Official "Firefox With Bing" Released 274
MrSeb writes "Mozilla is now distributing a version of Firefox that uses Bing as the default search provider instead of Google. Rest assured that this is a joint project, though: the creatively-named Firefox with Bing website is run by Microsoft, and both Mozilla and MS are clear that this is a joint venture. Now, don't get too excited — the default version of Firefox available from Mozilla.com is still backed by Google, and there's no mention of an alternative, Bingy download anywhere on the site — but it's worth noting that Mozilla has been testing Bing's capabilities using Test Pilot over the last couple of months, and the release of Firefox with Bing indicates that Mozilla is now confident in Bing's ability to provide a top-notch service to Firefox users. Mozilla might be readying a large-scale switch to Bing when its current contract with Google expires in November."
Whats this "instead of Google" shit? (Score:1, Interesting)
I thought they merely skinned Google [blogspot.com] and called it their own?
Re:Google competitor (Score:4, Interesting)
But when that competitor is Microsoft the metagame changes. MS is famous for doing a little of everything, so they're always Fourth in a market, trying to look like "underdogs" while they still have the fading WinOffice monopoly.
Can Mozilla piss off their users any more? (Score:2, Interesting)
Every move that Mozilla has made lately has done nothing but piss off their long-time users.
First it was not fixing the memory usage and performance problems that have plagued Firefox for years now. This is something that users keep begging Mozilla to fix, but it never happens. Firefox is always slower than Chrome, Safari, Opera and now even the more recent versions of IE!
Then there are the Firefox UI changes they've made with recent releases that only make it so much harder to use Firefox. Please bring back the menus! Please bring back the status bar! Please show the protocol in the URL bar again! Please reverse any design decision made by a so-called "UI designer". They don't help usability! Hell, even Thunderbird has been affected by this crap.
Recently they went all silly with the version numbering and the release schedules. Now Firefox is unusable for enterprise users, and home users are getting damn confused with what version they are using or should be using. It doesn't help that extensions break very often now, too.
Now there's this Bing nonsense.
Why does Mozilla go out of their way to ignore their users? Why do they go out of their way to mess with these projects that don't actually fix any of the serious problems that users point out time and time again, for years and years?
Just making sure Google is listening... (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is this is a shot across the bow of Google. Letting Google know that it's pretty easy for them to switch the default search traffic to Bing is just good business. I'm sure Microsoft is going to be bidding pretty heavily to get Firefox's search user base.
In the end it's just going to keep Google honest and make sure they pay a fair price for the search traffic Firefox sends them. I think Google pays something like $60 or $70 million a year for all the Firefox user searches. That's chump change to someone like Google. I suspect after this, the next contract renewal might be a higher number.
Re:Bing (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm more confused about what is said over why it is said.
A good thesis has three parts: Who, What, and Why
Now, I see plenty of who and what, but no why.
"This is also the reason why Google is struggling in non-western world like China and Russia. They didn't get there by the time internet got wider usage, so they cannot get market share now." -- really? A company that doesn't like censoring and tried to find ways to not censor legally does not get common usage in a country that loves to censor? I'm talking about china and their homegrown Baidu [businessweek.com] as an example.
Saying that Microsoft started from an underdog position is fallacy. There were other search companies before Google existed and Microsoft didn't see any need to compete then. They made Google their enemy after they realized that there is a market for information. Just because they were late doesn't mean it is Google's fault. Maybe it was the lack of foresight with the internet? If memory serves me right, Windows 95 did not have WinSock at release and had to be installed with modem software.
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Related to the article though, I find the whole thing all-in-all pointless. They are giving food to the enemy here, and that is under the assumption that people choose the browser by choice of the default search engine. I can only assume they really want to get a foothold to edge out some of Google's territory down the road.
Re:Just making sure Google is listening... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah? Even now Chrome has overtaken FF in the UK [reuters.com] with the writing clearly on the wall for the rest of the world?
I've actually been using bing lately (Score:5, Interesting)
I love google as a company. I love android, I love gmail, and I love google calendar. I use and heavily rely on all three.
However google's search engine as of recent is very disappointing, largely as a result of a few so called "fixes."
Google recently did away with the ability to add + before a word to prevent from using synonyms for that word, so when you want to do a literal search for anything, you MUST surround it in quotes. Very annoying.
I've been finding that as of late, google appears to be omitting some kewords from my search. The page summary doesn't include some of the words, and worse is that when you go to the page, and hit ctrl-f, you can't even find one of the omitted keyword! Frustrating as hell.
The most annoying, is when you type a search term with google instant, and sometimes when you arrow back to inline edit your search while instant is coming up, or if you accidentally move the mouse over one of the search suggestions, it removes your original search and replaces it with one of the search suggestions, causing you to have to re-type the whole thing! And turning off google instant isn't a reliable solution, because when you lose the cookie, or move to a computer that doesn't have one, you have to go and turn it off again.
I've been using bing lately and thankfully it doesn't suffer from these problems. I'd like to go back to google, but until they can solve these problems I'll be using bing for a while.
Re:Bing (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been accused of shilling for very many companies just because I commented something positive about them
Since you pretty much only post positive stories about MS - nice, big, semi-articulate stories, as opposed to two sentence rants - yeah, you're a shill, and lying about it. Must be a sucky job, be paid to lie repeatedly.
Re:Whats this "instead of Google" shit? (Score:4, Interesting)
The USER is voluntarily submitting that data.
What data? The result provided by a third-party search engine. Doing it that way is just a way to cover their legal asses - it doesn't fundamentally change what they were doing.
Fact is, they don't need such techniques to track searches on Bing, since they control the website and can put the tracking there (and which would track *every* Bing search, not only Toolbar ones).
Therefore, the only reason to track through the Toolbar is to take advantage of the results provided by other engines.