Ask HN: Did Bing miss their opportunity to compete with Google?

3 points

3 years ago

Here's a sentence I never expected to write: For the past few months I've used Bing as my default search engine.

While Bing's standard search results are slightly worse than Google's, both sets of traditional searches have been in a steady decline for years. It's not news on HN that both technical results and product recommendations have become especially awful outside of forums like Reddit.

However, Bing's "chat" feature with ChatGPT 4 was brilliant. I'd developed a habit of "chatting" instead of searching, especially for technical queries. Bing became my go-to instead of Google. They converted me! I thought it was a brilliant move by Microsoft.

Being a Linux + un-googled Chromium user, this was largely thanks to the "Bing Chat for All Browsers" extension. Even if I wanted to use Edge as my daily driver, I couldn't on my Fedora workstation. But Microsoft sent a legal takedown to the developer, leading to this: https://github.com/anaclumos/bing-chat-for-all-browsers/issues/119

So I just switched back to Google today. They have Bard now, with no browser restrictions - I'll try it out instead.

Was I really so far out of Microsoft's target demographic that it's part of their product strategy to lose me? They're clearly aiming at Windows + Edge users. Maybe they're getting so many conversions in that segment that actively churning Linux-centric developers like me isn't a big deal?

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