Accessing bing.com in IE

[AdamDawes]

Hello,

I updated to WP8.1 update 1 yesterday and Cortana arrived (I'm in the UK), which is great -- not quite perfect yet but shows a lot of potential. I was very happy until I later opened my web browser and went to www.bing.com. Instead of the Bing search page appearing as I had expected, a message was displayed saying "Launching Bing..." and Cortana appeared.

Now I realise that I can use Cortana to search the internet, but I really want to be able to use Bing in the browser for a variety of reasons, and now I no longer appear to be able to do so. As a result, I've had to switch back to using Google, something I had no previous intention of doing!

So can anyone tell me if it's possible to get bing.com working in IE once Cortana is installed?

Many thanks,

 

[Pete]

There isn't a way as far as I can see.

But what I imagine you could do is create a web page wrapper app that gives you access to the Bing homepage without Cortana sweeping the carpet from under your feet...

If you find that feature useful, other people may do as well.

 

[AdamDawes]

Urgh, that's completely broken the way I use my phone -- almost to the point that I'd rather switch off Cortana... A wrapper app might work, but I don't want to have to go to a different app every time I want to search (and the browser control has various limitations and restrictions when used in an app, too).

Hopefully they will make this an option at some stage, I'm surprised more people haven't been annoyed by this..! Losing the Bing app that used to appear when pressing the Search button seems like an unnecessary step backwards, but hijacking the functionality of the browser just seems inexcusable.

 

[k72]

I typically have Cortana off and if I type Bing.com in IE, it takes me to the Bing search app. I can't look at the actual website in the browser. I tried because I wanted to save the homepage but I haven't found a way.

 

[psiu_glen]

It's been like that here in the US for awhile at least. About the best you can do is punch in a search term in the browser address bar. Even without Cortana it hijacks the Bing page here. Also, they removed the other pages from the Search screen: Local, News, etc

 

[AdamDawes]

Damn. That's such a shame.

 

[dabs1710]

The bigger mistake in all this is the requirement for Cortana to be enabled to use the "quiet hours" feature. That sounds really illogical and moronic to me. The only alternative that I can find is to use a different browser. You can get to bing.com that way (I tried UC browser), but all these other browsers are rather sucky compared to the native IE.

Urgh, that's completely broken the way I use my phone -- almost to the point that I'd rather switch off Cortana... A wrapper app might work, but I don't want to have to go to a different app every time I want to search (and the browser control has various limitations and restrictions when used in an app, too).

Hopefully they will make this an option at some stage, I'm surprised more people haven't been annoyed by this..! Losing the Bing app that used to appear when pressing the Search button seems like an unnecessary step backwards, but hijacking the functionality of the browser just seems inexcusable.

 

[k72]

The bigger mistake in all this is the requirement for Cortana to be enabled to use the "quiet hours" feature. That sounds really illogical and moronic to me.

True. It would be nice to use this without having Cortana on.