The New Bing Makes Google Look Anti-Social | Hacker News Reader

The New Bing Makes Google Look Anti-Social

readwriteweb.com

36 pointsjonmwords21 comments

OK. So there is a Metro bar on the right side. Looks like a lot of work. But..why (Google+ should hear this, too) would I want everyone to see what I am searching for all the time? "Well, you don't have to tell anyone!", you say. Exactly. And now we're back to the norm and those who contract to a simpler approach win. Again.

I've never searched for something and then said, "I wish I could share this right now!" The reason being is that I haven't even seen the content yet – and when I do, there will be functionality to share right there. Why would I want to talk about something before I've seen it?

Google now likes to remind me that, in fact, my own website belongs to me, when it appears in searches. "You shared this". It's unhelpful and a waste of screen real estate.

What I hate is that there is nothing that tells me explicitly what is going on. If I am about to search for a gift for my wife, I don't want to have wheels spinning in the background figuring out what to do with my search. I already get paranoid with G+ and find myself logging into every social media app to make sure nothing was posted (e.g. "Nick was searching for flower shops in Ontario").

I don't mind the option, but there should be a liberally visible indicator/switch and defaulting to off would be nice.

I thought Ms. Dewey was going to change the direction of search UI, but somehow it died.

They dont' see it all the time. You search, if you don't find it, you basically have a way to ask your friends instead. It's not that complicated. You're not sharing your search, you're just asking real people. Sometimes people know the answers to questions you're asking. Seems rather handy.

That reads like a MS press release.

That's because it is a Microsoft press release, or more precisely its a coverage on a new feature which covers the things Microsoft wants to get out about their changes.

This isn't a bad thing (and actually I think that Microsoft deserves credit for some nice UI work) it's just the way a company does public relations. They talk to journalists and tell them all about their new thing, and then the journalists turn around and write about that new thing for their readers. Usually it is not some journalist happens to stop by the site and says "Holy crap! Look at all the stuff they did!"

And meanwhile, Bing still returns worse results than Google. Don't care, not interested. Stop fussing about with the window dressings and make your results not suck!

The image search appears slightly better than Google, at least for the queries I've tried so far.

I can't even remember the last time I searched on bing and didn't find exactly what I was looking for. Can you give an example of a query that yields "worse" results?

bing google "34%" site:news.ycombinator.com

For the most part, I don't want my search to be social. I generally go to google for facts.

A good social search app would be a nice product, but I don't really want it conflated with my web search.

ReadWriteWeb needs to die. They just copy stories word for word, add a few lines and then produce some of the worst link bait titles on the web. Zero value.

Okay so the new Bing looks really good and works really well. Now they only need to change their name because I ain't binging. I can do MS Search or I can do Google but for God's sake change the name and please also stop running those spammy Bing rewards.

I'd like to try it, but you have to sign up for a newsletter to do so. That doesn't make sense.

You can't try it as soon as you sign up. If you sign up, you'll "be notified." That being said, I was once signed up for a Bing Newsletter, and they weren't too spammy. Still, wish I could try it without having to sign up.

Interesting, since the old "X" versions of Bing looked exactly like Google, with a pretty background.

Except the result page, which generally doesn't look like Google at all since Google's results I can generally use.

Facebook never gonna get my search data!

you can use a separate app if you need share your search query: http://servletsuite.blogspot.com/2012/02/ask-friends-sociali...

Meh

The principles of capitalism and competition in action.

I seriously dont like Bing. But I don't use any google products now for more than a quick look (including gmail) because they be storing my data and preferring their G+ stuff over more relevant information. So, while I don't like Bing, I will probably give this a try, as it sounds like it is the proper balance in a social search engine.

And simple always wins in my book. This seems much less obnoxious/intrusive than G's new social search attempts.

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