back to article Bing fling sting: Apple dumps Microsoft search engine for Google

Apple will drop Microsoft's Bing as the default web search provider for its iOS and macOS gear. The Cupertino Newton-slinger said on Monday it will use Google Search as the default for queries in Siri, the iOS search bar, and Spotlight on macOS. Google is already the default search engine for the Safari web browser on Macs, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    To be fair, it was Google search all along ...

    Bing was just a proxy with a very large cache.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: To be fair...

      Nobody ever said "I don't know, I'll Bing it"

      1. Afernie

        Re: To be fair...

        Not strictly true. As I recall Microsoft über-fanboy "Richto/TheVogon" was prone to letting those very words escape his lips. Think of him as the anti-Eadon, and for the sake of the universe, keep them separate.

        1. Semtex451

          Re: To be fair...

          I thought we weren't supposed to talk about them.

          1. Afernie

            Re: To be fair...

            "I thought we weren't supposed to talk about them."

            So they're like the entities of the Cthulhu Mythos, those that shall not be named? I started forewarned and repentant. Hopefully I haven't completed the summoning of that which lurks on the threshold (of mainstream computing).

      2. chasil

        But we do say...

        ...this search is to sensitive for Google, so I'll use DuckDuckGo.com.

        Bing is the backend for DuckDuckGo.

    2. Afernie
      Joke

      Re: To be fair, it was Google search all along ...

      "Bing was just a proxy with a very large cache."

      But if that's true, how come I can never find any useful search results with Bing?

    3. A K Stiles
      Coat

      Re: To be fair, it was Google search all along ...

      Not entirely sure why, but every time I've seen 'Bing' in this comments thread, my brain has read it as 'Binge' - maybe I need another holiday?

  2. Semtex451
    Alert

    Apple told El Reg. Yes, really.

    See? All it took was a begrudgingly nice article from Andrew O about the iPhone 8.

    I hope Apple didn’t just forget El Reg is on the blacklist again coz I know he’s probably still in the shower crying.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    So now the phrase is officially...

    Bada Google Bada Boom.

    Thank you, I'm here all week.

    1. handleoclast
      Coat

      Re: Bada Google Bada Boom

      'Tis an old joke. Bob Hope did it with Google Crosby many years ago.

  4. RudderLessIT

    Time heals all wounds

    But only because Steve is not around.

  5. Mikel

    It's about time.

    Inferior search results were not improving the premium of the products.

  6. ratfox
    Paris Hilton

    I wonder if Google is paying for that

    It seems that Google is paying Apple billions to be the default search engine on Safari. I wonder how much the change is due to Google's superior search results, and how much to them bidding higher? Apple also knows how to monetize their users...

    Though Bing is still the default for images, for some reason (is Bing good for images? Anybody knows?), so maybe there are complicated trade-offs.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I wonder if Google is paying for that

      Not sure why you got you go the down vote...oh yes.forgot, that one person.

      Yes Google do pay a fortune to be search on big names (just look how much Mozilla gets), so wouldn't surprise me if cash or patents exchanged hands.

      Bing I find is much better for visual search (Google ripped of MS on that one for a change), but can be a bit CPU usage heavy.

      Still prefer Startpage over both of them.

    2. David T-Rex

      Re: I wonder if Google is paying for that

      Of course it's money. The fact Apple are trying to claim anything different is just lies. Google offered more than bing were.

      If it was any other reason than money bing would never have been chosen in the first place.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bing

    "Bing has grown every year since its launch"

    Grown more irrelevant is the growing it's been doing. Sure they might have forced it onto people via Win10 search, but nobody actually uses it intentionally

    1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

      Re: Bing

      I'm not aware of anyone who uses the start menu to search the internet, normally they will have Chrome or Google as their homepage.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: Bing

        They have Chrome as their homepage?

    2. Michel

      Re: Bing

      I use it all the time. I've found their search results are very useful and when searching for code advice the code snippets and explanations often appear at the top of the search results, so i don't even have to click through to load the next page.

      Not to mention the Bing/Microsoft Rewards you get for searching, I've been getting free Xbox live gold(and four games/month) for over three years.

  8. AMBxx Silver badge
    Linux

    rolling out to all users over the course of the day

    Nobody complaining about the OS provider changing their search engine without permission? Do you get a choice?

    Penguin just because there are no ducks.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: rolling out to all users over the course of the day

      The word used three times in the first two paragraphs is 'default'.

      It is changing the default search engine. Users can choose others, just as they always have.

      Have another coffee!

    2. Naselus

      Re: rolling out to all users over the course of the day

      "Do you get a choice?"

      Will the average iPhone user notice?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The worst thing about Alexa is Bing, so often when you ask a question you get a I don't understand response and have to crack out the phone to "ok Google"

  10. RyokuMas
    FAIL

    So much for precedent...

    Given the furore over default browsers about a decade and a half ago, surely the "correct" behaviour in this instance - and indeed for whenever any browser is first started - would be to put up a page with Bing, Google, Duck Duck Go et. al. all presented in a random order and ask the user to select which one they want to make their default search engine?

    Either we have forgotten the past or we're so stuck in it we can't see what is happening out there.

    The new monopoly rolls on...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I couldn't get beyond the stock photo...

    Was the rest of the article any good?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft, meanwhile, it putting on a brave face.

    "To be honest, it makes little difference... some years ago we realised we'd no idea how to make Bing work, that its search results were essentially random like Yahoo! so we changed Bing to be CSS and XSLT over Google. This has saved us electricity and servers - so great for the environment, has allowed us to externally repurpose our entire Search team - so great for Uber and Starbucks and restaurants in the Redmond area, and has allowed us to concentrate on making Windows 10 the best product we've ever made with 10 in its name (apart from Office 2010) - so great for System.NullRefererenceException", Redmond said in a statement to The Register.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Microsoft, meanwhile, it putting on a brave face.

      "we'd no idea how to make Bing work, that its search results were essentially random like Yahoo"

      That would be the Yahoo that uses Bing then?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: Microsoft, meanwhile, it putting on a brave face.

        That would be the Yahoo that uses Bing then?

        Yes - it's like what happens when you Google Google.

  13. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    'strue - every time I find a Bing search, I default it over to Google or DuckDuckGo.

    Bing is just bingbonging all over the place anyway. And it is such a silly name.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      It is a German tinplate toy company

  14. davenewman

    In 2013 I compared Google and Bing's geolocation of thousands of house addresses in Oxford. Bing couldn't locate half of them, Google got all but 3%. So I got NationBuilder to change its default search and geolocation engine for the UK.

  15. My other car is an IAV Stryker
    Coat

    Every time I hear "Bing"

    ...I think of the insurance salesman from "Groundhog Day".

    What was his name again? Oh yeah, Ned Ryerson -- BING!

  16. Wade Burchette

    Jack of all trades, master of none

    Or, as I like to say "those who do everything do nothing well". At one time, Microsoft did a few things well. Now ... what do they do well? Windows, garbage. Bing, inferior. Office, has gone downhill since 2003. (To be fair, 2016 is much better than 2013; but that is like saying living in a shack is much better than living in a cardboard box.) Microsoft needs to stop trying to be all the other tech companies and start focusing a few things again. And they also need to stop listening to know-nothing know-it-all experts who couldn't predict 12:01 at 12 noon, and then start listening to their customers instead.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    StartPage

    When I first heard about DuckDuckGo it became my search tool of choice but I found it frustrating as the results were not as comprehensive a Google. Then I found out the DDG uses Bing behind the scenes.

    I now use StartPage as it uses Google for searching. Is it as private as they claim?

  18. DontFeedTheTrolls
    Trollface

    I'm just surprised Apple didn't have their own skewed search engine behind all the seraches

  19. MJI Silver badge

    What happened to all the older search engines?

    With wildcard searches + and - worked.

    Being able to do <randompartword>* was usefull and returned a good list of sites where the randompartword was important.

    Google is getting painfull

    word 1 is common word 2 is rare

    Google search

    site 1 lots of blah

    Underneath word 2 is crossed out

    and so on down the search

    So put in + in front

    No it looks for +word 2 not YOU MUST HAVE WORD 2

    Search engines, I despair, all shopping sites now

    1. Martin 47

      Re: What happened to all the older search engines?

      Have you tried 'deep search'?

      https://deepsearch.tsignal.io/

    2. greenup

      Re: What happened to all the older search engines?

      For google, the correct character for "you must have word 2" is double-quote, not +.

      so, when you see word2 crossed out, add quotes around it.

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re: What happened to all the older search engines?

        Yes but it used to be +

        More to the point why does it think that not including my search term is more relevant?

        Also

        20 pages of shopping sites, then some real sites.

        I am sure there is less usefull content on the internet now.

  20. mark l 2 Silver badge

    "now powering over a third of all the PC search volume in the U.S"

    I get a lot of US traffic to my website and the amount of people coming in from Bing is less than 1%, so they have a long way to go to get to a third of search volume in my eyes.

  21. MJI Silver badge

    One use only for MS search engine

    They bought multimap, multimap had OS mapping.

    swaps to a German tin plate URL now though, but OS is still there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(company)

    https://www.fabtintoys.com/bing/

    So when did MS buy them?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Market-speak Microsoft

    "We value our relationship with Apple and look forward to continuing to partner with them in many ways..."

    This is the market-speak PR claptrap which makes us utterly despise Microsoft.

    Spend more time improving your product instead of spitting out scripted feel-good buzz words.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bing is not a very good search engine

    If you had to bribe people to use Bing (see 'Bing Rewards'), that doesn't reflect well on the merit of your product, does it?

    The problem with Google Search these days is political correctness and the wanton censorship of certain results which show up perfectly fine on Bing or DuckDuckGo. Still, if I want a second opinion search engine, DuckDuckGo would be my choice.

  24. coolcity

    Quite obvious that there's a lot of irrelevant vitriol around Microsoft here, so any comment will be as meaningless on here as most of the other comments would be on an anti-Google site, but for what it's worth I much prefer Bing.

    I find Google search to be very much like the Google app store - a few decent or relevant results amongst tens of thousands of crap ones.

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