Summary: Bing failed to make a difference for Microsoft; Lloyds TSB requires Microsoft Windows for Web access

FOR the great investment and deception that has gone into Bing, Microsoft has received almost nothing. It all goes badly as soon as the marketing offensive exceeds its shelf life expectancy and even in the US it shows almost no gains (before and after the renaming/rebranding of Microsoft search). Available numbers and charts may seem meaningful (people trust pictures), but as usual, reporters are sticking to US-only data, which gives the illusion that Microsoft has more than a few percent in market share (globally). Mary Jo Foley uses these biased numbers to project optimism.

While some other reports have claimed that Microsoft lost a point — or in some cases, substantially more — of the U.S. search it has been slowly but steadily gaining, comScore is claiming Bing actually grew a bit.

Nothing is being said about the comScore-Microsoft business relationship [1, 2, 3]. For a company like comScore it would too simply to change a few parameters or data samples to fit a predetermined, desired outcome.

To clarify, it's not that Google is benevolent, innocent, or benign, but to allow Microsoft to gain at Google's expense is to promote an additional peril to Free software.

A few days ago we explained why it's important to keep Microsoft off the Internet. Microsoft excludes GNU/Linux from the Internet (example from a few days ago) and Lloyds TSB plays along, based on the following new report.

Many Lloyds TSB business customers who use Firefox as their default browser are currently unable to access their online banking accounts.

We previously showed the same thing happening at Microsoft's partner, Citibank. Banks that do not understand the dangers of banking with Windows do not deserve business. The collective financial damage caused by account compromises is to be paid for by all customers somehow (interest rates, commission, service quality, and so on). ⬆