Over the past few months, ChatGPT has changed the game in many ways, and the next step is with AI-powered chatbot experiences for search. However, those experiences are only as good as the information feeding them, so it’s time for Google to really put the hammer down on “SEO spam.”
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As expected, Microsoft today announced “the new Bing” that offers direct, AI-generated answers.
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Microsoft has announced a February 7 event where it will unveil “progress on a few exciting projects,” with Bing’s ChatGPT infusion expected to be among the updates shared.
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The arrival of ChatGPT has led to a “code red” within Google and big changes on their way, but as reported last month, it seems Microsoft Bing will beat Google to the punch by simply integrating ChatGPT itself. Here’s what that will apparently look like.
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Google has been under fire for its dominance in online search for years, and currently, the tech giant is facing down a case in the EU over its actions. This week, however, the company is leaning on the idea that its customers want to use Google Search over alternatives, with the evidence used to support that being that the most popular search term on Bing is apparently “Google.”
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One big Microsoft foothold in enterprise productivity remains the Office suite of applications. The company announced yesterday that — by default — users of its premium Office 365 subscription will be forced to install an extension that makes Bing the default search engine in Chrome.
Google has been the biggest name in search for so long, it’s a household name. For the past several years, though, Microsoft has been trying to compete with Bing, its own search engine. Today, Microsoft is announcing that Bing can now use Visual Search, just like Google Lens.
Google’s ongoing project with Street View is ambitious, but it’s also not the only one going on at any given time. Microsoft has had its own “Streetside” photography project ongoing for Bing maps and, after a while, cars from those opposing projects crossed paths.
As part of announcements at Microsoft’s Build 2016 conference today, Skype announced a new ‘Bots’ platform that it’s launching today in preview mode for developers and users in the Android app (as well as the iPhone, iPad and Windows apps).
As part of its Android M announcement, Google showed off its Now on Tap feature which will allow you to get contextual information within any app or screen just by pressing the home button for a few seconds. With Marshmallow not set to hit the public until later this year, it gave Microsoft a chance to beat Google to it. And it has done just that in its latest Bing app for Android.
Microsoft recently released its Cortana digital assistant as a beta app, and we’ve been able to get our hands on the preview. Apart from its Material-like design, the app looks, performs, and acts just like the Cortana on Windows Phone. You can ask it to set reminders, give you directions and weather information, or do simple arithmetic. It has its limitations and doesn’t feel quite as intuitive or in-depth as Google Now or Siri, but it has its uses.
Microsoft’s Bing isn’t the most popular search engine around, but—at least according to the latest from comScore—it’s gaining ground slowly but surely. For the first time, Microsoft sites have surpassed the 20% milestone, meaning more than one fifth of overall search traffic is now owned by the Redmond, Washington company…
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In what may be taken as some dreadful news to long-time fans of Cyanogen’s work in the custom Android-based ROM space, the group has today announced a partnership with Microsoft to pre-install many of the Redmond company’s consumer-facing apps on its mobile OS…
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Google’s share of the US search market has fallen to its lowest level since at least 2008 following the deal in which Mozilla switched the default Firefox search engine from Google to Yahoo in November. Yahoo saw its share increase from 8.6% to 10.4% in the one month since the deal was signed.
The figure was revealed by StatCounter, who said that Firefox users represented just over 12% of US Internet users as of last month …
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Yelp announced today that it would be updating its Android application “soon” with a new feature that automatically translates reviews in 15 different languages. According to a Yelp blog post:
The translation feature works for all 15 officially supported Yelp languages: English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, French, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, and Japanese.
An exact date for the feature on Android has not been announced yet. The Yelp app is free on the Google Play Store.
Google and Microsoft are rivals in just about every sense of the word, but every now and then these two juggernauts play nice with each other. Case in point, the newest version of Chrome Canary features a new tab page loaded with Bing’s famous images for people who use Google’s browser, but prefer Microsoft’s search engine.
With the introduction of a new CEO and a few personnel shifts, Microsoft is definitely making some changes, but along with its corporate restructuring, the company appears to have a new take on marketing as well. Derrick Connell, Microsoft’s corporate vice president in charge of Bing recently stated during an online Q&A session that the company was done with its highly publicized Scroogled ad campaign.
College Humor is back by popular demand with a yet another look at the far too realistic personification of the search engine in the sequal to its “If Google Was a Guy” video. Certain questions prompt a camera appearance by the ominous NSA. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing makes a guest appearance as a pristine but vacant office employee. The parallels drawn are undeniable. Watch it below:
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Photo: gamechup.com
In what must surely win some kind of award for irony, Steve ‘dead man walking’ Ballmer repeated his call for Google to face greater scrutiny from competition authorities, describing the search giant as a “monopoly.”
Speaking at an analysts briefing yesterday (via The Verge), the outgoing Microsoft CEO responded to questions about Google’s plans to generate money from online services saying:
Google does it. They have this incredible, amazing, dare I say monopoly that we are the only person left on the planet trying to compete with. We’re the only guys in the world trying.”
Microsoft of course faced numerous anti-trust suits back in the heady days of its dominance of the PC industry, and always dismissed them with the view that consumers make their own choices.
Microsoft’s search service Bing has 17.9 percent of the US search market, a distant second to Google at 67 percent. The disparity is often greater internationally though Google does have competition from Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China.
Microsoft must be pretty happy with Apple’s decision to include Bing as the default search engine powered web results in Apple’s revamped Siri application heading to iOS 7 this fall. However, what does this all mean for Google? It could very well signal Apple’s increasing desire to cut its reliance on services powered by its biggest competitor in the smartphone space.
Before iOS 7, searching for something with Siri would often turn up the option to search for web results. Doing so would give you results through Safari using your default search engine (which by default is set to Google). Now, in iOS 7, web results will be displayed right in the Siri app, however, they will be powered by Microsoft’s Bing– and not Google.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Zr4JwPb99qU]
While Google has played several light-hearted April Fool’s jokes today, Microsoft’s search engine Bing took things to the next level by pretending to be Google.
To see the somewhat harsh joke, go to Bing’s website and then search for “Google.” A Google-like search page will appear with the header “Bing.” The fake search page features floating squares that criticize Google, but it most notably changed Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button to “I’m Feeling Confused” with link to a blog post that fully explains the joke.
According to Bing.com’s blog:
So today we’re running a special test, where if you visit bing.com and enter a certain telltale query, you’ll get something a little more bland. We decided to go back to basics, to the dawn of the Internet, to reimagine Bing with more of a 1997, dial-up sensibility in mind. We may see some uptick in our numbers based on this test, but the main goal here is just to learn more about how our world would look if we hadn’t evolved.
So, Microsoft has basically slammed Google’s look and deemed it dated. Yeah. Way to keep things light, Redmond. Don’t worry, though: Google has lashed back.
Microsoft loves to launch ad campaigns against its No. 1 enemy, Google, and now it is embarking on yet another for Christmastime, called “Don’t Get Scroogled“, that places the Google Shopping experience under a microscope.
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, lambasted Google today and alerted consumers of Mountain View’s pay-to-rank system for shopping results. Here’s an excerpt from the “Don’t Get Scroogled: Bing Launches Campaign for Honest Search to Help Shoppers this Holiday Season” blog post on Bing’s community website:
“Specifically, we want to alert you to what Google has done with their shopping site right in time for Christmas. Instead of showing you the most relevant shopping search results for the latest coffee maker you’re looking to buy mom, Google Shopping now decides what to show you – and how prominently to display what product offers they show — based partially on how much the merchant selling the product has paid them. Merchants can literally pay to improve their chances to display their product offers higher than others inside of Google’s shopping “search,” even if it’s not better or cheaper for the consumer. The result of this new “pay-to-rank” system is that it’s easy for consumers to mistake an ad for an honest search. That’s not right, it’s misleading. It’s not what you expect from search, and it’s not how we at Bing think search engines should help consumers get the best prices and selection when shopping.”
The Redmond, Wash.-based search engine basically said shoppers who use Google for their shopping searches are “getting ‘Scroogled’ when they should be getting fair, honest, open search.” Bing then compared Google Shopping to Ebenezer Scrooge and noted, “We think consumers should be aware what they’re seeing when they’re shopping online and to understand, without any hidden text or traps, the fine print of what their ‘search engine’ actually searches.”
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySwn_1o8zfs]
Earlier this month, Microsoft’s search engine Bing unveiled a new style that looks strikingly like Google’s homepage user-interface, but today the Redmond, Wash.-based Company branched from the design and announced a host of new features.
The redesign is still very Google-esque, but the notable aspect to this change is that Microsoft is continuing to make jabs at its primary competitor all the while conducting an obvious rip-off. The Windows-maker even detailed to users in a Bing blog post that its search relevance and quality surpassed Google’s when all signs of branding were removed from the search engines’ homepages:
From the outset, we knew that serving relevant results that were equal to or better than the other guy was table stakes. To track our progress, we conducted tests that removed any trace of Google and Bing branding. When we did this study in January of last year 34% people preferred Bing, while 38% preferred Google. The same unbranded study now shows that Bing Search results now have a much wider lead over Google’s. When shown unbranded search results 43% prefer Bing results while only 28% prefer Google results. What this means is that in 3 years we’ve made some real progress in core relevance and search quality, and while search is becoming so much more than just web results, having a rock solid foundation is important for the future of Bing and search more generally.
Screenshots are available below.