Tried to be google-less for the last to weeks ... failed :-(

rtotheich

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TellMe already recognizes German, French and Italian. That is by far the most challenging engineering task, but it is already completed, at least as far as Switzerland is concerned.

In regard to Local Scout, well, the button to launch Local Scout simply doesn't exist in WP. You can't even start it. You are likely correct that this is due to a lack of data (although Microsoft does have more than nothing). Interestingly, Nokia has more than enough data for all of Europe, but they apparently haven't merged their POI databases. I was under the impression that Microsoft and Nokia were going to merge ALL their mapping data, but as of yet it hasn't happened. Anyway, none of this requires bilingual engineers. Most junior developers could get this job done.

This is a fair point. However, what I meant to say is that some location data doesn't exist at the present moment for other reasons:

Go to an old restaurant located in a historic location in a small town or a souvenir shop located inside a Swiss Chateau. These people have no desire to BE on local scout and probably don't want to be included in yellowpages or wherever Siri pulls from. It's this kind of thing that prevents restaurants from showing up, not just the fact that nobody has implemented them. Many other places in the world don't have or have any interest in Foursquare, Yelp, or similar services for a variety of reasons. Parisian Bars on the Champs-Elys?e are already flooded with tourists and featured in every guidebook and maybe they don't want a bunch of random reviewers changing that. Much of the time, it just doesn't match the culture. I studied in Morocco last semester and there literally isn't support for Foursquare there. The restaurant owners who have places located in the center of the medina where cars can't go certainly have no interest in photos of their restaurant appearing on some website whose main audience isn't people who speak their language.

When searching for something will definitely yield no results or inaccurate results, you have two options: One is to slap the BETA or Unfinished product label in the header and the other is to completely disable the feature until it is good enough so that it won't cause problems or crash the device, which could happen when reviews are being written in two langauges and appear next to each other.

The idea behind 'localization' is that it requires much more than programming and simple execution. It requries accurate display of the right information when you want it without hassle and the explicit permission of the owner of the establishment as well as several country-specific bureaucraties. This isn't something that amateur devs can complete on their own.
 
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dtresca

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Are people calling Google evil here not in the world in the 90s? Talk about turning a blind eye to what Microsoft was over a decade ago before Apple came along.

I'm definitely not calling Google evil. This is more just trying to see how well Microsoft's services can perform the tasks that Google has dominated for the last several years. That's just the way I see it, anyway.
 
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I'm definitely not calling Google evil. This is more just trying to see how well Microsoft's services can perform the tasks that Google has dominated for the last several years. That's just the way I see it, anyway.
A LOT of people here are calling Google evil. They suffer from memory loss or are plain ignorant of Microsoft's practises in the 90s.
 

Laura Knotek

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wazup113

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well it kind of sucks because at my school is technology based(not a fancy school just do it that way) and some teachers require using google docs for work to share with students and directly share with teachers so i can't quite ditch google yet and still have my android tablet so it whatever for now
 

tgp

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well it kind of sucks because at my school is technology based(not a fancy school just do it that way) and some teachers require using google docs for work to share with students and directly share with teachers so i can't quite ditch google yet and still have my android tablet so it whatever for now

At work (Microsoft partner; see my earlier posts in this thread) one of my colleagues uses Google Docs/Drive to share with a customer. He would be one of the MS fanboys, yet he claims that Google's online document collaboration works better than Skydrive. Even though it's acknowledging a competitor's strength, as a business it's in our best interest, and our customers', to use what does the job best. In certain cases, that is Google.
 

stephen_az

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We have this discussion at work all the time. We are a Microsoft partner, so obviously we'd be biased towards Bing. However, we cannot argue with the results. A few of us have just gone to using Google exclusively, but a few of the hard-nosed Bing fanboys use Bing by default, but switch to Google when they need to find something. :wink:

1) What results? I see no great difference in results between the two, and haven't for at least a couple years.
2) Congratulations on raising the maturity level of this thread. Yes, that is sarcasm. Why bring up fanboys? Has anyone here suggested anything to justify going in that direction.. Ironic that it is so often those possessing a bias who claim a bias in others.
 

stephen_az

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At work (Microsoft partner; see my earlier posts in this thread) one of my colleagues uses Google Docs/Drive to share with a customer. He would be one of the MS fanboys, yet he claims that Google's online document collaboration works better than Skydrive. Even though it's acknowledging a competitor's strength, as a business it's in our best interest, and our customers', to use what does the job best. In certain cases, that is Google.

Google's online document collaboration holds it place because it was essentially first to the game. In terms of quality of experience, I wouldn't even rank it second.
 

a5cent

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A LOT of people here are calling Google evil. They suffer from memory loss or are plain ignorant of Microsoft's practises in the 90s.

Well, are you calling the MS of the 90's evil? That is equally ridiculous. Neither is evil. Both are doing what they should. However, any company that gets too powerful is never a good thing for consumers, though MS hasn't been that powerful for a long time now. MS has been regulated and fined out of that power, while Google and Apple had free reign. On the mobile web, Google has monopoly power and they are now acting like it. It's not evil, but it is bad for all of us and educating people is the only way of reducing their misuse of monopoly power. Left undisturbed, far more smaller browser developers will disapear, than Microsoft ever had the chance of killing off. Times change.
 

cedarlog

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iim almost google free
i changed my country location on bing to US so i don't have to rely on google
no google documents
no gmail
no google voice/talk
no google maps
no google reader
no google search engine
no chrome browser
no google +
no android
no google drive

however i still use youtube cause everyone posting their videos on it even microsoft
 

a5cent

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however i still use youtube cause everyone posting their videos on it even microsoft

I see no problem with using YouTube. It doesn't provide google with opportunities to misuse their monopoly power on the mobile web.

Using webkit based browsers is the most important thing to avoid (chrome and safari), on the desktop and on mobile.
 

sueha

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I'm from Germany and I dont see a single difference between Google and Bing (except of some ergonomical issues, where Bing seems to be a little better than Google to me).
Stay with Bing DE
 
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Well, are you calling the MS of the 90's evil? That is equally ridiculous. Neither is evil. Both are doing what they should. However, any company that gets too powerful is never a good thing for consumers, though MS hasn't been that powerful for a long time now. MS has been regulated and fined out of that power, while Google and Apple had free reign. On the mobile web, Google has monopoly power and they are now acting like it. It's not evil, but it is bad for all of us and educating people is the only way of reducing their misuse of monopoly power. Left undisturbed, far more smaller browser developers will disapear, than Microsoft ever had the chance of killing off. Times change.
Microsoft misused its powers and it was penalized in court and it ruined their reputation irreparably. I really don't see Google doing anything that will make them suffer the same fate
 

Chregu

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I'm from Germany and I dont see a single difference between Google and Bing (except of some ergonomical issues, where Bing seems to be a little better than Google to me).
Stay with Bing DE

Your post made me wondering if there's something like scholar.bing.com (as in scholar.google.com which is great), so I googled it, and well there is: Microsoft Academic Search

Will try this out next week as I am writing on a review anyway. (I found my boss with picture, so it can't be too bad, can it? ;-) ...well, wrong university, but still... ) There's even an app for WP, but the only review in my marketplace region describes it as terrible.
 

a5cent

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Microsoft misused its powers and it was penalized in court and it ruined their reputation irreparably. I really don't see Google doing anything that will make them suffer the same fate

Just because you don't see missuse doesn't mean it isn't there. Do you understand what practices got MS in trouble? If you do, then you should have no problem identifying Google's wrongdoings. Exact same practices in different areas.
 

arrowrand

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Just because you don't see missuse doesn't mean it isn't there. Do you understand what practices got MS in trouble? If you do, then you should have no problem identifying Google's wrongdoings. Exact same practices in different areas.
And yet MS wants you to give all the same data that Google collects on you to them, and you're OK with that?
 

arrowrand

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Using webkit based browsers is the most important thing to avoid (chrome and safari), on the desktop and on mobile.
Avoid WebKit? In favor of what, Trident? No, thank you.

For one, I don't have a computer that IE will even install on. Second, I don't like IE on my Lumia. It doesn't display as well as Chrome on my Nexus devices or Safari on my wife's iPad and is much slower in doing it.
 
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Just because you don't see missuse doesn't mean it isn't there. Do you understand what practices got MS in trouble? If you do, then you should have no problem identifying Google's wrongdoings. Exact same practices in different areas.
What exactly has Google done? All this butt-hurt I'm seeing is the direct result of Google dropping support for exchange sync. Sue them for not supporting a proprietary, paid system for syncing and instead going for a more open system that is available everywhere except Windows Phones because Microsoft was either too dumb or plain ignorant about implementing it in their OS. God even Meego had CalDav support!
 
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And you have to remember Microsoft has publicly dissed Google a lot of times. Both with the #droidrage and that campaign against Google (I forgot what it was called). Why on Earth would you then expect Google to go out of its way and support Windows Phone? Microsoft asked for this, they literally begged Google to screw with them and now that they have, suddenly Google is the evil one here.
 

arrowrand

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And you have to remember Microsoft has publicly dissed Google a lot of times. Both with the #droidrage
#droidrage doesn't have anything to do with Google ending EAS usage.

1. It costs money, and that money was going to Microsoft.

2. EAS has serious compatibility issues with the features available in Google Contacts and Google Calendar.

ammarmalik2011 said:
and that campaign against Google (I forgot what it was called).
Bing vs Google Challenge.

A worker in the Cincinnati Microsoft Store didn't believe me when I told him that I went 5 for 5 Google in the challenge, so he challenged me to do it again in front of him.

I did it again, 5 for 5 Google. He first wanted to pick the search terms, which I said no to. He then wanted me to only look at the first few results, which I also refused to do.
 

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