Mozilla tests Microsoft Bing as the default Firefox search engine | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla tests Microsoft Bing as the default Firefox search engine

bleepingcomputer.com

49 pointsthunderbong40 comments

Any idea when this started?

Asking because my Firefox at work (on macOS with O365 installed) suddenly switched to Bing as the default search search engine about 2 weeks ago.

And frankly, I was pretty pissed about it. Figured it was MS pulling some underhanded bullshit yet again.

Note - all search engines except DDG and wikipedia were removed (and have been again), and Firefox does _not_ have permission to run studies on any of my computers (work or home).

So, if this really was FF pulling this crap, they have some questions to answer.

Oddly, I have had my default search set to Bing for a few years, now, in FF. I do it as a small effort to counterbalance the Google juggernaut. Most of the time it works fine. Bing’s image search is even better than Google’s. If I’m not finding what I want, I jump over to Google.

Revenue aside, it's not clear as well, as a user, why I would want to use bing.

Whenever I use Edge, I end up wondering why Google is broken and does not find what I'm looking for - It's because I'm actually using bing!

(I'm in the eu where Google holds a near monopolistic market share, so maybe ms has little incentive to improve bing for eu users)

Google does sooo much filtering of search results I can no longer use them. They actively supress information which they deem politically controversial. I have been using duckduckgo for a few years now and I really appreciate getting a raw search result where I do the content filtering.. not to mention my privacy is more protected there. On the very rare case I don't find what I want there, adding the "bang" !g to my search will route me to google, so its no pain to dig there if needed.

I also use Duckduckgo as a default and only have to use Google maybe once per week, and then I use the !g shortcut from Duckduckgo.

"I use the !g shortcut from Duckduckgo"

This works so neatly!! Going to try duckduckgo for the next month.

There are thousands, ddg is a metasearch engine.

as an alternative: https://metager.de/

This x1000

I'll come out and say it. Bing is the best porn search engine out there.

Porn/offensive materials are always the best test of a service provider.

The trick to Bing is (on bing.com) to change your regional settings to the US. (Bing.com > burger menu > settings > Country/Region > United States (English))

This small change will greatly improve the quality of the search results.

I think a lot of this is personalization-related, too. I primarily use Bing for the rewards points. If I can't find it on Bing, only very seldom do I find it on Google.

But I've noticed on my work computer where I rarely use the browser, results are absolutely atrocious. But that's true for both.

But beyond that, I think search engine quality for anything but the top 100 websites has declined dramatically over the past ten years. Google has straight up delisted websites I used to visit that still exist, seemingly simply based on age.

>why I would want to use bing.

To search for google (which is probably the most used keyword in bing)

However Ecosia is kind of a good thing (based on bing)

https://www.ecosia.org

I've been using Ecosia for over a year now. Took about a week to get used to but I'm getting good results and if they actually do what they promise I'm doing something good for the world :)

I'm having trouble finding it on their website but I watched a regenerative agricultural guy two days ago say ecosia was giving out grants to people like himself. He had a permanent polyculture of mostly food, not trees, but it was neat.

I didn't know about this - thanks!

I understand this doesn't mean Bing _will_ be the default session (yet).

But in a broader way, I don't understand any of the recent descisions Mozilla has been making in regards to Firefox. It keeps getting stranger and stranger.

Mozilla has lost their way. Mitchell’s ability to lead the company is deficient.

Respectfully I think she should step down and hire a real CEO again.

Knowing nothing of the particulars, I emphatically agree. This past month I have twice disabled ads that circumvent my ad-blocker placed on my homepage by Mozilla labeled as a fucking “experiment.” It’s mind blowing to me that leadership there is so lost and without a paddle they’re putting ads directly in my face without asking. It’s a huge violation of trust and honestly has made me start to regret supporting Firefox and Mozilla all these years.

Mozilla literally goes around preaching bullshit about a safer web, acting like they give a fuck, when I’m reality they’re as eager as anyone to sell you out. It’s disgusting behavior.

I truly don’t want to move back to a Chromium based browser (I hate using Chrome), but they have maybe one more chance before I’m forced to. At least if I’m using Chromium, I can assume my browser is hostile and leaking information instead of assuming it’s trustworthy when it’s clearly not.

Whoever is at Mozilla that approves of this kind of stuff should leave. You’re doing the world a disservice and likely harming the future of the free internet. If that’s the CEO, then by all means, please let the door hit you on the way out as it slams shut.

Why wouldn't you switch to a Firefox derivative or other Gecko-based browser?

Because that shows as Firefox market share to webservers, further perpetuating the "people still use Firefox" myth that's being clung to by people who haven't studied the big picture state of browser security in a while.

It may be going the way of Netscape at this point - hopefully it doesn't get acquired by an Oracle or Verizon type entity, but Mozilla has seriously screwed up in the last several years. Bureaucracy, complacency and loss of vision and purpose, software change for its own sake, and they seem not to have noticed the relevance they've lost. It's sad but predictable.

There is nothing they can do. Users have voted that speed is more important than any privacy, and Firefox will never get faster than chrome.

Its in the article.

>With the current Google contract expiring in fifteen months, Mozilla may be thinking about striking a deal with Microsoft instead.

Why fucking Bing of all things? Why not Duck Duck Go? Are these kinds of deals really solely based on the funding MS would give them?

I mean... yeah, pretty much. A massive part of their funding is their search engine IIRC, so if they could make it bigger, they could certainly improve it. Mozilla's financials mean it's entirely reliant on that, basically.

If they don't have an alternative to Google how can they:

- Negotiate with google?

- Keep on serving a useful browser experience if google doesn't want to be on firefox anymore?

I always change it to Duckduckgo anyways. But sure it will affect people who do not change.

Using Nightly on Desktop and there is no reason to use Chrome/Edge/Brave. Firefox is really fast now. Youtube/Twitch all works.

Vivaldi would actually be great if it was faster.

Only things I would like in Firefox are native vertical tabs as all the addons feel a bit off. And the F2 commandline from Vivaldi.

Firefox has never been fast for me up against Chrome or even Safari. It still feels horribly unoptimised on Mac. Slow, bloated and choppy.

This is true even on my i9, 64gb RAM MBP.

It's true after a fresh install with no extensions. It's been true for 10 years.

Sounds like an apple problem. FF is snappy on linux and windows for me.

I hate Firefox on my Mac but I'll move to Linux in the next year so the problem with FF performance might just end up resolving itself. :D

What do you use? X.org or Wayland?

I don’t think that is a universal experience. On my Mac FF is similar to Chrome for most sites. The only ones where is doesn’t quite match Chrome are gmail and YouTube, which oddly, are slower on Firefox.

I’m a big fan of Firefox but on my work thinkpad watching a YouTube video causes my cpu to spike so now I’ve been using edge more and more.

That thinkpad has lots of problems though. Connecting an hdmi cable causes the fans to spin non stop.

I use several ones, i'm not stuck on using one searxch engine only.

Shouldn't it be DuckDuckGo, since folks looking to use Firefox in the first place would also more likely want to use it?

It should and that’s what people might set it to. However, Mozilla is reliant on money they get from deals about which search engine should be default (just as e.g. Safari on iDevices).

lol Google being the default search engine is literally how Firefox makes money. Only Microsoft has pockets deep enough to replace that revenue stream.

There was a time when id just rawdog firefox and not stress about my privacy or what data was being colected. Then I had to start trimming it down as it became an ever bigger advertisement for other mozilla products, and its data collection ever more concerning. The worst part was the articles presented by pocket on every new tab page. This sounds like a great way to influence thought and show blatant advertisements. Shady shit. Now I use a fork, librewolf, because it’s already set up usable out the box with ublock installed. You’ll have to pry my computer from my cold dead hands before you get me to switch to chromium

Mozilla doesn't have tech leadership anymore. Firefox today is as good as it will ever be.

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