Hacker News Reader

Comment by sumtechguy | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, this is what I want bing's 'homepage' to look like and I usually configure it to be as close to that as I can. The default was/is a ton of news and other junk. I just want a search bar and maybe an identifier picture. It was one of the things I liked when google first came out. It was 'simple' as many of the other search engines from years ago had tons of 'helpful' things on the front page that I just did not want.

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I always find it embarrassing when a colleague opens up a new tab while screen sharing and Bing / Edge starts spamming trashy news.

Given Microsoft is “soo enterprise” it’s always a source of amazement that Microsoft feel it’s acceptable to default to this kind of spammy behaviour.

It just goes to show how running businesses by engagement scores really is just a race to the bottom.

> starts spamming trashy news. Think I am on my 4th or 5th time going into the settings to turn it off too.

I think google may be starting to do something similar too. I think I got caught in an A/B test a week or so ago. Little bits of news popping on the landing page. Off to the settings to turn that off. Which then somehow messed up the settings on my phone as well.

Computers doing 'surprising things' makes users angry and feel like they do not have control.

That was back when everyone was trying to make a "portal" to compete with AOL. It seems like browsers are headed down the same path now with replacing the simple search box new tab page with the same stuff the portals had.

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