Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 11th Dec 2009 18:35 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
The ripples caused by Google's Eric Schmidt's words are spreading further and further throughout the internet. Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, wrote on his blog, urging people to switch away from Google to Bing, which he claims has a better privacy policy. Dotzler points users to the Firefox Bing add-on.
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RE[2]: bings better anyway
by google_ninja on Fri 11th Dec 2009 21:30
in reply to "RE: bings better anyway"
Member since:2006-02-05
What's more, I don't care one bit for any of Bing's "extra" features. I don't want a shitload of javascript grinding in the background. I want a plain, empty page with a search box, a button, and a simple unordered list of results each with a link and maybe (*maybe*) a preview of some contents of the page. Adding other things is only acceptable of there is zero performance hit.
Agreed. I tried bing out for a few days, and I found while the results were pretty good, all the extra crap that had little to nothing to do with search is retarded.
RE[3]: bings better anyway
by sorpigal on Fri 11th Dec 2009 21:59
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-11-02
RE[2]: bings better anyway
by umccullough on Fri 11th Dec 2009 21:39
in reply to "RE: bings better anyway"
Member since:2006-01-26
Once upon a time I was an InfoSeek fan. Remember InfoSeek? If not, then I feel old.
I didn't much like Yahoo at the time, HotBot was bad, Lycos was OK (but didn't exist yet when I chose InfoSeek), WebCrawler was almost as bad as HotBot... InfoSeek was the best of the bad choices. AskJeeves was cool, but mostly useless.
I didn't much like Yahoo at the time, HotBot was bad, Lycos was OK (but didn't exist yet when I chose InfoSeek), WebCrawler was almost as bad as HotBot... InfoSeek was the best of the bad choices. AskJeeves was cool, but mostly useless.
I remember when Altavista was my engine of choice!
RE[3]: bings better anyway
by chemical_scum on Sat 12th Dec 2009 03:43
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-11-02
"Once upon a time I was an InfoSeek fan. Remember InfoSeek? If not, then I feel old.
I didn't much like Yahoo at the time, HotBot was bad, Lycos was OK (but didn't exist yet when I chose InfoSeek), WebCrawler was almost as bad as HotBot... InfoSeek was the best of the bad choices. AskJeeves was cool, but mostly useless.
I didn't much like Yahoo at the time, HotBot was bad, Lycos was OK (but didn't exist yet when I chose InfoSeek), WebCrawler was almost as bad as HotBot... InfoSeek was the best of the bad choices. AskJeeves was cool, but mostly useless.
I remember when Altavista was my engine of choice! "
Yes the good old days - my personal web page came up as the first response to a search on my (real) name. Now its hard to find me lost in all others in a recent google search. Still there weren't a lot of web pages back in '96.
RE[3]: bings better anyway
by michaelz on Sat 12th Dec 2009 10:51
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2007-03-23
Jup, those where the days 
Especially since you could simply ask "How to use a hammer?" and it would actually give a reasonable result.
Google still won't advertise to ask questions in plain english/dutch or whatever language.
I switched from altavista to google when altavista had a lot of ads and google just had a few ads on the side. Altavista started adding ads like "search-results"... Hm, sounds familiar? That's the moment I start hating any searchengine.
Time to start an open source searchengine?
WOW... THAT LOOKS CLEAN TO ME!
http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=osnews&kgs=1&kls=0
Edited 2009-12-12 10:53 UTC
RE[3]: bings better anyway
by StephenBeDoper on Sun 13th Dec 2009 00:07
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-07-06
I remember when Altavista was my engine of choice!
I still remember when the Yahoo homepage would fit on a 640x480 display without scrolling. For my money, they started going down the tubes when they ditched the old-school grey background (AKA the default that older Netscape versions used, if no bgcolor was specified).
RE[3]: bings better anyway
by Mellin on Sun 13th Dec 2009 01:51
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-07-06
RE[2]: bings better anyway
by Drumhellar on Fri 11th Dec 2009 21:42
in reply to "RE: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-07-12
RE[3]: bings better anyway
by sorpigal on Fri 11th Dec 2009 21:55
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-11-02
RE[2]: bings better anyway
by MamiyaOtaru on Sat 12th Dec 2009 09:38
in reply to "RE: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-11-11
Member since:2005-09-27
RE[2]: bings better anyway
by tyrione on Sat 12th Dec 2009 16:23
in reply to "RE: bings better anyway"
Member since:2005-11-21
According to my weblogs...
by gfolkert on Sun 13th Dec 2009 01:23
in reply to "RE[2]: bings better anyway"
Member since:2008-12-15
Member since:2009-08-19
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2005-11-02
Once upon a time I was an InfoSeek fan. Remember InfoSeek? If not, then I feel old.
I didn't much like Yahoo at the time, HotBot was bad, Lycos was OK (but didn't exist yet when I chose InfoSeek), WebCrawler was almost as bad as HotBot... InfoSeek was the best of the bad choices. AskJeeves was cool, but mostly useless.
No matter which one you chose searching was a kind of an art form. You had to know what boolean meant and you had to be able to figure out the right keywords and logical connections or you didn't get very good results. I was good at this and often assisted others with crafting queries.
At a certain point the search sites all started becoming "Portals"--starting with yahoo. Each page had a banner ad, or two or three, a bunch of unrelated content, and the front page loaded really slowly... and the search results always stayed about the same: awful.
Every time a new search engine came out I tried it and found no improvement over the other search engines. Then, one day, InfoSeek went away and was replaced by Go, which was much worse. I started using Yahoo and Lycos, the best of the remainder.
One day I heard about a new one called Google. I went to its front page which loaded over 28.8 like it was in my local cache. I tried some simple questions and--ready for it?--got good results, which also loaded like they were in my local cache. I tried complex queries and found that my results were *better* if I didn't try to use boolean logic... in fact, google seemed to be saying it was ignoring my AND, OR and parentheses!
Since that day I have tried every search contender to come along, just as I had before. In every case I repeat my usual tests: Simple queries, complex queries. I take it for a spin and I see what it can do. In every case every search engine since google has been one of:
1) Slower to load front page or results or both.
2) Provides less useful results.
Tried Yahoo lately? Every now and then I go there and try to use it as my search engine. Typically I spend 10 minutes being unable to find what I want, swap back to Google hand have it in seconds.
Google search is not king through some fickle chance, It's not like Windows where its parent company strong-armed the competition until their own product was number one. Google is on top because Google search is better.
I am not a Google fan boy, I'd drop then like a hot potato the minute there was something as good, nevermind better. So far nothing is as good. Bing is really, really not as good.
What's more, I don't care one bit for any of Bing's "extra" features. I don't want a shitload of javascript grinding in the background. I want a plain, empty page with a search box, a button, and a simple unordered list of results each with a link and maybe (*maybe*) a preview of some contents of the page. Adding other things is only acceptable of there is zero performance hit.