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Is This Bing or is it Bong?

Smoking pipe



Summary: Is Microsoft high or is Bong[sic] broken by engineering?

IN SIX previous posts we wrote about failures of Microsoft's latest name for a search engine [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. A new identity alone cannot resolve an identity crisis. There are four more failures and observations which this post shares. Here is a quick list.



Failure #1: Anti-Linux Bias



We already know that Microsoft tweaks search results to promote its commercial agenda. Stefano Forenza shows that Bing is biased against GNU/Linux, possibly by design.

What’s this crap ? It’s obvious that Microsoft didn’t payed those guys. (well.. maybe the first :-P ). But why Windows came up as a suggestion for the Linux search, and why the first two posts talk respectively about ‘Linux being inferior to Windows’ and ‘the issues in switching to linux’ ?.

If I were to think bad I would think Microsoft did tweak the Windows keyword to have more relevance than the others. Hyperlinking and pagerank would do the rest.


More details and some screenshots are included in the full post.

Failure #2: Anti Opera



Opera is giving Microsoft a real headache in Europe. What does Microsoft give to Opera users? Nothing.

Bing.com no gentlemen when you run Opera web browser



[...]

Hello, Mrs Kroes, …! It reminds you so much of the old DR-DOS tricks but this is even more silly for a new search engine which was supposed to get it right. One of the best and most popular web browsers, Opera, is not supported? Surprisingly everything works seems to work fine anyway when you select “Go to the map using this browser”.

The map service looks great, but it is not fully translated yet into German language. Additionally to the usual satellite images it adds a bird view perspective. I am from Germany’s largest navy port and I am quite surprised that you can get detailled bird view pictures of our military facilities. In the real world signs scare you that they may shoot at you. And if you take pictures, the police might be very interested in your identity and your actions may be interpreted as a criminal offence by a court.


Failure #3: Pro Pornography



Microsoft is blocking Google for allegedly being unsuitable for children. How hypocritical is that? Whereas Google makes pretty successful attempts at eliminating child-unsafe content for particular crowds, Microsoft has no shame.

This is just too good. One of the features of Microsoft’s just launched Bing search engine is that it auto-plays videos in results when you hover over them. Naturally, the first thing a number of people, like Loic Le Meur, did was search for “sex” or “porn.” The results are majestic — if you’re a teenager looking for a way around porn filters on your computer. And this isn’t artful porn or something like it, it’s straight-up, hardcore pornography.


Failure Extraordinaire: Microsoft Buys Bingsucks.com



Tony Manco has found out that Microsoft acquired the domain Bingsucks.com. Microsoft is obviously expecting people to express themselves using such domain names.

Tony shows:




whois bingsucks.com || Domain Name: BINGSUCKS.COM Registrar: MARKMONITOR INC. Whois Server: whois.markmonitor.com Referral URL: http://www.markmonitor.com Name Server: NS1.MSFT.NET Name Server: NS2.MSFT.NET Name Server: NS3.MSFT.NET Name Server: NS4.MSFT.NET Name Server: NS5.MSFT.NET



Here are the details for Microsoft's corresponding nameservers:




Administrative Contact: Domain Administrator Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond WA 98052 US domains@microsoft.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: MSN Hostmaster Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond WA 98052 US msnhst@microsoft.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329



Has Microsoft already bought Bingfails.com? How about Bingdiscriminates.com?

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