Microsoft Bing is trying to spoof Google UI when people search Google.com

I host my own SearXNG instance, which miiiight be a bit of a bad idea because the anonymity of the crowd disappears but hosting your own services is way too cool to ignore. It's at search.gregtech.eu in case anyone wants to use it.

SearX is dead; you should use SearXNG now.

DDG is just Bing under the hood

I feel like Microsoft is way more shameless about their shady stuff. They've been messing around with impersonating google/chrome for awhile now, they recently had that thing where they would copy all your open chrome tabs, and then when you started your computer it would open edge with all your chrome tabs to trick people into using edge instead.

I would use anything else before DDG, the primary function of it which is searching, generally feels sucky

Not just Google. There was a performance "bug" in Windows Defender a while back that specifically harmed Firefox. It had been reported but Microsoft took 5+ years to fix, and Mozilla did the bulk of the sleuthing and proposing fixes themselves.

Now, whether MS were intentionally crippling a competitor's browser in the beginning when the bug surfaced (which coincidentally was around the time Edge was relaunched as a chromium browser), there's no way to know.

But after a certain point, a software company with a market cap in the trillions loses any benefit of doubt I'd give them in scenarios like this where it benefits them not to find a solution. And 5 years is far beyond that point.

Unfortunately for Firefox, they didn't really have the money for a lawsuit against a juggernaut like Microsoft.

I'm having antitrust deja vu. Anybody else?

They seem to pathologically not be able to help themselves, even with products that don't need to be promoted that way. I used Outlook for Android for years because it was actually quite good. Had a multi account inbox view, true dark mode, Galaxy Watch compatibility when those were all rather unusual features. But then they started trying to put Bing search in my long press menu system wide, using Outlook as the Trojan horse to do so, and I just found that too obnoxious

I don't think they can. They would need to rethink their company culture, but because the current one makes big numbers go up, they don't really have to change anything.

Corps don't give a fuck about an antitrust law suit. In the US, the party that pays the most to jerk off CEOs just got put in charge. Even if it was the other party, who only pays slightly less, the most extreme fines are a slap on the wrist. Hell, come Jam 20th it'll probably a tax write off.

Until the EU levies fines that would kneecap these companies out of business, there is no incentive to change the behavior.

I mean the original lawsuit was for aggressively bundling Internet Explorer and kneecapping other browsers. Which sure sounds a lot like a minor variation on what they've been doing with Edge and Bing for a while now, without consequences. Antitrust enforcement is not something I have a lot of confidence in for the foreseeable future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_to_America

lol, I just watched this movie this week

Yeah tbh, it's just two shady companies trying to out-cheat each other.

DuckDuckGo and Kagi managed to figure this out. Bing is the odd one out.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy! But an enemy I like to watch.

lately

The stupidest thing about this whole entire thing about net neutrality.

The entire reason the FCC was created was to prevent the committee from being governed by the government process to avoid corruption for the exact circumstances we're seeing here

Saying that the Supreme Court and the appeals court has any area of saying what the FCC is legally allowed to do is laughable, as the entire reason for the committee being isolated from the standard Executive Administrative branches was to prevent government overreach like they're doing currently.

This is 1,000% them saying hey you're an isolated committee that we can't touch but you're not allowed to do the one thing that your committee is supposed to do

Corruption all the way to the top. It's the American way, ironically I think the slogan "drain the swamp" works for both parties, as it's clear that the people that are in charge aren't willing to actually uphold the commitment they've made to the people.

I first became aware of the Yes Men after they apologized for the Dow/Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal. Just wanted to share,

https://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_yes_mens_bhopal_hoax

I prefer DDG to either as well, but in terms of search quality ... Don't they use Bing search results?

I don't think there's a difference in search quality, but I do really like the bangs and the client-side settings (can completely disable the AI noise, enable dark mode, etc all w/o needing an account).

I disagree with the quality part.

DDG may be better for privacy, but I've found their search results to be garbage.

I think Kagi is way better, but unluckily it's a paid product. Most of the people will never pay for a search engine.

If you’re going to use one of the two, it’s a lot better to be using Bing than Google. At least you stand a chance of finding what you’re looking for with Bing.

Why would they? They can imitate Google's style w/o violating their copyright, it would actually be easier to reinvent the wheel than to try to somehow copy what Google has. It's nothing special, just a bit of padding and margin settings for result cards and whatnot.

Google has such bad results, they would probably figure you wanted the Palmer’s candy.

I'll need a source for that.

Just try yourself, the claim is obviously false.

https://www.bing.com/search?pc=MOZI&form=MOZLBR&q=bullshit
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=bullshit

The results here are nothing alike.
Her I have the first result on Google being "Prime video", which does not occur on the first page of Bing.
On Bing the first result is Wikipedia English, where Google has Wikipedia Danish as 2nd result, and the English not occuring on first page.

Misleading users is definitely harmful. Since this is obviously done on purpose, I'd say it's malicious.

Is Google really as shit as Bing? I had to Ask Jeeves to confirm that.

Honestly G might be worse than B at this point

I see this as an action intended to trick users.

and yet Network Service still makes people use Google + ddg has better search quality

It's my right to say it's shitty behavior and I look down on it