What is Bing like these days?

Forums › Desktop computing › What is Bing like these days?

Rikkitic

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#311567 27-Jan-2024 11:57

I am not a fan of Google and I have been using Startpage as a search engine, which acts as an intermediary but recently I went back to Duckduckgo after a long period away.

Unfortunately Duckduckgo seems to have done something related to its privacy features that has slowed my searches to an absolute crawl. It usually takes several seconds before anything appears and sometimes nothing appears. It has become unusable to me.

As someone who hacked my way through most versions of Windows from the 1980s, I am not a huge fan of Microsoft either though I use it but now I am wondering if it might be worth taking another look at Bing. What do the knowledgeable people here think? Has it shed the Windows stupidities of the past and become something useful? How does it compare to Google, also in terms of user privacy?

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#3187239 27-Jan-2024 12:06

I use Bing a bit and it's fine. Not sure how you feel about gen AI, but for some things I find it really useful. Bing also has some nice Office 365 integrations but only relevant if you use O365.

Rikkitic

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#3187242 27-Jan-2024 12:20

I don't use Office. I did just ask Bing what the difference was between male and female orgasm and it censored me! Microsoft must be very hung up about sex!

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mentalinc

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#3187245 27-Jan-2024 12:50

still lets me search for firefox or chrome just fine.

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#3187246 27-Jan-2024 12:53

Its OK, but the CoPilot part of it is damn annoying, you think youre clicking on a link, and in reality its firing up AI.

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Wombat1

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#3187270 27-Jan-2024 13:32

Rikkitic:

I don't use Office. I did just ask Bing what the difference was between male and female orgasm and it censored me! Microsoft must be very hung up about sex!

Or you not being totally honest about what you asked and what you were doing. Its pretty hard to get censored by Microsoft.

Rikkitic

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#3187280 27-Jan-2024 13:52

Wombat1:

Rikkitic:

I don't use Office. I did just ask Bing what the difference was between male and female orgasm and it censored me! Microsoft must be very hung up about sex!

Or you not being totally honest about what you asked and what you were doing. Its pretty hard to get censored by Microsoft.

Don't suggest things if you don't know what you are talking about. I literally typed 'What is the difference between male and female orgasm?' I started to get a scrolling response and then it was suddenly overwritten by 'let's talk about something else instead' or words to that effect. I don't remember exactly. All other text was blanked and there was no further response. The dialogue box would not allow me to ask any further questions.

Before that I just asked a couple of random questions, the last one being what was involved in terraforming Mars. Hardly the kind of stuff to set off Mrs Grundy!

If you feel a need to check up on me, try it yourself and see what response you get. I would be interested to know.

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rscole86

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#3187283 27-Jan-2024 13:56

Are you sure you were using Bing, and not the Bing chat/copilot?

Bing search works fine, several pages of results. Bing chat gives me a single response, then says that's enough for now etc.

Rikkitic

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#3187309 27-Jan-2024 14:37

rscole86: Are you sure you were using Bing, and not the Bing chat/copilot?

Bing search works fine, several pages of results. Bing chat gives me a single response, then says that's enough for now etc.

Yeah it was Bing chat. That's still Bing isn't it?

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Brumfondl

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#3187312 27-Jan-2024 14:55

1) I would trust Bing Chat a lot less than Bing itself

2) I used Bing for about a year or so and it is not great

3) I currently use the Brave browser with DuckDuckGo as the search engine. I have had no slowdowns when searching so no idea what might be causing them, unless it is your browser of choice being dodgy. I also seem to have a higher chance of getting answers to the questions I search for than I did when using Bing, but obviously I have no data to back that up.

KiwiSurfer

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#3187461 27-Jan-2024 19:24

I've been using DuckDuckGo for years and find it fantastic. No recent issues as you describe across a number of different devices and RSPs so would suggest issue is closer to your home perhaps? Do you use a dodgy DNS provider instead of your ISP resolver?

Whenever I go back to Google by accident (e.g. new Firefox install) I find the Google results to be fairly poor compared to DuckDuckGo -- one search is usually enough to remind me to switch my search engine to DuckDuckGo.

Tinkerisk

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#3187465 27-Jan-2024 19:51

I delete all this MS bloatware in tow with Windows sight unseen. If you want to replace individual functions with confidence (not just for Windows), you can refer to privacytools.io, where (even cross-platform) alternatives are listed.

I use startpage as my search engine. And two recursive own DNS, and several other privacy gimmicks including stealth obfuscation (I can also specify what the browser reveals, i.e. completely change the fingerprint. This is interesting, for example, if you order an airline ticket under Linux or iOS. The one under iOS suddenly costs €50-150 more depending on the route, oh wonder!)

The normal user out there has no idea (nor can they) what is going on. Property and collected data is being abused without restraint via the internet. It's a mess, really!

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Tinkerisk

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#3187484 27-Jan-2024 21:07

Rikkitic:

I literally typed 'What is the difference between male and female orgasm?' I started to get a scrolling response and then it was suddenly overwritten by 'let's talk about something else instead' or words to that effect.

A few preset filters must have been activated or some DNS also filter content. Incidentally, I received comprehensive serious answers to exactly the same question - although I wouldn't necessarily need anything other than this for test. 😊

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#3187489 27-Jan-2024 21:17

Wombat1:

Or you not being totally honest about what you asked and what you were doing. Its pretty hard to get censored by Microsoft.

Counterpoint: I did a search for "scss" (a Web dev-related tool) a month or two ago. Bing Search decided that I had to see what its "AI" thought of this, and gave me a Bing Chat sidebar. Chat decided that "scss" was a typo of "sass" and proceeded to chastise me for trying to "be sassy" with it.

gehenna

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#3187494 27-Jan-2024 21:30

I gave Bing a very fair go last year when the AI features came out. I think I used it as my default search engine for about 6 months, but in the end I had to move back to Google simply to get more accurate and relevant search results. I like some of the things Bing does to show lots of context about something on one page, but ultimately it's no use to me if the results are only superficially good. If I'm searching for something specific I want an accurate result.

Tinkerisk

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#3187500 27-Jan-2024 21:49

gehenna:

I gave Bing a very fair go last year when the AI features came out. I think I used it as my default search engine for about 6 months, but in the end I had to move back to Google simply to get more accurate and relevant search results. I like some of the things Bing does to show lots of context about something on one page, but ultimately it's no use to me if the results are only superficially good. If I'm searching for something specific I want an accurate result.

Anonymising search engines receive the request, remove the personalised content and forward it to Google under their flag, which then cannot link any personal profiles to it! The search itself is still carried out by Google. It should be noted that these search engines must be configured according to your own preferences (e.g. search space, world, national, adult filter, etc.).

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