Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Search Endeavours: Resorting to Bribery, Deception, and Intimidation

Cigarette



Summary: More information about Microsoft's tactics against Google, including some of the least ethical new decisions (mostly input from readers)

EVERYONE knows by now that Microsoft's renamed search engine did not live up to the promise. What Microsoft did with "Bing" is similar to what it did with Vista 7. It's a case of renaming/rebranding/rebadging and marketing that's rather obscene.



Yesterday we wrote about subversive new tactics that won't work and there is more about it in The Register, which labels it "bribery".

Mark Cuban counsels Google-busting bribery



[...]

Broadcast.com co-founder and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's idea is simplicity itself: Just pay the top 1,000 websites a million bucks per to de-list themselves from Google.


The fact that Microsoft eventually goes in a similar direction (conspiring with newspapers) shows what a bunch of gangster-like minds still run the company. "It seems to be confirmed now that Microsoft is conspiring with publishers to exclude Google," quotes one of our readers, then adding: "Is there a new meme being promoted on the Internet? Dump Google - move to Bing. Who would be behind planting such stories?"

“The fact that Microsoft eventually goes in a similar direction (conspiring with newspapers) shows what a bunch of gangster-like minds still run the company.”Well, we have evidence to show that Microsoft "plants" stories, by its own admission. From Slashdot we have this summary: "Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a plan to kill Google by paying the top 1,000 sites a cool million each to leave the Google index and move to Microsoft."

"Yet more 'let's kill Google' stories," shows our reader, but comments are not even allowed in The Register.

Adding to this web of dirty tricks, again we see Microsoft sites using US-only figures to sell people lies and deception and take their eyes off the collective truth.

The October comScore numbers are in and Microsoft has inched upward for another month with its Bing search engine.


comScore is actually a close partner of Microsoft, with whom is shares data, but Mary Jo Foley does not disclose this. Bloggers and reporters who do no work whatsoever actually asking themselves questions and properly investigating are not terribly helpful. We wrote about the subject in:



"How to hack Bing CashBack," shares our reader, who caught up with the news about a flaw we wrote about before. It's another fine example of negligence and improper response [1, 2]. In relation to this same article, here an opinion expressed yesterday:

Subject: Microsoft's typical security quality turns Bing into ka-ching ... From: Richard Rasker <spamtrap@linetec.nl>€ € (Linetec) Date: Tuesday 17 Nov 2009 21:42:06 Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy

... and results in Microsoft's typical reaction in cases like this: set a pack of lawyers on the person who discovered the loophole:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/11/bing-loophole
"It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to take on Google, but€ Microsoft's Bing search engine was facing embarrassment today, after it€ emerged that a security loophole could allow users to skim huge sums of€ money from the system without its knowledge. ... a technical flaw in the system was discovered by US entrepreneur Samir Meghani, the co-founder of price comparison website Bountii, who found that the way Bing cashback works means that a small piece of computer code€ could result in huge sums of money being credited to somebody's account. ... Meghani said that he received a letter from the company's lawyers asking€ him to take down his post on the subject - or face the consequences."
Ah well, that'll teach 'em, trying to bribe people into using their insecure rubbish :-)

Richard Rasker


Nothing that Microsoft tries has actually worked against Google, but it carries on lying, pretending to be optimistic.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
 
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead
Happy Independence Day to Our American Readers
Maybe tomorrow will be a good opportunity to explain to American people - in terms of concepts, not brands - which tools respect their independence
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Linuxsecurity, and Google News Getting Even Worse (More Slopfarms Added Which Attack Linux With Bruce-Force SPAM)
Google News is part of the same problem
Links 03/07/2025: More Cuts and Cancellations at Microsoft Revealed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/07/2025: Favourite Child and Launching WikiGem
Links for the day
GNU/Linux is Replacing Microsoft Windows. But We Need to Eradicate Microsoft, It's a Hub of Crime.
I have been writing about Microsoft since the 1990s when I was in school
Mystery Surrounding the PCLinuxOS Sites and PCLinuxOS Magazine
Let's hope this isn't something major
People and Companies Do Learn Some Lessons From Their Mistakes (Stubborn Ones Don't)
Brett Wilson LLP is an example of one that would rather drown in mistakes
Links 03/07/2025: 'Hey Hi' Slop Ridiculed Some More and Microsoft's Layoffs Tally for 2025 Reaches About 29,000 in Just 6 Months (Almost 5,000 Per Month)
Links for the day
Microsoft Staff Harassing Women, Strangling Women, Telling Women to Kill Themselves and Worse? Not a Problem!
Two women have left Brett Wilson LLP
The Slopfarms Are Losing the Plot (and Google is Propping Up Rogue Sites)
Google is part of the attack on the Web, on information, and on technology
New BetaNews Realises There's No Potential or Future in Slopfarms, Prior Editor Wayne Williams is Back
They realise that slop (so-called "AI") cannot replace humans
Claims That Microsoft Looks for Staff That Works More and Gets Paid Less (or Can Only Code by Grabbing Other People's Code, Under the Guise of "AI")
People can form their own opinion
Richard Stallman Was Right About Reasons Not to Use Microsoft
last updated 2017
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Gemini Links 03/07/2025: No to Cloudflare and Small Web July
Links for the day