Does anyone out there actually like Bing? A diatribe.

It's almost distressing, and I wish I could say something different, but I can't see any reason to use Bing at all. It's not that I have a 'thing' for Microsoft. Google isn't bad, but I can't decide whether the wild wooley internet has died or if you just can't get there with the current providers of search. I don't think that the state we seemed to have arrived at of having mostly one search engine worth using (or available) is a good one. I seriously miss all the other providers, as I also miss a lot of the other-worldly content which I seem to remember finding.

But perhaps I am not looking for an internet search engine but an internet time machine.

I offered content at one time. I had a website that attempted to show some of the best alternative rock music in Spanish and English and communicate to both worlds. But the website also had a secret insidious mission. Every detail of the website was intent on drawing vistors to visit other content in science, in art, in media. That decorative image of the moon clicked on would take people to vist Nasa. And that strange ghostly art work that enhanced the lryics to a song by Piero or Jefferson Airplane would transport a visitor to an online museum. There were stories about machine, trains that actually ran better on meat... flesh-eaters, zounds! I thought that some day some crazy kid coming to see rock might find themselves studying some form of advanced biology or even more.

My website is gone with the blogs, and twitters, and whatever media sensation that will pop up next week. Last week two girls pushed each other into a fountain in Kansas City, someone twittered and more than 700 stupid kids showed up to fight on the Plaza, all at once in Kansas City, Missouri. I don't completely blame the kids for being dumb, we've had creepy politicians for the past year doing their best to fan hate between people and suceeding fabulously. And we are a bit at fault here ourselves. Many of us have a short lived memory of history. We forget quickly, a repeated lie which digs at the emotional gut seems to be a very useful tool towards that ends. It becomes today's 'truth' in the same way that anything new is pounced on like Twitter. It's a banal kind of existance of people so bored that they sit waiting for any new way to 'twitter away' their time.

Flash! You're an idiot waiting for some other idiot to tell you to show up and do whatever they say. I think that these type of devices will speed the interent to it's demise, and not vice-versa.

So is there something more than Google now? And what about his Bing? When the other engines gave up, did we lose 3/4's of the net with it? Do internet search engines show personality? Like the amazing Rock Natonal of Latin American countries, I think that we are all ripped-off when instead of worldly search engines originating from their perspective zones we are left to search through one giant media core. This does not represent the world and it never will.

This evening, I listened to an internet radio station (WFMU) where a unique human point of view transported me to a place no other human could take me. That's technology. That's beauty. No other human could take me there. There is no place in this world for one, but there has to be. Many one's, not just The One.

I'd be interested in hearing your comments.

 

I use bing in a limited way. I enjoy the photography every day on the home page, and I use it to search. I think it does an excellent job at both. I had used Google for years with its cute Google logo that changed every once in a while, but for entertainment value you can't beat bing. And its search engine is great too.

 

Interesting.

Perhaps I should try Bing when I look for entertainment items.

My initial use of the internet almost exclusively focused in communicating with other countries. In that period of time each country had it's own local content search engines. This appeared to give each search engine more of a sense of character and the returned content, to me, was more unique and interesting.

As idealistic as this one world image seems to be in vision, perhaps it is in reality... sort of boring?

This may be getting away a bit from the subject of Bing, but I think in a way it is right to the point. The operators of Bing have been trying to compete with Google by out-Googling Google. Perhaps they should go retro and try to do what Google cannot do. Yahoo Argentina does not seem to replace the old Argentine search engines, for example. The only analogy that I can think of is to give the old white bread example. White bread is great, but if you have had something different, despite the similarity of the ingredients, white bread won't replace Jewish rye.

I actually went back to Bing to try a search on the Mexican rock group Cafe Tacuba after I read your reply. I was surprised with the results which were much better than when I attempted to use Bing to find Microsoft related material. After that search I went right back to Google who strangely had better results.

The results on Cafe Tacuba were much more interesting. I liked the page layout and presentation. Either Bing had improved drastically in the space of a month, or as you have said, they are better with visual or entertainment content. As you said, the use of images (at least in this particular instance) is pleasant.

I appreciate your reply which shows that people who like using a tool sometimes know the best way of how to use it.

 

Did a search once, results were kinda messed, went to Google and used as normal.
Never went back to Bing

 

same here, whenever i try it i confuse it! maybe im too used to google which always finds what i need.

 

Yes I do.

 

I don't know what you mean by confuse. As I type my inquiry, it makes suggestions as to what I might be looking for. Sometimes while I'm still typing it comes up with what I'm looking for. In any case I always get results just like Google.

 

I Don't like Bing...Still with Google.

 

use bing only for the cashback features nothing more

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to get less "garbage" results when using Bing Over Google. What I mean by garbage is untrustworthy links, barely related results, and such. Google has an absolutely horrid tendency to give results where a search term is mentioned in a post on some forum thread. Not an actual discussion mind you, but simply the term being used in a sentence. That might be thorough, but it isn't intelligent. With Bing I see (mostly) the opposite. It tends to give me results with substance (and a lot less malicious links as well).

Now, where Google remains top dog is image search. Not because the actual images are better or there is more of them, but because of how they load in the results page. On Bing, an image search is like walking through thick molasses for me. Results load quite slow, and the images themselves when clicked on just as slow. With Google, image searching is fast and (usually, depending on the website the image is hosted on) viewing the images is just as fast.

 

Don't like Google and don't like Bing, so I use Ixquick and Copernic pro (saves your results and shows if you've visited it. Nice.). When I don't find what I want I use Scroogle or if that doesn't help Google, but that's not often.

 

Bing has changed extensively recently, to the point they are TV advertising to get people to try it again. Just saying don't judge it on past experiences.

 

Bing is always my first option over Google now.

 

I tried Bing, but I didn't find any advantage on Google, except the photography in the home page.

 

I've been giving SeaMonkey 2.0.4 a bit of a spin, I hadn't been using SM for some time as it has some of the same Ajax scripting problems as Firefox. However K-Meleon seems to be having trouble rendering in some pages so I thought I'd pimp my ride kit the Monkey out with a new theme, WOT, ABP & NoScript then surf a bit.

I noticed that I had set Ask Jeeves (UK version of Ask.com) as the default search engine (you can type straight into the url bar in SeaMonkey) which I had forgotten about. You know, I had also forgotten how much I liked Ask Jeeves!

I now have Bing as my homepage on SeaMonkey. This gives me a nice choice between the two.

The only thing I like about Google is Gmaps I think. I just wish I could find a cheap pair of those 3D glasses somewhere.

 

The only time I see the word "Bing" is when I open IE 8 once a month to pay bills.(two utility sites still require it.)

The only reason I see it then,is because I let IE8 go back to its default MSN
homepage, because I wanted to trim a couple of entries off my Hi-Jack This
log.

bing cherries are nice,however!!

rat

 

Google seach is always my favorite.

 

Very interesting all of this.

I had a bit more of a comment but had trimmed it, now I add it back in:

I myself have done a lot of country specific searching in the past. I'm a Rock Nacional junkie. In Latin American countries that stands for rock music containing root specific rhythms, instrumentation and such unique to that particular country.

I really liked the Model-T like search engines for their local character and propensity to promote business, culture and such from smaller areas (i.e countries and even cities.) I'd call it searching with personality. I swear that I was finding a lot more interesting details about various places around the world when these engines were around, or not simply appendages of the bigger engines, such as Yahoo, and Bing.

I think that this was one case where bigger was not better, and in fact.. bigger was nothing but kind of dull. Some people may have the bucks to travel the globe as they like (off the internet) but for me... this was my only real shot at that.

 

I detest Bing. I have Scroggled the Google.

 

I don't use Bing.
Google is more of a habit for me. It's the only search engine that I use now.

 

All these peeps run'in Doze detest'in Bing - bizarre! Competition lets you see the "lay of the land" folks.

 

I always bang with my Bing!! superb seach engine
Nice display also

 

Google is still my favorite. I also use Startpage. Also interesting are http://www.searchenginecolossus.com and http://www.finderseeker.com.

There's another important issue: DNS servers censor sites. Everyone knows about China. Every country probably censors some sites. Even OpenDNS probably does. There's a Thai site that lists some alternative DNS servers. For an interesting read, see Dr. Rolf Freitag's "Meine liberale Seite". Be careful about following links, BTW.

 

tried bing as i was sick of googles left sidebar but using now

http://www.cuil.com/search

 

Just tried it today because i was getting a friends machine up and it's the default search engine on Google Chrome, searched for a motherboard and it definitely sucks IMO
With Google it was the first result, with bing results were messy, mixed