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Comment by lev99 | Hacker News Reader

I thought it was strange bing was not mentioned, even though it has Mozilla's endorsement of having a better privacy policy than Google[0] and is probably the most popular alternative to search in the United States. This far from a complete list of Google alternatives.

[0]https://www.pcworld.com/article/184520/mozilla_endorses_bing...

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I like/sometimes use Bing, and it's decent, but it's not significantly different than Google in terms of data collection. The biggest difference, arguably, is that they pay you for it via Bing Rewards.

DuckDuckGo uses Bing data and respects your privacy more, and probably the best choice for the privacy-conscious.

My primary goal of using Google alternatives is to deprive Alphabet of revenue. Privacy benefits are secondary.

Why do you want to deprive Alphabet of revenue, if not for their privacy-disrespecting business model?

Read a cyberpunk book. The mega-corp as focal point for resources, innovation and political clout is a scary thought.

Consider the almost exclusive dataset they have moated "everyone" else out of, and the long line of disingenuous/unethical business practices. The privacy considerations are the proverbial top of the iceberg.

Using Microsoft products to avoid feeding megacorps would be a strange strategy.

Most of the fictional dystopia center around a single mega-corp not mega-corps... Thus if you have 3 or 4 Mega Corps that would be preferred to a single monopolistic Mega-Corp.

Do you have any book recommendations?

Dune's CHOAM corporation is a great example. Ownership in choam is synonyms with power and wealth. All political maneuvering is based on gaining or keeping control in choam corporation.

For "receiving end" perspectives, watch Blade Runner (the old one) or Altered Carbon. The Expanse probbly qualifies too. For books, Peter Hamilton incorporates different mega-corps in his universe but it's not the main object. Special mention to the Void Trilogy's Commonwealth.

The Expanse's high-political scene is best described by the balance of powerful sovereigns, and how that changes over time. Companies have a lot of power, but that power is primarily expressed by influence in governments. A company gets mining rights from a U.N. charter by influence. Then the company expects the U.N. military to defend those mining rights. Sometimes the company influences the goverment and sometimes the goverment influences the company. The big exception to this is the O.P.A. which always tends centralize power around Tycho.

Altered Carbon also uses goverment as the primary seat of power. United Nations Envoy Corps are primarily a reskinning of Dune's Sardaukar, the powerful super soldiers that enforce the rule of law out of fear. There are very powerful corporations, especially those discussed in the first book, but their power is again through the influence of government, and goverment has the authority to act independently.

This is in comparison to a true mega-corp like Final Fantasy 7's Shinra Corporation, where all power exists within the company. Shinra can destroy 1/8th of the capitol city with no repercussions, and there is no significant economic activity outside of the company.

I wouldn't throw someone into the deep end of corporatism based on where this thread started ;) I figured the implicitness of my examples' corps' power fits better as an illustration of the potential short term future.

Yours is a terrifying endgame, but it feels (to me) quite far removed from what we should look out for before it's too late.

Alphabet has several projects that Microsoft does not have a counter-project for and in which my primary ethical concerns are not privacy related.

I'm specifically concerned about their approaches and attitudes on AI and Life Sciences.

That was in 2009 - Windows 10 probably wasn't even a project at that point, for instance.

I doubt Mozilla would recommend Bing over Google again because it's more "pro-privacy."

I think the point is not so much pro vs anti privacy. On the web you have to assume every site is anti privacy, and you may have some rare pleasant surprises. To me the point is rather to spread that trail of data among multiple providers that are not known to sync their data.

As much as I like Microsoft, Bing is awful. Ive used it, and I tried to like it. It can't find anything.

I find bing to be better than any other Google alternatives.

agree

It would be possible for you and your parent comment to be correct simultaneously.

Bing's video search (particularly for porn) is the best in the business.

Its image search is also pretty good. If I'm not successful on a google image search, bing usually comes up with quality images. Their maps also tend to better render local businesses and it's easier to navigate the results than google, surprisingly. On the other hand technical searches are way better on google.

> (particularly for porn)

I had not considered Bing a serious competitor to Google's search engine until now.

>> (particularly for porn)

> I had not considered Bing a serious competitor to Google's search engine until now.

I can’t tell how much humor was intended here, but that’s a serious competitive point that had not occurred to me. Ever. It’s not something that MS could use in a marketing campaign, but could easily sway lots of people to give it a try when they otherwise wouldn’t.

I'm not sure if it was implemented as a 'competitive point' or if Microsoft just has employees that solved the porn search problem for personal use.

That’s likely on purpose now, even if it was accidental in the beginning. Microsoft marketing people are not stupid, and they know the right amount of piracy and the right amount of porn is excellent marketing.

I use Bing a fair amount and I like it.

I'm wondering if you could elaborate on what sorts of things you are trying to find and having trouble with. Perhaps HN could make a few suggestions for how to get more out of your Bing experience.

I've tried switching to it but for looking up code and projects it kinda sucks. Even when I throw hints at it sometimes it just doesn't seem to care. I'm using DuckDuckGo instead for now.

It’s a matter of taste but I prefer the Apple/google clean and white UI with little else distraction than what you are trying to achieve over Microsoft’s “portal from the 90’s/let’s fill every bit of space”. Whether it’s bing or Windows, something as stupid as showing you a different background picture every time means you always have to deal with a new visual, which means more effort to find your way. It’s the same for IE and edge, the default new tab is to show you a busy page with news, weather forecast, most visited stuff. That’s like advertising banners to me.

I’m surprised to learn an it professional regularly finds their way to a search engine home page. I would assume you’d just type your query directly into the address bar? This seems to work for every major browser at least, unless I’m mistaking?

I actually use Bing, and I see the oddity that is their homepage once a month, if that.

(And I think bing is fine for about 80% of searches. The rest I use google, which manages for another 10%, and for the remaining tithe I have to do something archaic like think about how to properly format a search query. Party like it’s 1999.)

Why are you going to Bing’s homepage? The rest of the site is minimalist.

It was also disappointing to hear recently one of their developers say that they mostly just copy what Google is doing to keep up.

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