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

Luminatic

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I'm frustrated.

[rant]

I tried an internet live without google for the last two weeks or so. All went well, with one exception: Internet search.
I tried alternatives: Bing and duckgogo, to be more precise.
What can I say? They just don't work as well for me as google does. I get more search results with google. I can filter by date, every single time. And while this is, theoretically, also possible with other search engines, it doesn't work most of the time.

On the other hand, I see commenters telling people off for not liking bing due to worse results than google. They call them stupid or liars, forgetting that there is a world beyond their country borders, a world where the same things doesn't work as good as in their country. I read things like "It has a calculater, travel services, flight search" and such. For all the people who enjoy bing and its features: There are lots of people who don't have this features, probably because they live in a country where these are not enabled. Those people aren't too stupid to use bing. They just don't have the same good experience as you do! Really, I mean it, they don't, really not.

So ... as long as MS can't give me an internet search experience that is at least close to as good as google, I'll have to rely on google or keep on searching for other options ... sad but true.

And to the people who think that I'm lying or I haven't really tried: NOT true. Heck, when I go to the bing page of my country, I see it's still in beta. And this is hardly my fault, right?

I like my WP. I really, really do. Best UI experience I ever had. But things like I explained above sometimes make me thing that Microsoft doen't take the rest of the world (U.S. and maybe U.K.) seriously enough. Hey MS, we're your paying customers too. You're a global company. Please act this way! Apple can do it quite well (At least on my continent) ... why can't you?

[/rant]

(I'm open to suggestions about changing this situations! ;-) )
 

freestaterocker

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Man I thought for sure no YouTube would've been the issue... (it's my biggest issue lol) Sorry to hear Bing isn't as great for you as it's been for me.

EDIT: Important to note I'm in Canada, which is significant since AFAIK we still don't have local scout functionality on Bing. But I switched almost completely to Bing search 1 ? years ago when I got my 1st WP cuz it's 1 button press and I'm lazy lol.
 
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Luminatic

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*smiles* To be honest, youtube is my second biggest issue ... with wide gap to my bing issue. Cause I don't have to login via a gmail account to watch youtube films. And my leftover youtube account is connected to my ancient yahoo-account ... lucky me :wink:
 

bbqrooster

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I have switched from Google search to Bing search for over a year. Never feel the need to go back to Google. Bing fills my search needs, not saying that you don't have special needs that only Google search can fill.
 

Chregu

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I never search with Bing, Goolge is actually my start page (although I'm never logged in, I don't use Google services that need an account) but when I go on Bing this "Beta" is really disturbing me.

Also the page is still linking to Hotmail instead of Outlook. Bing is terrible here and I'm using Google search on my phone and on the computers I use.

But this is not really frustrating me, as I just use the Google app on the phone (people tend to complain, but as I only search with it, it works great for me). Makes the "Search" button incredibly useless though.
 

Luminatic

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I have switched from Google search to Bing search for over a year. Never feel the need to go back to Google. Bing fills my search needs, not saying that you don't have special needs that only Google search can fill.

Well .. I don't think my search needs are that special, I really thing that in some countries, bing works well, and in others, it doesn't.
 

Chregu

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What country are you in? I am in US. Bing works well for me.

I'm not him, but I'm from Switzerland, Bing is in beta (...shows somehow the commitment Microsoft is making in Europe with its platform ;-) ) and the search results are terrible.

I also like to search for American or UK pages, with Google no problem; in Bing I can only change the language, but not the area.
 

Luminatic

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I'm in Switzerland. I've heard many times that in the U.S., bing works very well.

What I don't understand is: MS is a global company, selling their products globally. Why don't they do their best to give all their customers the same good experience? It's not like MS products are cheaper for me than for you in the U.S. (Just the opposite, I guess). I could understand that to make bings seach results better, they need more users to use it, which is hard to achieve around where I leave ("to google" is hardwired into peoples brains these days, and that's a hard nut to crack). But why do the U.S. citizens get, for example, flight search and a calculater on bing and us Swiss not? It is things like these that I have a hard time understanding, and sometimes things like these make me thing if MS takes non-US-Customers less seriously. Understandable, as they're located in the U.S, but NOT good, since they're also a global company with customers allover the world. And since the customers outside the U.S. also pay money for their products as well, MS should make the same effort as in the US to make them happy. And I just don't see that now (Bing = Beta in my country ... just an example for what I'm trying to say).
 

Tahiti Bob

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I'm in the UK and have tried to use Bing for search for close to a year and it's not even close to compete with Google. I think Microsoft has the US pretty much sorted but not much beyond that. Trying to leave a life without Google is just silly anyway, you can't replace YouTube and their search is unmatched (outside the US that is).
 

tgp

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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:
 

tiziano27

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That's truth, bing is in beta in my country and is not as good as google. So I use Bing for searches in English (localized in USA), and google for seaches in my language.
 

Tahiti Bob

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Another thing you can't replace is Google Reader. Sure you can use an RSS reader but GR syncs across any device you use. Going full on Google free is just crazy.
 

Luminatic

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Thanks to a comment on the wpcentral homepage, I've found that even bing.de has more features than bing.ch, and it's NOT in beta.

bing.de has:
Web/Pictures/Videos/Maps/News/Search history on top, and some newslinks on the bottom.

bing.ch has:
Web/Pictures/more on top, and no newslinks on the bottom.



Guess MS Switzerland is still living in the last ice age :wink:, I don't see any other good reason why leaving the Swiss behind. Or maybe there are just not enough of us, making us too unimportant to care.
 
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stmav

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If Bing isn't up to par in your country, then noone can blame you for going with what works for you. Hopefully in the near future MS will get out a satisfactory version for everyone.
 

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