Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Bing

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | February 8, 2011, 7:36am PST

Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Microsoft’s search engine Bing.

Just take a look at these screenshots from Rovio Mobile’s latest update to Angry Birds Seasons:

Clicking on these links takes you to the Bing site and carries out Angry Birds related searches. Oh, and it also asks you if you want to change your search provider to Bing. Since there’s little difference between Google and Bing these days, I chose to stick with Google.

I’m assuming that this represents some sort of deal between Rovio Mobile and Microsoft. It’s certainly an interesting way to monetize a free game update, not to mention giving Microsoft’s search engine some face time on an Apple product.

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Topics

Google Inc., Search Engine, Microsoft Corp., War, Search, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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Hopefully, you're not easily impressed by the bigger numbers in a search

adornoe@... 10th Feb 2011

because, those bigger numbers are most times meaningless, especially when what you're searching for can be found within the first few pages of results.

So, how often have you scanned through a search which yields a few million hits? If you ever do that, then you won't have time to live the rest of what's left of your life; that is, if anything is left of your life.

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RE: Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Bing

roteague 8th Feb 2011

Actually, there isn't "very little" difference between Bing and Google. I went to Bing a long time ago; I love the graphical nature of the site.

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Exact opposite opinion...

jasonp@... 8th Feb 2011

@roteague
IT has been my business for a long, long time. It a vendor wants me to switch from something I'm currently using to their product, there has to be something in it for me. It has to make my job easier.

A decade ago I tried Google for the first time. Before that, I typically stuck with Yahoo. A month after trying Google, I never went back to Yahoo and have used Google for my search engine ever since. It's easy, it's extremely flexible and it just works. I've tried Bing. It was almost an identical experience from an end user standpoint. In other words, there was no hook to bring me back.

Now there are other Micrsoft tools I use on a daily basis. There is no other software development platform that comes close to Visual Studio when it comes to productivity. I also happen to like SQL Server a lot, especially since they embedded the .NET framework. I'm settled in on Office 2003 since I personally can't stand the new ribbon interface and couldn't imagine being as productive in OO or Corel WP Office. For me, Microsoft missed the boat on Bing. I'll continue using Google until something better comes along. Bing ain't it.

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RE: Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Bing

Cylon Centurion 8th Feb 2011

Bing wasn't copying Google.

Sheesh.

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google is crapping their pants and thats why we're seeing them turn into

Johnny Vegas 8th Feb 2011

billion dollar cry babies right before our eyes. the gimmicks are over. Bing is now objectively better at both search and maps. now we've come to the point where google needs bloggers too shill for them...

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A lot more bloggers...

jasonp@... 8th Feb 2011

@Johnny Vegas
...shill for Microsoft than for Google. And no, Bing isn't "objectively" better at either search or maps. I tried them side by side for a week and didn't find a single instance where Bing results were an improvement over Google results. Most were almost identical. As for maps, I'll stick with MapQuest...it's far better than either Google or Bing.

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RE: Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Bing

HalfAKilo 8th Feb 2011

@jasonp@... you must be kidding. pro-google and pro-apple shilling is 90% of all web content

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RE: Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Bing

LiquidLearner 8th Feb 2011

@jasonp@...

I disagree about the maps, in fact I often use Bing to verify Google navigation on my phone. I've ended up in some very bad places thanks to Google being way, way off. Bing is also more accurate if you have more new housing in your area. It picks up new developments usually months before Google.

That said I agree with your point about Google search, especially related to IT. I prefer Google for searching for obscure error messages and the like, it does tend to give better results. Bing is superior if you're shopping though, by a landslide. It's also better if you're trying to find info about places to eat and things to do in your area.

Bing is the only search engine who has given Google any competition. Google was looking like IE6 there for a while, with no visible changes and just coasting on what they had. Thanks to Bing Google has improved.

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RE: Angry Birds have a new best friend in the war against the pigs - Bing

Cylon Centurion 8th Feb 2011

@LiquidLearner

Agreed. Google sat on it's search engine monopoly like Microsoft sat on it's IE monopoly.

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Cylon Centurion 0005: What is a monopoly?

adornoe@... 9th Feb 2011

I mean, in the world of browsers, can there really be a monopoly?

In economic terms, if a browser is not a revenue producing service, then, should it be called a monopoly?

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bing vs google

Long shadoW 10th Feb 2011

I like them both - but the numbers don't

- same time/day/machine , moderate filter

BING Google
Web Image Web Image
word :
carrots 9.9m 1.29m 18.9m 5.6m

famine 5m 154K 9.7m 2.7m

cartography 670K 6K 265K 20K
thematic

blustery 600K 557K 7m 736K

random 533K .426K 900K 44.6K
polymorphic

yoicks 24K 149K 50K 15K

bing 6m 3.3m 163m 48m