this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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I feel like it's dying and the people I know say they use Google or duck duck go.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I do. I use several search engines, but depending on the topic, Bing returns accurate results, especially since they integrated Bing Chat (their AI).

And I'm not alone.

Google a) is littered with ads, sponsored and overly SEOified results and b) has too much dominance.

So I use Bing, Ecosia (which uses Bing) and a number of other search engines.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Same here. It costs me more seconds to mentally filter out the Google Ads.

Most of my searches are combined with wiki, reddit or some other keyword to help find the result I am looking for.

I need to scroll less with bing to get to the first wiki article.

I also like bingGPT for the more advanced queries.

Some of my devices have Bing as default, otherwise DuchDuckGo or Google.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Duckduckgo actually uses Bing for search results. Unless something changed.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Largely true, though the full answer is a bit more nuanced.

Source.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Ecosia.org too

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I host and use SearXNG at home. It's a search engine aggregator that combines results from multiple search engines (including Bing). It also doesn't track your searches.

There are some hosted instances you can use as well, but I recommend hosting it yourself if you can.

Hosted instances: https://searx.space/

GitHub link: https://github.com/searxng/searxng

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Yes, I use Bing. I got sick of Google's ads, not to mention having to click through two pages of useless boosted links. Bing is quicker and cleaner.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes. I work in corporate environment that uses very restrictive approach to websurfing. Because of that I'm using Edge and Bing while working.

I can find what I want there, but that's about it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I can find what I want there, but that’s about it.

To be fair, nowadays that's the highest praise a search engine will get. No one will make it easy to find stuff anymore. Being possible is the best you get.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Sign me up captain

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I use DuckDuckGo, which technically means I use Bing minus the privacy violations.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bing Rewards is great, out of the two, at least Microsoft pays me for my info.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you don't think bing rewards are that great, you can always tell Microsoft to send a small amount of money to a charity instead of getting the rewards.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use bing to check if my internet is working

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Much like Edge is a good browser to download other browsers, Bing is a good place to test if the internet is working.

I rarely go there and don't have much if anything cashed, so I know I'm getting bakery fresh internet

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've tried alternative search engines but IMO nothing can beat Google.

Qwant is the only one I felt like was of similar quality.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Compare searches with bing, it seriously outperfoms

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You haven't tried Kagi then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree. But I’m still evaluating if it’s worth it. I search a lot. I’ve already had to upgrade to the $10 a month plan. I might have to upgrade to the $25.

That’s a lot. I love it though. I’ll probably end up canceling some streaming service in favor of keeping Kagi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah I'm cancelling streaming services myself, felt completely robbed by paying 3 or 4 of them and still rarely something worth watching.

I have only amazon and HBO left now. Amazon mostly because of free express delivery of items.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Since the Snoopocalypse I've been using it MUCH more. I'm as surprised as anyone, but without Reddit, Google is complete hot garbage. I used to use Google 95% of the time and didn't realize how many times I gave up and added "reddit" in the query. It's unusable.

Out of principle, I've made SearXNG my default, but I don't shun Bing at all now. I occasionally use DDG, but anything relatively technical just doesn't come up much there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I love Bing, rewards is nice, and the results are less manipulated than google

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use whoogle, an open source frontend for Google that's strips all the bullshit out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

i liked it but it's more slower than Google..

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only indirectly I believe through ecosia.org

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Same. Privacy was trumped by the environment (still use blockers tho)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I use Bing Chat a lot when researching things but for regular searches I prefer Google. Bing seems to be great for US based users but I have a hard time finding stuff in my language or my area.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does playing with the AI count?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I love how bing is the only AI capable of ending a conversation with you on its own. Pure savagery.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Bing is pretty good for general searching. I've been mostly using it as my primary. I actually really love Bing Chat for this as well - as a langchain LLM, it is able to search for sources before answering, so it's less likely to hallucinate than ChatGPT alone (which only has the sources it was trained on.) However, one should always double check the sources Bing provides as occasionally it misinterprets when restating from what it has found.

When I want technical results which may contain specific errors in quotes, or technical documentation reference for something, I often find myself moving back to Google. Most recently was a very specific component I was researching in quotes - Bing found zero results, Google found one reference to it (and that ended up being enough for me to understand it.)

I believe part of this is related to the lengthy user profile Google almost certainly has on me, in which it knows very well how to fine tune my results based on what I click on. If Bing is doing the same, it will hopefully improve over time for my very specific queries.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I use Google with DuckDuckGo as a backup if I ever wanted to search something that google likes to censor (like "how to downloading a car").

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'll be honest, I haven't used anything but Google, probably more out of habit than anything. I didn't realize we had reached the point that Bing was a superior option...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Nope. Duckduck all the way. The only useful thing Bing has (in the UK) is OS maps for map searches.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use DuckDuckGo. Oddly, though, I find that results on searches for specific Linux issues I may be running into are almost better on Google. Given the number of people here saying they get better results with something other than Google, I'm curious if anyone else has had similar or contradictory experiences with Linux troubleshooting searches.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I was using bing for a little, switched to DuckDuckGo and now I'm using Kagi. I used the free trial and it was pretty sweet. Just seeing if the $5 a month plan is usable for me. If not I'll probably switch to a different search engine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I always google on Bing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

When I can't find something on Google, I usually switch to Ecosia (which uses Bing). It can have better results, depending on the topic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I just use it for rewards points so I can get free months of game pass.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I like using bing if only because I have Google for nearly everything else (phone, email, maps, etc)....nice to spread out the tracking of who knows what about me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I would love to use Bing, but it doesn't want to load the homepage on my shitty rural internet. Unless there's a better version that doesn't clog up the homepage with images.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's the default browser whenever I use Edge, but that's about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use duckduckgo which uses bing to search but that cause it the default in tor and brave search not being able to search images and videos

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'd say it's changing very quickly due to ai. Otherwise it wasn't any good

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