
| lot now.
|
| And then I don't bother with many competitors because they're
| all bing based anyway.
|
| Way down the list sometimes I resort to Brave search. Not
| because it's good. But in fact, because it's so bad, it might
| be indexing something the others tried getting rid of for a
| good year or two after everyone else tried to memory hole it.
|
| Which has helped me pull cached versions of something
| interesting "to me" that wasn't interesting enough for
| someone else to have gotten with archive.today
|
| Think the most recent one I went down the whole rabbit hole
| on was a tv show called "that's my bush" from Comedy Central.
| I was willing to buy them but they were Unobtainium. I did
| end up finding the episodes on archive.org and on torrents,
| via yandex. Great example of something harmless and hilarious
| that Big Social and Big Search just HAS to protect my
| delicate sensibilities and my fragile mind from.
|
| Just to underscore how stupid and petty some of this stuff
| has gotten.
|
| Google and Bing both hid their availability on archive.org
| from me and I would not have thought to look there.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| Maybe I am cheap, but I have been using bing because of their
| rewards points stuff, at least then I get paid for my data.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I will help determine if you're cheap. How much money have
| you saved/made through the rewards points stuff?
| garciasn wrote:
| Far less than the time saved had they received Google's
| results instead of Bing's inferior ones.
| norman784 wrote:
| Are Google results good? I stop using Google years ago
| because of the garbage results (a lot of spam sites that
| were just serving data crawled from Github and other
| sites).
| KTibow wrote:
| I've went through a few stints of using Bing. Eventually
| I end up starting all my queries with `@google`.
| nine_k wrote:
| My primary search engine as of now is DDG, Their results
| are mostly fine (and powered partly by Bing). When their
| results are not good enough, I ask Google; often, but not
| always, it's better. For some other kinds of queries,
| Google fares notably worse than DDG, likely because SEO
| tricks are disproportionately directed against Google,
| and not always work against other search engines as
| effectively.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| DDG uses Bing behind the scenes.
| garciasn wrote:
| I suppose some of this is subjective and/or nuanced. In
| my personal experience, for the search terms I use most
| often for my personal and professional lives, Google
| provides quality several stdevs above Bing's results.
| unsignedint wrote:
| I've had my issues with Google ever since they ran a
| series of ads pretending to be for Blender but actually
| linking to a scam site. (I'm not sure if it's gotten
| better since then.) While I do occasionally come across
| questionable ads on Bing, they're definitely much less
| frequent. For what it's worth, I've switched to using
| Edge as my browser as well, largely because Google
| refuses to address one of the most frustrating issues
| with its external link profile behavior. Specifically,
| Google forces external links to open in the last-used
| profile, rather than letting you choose, whereas Edge
| allows you to customize this behavior.
|
| On top of that, Bing's deep search feature has proven to
| be genuinely useful
| miki123211 wrote:
| If you use a search engine, you _need_ an Ad Blocker.
|
| Not because "privacy:", not because "tracking", but
| because malicious ads exist, and you'll click on one
| eventually.
|
| This is even more true for less technical family members.
| recursive wrote:
| You've completely overlooked the possibility of a search
| engine without ads. That's what I use.
| Arnavion wrote:
| I wrote https://www.arnavion.dev/blog/2020-12-05-ddg-vs-
| google/ in 2020. The tl;dr is that Bing's (DuckDuckGo's)
| results were garbage and Google was giving the correct
| answer within the first five results.
|
| Running those same specific queries now, the Google
| results are as bad or worse than Bing's results at the
| time, and Bing now frequently gets the results that
| Google did at the time. But my everyday experience is
| still that Google gives generally better results than
| Bing / DDG.
| junar wrote:
| I perused the Bing rewards site [1]. It seems that you need
| 1,000 Bing searches to get a $5 Microsoft or Xbox gift card
| (3rd party gift cards seem more expensive). There are also
| daily caps on rewards from Bing searches.
|
| [1] https://rewards.bing.com/welcome
| foobiekr wrote:
| Honestly 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.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| They're really using every tactic they can -- and for the life
| of me, I have no idea why. They've pushed so hard, for so long,
| to make Bing succeed -- even forcing it in the Start menu --
| and it's still not owning the search space.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| In my opinion, they'd be much more effective if they just
| killed the Bing brand, killed Bing rewards, killed the Bing
| newsfeeds, rebranded it to "Private Search" at
| privatesearch.com, and called it a day. Yes, people have
| memories shorter than a goldfish.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| Agreed that the Bing brand has to go, but I think they
| should use their normal naming schemes, something like
| "Microsoft Azure Cloud Search Pro 2025 SP1"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| They'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 wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| If they didn't care about the difference they obviously
| wouldn't have searched for Google in the first place
| recursive wrote:
| Not 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 wrote:
| You can also see it for yourself without needing Windows or Edge
| by opening https://www.bing.com/search?q=google in Linux Chromium
| for example.
| PessimalDecimal wrote:
| The only other search query I have found that provides a
| similar "spoofed Google" look is
| https://www.bing.com/search?q=yandex.
| riiii wrote:
| "Fuck Microsoft! Fuck!"
|
| -- Dr. Adrian Mallard
| bangaladore wrote:
| Interestingly 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 wrote:
| Interesting. 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")
| tim333 wrote:
| Being charitable you could see that as a tribute to Google to
| mirror their doodles.
| dsissitka wrote:
| Removed. I see the scrolling happens for me in Chromium so that's
| not PCWorld's doing.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Your 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).
| dsissitka wrote:
| It's not doing it for me in Firefox but it is in Chromium.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Sure. It also does it in Edge which is what all the
| articles are about, since Windows+Edge is the primary
| reason people end up using Bing by default.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| The page automatically scrolls, 9to5google's article has a gif
| of it in action. https://9to5google.com/2025/01/06/bing-trick-
| users-google/
| Sephr wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I was referring to PCWorld there. I've rephrased it.
| Hopefully it's a little clearer now.
| Sephr wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the clarification
| notfed wrote:
| Can't reproduce. Does it only happen from Edge?
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I reproduced in both Firefox on Windows 11 and Firefox on
| Debian.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Works 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 wrote:
| The copilot feature is pretty handy.
| arielcostas wrote:
| And, 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 wrote:
| You can just scroll past it you know
| mrweasel wrote:
| You 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.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Weirdly, it works for me on FireFox (I see the Google-like
| page) but not on Edge (where I just see a link for Google, no
| mimicry). I am not signed in on Edge.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Works on Safari / Mac
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It doesn't work if you're logged in.
| criddell wrote:
| Search for google in bing. At least that's how I can see it.
|
| https://www.bing.com/search?q=google
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Never 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.
| franczesko wrote:
| Bing is ok. DDG is pretty much its anonymized version.
| datavirtue wrote:
| If 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.
| asdff wrote:
| Initially 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.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Honestly I feel like Bing has been the better search engine for
| 6 - 8 years at this point.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Honestly, 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.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I always find it embarrassing when a colleague opens up a new
| tab while screen sharing and Bing / Edge starts spamming
| trashy news.
|
| Given Microsoft is "soo enterprise" it's always a source of
| amazement that Microsoft feel it's acceptable to default to
| this kind of spammy behaviour.
|
| It just goes to show how running businesses by engagement
| scores really is just a race to the bottom.
| neocritter wrote:
| That was back when everyone was trying to make a "portal" to
| compete with AOL. It seems like browsers are headed down the
| same path now with replacing the simple search box new tab
| page with the same stuff the portals had.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I have a longtime dislike for Microsoft but google has become
| almost unusable recently with fake ai pages filling the
| results, and Bing seems to work better.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Moves like the one from the linked article is one contributor
| to the hate.
| debugnik wrote:
| I stopped using DDG, which pulls results from Bing, because
| Bing fell very easily for SEO slop; yes, even worse than
| Google.
|
| The most painful for me was a set of wikis filled with AI-
| generated nonsense about OCaml and some other niche languages,
| which completely shadowed genuine content on the first page of
| any search.
| Neil44 wrote:
| In my experience the search results on bing are a spam filled
| trash fire.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Google and bing suck about equally at search these days.
| Stagnant wrote:
| I've never used bing that much, but after google removed its
| cache feature last year, I found myself using bing a lot more
| often. A couple of weeks back I was so disappointed to find out
| that Microsoft had pulled the plug on bing's cache as well. I
| just can't grasp why anyone would think that removing the one
| feature that gave you edge over the competition was a good
| idea. AFAIK now the only search engine remaining with a cache
| is yandex.
| Krssst wrote:
| I despise anything being forced onto users. Why are Bing and
| Edge being used in the Windows start menu even when the default
| browser is something else? Why is there no simple option to
| disable Bing search in the start menu? Why is Teams ignoring
| the default browser with its default settings to use Edge
| instead?
|
| (those are rethorical, I think I know the answer)
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| This is only funny because no one takes bing seriously.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Huh? 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| Krssst wrote:
| Also, not using Android or Chrome is very feasible for almost
| everyone (thanks to iOS and Firefox/Chromium). Not using
| Windows is almost impossible for a large array of use cases
| and professions.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I 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.
| dlachausse wrote:
| DuckDuckGo has served me pretty well for the past couple of
| years.
|
| Also, their AI offering duck.ai is pretty solid as well.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| Kagi is pretty good.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Bing 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 wrote:
| Both companies are known for highly invasive tracking.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Bing 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| True, that alone keeps me away from google.
| ricoche wrote:
| This is so desperate I feel bad for them
| olyjohn wrote:
| I don't feel bad for them. Fuck them. It's a delicious taste of
| their own medicine.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| Everything 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 wrote:
| It 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.
| zb3 wrote:
| I'll immediately switch to Bing if you allow me to search by
| regex, or at least "literally literally".
| londons_explore wrote:
| true regex search of the internet is a "more compute than on
| all of earth" type problem.
|
| They could at least get closer tho...
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| I'm surprised more startups don't just copy the most famous
| landing page of all time.
| meltyness wrote:
| I 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.
| politelemon wrote:
| Well currently, every chatbot has seemingly copied the now
| famous chatgpt layout. Making it a defacto.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| It also only lands because Google has so thoroughly genericised
| its brand as to be unrecognisable at a glance.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| No, this is 1000x more deceptive than the askew thing.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Entirely 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 wrote:
| Is there something I'm supposed to be noticing with "askew"?
| Seems the same as cattywampus.
| Arnavion wrote:
| The page gets a CSS filter applied that tilts it by 1deg.
| <style> body { transform:
| rotate(1deg) } </style>
| londons_explore wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| I 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 SS1125(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.)
| croisillon wrote:
| "i'm appalled that i ended up searching google on bing when i
| honestly believed i was searching google on google"
|
| - no one ever
| fullshark wrote:
| ??? They aren't searching google on bing, they are issuing bing
| searches on a search bar designed to spoof google's and fool
| them.
| granzymes wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| tbh, if you're working on bing you probably don't really care
| about the work
| Tistron wrote:
| Looking 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 wrote:
| Disclaimer - 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 wrote:
| With 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 wrote:
| Is 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 wrote:
| If they didn't care what search engine they were using, would
| it be necessary to make it look so much like the google
| homepage?
| geodel wrote:
| Because they think it is genius.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Older people don't understand the idea of "search engine",
| they understand "google". They don't realize you can "google"
| through Bing as well. I hate it, but it is what it is.
| quink wrote:
| > They likely don't care what search engine they're using
|
| That's nothing, for our next iteration our navigation system
| will take you to the nearest Woolworths because they've got a
| commercial partnership with us even though the customer quite
| clearly said 'Coles'. It's likely they don't care.
| vasco wrote:
| It's genius to copy your competitor because the user might not
| notice and you can also solve their problem? I don't think it's
| genius.
| gazchop wrote:
| I haven't heard anyone utter anything but disgust at
| accidentally using bing. They _know_.
|
| The fact windows is full of dark patterns to try and get you to
| use it is pathetic disrespectful hubris not genius.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| That makes no sense. If they don't care what search engine
| they're using, why do it?
| from-nibly wrote:
| Misleading people is always nefarious full stop. It's not your
| job to decide whether or not someone else cares, it's theirs.
| shiveenp wrote:
| This comment tells me everything I need to know about the kind
| of people that work at Microsoft.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| Which is... that they're all geniuses?
| not2b wrote:
| More like, they think that deceiving people for profit is
| genius.
| RajT88 wrote:
| It can be both. And it is.
|
| Machiavellian, even.
|
| https://ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/chapters-15-21/chapter-1...
| suddenexample wrote:
| The ones debating whether this is nefarious or not are the ones
| ruining the tech industry. This is absolutely nefarious.
| Whether or not it's a clever path to promotion due to corporate
| incentives is irrelevant.
|
| I'm curious what part of Microsoft's culture enables these
| satirically slimy product decisions. In theory, other megacorps
| should be no better, but somehow they seem to maintain a bar
| that Microsoft always manages to stoop below
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Disclamer - I owned a restaurant that gave Pepsi products to
| customers who explicitly ask for a Coke.
|
| There's probably some debate about whether this is nefarious or
| genius, but I lean towards the later. "Coke" has always been
| the number one request from our patrons, and the amount of
| people who just wanted any soda but said "coke" was wild.
| there's a very large percentage of poorly palated patrons who
| aren't looking for a Coca-Cola, they're looking for a soda, and
| in their mind the two are the same.
|
| They likely don't care which soda they're drinking, so I
| suspect this actually captures a very large amount of soda
| sales, while still solving the intent of the patron.
|
| What's that? There's a process server outside? Whatever for?
| lukevp wrote:
| This was so offensive to imagine as a Coke fan, great choice
| of metaphor!
| quink wrote:
| A perfect analogy, if I were to trust the glass with my
| deepest darkest secrets, had a relationship with it going
| back decades, expect it to point me to the right direction
| and keep track of much of my correspondence, and so on and so
| forth.
|
| OK, maybe a glass of soft drink somehow doesn't do that, but
| I suppose it's perfect analogy adjacent.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > I owned a restaurant that gave Pepsi products to customers
| who explicitly ask for a Coke.
|
| Did you tell them they were drinking Pepsi or ask some
| variant of "Is Pepsi okay?"
| riiii wrote:
| Are you from the PR Disaster Mitigation Department trying
| to find justification for this?
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Disclamer - I owned a restaurant that gave Pepsi products
| to customers who explicitly ask for a Coke._
|
| I have in fact heard "coke" used as a generic before. Just
| like google, kleenex, champaign, cheddar, ...
| ziml77 wrote:
| But at the very least they need to say "No Coke. Pepsi."
| pests wrote:
| This example was doomed from the start because of this
| fact.
|
| A lot of the US south uses the generic "coke."* It is not
| uncommon for this conversation to play out: "Can I get a
| coke?" "Sure, which kind?" "A Coke" (or a pepsi, or fanta)
|
| In my neck of the woods we call it "pop" which always
| sounded strange to me in isolation.
|
| * As famously depicted in the 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey.
| lesuorac wrote:
| To avoid the whole question of if they carry pepsi or coke
| I usually just ask for a pepsi-coke and I've yet to run
| into any problems.
| jjcm wrote:
| I definitely get what you're saying - there's an element here
| of taking what a customer asks for and returning something
| different, but I think it's an imperfect analogy.
|
| It's not bringing them a Coke, it's bringing them a dispenser
| that says "Cola" next to a fridge with options. For people
| who just want Cola, it's immediately available. For those
| with a brand choice, there are additional options.
|
| The reality I'm trying to portray though is that the
| demographic of people who search "Google" in a search field
| rarely overlaps with the demographic of people who are
| opinionated about their search tool, so this ends up serving
| a segment of the population in the way they expected.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It's a cheap trick from some 20 year old fresh out of
| college. It works though but it makes Microsoft look soft
| and somehow non professional. But still good for them if
| they get to convert a few users
| linuxftw wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| _-- 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?_
| jhanschoo wrote:
| If 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.
| pornel wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Fun 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 wrote:
| This 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.
| baxtr wrote:
| I bet this was initially an A/B test idea of a product manager
| eager for promotion.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I 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!
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| It's so sleazy. The logical next step for Microsoft's Bing, MSN
| and advertising network is their very own online gambling.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Is 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.
| rlpb wrote:
| Given 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| That'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 wrote:
| Seems 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.
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