Is Microsoft censoring Bing search results?
Bing is a great search engine. It’s the first search effort from Microsoft that I’ve found can almost compete with Google for relevant results to queries. And I’ve started using it alongside Google on a daily basis. However, that may cease if Microsoft continues to censor Bing search results in order to make the company and its products look better.
Bing is doing well, really well in fact. After an impressive launch which saw many people trying out the search engine and declaring it doesn’t actually suck, it is still gaining new users on a monthly basis. What’s more, Microsoft’s recent deal with Yahoo, which will see Bing provide all the search efforts for Yahoo, will immediately put Bing in second place behind Google in the search sector. Albeit a long way behind the market leader.
However, a recent piece of detective work from PC World has uncovered a less-than-savory piece of search result engineering on Microsoft’s part. Allegedly. It could all be coincidence I suppose. But I very much doubt it.
Until a few days ago asking Bing, “Why is Windows so expensive?” received a set of search results which had a link to an article asking “Why are Macs so expensive” at the top. The rest of the results were about games for Windows Live, the type of windows you look out of, and hosting providers. Basically anything and everything apart from the Windows operating system.
A search for, “Is Microsoft Evil?” prompted an equally skewed set of search results. The top link was to a NYT article asking whether Google was evil or not, and other links included one about proxy servers, and one linking to a story about how Microsoft is so charitable.
Since the article bringing these strange censored results to mainstream attention was published the results have magically changed so that more relevant results now show up when either of the above two questions are asked. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that there’s a good chance Microsoft was attempting to engineer Bing search results to ensure Microsoft and Windows was shown in nothing but a good light.
As good as Bing is, if this type of censoring rears its ugly head again then few people will consistently choose it over Google. However catchy its new jingle is.
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August 10th, 2009
wow. i went from google to bing and have been using it for about 2 months meow. no im considering going back, or atleast for contraversial topics