The looming search engine war: Bing vs Google and privacy

Given that Microsoft still hasn't figured out there's a whole country (just a couple hours) north of Redmond state, called "Canada" that uses things like Metric distances and temperature units while Google has full support for Canada in both official languages..... there's only really one choice for me. I run Google Search, Google Maps & Latitude, Gmail. The only thing I'm missing on my Windows phone is Google Talk.

Now don't get me wrong. I *like* the Windows phone ecosystem, I just wish that I could use things like Bing in my day to day life. I can Google movie showtimes and I get the local theatre. I can't do that with Bing. I can Google street directions and it gives me what I need in terms of location, time, and metric units. I can Google local weather. While I can do that with Bing, it doesn't give me information I can use. I don't understand Farenheit - I need my daily high and low in Celsius. Mind you I can always Google "78F in Celsius" and get the conversion but ....

So, in Canada, Microsoft has literally handed the search business to Google. They have full support in the desktop search client but not in the mobile space.

I use Bing on my TP2 and on my pc's, have the opt out cookie installed and have google's site blocked at my router. Google has entirely too much information in its cellars with virtually no oversight and accountability and is always looking to increase that in every way it can. I personally would like to have a choice in whether and what information about me is stored so a big NO to google from me.

I use chrome mainly for layout reason but I use Bing as my default search engine. It works excellently the only thing they need to adjust is their layout view on there page.

Bing lost my vote when they destroyed bing for mobile. No more turn-by-turn directions, no more follow me GPS tracking, no more bing.

This poster puts it very well:

http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20091208/0221047243#c45

Bing lost my vote because their web searches are really pitiful. If you go to Bing.com in any browser, where is the cool picture? The worst part is when you search, you get only a few results at a time, instead of the many that Google gives you. On my PC I'm all for Bing, but Microsoft, please improve the mobile component.

I have always been very leary of using google and their privacy policies are very...evil shall we say. Bing every time baby

eric schmidt was expressing his discomfort with acknowledging that somethings you do may be better kept private. That is: .."maybe you shouldn't be doing it ON GOOGLE".

thank God there is a choice.

My vote is for anything that does NOT come from Google.

I had to set Bing as the default search engine for my Firefox browser on my laptop, as Google kept thinking I was a robot and blocking my searches. I don't have any issue with Bing and it is quite usable.

I'm not happy with either, but I so loathe Google's business practices that I stay away as much as I can. I don't like "mobile editions" of anything to begin with; I need data, raw data, and as much of it as you can feed me at a go. I'll decide what's relevant and interesting, thank you. I hate stemming. I can't abide SEO. I think any sorting system deployed in the public sector thus far is a joke. If I had a spelling deficit that would be my issue, not yours. If I wanted my results to be chopped down to a useless slice of what they would be on a desktop browser, I'd tick that box. If I wanted help, I'd ask for it. I don't partake in trends, I don't give a shit what anyone else is searching for, and if I could simply gain much more precise control over search queries not only in language but in function and scope I could actually find what I was looking for, I guarantee you. My 'networks' are none of your goddamned business, nor are my interests, patterns, demographic or personal information, and if you make the mistake of attempting to collect them from me, I will task random drones to feed your services erroneous data as readily as you'll accept it, and I'll never do business with or through you. I have no claim here in the interest of mere privacy, nor do I pretend to any degree of secrecy in my online exploits. The internet is not secure, period. If I had sensitive matters to attend to, I'd do them securely. But that's not what this is about. This is about me actively choosing to deny or punish unethical corporate entities for having built a business model on reading other people's mail to begin with. It's not about justice or equality or fairness or greed. It's about choices, and the search industry has made very poor ones.