Yahoo Ask Jeeves Google Bing! *Fight*

Shifty Geezer

Shifty Geezer

uber-Troll!
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Another disagreeable Windows 10 experience, discouraging further use. My latest encounter was installing it on my sister's laptop with a new SSD. I was just using it with Ethernet to the router to try and get PS4 to play nicely without lag (no joy :() and Cortana kept damn well popping up inviting me to look for something, while Edge's use of Bing by default meant the top results of any searches were damned paid-for ads! Why would anyone choose Bing as their search engine of choice when it skews results in favour of monetisation? Why would anyone want an intrusive Cortana when we all despised MS's hateful paper-clip in Office?! Win 10 is the most intrusive, offensive, disrespectful OS I've known from MS by a long, long margin.
 
Malo said:
How is this different from Google?
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Google doesn't put sponsored ads at the top. It gives an attempt at an answer in a Snippet, followed by the most sensible, expected results. So for me searching for Linksys router reset instructions, Google gives exactly the expected results from Linksys at the top, whereas Bing gives sponsored results from other sites. The official Linksys pages were halfway down Bing's search results. That's fundamentally crap! Like a Satnav that leads you down toll roads because they're sponsored by the toll-road operator. Or a librarian guiding you away from the books you ask for to alternatives because they get commission from the book writers (bizarrely...). A good search engine just provides access to the information search for. And given that there are free and genuinely good alternatives to Bing, I'm pleased to make use of them! But I can't see how MS hopes to compete with other OSes and service providers when they are categorically pants in so many departments at the moment, out-manoeuvred by their rivals at every turn.
 
Try bvsg.org. I use Bing for their Rewards program to get free Microsoft Credits for my games. But Google seems to give me more relevant results. But to say it doesn't target ads at the top of their results is just being ill informed.

Tommy McClain
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Google doesn't put sponsored ads at the top. It gives an attempt at an answer in a Snippet, followed by the most sensible, expected results. So for me searching for Linksys router reset instructions, Google gives exactly the expected results from Linksys at the top, whereas Bing gives sponsored results from other sites. The official Linksys pages were halfway down Bing's search results. That's fundamentally crap! Like a Satnav that leads you down toll roads because they're sponsored by the toll-road operator. Or a librarian guiding you away from the books you ask for to alternatives because they get commission from the book writers (bizarrely...). A good search engine just provides access to the information search for. And given that there are free and genuinely good alternatives to Bing, I'm pleased to make use of them! But I can't see how MS hopes to compete with other OSes and service providers when they are categorically pants in so many departments at the moment, out-manoeuvred by their rivals at every turn.
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Cortana can be easily turned off. As for google and bing... I use both and Google is more accurate, understands what you mean better and gets better results overall.

Bing tends to be very porn friendly, if you search words or if you seek unrestricted photos there are a lot of nsfw results for whatever reason. What does Bing well is that it is different than Google. I remember working with classmates and creating a document based on our searches and my classmates got the same articles, so they were kind of repetitive, but searching in bing I got different articles to search for information and made my work a bit different.

The ads thing doesn't happen to me -either you are overreacting or you are wrong-, and in that sense my experience is the same as Ike Turner.

Capture.jpg
 
AzBat said:
Try bvsg.org. I use Bing for their Rewards program to get free Microsoft Credits for my games. But Google seems to give me more relevant results. But to say it doesn't target ads at the top of their results is just being ill informed.

Tommy McClain
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I tried and this is what I got, first try. Shifty might be biased, wrong or both, but the results are pretty clear to me. Great find btw!! Thanks for sharing.

Google gets more to the point showing a Wikipedia article at first, while Bing sends you first to some song nobody knows. However the ads in google are endless.

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Ike Turner said:
It's not...both always return identical results 90%+ of the time btw http://imgur.com/a/Ngh4d
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well thats easily proven to be 100% bullshit, identical results 90%+
you honestly think that is a factual statement?

OK lets try shifty's suggestion
"Linksys router reset instructions" not "Linksys"
Bing: -> https://www.router-reset.com/en/reset-manuals/Linksys
Google -> http://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=139791

now you better hope that the next 9 search results you try are exactly the same or else you 90+% statement aint looking too true

No idea which is more useful, as I dont havt the router
 
zed said:
well thats easily proven to be 100% bullshit, identical results 90%+
you honestly think that is a factual statement?

OK lets try shifty's suggestion
"Linksys router reset instructions" not "Linksys"
Bing: -> https://www.router-reset.com/en/reset-manuals/Linksys
Google -> http://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=139791

now you better hope that the next 9 search results you try are exactly the same or else you 90+% statement aint looking too true

No idea which is more useful, as I dont havt the router
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my results using bvsg.org -nice discovery-

Capture.jpg
 
more tries:
results from the original Google page, in this case I went to google.co.uk

No Ads...,what's with the other adds appearing before at bvsg.org?
Capture.jpg


No Ads either in Bing, and I never used things like AdBlocker, couldn't care less.
Capture.jpg
 
Don't search results depend on how frequently you use a search engine as well? With all the information they collect they must be building up user profiles.

Different case but I've got the same with ads. Recently I've become unable to block ads on my phone so now I'm stuck with seeing ads again and the thing I noticed is if I search for used cars, the next time I open b3d I immediately get a banner for used cars, showing the models I've been searching for!

I'm sure if one uses Google for years they can predict the results you are most likely looking for and give priority to results based on that.

It's easy to test, just get a new pc and connect it to a internet connection outside your own home. Initial results won't be the same as on your Google harvested pc. I've noticed this at work a couple of times.

So if you give search engine Y time to profile you, you probably get better results.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
Don't search results depend on how frequently you use a search engine as well? With all the information they collect they must be building up user profiles.

Different case but I've got the same with ads. Recently I've become unable to block ads on my phone so now I'm stuck with seeing ads again and the thing I noticed is if I search for used cars, the next time I open b3d I immediately get a banner for used cars, showing the models I've been searching for!

I'm sure if one uses Google for years they can predict the results you are most likely looking for and give priority to results based on that.

It's easy to test, just get a new pc and connect it to a internet connection outside your own home. Initial results won't be the same as on your Google harvested pc. I've noticed this at work a couple of times.

So if you give search engine Y time to profile you, you probably get better results.
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it feels as if there is some tracking going on all the time. It happens when I search for a new 4K monitor model and start seeing ads from that. But I think I got Google confused.

Plus, here at B3D there are banners telling me how nice arabian, Russian, latina, asian women etc are, but I am not looking for ladies now
 
I dont really see those ads at the start of googles results (though oddly here, I assume cause Im directly looking to buy something and it was to go of an oppo to miss),
using firefox (not signed into google) but I assume theyre tracking me anyways, the first result is NZ result, if I use bvsg.org then the gooogle reults in sponsered ads at the start
gb1.jpg


bing, seem to be all US results (maybe it's not meant to be used outside the US), the first paid ad is for potterybarn (thats ad money well spent :yes:)
gb2.jpg
 
Cyan said:
I tried and this is what I got, first try. Shifty might be biased, wrong or both,
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Or neither? Do you honestly believe I'm so biased against MS that my delusional mind imagined three adverts at the top of my search results? Or was I too dumb to interpret the results page properly?? Really strange thinking here.

tongue_of_colicab said:
Don't search results depend on how frequently you use a search engine as well? With all the information they collect they must be building up user profiles.

So if you give search engine Y time to profile you, you probably get better results.
Click to expand...
An intelligent response! It would appear results are dynamic and vary on whatever whims the search provider is operating on at the time. I just checked the same machine's web history with the same results and didn't get any adverts, with the Linksys official page topping the list. I've only found one advert in a few subsequent searches, searching for "reset linksys password". On the laptop I have an advert for a password manager on the top of my results. On this PC in Firefox, the same results lack the advert. I wonder if results are varied also by whether you are logged into your MS account or not?

So in general use Bing may not be all that bad, although I do find the Google results more on topic*. What is a little shocking is how quickly some people with different experiences instantly poo-poo someone else. I suppose I shouldn't be that shocked - it's endemic to the species with many, many examples of people not being believed and fobbed of as crazy or prejudiced or somesuch. *shrug*

* last time I evaluated Bing properly was when it released. It has probably improved a lot since then.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
last time I evaluated Bing properly was when it released. It has probably improved a lot since then.
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I think this is what gets to the heart of the problem of your initial post. You poopoo all over a service that you haven't properly used in years & then propped up a competing service that is shown to participate in the same practices. This would be like if I went into a PS4 thread & talked about how crappy its standby/suspend mode was but hadn't used it since it launched. Personally I try to make it a habit to only post on topics which I have personal experience with, but hey that's just me. ;)

Tommy McClain
 
AzBat said:
I think this is what gets to the heart of the problem of your initial post. You poopoo all over a service that you haven't properly used in years...
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My post was in the Windows 10 thread, where I reported on my experience using Windows 10 that day. That experience may not be representative, but it was real and what I was referring to - I'm not making shit up.

My reaction was also tainted by previous negative experiences with Win 10, for sure. And I am moderately emotional about it because a computer is my day-to-day existence, along with being the family tech guy who has to fix everyone else's computer problems, and I need it to be a good experience. To date my OSes have only ever been the good ones - AmigaDOS/Workbench, Windows 95 (nothing fancy and okay for the time), Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7. The latest Windows, and Microsoft's current design and implementation choices, keep being annoying. As a consumer I can 1) not buy/use their products, and 2) grumble on the internet in the hopes they'll listen and change to produce a product that better suits me. There aren't many real alternatives to an OS.

What does bother me is that people take such complaints as prejudice, as if I'm incapable of appreciating a good product if it wears a certain badge. That in turn prejudices the interpretation of the criticism. The moment MS make an awesome, swanky, capable, trouble-free OS, I'll be posting how awesome my experience is. However, I can only post on what I'm actually experiencing.
 
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