Tuesday, 24 May 2016

Google Yahoo Bing Search


GOOGLE
This article is about the company. For the search engine, see Google Search. For other uses, see Google (disambiguation).
"Google Inc." redirects here. For the parent company, see Alphabet Inc.
Not to be confused with Goggle or Googol.
Google Inc.
Subsidiary
Industry
FoundedSeptember 4, 1998; 17 years ago
Menlo Park, California[1][2]
Founders
HeadquartersGoogleplex, Mountain View,California, U.S.[3]
Coordinates37.422°N 122.084058°WCoordinates: 37.422°N 122.084058°W
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Sundar Pichai (CEO)
ProductsList of Google products
Number of employees
57,100 (Q2 2015)[4]
ParentIndependent (1998–2015)
Alphabet Inc. (2015–present)
SubsidiariesList of subsidiaries
SloganDon't be evil[5]
Websitewww.google.com
Footnotes / references
[6]
Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software.[7] Most of its profits are derived fromAdWords,[8][9] an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,"[10] and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil".[11][12] In 2004, Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.[13] In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its interests as a holding company called Alphabet Inc. When this restructuring took place on October 2, 2015, Google became Alphabet's leading subsidiary, as well as the parent for Google's Internet interests.[14][15][16][17][18]
Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine (Google Search). It offers online productivity software (Google Docs) including email (Gmail), acloud storage service (Google Drive) and a social networking service (Google+). Desktop products include applications for web browsing (Google Chrome), organizing and editing photos (Google Photos), and instant messaging and video chat (Hangouts). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the browser-onlyChrome OS[19] for a class of netbooks known as Chromebooks and desktop PCs known as Chromeboxes. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware, partnering with major electronics manufacturers[20] in the production of its "high-quality low-cost"[21] Nexus devices.[22] In 2012, a fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service.[23]
The corporation has been estimated to run more than one million servers in data centers around the world (as of 2007).[24] It processes over one billion search requests[25] and about 24 petabytes of user-generated data each day (as of 2009).[26][27][28][29] In December 2013, Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such asYouTube and Blogger.[30] Its market dominance has led to prominent media coverage, including criticism of the company over issues such as aggressive tax avoidance,[31] search neutrality, copyright, censorship, and privacy.[32][33]

YAHOO

Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders of Yahoo
In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University when they created a website named "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web".[19][20] The site was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In March 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!"[21][22] The "yahoo.com" domain was created on January 18, 1995.[23]
The word "yahoo" is a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle"[24] or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".[25] The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom", and the term "officious", rather than being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo database while surfing from work.[26]However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the slang definition of a "yahoo" (used by college students in David Filo's native Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unsophisticated, rural Southerner): "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Filo's college girlfriend often referred to Filo as a "yahoo." This meaning derives from the Yahoo race of fictional beings from Gulliver's Travels.

Expansion

Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s. Like many web search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal. By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users.[27] It also made many high-profile acquisitions. Its stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble, Yahoo stocks closing at an all-time high of $118.75 a share on January 3, 2000. However, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $8.11 on September 26, 2001.[28]
In 2000, Yahoo began using Google for search. Over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004. In response to Google's Gmail, Yahoo began to offer unlimited email storage in 2007. The company struggled through 2008, with several large layoffs.[29]
In February 2008, Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for US$44.6 billion. Yahoo formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Three years later, Yahoo had a market capitalization of US$22.24 billion.[30] Carol Bartzreplaced Yang as CEO in January 2009.[31] In September 2011, she was removed from her position at Yahoo by the company's chairman Roy Bostock, and CFOTim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company.
In early 2012, after the appointment of Scott Thompson as CEO, rumors began to spread about looming layoffs. Several key executives, such as Chief Product Officer Blake Irving left.[32] On April 4, 2012, Yahoo announced a cut of 2,000 jobs or about 14 percent of its 14,100 workers. The cut is expected to save around US$375 million annually after the layoffs are completed at end of 2012.[33] In an email sent to employees in April 2012, Thompson reiterated his view that customers should come first at Yahoo. He also completely reorganized the company.[34]
On May 13, 2012, Yahoo issued a press release stating that Thompson was no longer with the company, and would immediately be replaced on an interim basis byRoss Levinsohn, recently appointed head of Yahoo's new Media group.[34][35][36] Thompson's total compensation for his 130-day tenure with Yahoo was at least $7.3 million.[37]
On July 16, 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed President and CEO of Yahoo, effective the following day.
On May 19, 2013 the Yahoo board approved a US$1.1 billion purchase of blogging site Tumblr, and the company's CEO and founder David Karp will remain a large shareholder. The announcement reportedly signifies a changing trend in the technology industry, as large corporations like Yahoo, Facebook, and Google acquire start-up Internet companies that generate low amounts of revenue as a way in which to connect with sizeable, fast-growing online communities. The Wall Street Journal stated that the purchase of Tumblr would satisfy the company's need for "a thriving social-networking and communications hub."[38][39] On May 20, the company announced the acquisition of Tumblr officially.[40] The company also announced plans to open a San Francisco office in July 2013.[41]
On August 2, 2013, Yahoo Inc. announced the acquisition of social Web browser concern RockMelt. With the acquisition, the RockMelt team, including the concern's CEO Eric Vishria and CTO Tim Howes, will be the part of Yahoo team. As a result, all the RockMelt applications and existing Web services were terminated on August 31.[42]
Data collated by comScore during July 2013, revealed that more people in the U.S. visited Yahoo Web sites during the month in comparison to Google Web sites; the occasion was the first time that Yahoo outperformed Google since 2011. The data did not incorporate visit statistics for the Yahoo-owned Tumblr site or mobile phone usage.[43]

Recent developments

On March 12, 2014, Yahoo officially announced its partnership with Yelp, Inc., which will help Yahoo boost its local search results to better compete with services like Google.[44]
On November 11, 2014, Yahoo announced it would be acquiring video ad company BrightRoll for $640 million. Video is one of the company's key growth areas and the acquisition will make Yahoo's video ad platform the largest in the U.S.[45]
On November 21, 2014, it was announced that Yahoo had acquired Cooliris.[46]
By the fourth quarter of 2013, the company's share price (NASDAQ: YHOO) had more than doubled since Marissa Mayer took over as president of July 2012; however, the share price peaked at about $35 in November 2013 at $35.[47] It did go up to $36.04 in the mid afternoon of December 2, 2015, perhaps on news that the board of directors was meeting to decide on the future of Mayer, whether to sell the struggling internet business[48] and whether to continue with the spinoff of its stake in China's Alibaba e-commerce site.[49] Not all has gone well during Mayer's tenure including the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr that has yet to prove to be beneficial while the forays into original video content led to a $42 million write-down. Sydney Finkelstein, a professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, told the Washington Post that sometimes, "the single best thing you can do ... is sell the company."[50] The closing price of Yahoo! Inc. on December 7, 2015 was $34.68.[51]
The Wall Street Journal's Douglas MacMillan reported that Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer is expected to cut 15% of its workforce. The announcement is expected after the market closes on February 2, 2016.[52][53]

Products and services

Main article: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services
The front page of the Yahoo website in 2016
Yahoo operates a portal that provides the latest news, entertainment, and sports information. The portal also gives users access to other Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups andYahoo Messenger.

Communication

Yahoo provides Internet communication services such as Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail. As of May 2007, its e-mail service would offer unlimited storage.[54]
Yahoo provided social networking services and user-generated content, including products such as My Web,Yahoo Personals, Yahoo 360°, Delicious, Flickr, and Yahoo Buzz. Yahoo closed Yahoo Buzz, MyBlogLog, and numerous other products on April 21, 2011.[55]
Yahoo Photos was closed on September 20, 2007, in favor of Flickr. On October 16, 2007, Yahoo announced that it would discontinue Yahoo 360°, including bugrepairs; the company explained that in 2008 it would instead establish a "universal profile" similar to the Yahoo Mash experimental system.[56]

Content

Yahoo partners with numerous content providers in products such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Music, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo News,Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo Games to provide news and related content. Yahoo provides a personalization service, My Yahoo, which enables users to combine their favorite Yahoo features, content feeds and information onto a single page.
On March 31, 2008, Yahoo launched Shine, a site tailored for women seeking online information and advice between the ages of 25 and 54.[57]

Co-branded Internet services

For more details on this topic, see AT&T_Internet_Services § Conversion to AT&T Internet Services.
Yahoo developed partnerships with broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. (via BellSouth & SBC),[58][59] Verizon Communications,[60][61] Rogers Communications,[62][63] and British Telecom, offering a range of free and premium Yahoo content and services to subscribers.

Mobile services

Yahoo Mobile offers services for email, instant messaging, and mobile blogging, as well as information services, searches and alerts. Services for the camera phone include entertainment and ring tones.
Yahoo introduced its Internet search system, called OneSearch, for mobile phones on March 20, 2007. The results include news headlines, images from Flickr, business listings, local weather and links to other sites. Instead of showing only, for example, popular movies or some critical reviews, OneSearch lists local theaters that at the moment are playing the movie, along with user ratings and news headlines regarding the movie. A zip code or city name is required for OneSearch to start delivering local search results.
The results of a Web search are listed on a single page and are prioritized into categories.[64]
As of 2012, Yahoo used Novarra's mobile content transcoding service for OneSearch.[65]
On October 8, 2010, Yahoo announced plans to bring video chat to mobile phones via Yahoo Messenger.[66]

Commerce

Yahoo offers shopping services such as Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo Travel, which enables users to gather relevant information and make commercial transactions and purchases online. Yahoo Auctions were discontinued in 2007 except for Asia.[67] Yahoo Shopping is a price comparison service which uses the Kelkoo price comparison service it acquired in April 2004.[68]

Small business

Yahoo provides business services such as Yahoo DomainKeys, Yahoo Web Hosting, Yahoo Merchant Solutions, Yahoo Business Email and Yahoo Store to small business owners and professionals allowing them to build their own online stores using Yahoo's tools.[citation needed]

Advertising

Yahoo Search Marketing provides services such as Sponsored Search, Local Advertising and Product/Travel/Directory Submit that let different businesses advertise their products and services on the Yahoo network.
Following the closure of a "beta" version on April 30, 2010, the Yahoo Publisher Network was relaunched as an advertising tool that allows online publishers to monetize their websites through the use of site-relevant advertisements.[69]
Yahoo launched its new Internet advertisement sales system on February 5, 2007, called Panama. It allows advertisers to bid for search terms to trigger their ads on search results pages. The system considers bids, ad quality, clickthrough rates and other factors in ranking ads. Through Panama, Yahoo aims to provide more relevant search results to users, a better overall experience, and to increase monetization.[70]
On April 7, 2008, Yahoo announced APT from Yahoo, which was originally called AMP from Yahoo,[71] an online advertising management platform.[72] The platform simplifies advertising sales by unifying buyer and seller markets. The service was launched in September 2008.[73]
In September 2011, Yahoo formed an ad selling strategic partnership with 2 of its top competitors, AOL and Microsoft.[74] But by 2013 this was found to be underperforming in market share and revenue, as Microsoft simply skimmed off four percent of the search market from Yahoo, without growing their combined share.[75]

GeoPlanet

Main article: GeoPlanet
Yahoo offers cartographic and geographic services via GeoPlanet.

Yahoo Next

Main article: Yahoo Next
Yahoo Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo technologies currently undergoing testing. It contains forums for Yahoo users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo technologies.[76]

Yahoo BOSS

Main article: Yahoo Search BOSS
Yahoo Search BOSS is a service that allows developers to build search applications based on Yahoo's search technology.[77] Early Partners in the program includeHakia, Me.dium, Delver, Daylife and Yebol.[78]
In early 2011, the program switched to a paid model using a cost-per-query model from $0.40 to $0.75 CPM (cost per 1000 BOSS queries). The price, as Yahoo explained, depends on whether the query is of web, image, news or other information.[79]

Yahoo Meme

Main article: Yahoo Meme
Yahoo Meme is a beta social service, similar to the popular social networking sites Twitter and Jaiku.

Y!Connect

Y!Connect enables individuals to leave comments in online publication boards by using their Yahoo ID, instead of having to register with individual publications. The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo plans to mimic this strategy used by rival Facebook Inc. to help drive traffic to its site.[80]

Yahoo Accessibility

Yahoo has invested resources to increase and improve access to the Internet for the disabled community through the Yahoo Accessibility Lab.[81]

Yahoo Axis

Main article: Yahoo Axis
Yahoo Axis is a desktop web browser extension and mobile browser for iOS devices created and developed by Yahoo. The browser made its public debut on May 23, 2012.[82] A copy of the private key used to sign official Yahoo browser extensions for Google Chrome was accidentally leaked in the first public release of the Chrome extension.[83]

Yahoo SearchMonkey

Yahoo SearchMonkey (often misspelled Search Monkey) was a Yahoo service which allowed developers and site owners to use structured data to make Yahoo Search results more useful and visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites. The service was shut down in October 2010 along with other Yahoo services as part of the Microsoft and Yahoo search deal. The name SearchMonkey is an homage to Greasemonkey. Officially the product name has no space and two capital letters.
Yahoo SearchMonkey was selected as one of the top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008.[84]

Defunct services

Main article: List of Yahoo-owned sites and services § Closed/defunct services
Geocities was a popular web hosting service founded in 1995 and was one of the first services to offer web pages to the public. At one point it was the third-most-browsed site on the World Wide Web.[85] Yahoo purchased GeoCities in 1999 and ten years later the web host was closed, deleting some seven million web pages.[86] A great deal of information was lost but many of those sites and pages were mirrored at the Internet Archive,[87] OOcities.com, and other such databases.[88]
Yahoo Go, a Java-based phone application with access to most of Yahoo services, was closed on January 12, 2010.[89]
Yahoo 360° was a blogging/social networking beta service launched in March 2005 by Yahoo and closed on July 13, 2009.[90] Yahoo Mash beta was another social service closed after one year of operation prior to leaving beta status.[91]
Yahoo Photos was shut down on September 20, 2007, in favor of integration with Flickr. Yahoo Tech was a website that provided product information and setup advice to users. Yahoo launched the website in May 2006. On March 11, 2010, Yahoo closed down the service and redirected users to Yahoo's technology news section.[92] Other discontinued services include Farechase, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Live, Kickstart, Briefcase, and Yahoo for Teachers.[93]
Hotjobs was acquired by and merged with Monster.com.
Yahoo Koprol was an Indonesian geo-tagging website that allowed users to share information about locations without the use of a GPS device. Koprol was acquired by Yahoo a year following its inception and, in 2011, 1.5 million people were utilizing the website, with users also based in Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam. However, eighty percent of users were Indonesian.[94] Yahoo officially discontinued Koprol on August 28, 2012, because it did "not meaningfully drive revenue or engagement".[95]
Yahoo Mail Classic was announced as to be shut down in April 2013. Yahoo made a notice that, starting in June 2013, Mail Classic and other old versions of Yahoo Mail will be shut down. All users of Mail Classic are expected to switch to the new Yahoo Mail, use IMAP, or switch to another email service.[96] In addition, April 2013 brought the closure of Upcoming, Yahoo Deals, Yahoo SMS Alerts, Yahoo Kids, Yahoo Mail and Messenger feature phone (J2ME).[97]
In early July 2013 Yahoo announced the scheduled closure of the task management service Astrid. Yahoo had acquired the company in May 2013 and was to discontinue the service on August 5, 2013. The team at Astrid has supplied its customers with a data export tool and recommended former competitors such as Wunderlist and Sandglaz.[98][99]

Twitter slide leak on upcoming changes to Yahoo

On December 15, 2010, one day after Yahoo announced layoffs of 4% of its workers across their portfolio, MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier posted a slide from a Yahoo employee on Twitter. The slide was visible during an employee-only strategy webcast indicating changes in Yahoo's offerings.[100]
The following services were in a column under "Sunset": Yahoo Picks, AltaVista, MyM, AlltheWeb, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, del.icio.us, and MyBlogLog. Under the "Merge" column were: Upcoming, FoxyTunes, Yahoo Events, Yahoo People Search, Sideline, and FireEagle.
11 other properties were listed that Yahoo was interested in developing into feature sites within the portal to take the place of the "Sunset" and "Merge" vacancies, including the prior feature services (before the new Yahoo Mail was launched), were Yahoo Address Book, Calendar, and Notepad.[101] Despite Notepad being listed as a feature service instead of sunset or merge in 2010, Yahoo has since taken steps to de-emphasize Notepad. For example, in January 2013, Notepad was no longer linked within the new Yahoo mail service, although it continued to be linked in the older Classic version. Also, starting in mid- to late January 2013, Notepad was no longer searchable.[citation needed]
The blog on the del.icio.us website released a post by Chris Yeh after the slide was leaked in which Yeh stated that "Sunset" doesn't necessarily mean that Yahoo is closing down the site. Yeh further explained that other possibilities—including del.icio.us leaving Yahoo (through sale or spinoff)—were still being considered: "We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you. Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press."[102] On April 27, 2011, Yahoo's sale of del.icio.us to Avos was announced.[103]
Yahoo Buzz was closed down on April 21, 2011 without an official announcement from Yahoo.[104] MyBlogLog was then discontinued by Yahoo on May 24, 2011.[105]

Privacy

Protest against the mass surveillance by the NSA
In September 2013 The Indian Express reported that Yahoo received 29 thousand requests for information about users from governments in the first six months of 2013. Over 12 thousand of the requests came from the United States.[106]
In October 2013, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted communications between Yahoo's data centers, as part of a program named MUSCULAR.[107][108]
In late January 2014, Yahoo announced on its company blog that it had detected a "coordinated effort" to hack into possibly millions of Yahoo Mail accounts. The company prompted users to reset their passwords, but did not elaborate on the scope of the possible breach, citing an ongoing federal investigation.[109]

Storing personal information and tracking usage

Working with comScore, The New York Times found that Yahoo was able to collect far more data about users than its competitors from its Web sites and advertising network. By one measure, on average Yahoo had the potential in December 2007 to build a profile of 2,500 records per month about each of its visitors.[110] Yahoo retains search requests for a period of 13 months. However, in response to European regulators, Yahoo obfuscates the IP address of users after three months by deleting its last eight bits.[111]
On March 29, 2012, Yahoo announced that it would introduce a "Do Not Track" feature that summer, allowing users to opt out of Web-visit tracking and customized advertisements.[112] However, on April 30, 2014, Yahoo announced that it would no longer support the "Do Not Track" browser setting.[113]
According to a 2008 article in Computerworld, Yahoo has a 2-petabyte, specially built data warehouse that it uses to analyze the behavior of its half-billion Web visitors per month, processing 24 billion daily events.[114] In contrast, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) database of all United States taxpayers weighs in at only 150 terabytes.[114]

Criticism

Main article: Criticism of Yahoo
In 2000, Yahoo was taken to court in France by parties seeking to prevent French citizens from purchasing memorabilia relating to the Nazi Party.[115] In March 2004, Yahoo launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites were guaranteed listings on the Yahoo search engine.[116] Yahoo discontinued the program at the end of 2009.[117] Yahoo was criticized for providing ads via the Yahoo ad network to companies who display them through spyware andadware.[118][119]
Yahoo, as well as other search engines, cooperated with the Chinese government in censoring search results. In April 2005, dissident Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to foreign entities"[120] as a result of being identified by IP address by Yahoo.[121] Human rights organizations and the company's general counsel disputed the extent of Yahoo's foreknowledge of Shi's fate.[122] Human rights groups also accuse Yahoo of aiding authorities in the arrest of dissidents Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun.
In September 2003, dissident Wang Xiaoning was convicted of charges of "incitement to subvert state power" and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Yahoo Hong Kong connected Wang's group to a specific Yahoo e-mail address.[123] Both Xiaoning's wife and the World Organization for Human Rights[124] sued Yahoo under human rights laws on behalf of Wang and Shi.[125]
As a result of media scrutiny relating to Internet child predators and a lack of significant ad revenues, Yahoo's "user created" chatrooms were closed down in June 2005.[126] On May 25, 2006, Yahoo's image search was criticized for bringing up sexually explicit images even when SafeSearch was active.[127] Yahoo was[when?] a 40% (24% in September 2013) owner of Alibaba Group,[128] which was a subject of controversy for allowing the sale of shark-derived products. The company banned the sale of shark fin products on all its e-commerce platforms effective January 1, 2009. On November 30, 2009, Yahoo was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending a DMCA notice to whistle-blower website "Cryptome" for publicly posting details, prices, and procedures on obtaining private information pertaining to Yahoo's subscribers.[129]
After some concerns over censorship of private emails regarding a website affiliated with Occupy Wall Street protests were raised,[130][131] Yahoo responded with an apology and explained it as an accident.[132]

Management

Board of Directors

Chief Executive Officers

Former chief operating officer Henrique de Castro departed from the company in January 2014 after Mayer, who initially hired him after her appointment as CEO, dismissed him. de Castro, who previously worked for Google and McKinsey & Company, was employed to revive Yahoo’s advertising business.[138]

Yahoo International

Yahoo's Bangalore office
Yahoo offers a multi-lingual interface. The site is available in over 20 languages. The official directory for all of the Yahoo International sites is world.yahoo.com. The company's international sites are wholly owned by Yahoo, with the exception of its Japan and China sites.
Yahoo holds a 34.75% minority stake in Yahoo Japan, while SoftBank holds 35.45%,[139] YahooXtra in New Zealand, whichYahoo!7 have 51% of and 49% belongs to Telecom New Zealand, and Yahoo!7 in Australia, which is a 50–50 agreement between Yahoo and the Seven Network. Historically, Yahoo entered into joint venture agreements with SoftBank for the major European sites (UK, France and Germany) and well as South Korea and Japan. In November 2005, Yahoo purchased the minority interests that SoftBank owned in Europe and Korea.
Yahoo used to hold a 40% stake in Alibaba, which manages a web portal in China using the Yahoo brand name. Yahoo in the USA does not have direct control over Alibaba, which operates as a completely independent company. On September 18, 2012, following years of negotiations, Yahoo agreed to sell a 20% stake back to Alibaba for $7.6 billion.[140]
On March 8, 2011 Yahoo launched its Romania local service after years of delay due to the financial crisis.[141][142][143][144][145]
Yahoo officially entered the MENA region when it acquired Maktoob, a pan-regional, Arabic-language hosting and social services online portal, on August 25, 2009.[146] Since the service is pan-regional, Yahoo officially became Yahoo Maktoob in the region.
On December 31, 2012, Yahoo Korea shut down all its services and left the country, with its previous domain saying in Korean, "Starting from December 31, 2012, Yahoo! Korea has ended. You can go to the original Yahoo! for more Yahoo's information." Sooner did that message also disappear, leaving with just an abandoned, empty search bar powered by Bing.[147]
On September 2, 2013, Yahoo China shut down and is being redirected to taobao.com.[148]

Logos and themes

Logo used from 1996–2013 (shown: purple variant used from 2009), still used in Japan
The first logo appeared when the company was founded in 1994—it was red with three icons on each side.[149] The logo used on the Yahoo home page formerly consisted of the color red with a black outline and shadow; however, in May 2009, together with a theme redesign, the logo was changed to purple without an outline or shadow. This change also applied to several international Yahoo home pages. In some countries, most notably Yahoo!7 (of Australia), the logo remained red until 2014.[150] On occasion the logo is abbreviated: "Y!".[151]
On August 7, 2013, at around midnight EDT, Yahoo announced that the final version of the new logo would be revealed on September 5, 2013 at 4:00 a.m. UTC. In the period leading up to the unveiling of the new logo, the "30 Days of Change" campaign was introduced, whereby a variation of the logo was published every day for the 30 days following the announcement.[152][153] The new logo was eventually launched with an accompanying video that showed its digital construction, and Mayer published a personalized description of the design process on her Tumblr page.[154] Mayer explains:
So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team ... We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail. We knew we wanted a logo that reflected Yahoo - whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh, with a nod to our history. Having a human touch, personal. Proud.[155]
On September 19, 2013, Yahoo launched a new version of the "My Yahoo" personalized homepage. The redesign allows users to tailor a homepage with widgets that access features such as email accounts, calendars, Flickr and other Yahoo content, and Internet content. Users can also select "theme packs" that represent artists such as Polly Apfelbaum and Alec Monopoly, and bands such as Empire of the Sun.[156] Mayer then explained at a conference in late September 2013 that the logo change was the result of feedback from both external parties and employees.[157]

BING Search

MSN Search

MSN Search homepage in 2006
Microsoft originally launched MSN Search in the third quarter of 1998, using search results from Inktomi. It consisted of a search engine, index, and web crawler. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings fromLooksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily. The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.

Windows Live Search

Windows Live Search homepage
The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8, 2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta.
In the roll-over from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own internal image search algorithms.[12]

Live Search

Live Search homepage, which would help to create the Bing homepage later on
On March 21, 2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed bySatya Nadella, part of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live Search was merged withMicrosoft adCenter.[13]
A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search branding. On May 23, 2008, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a service for users to create their own custom search engines or use macros created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA on February 18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.[14]

Rebrand as Bing

First Bing logo used until September 2013
Second Bing logo used from 2013 until 2016
Microsoft recognised that there would be a problem with branding as long as the word "Live" remained in the name.[15] As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services, Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.[16]
The Bing name was chosen through focus groups, and Microsoft decided that the name was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that it would function well as a URL around the world. The word would remind people of the sound made during "the moment of discovery and decision making."[17] Microsoft was assisted by branding consultancy Interbrand in their search for the best name for the new search engine.[18] The name also has strong similarity to the word 'bingo', which is used to mean that something sought has been found or realized, as is interjected when winning the game Bingo. Microsoft advertising strategist David Webster originally proposed the name "Bang" for the same reasons the name Bing was ultimately chosen (easy to spell, one syllable, and easy to remember). He noted, "It's there, it's an exclamation point [...] It's the opposite of a question mark." This name was ultimately not chosen because it could not be properly used as a verb in the context of an internet search; Webster commented "Oh, 'I banged it' is very different than 'I binged it'".[19]
According to the Guardian "[Microsoft] hasn't confirmed that it stands recursively for Bing Is Not Google, but that's the sort of joke software engineers enjoy."[20] Qi Lu, president of Microsoft Online Services, also announced that Bing's official Chinese name is bƬ yƬng (simplified Chinese: åæ…åŗ”; traditional Chinese: åæ…ꇉ), which literally means "very certain to respond" or "very certain to answer" in Chinese.[21]
While being tested internally by Microsoft employees, Bing's codename was Kumo (恏悂),[22] which came from the Japanese word for spider (蜘蛛; ćć‚‚, kumo) as well as cloud (雲; ćć‚‚, kumo), referring to the manner in which search engines "spider" Internet resources to add them to their database, as well as cloud computing.

Legal challenges

On July 31, 2009, The Laptop Company, Inc. stated in a press release that it would challenge Bing's trademark application, alleging that Bing may cause confusion in the marketplace as Bing and their product BongoBing both do online product search.[23] Software company TeraByte Unlimited, which has a product called BootIt Next Generation (abbreviated to BING), also contended the trademark application on similar grounds, as did a Missouri-based design company called Bing! Information Design.[24]
Microsoft contended that claims challenging its trademark were without merit because these companies filed for U.S. federal trademark applications only after Microsoft filed for the Bing trademark in March 2009.[25]

Yahoo! search deal

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a ten-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing, retaining the Yahoo! user interface. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell advertising on some Microsoft sites.[26][27] All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012.[7]

Features

Interface features

  • Daily changing of background image. The images are mostly of noteworthy places in the world, though it sometimes displays animals, people, and sports. The background image also contains information about the element(s) shown in the image
  • Video homepage for HTML5 enabled browsers on occasional events, similar to the daily background images
  • Images page shows the main picture from that day and four searches that refers to that image with three preview pictures per search term
  • Left side navigation pane. Includes navigation and, on results pages, related searches and prior searches
  • Right side extended preview which shows a bigger view of the page and gives URLs to links inside of the page
  • Sublinks – On certain search results, the search result page also shows section links within the article (this is also done on other search engines, including Google)
  • Enhanced view where third party site information can be viewed inside Bing
  • On certain sites, search from within the website on the results page
  • On certain sites, Bing will display the Customer Service number on the results page

Media features

  • Video thumbnail Preview – where, by hovering over a video thumbnail, the video automatically starts playing
  • Image search with continuous scrolling images results page that has adjustable settings for size, layout, color, style, and people[28]
  • Advanced filters or advanced (query) operators – allow users to refine search results based on properties such as image size, aspect ratio, color or black and white, photo or illustration, and facial features recognition
  • Video search with adjustable setting for length, screen size, resolution, and source

Instant answers

  • Sports – Bing can directly display scores from a specific day, recent scores from a league or scores and statistics on teams or players.
  • Finance – When entering a company name or stock symbol and either stock or quote in the search box Bing will show direct stock information like a stockchart, price, volume, and p/e ratio[29] in a webslice that users can subscribe to.
  • Conversion of units (e.g., 1 oz in tbs, 1 cup in oz)
  • Mathematical calculations – (e.g., 2 * pi * 24).[30] Users can enter mathematical expressions in the search box using a variety of operators and trigonometric functions[31] and Bing will provide a direct calculation of the expression.
  • Advanced computations – Using the Wolfram Alpha computational engine, Bing can also give results to advanced mathematical problems (e.g. "lim x/2x as x->2") and other Wolfram Alpha-related queries (e.g., asking the number of calories in a typical pizza).
  • Package tracking and tracing – When a user types the name of the shipping company and the tracking number, Bing will provide direct tracking information
  • Dictionary – When "define", "definition", or "what is" followed by a word is entered in the searchbox Bing will show a direct answer from the Oxford English Dictionary
  • Spell check – Will change frequently misspelled search terms to the more commonly spelled alternative.
  • Best match (plus similar sites)
  • Product shopping and "Bing cashback"
  • Health information
  • Flight tracking
  • Translate – Auto translation of certain search phrases, often with phrases including "translate" or "in English". For example, to translate me llamo from Spanishto English the user would simply type "translate me llamo in English" and he or she would be redirected to a search results page with Bing Translator with the translation from Spanish to English[disputed – discuss]

Local info

  • Current traffic information
  • Business listing
  • People listing
  • Collections
  • Localized searching for restaurants and services
  • Localized searching for coupons and deals
  • Restaurant reviews
  • Movies played in an area – When a current movie title is entered in the search box Bing will provide listings of local theaters showing the movie. When a city is added to the search box, Bing provides the movie listings localized for that city.
  • City hotel listings – When "hotels" and a city name is entered in the search box Bing can provide hotel listings with a map. The listing leads to a detail search page with the hotels listed that holds extended information on the hotels and contains links to reviews, directions reservations and bird-eye view of the hotel. On the page with the listings the list can be refined by settings on ratings, pricing, amenities, payment, and parking

Third-party integration

Facebook users have the option to share their searches with their Facebook friends using Facebook Connect.[32]
On June 10, 2013, Apple announced that it would be dropping Google as its web search engine in favour of Bing.[33] This feature is only integrated with iOS 7 and higher and for users with an iPhone 4S or higher as the feature is only integrated with Siri, Apple's personal assistant.

Integration with Windows 8

Windows 8.1 includes Bing "Smart Search" integration, which processes all queries submitted through the Windows Start Screen.[34] The Bing integration captures a variety of features, one of the most prominent and advertised: Hero Search. This feature allows users to browse for popular and well-known places, objects or people. Searching France, for example, will show popular search items, such as population, calling code and date founded. The current weather and location are also directly accessible using Bing Weather and Bing maps. The "Hero" result will go further to provide attractions using Bing Images and popular websites relating to France, such as France Wikipedia and France's official website. Searching an artist will display similar results with the option to play music using the Windows 8-integrated Groove Music application.

Translator

Bing Translator is a user facing translation portal provided by Microsoft to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages. All translation pairs are powered by the Microsoft Translator, a statistical machine translation platform and web service, developed by Microsoft Research, as its backend translation software. Two transliteration pairs (between Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional)) are provided by Microsoft's Windows International team.[35] As of May 2016, Bing Translator offers translations in 52 different language systems.[36]
Bing Translator can translate phrases entered by the user or acquire a link to a web page and translate its entirely. When translating an entire web page, or when the user selects "Translate this page" in Bing search results, the Bilingual Viewer is shown, which allows users to browse the original web page text and translation in parallel, supported by synchronized highlights, scrolling, and navigation.[37] Four Bilingual Viewer layouts are available: side by side, top and bottom, original with hover translation and translation with hover original.

International

Bing is available in many languages and has been localized for many countries.[38] Even if the language of the search and of the results are the same, Bing delivers substantially different results for different parts of the world.[39]

Languages in which Bing can find results

Languages in which Bing can be displayed

Search products

In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Bing also provides the following search offerings:[40]
ServiceDescription
AdvertisingFormally known as adCenter, Bing Ads allows publishers to purchase pay per click advertising on Bing.[41]
DictionaryBing Dictionary enables users to quickly search for definitions of English words. Bing Dictionary results are based on the Oxford English Dictionary.[citation needed] In addition, Bing Dictionary also provides an audio player for users to hear the pronunciation of the dictionary words.
EventsBing Events allow users to search for upcoming events from Zvents, and displays the date and time, venue details, brief description, as well as method to purchase tickets for the events listed. Users can also filter the search results by date and categories.
FinanceBing Finance enables users to search for exchange listed stocks and displays the relevant stock information, company profile and statistics, financial statements, stock ratings, analyst recommendations, as well as news related to the particular stock or company. Bing Finance also allow users to view the historical data of the particular stock, and allows comparison of the stock to major indices. In addition, Bing Finance also features a JavaScript-based Stock screener, allowing investors to quickly filter for value, contrarian, high-yield, and bargain investment strategies.
HealthBing Health refines health searches using related medical concepts to get relevant health information and to allow users to navigate complex medical topics with inline article results from experts. This feature is based on the Medstory acquisition.
ImagesBing Images enables the user to quickly search and display most relevant photos and images of interest. The advance filters allow refining search results in terms of properties such as image size, aspect ratio, color or black and white, photo or illustration, and facial features recognition.
LocalBing Local searches local business listings with business details and reviews, allowing users to make more informed decisions.
MapsBing Maps enables the user to search for businesses, addresses, landmarks and street names worldwide, and can select from a road-map style view, a satellite view or a hybrid of the two. Also available are "bird's-eye" images for many cities worldwide, and 3D maps which include virtual 3D navigation and to-scale terrain and 3D buildings. For business users it will be available as "Bing Maps For Enterprise".
NewsBing News is a news aggregator and provides news results relevant to the search query from a wide range of online news and information services.
RecipeBing Recipe allow users to search for cooking recipes sourced from Delish.com, MyRecipes.com, and Epicurious.com, and allow users to filter recipe results based on their ratings, cuisine, convenience, occasion, ingredient, course, cooking method, and recipe provider.
ReferenceBing Reference semantically indexes Wikipedia content and displays them in an enhanced view within Bing.[citation needed] It also allow users to input search queries that resembles full questions and highlights the answer within search results. This feature is based on the Powerset acquisition.
SocialBing Social allow users to search for and retrieve real-time information from Twitter and Facebook services. Bing Social search also provides "best match" and "social captions" functionalities that prioritises results based on relevance and contexts. Only public feeds from the past 7 days will be displayed in Bing Social search results.
TranslatorBing Translator lets users translate texts or entire web pages into different languages.
UniversityBing University allow users to search for and view detailed information about United States universities, including information such as admissions, cost, financial aid, student body, and graduation rate.
VideosBing Videos enables the user to quickly search and view videos online from various websites. The Smart Preview feature allows the user to instantly watch a short preview of an original video. Bing Videos also allow users to access editorial video contents from MSN Video.
Visual SearchBing Visual Search (Announced Sept 2009, deprecated - July 2012[42]) allowed users to refine their search queries for structured results through data-grouping image galleries that resembles "large online catalogues", powered by Silverlight[43]
WeatherBing Weather allow users to search for the local weather for cities around the world, displaying the current weather information and also extended weather forecasts for the next 10 days. Weather information are provided by Intellicast and Foreca.
Wolfram AlphaBing Wolfram Alpha allow users to directly enter factual queries within Bing and provides answers and relevant visualizations from a core knowledge base of curated, structured data provided by Wolfram Alpha. Bing Wolfram Alpha can also answer mathematical and algebraic questions.

Webmaster services

Bing allows webmasters to manage the web crawling status of their own websites through Bing Webmaster Center. Additionally, users may also submit contents to Bing via the Bing Local Listing Center, which allows businesses to add business listings onto Bing Maps and Bing Local.

Mobile services

Bing Mobile allow users to conduct search queries on their mobile devices, either via the mobile browser or a downloadable mobile application.

Developer services

Bing Application Programming Interface enables developers to programmatically submit queries and retrieve results from the Bing Engine.http://www.bing.com/developers
To use the Bing API developers have to obtain an Application ID, http://www.bing.com/developers/createapp.aspx
Bing API can be used with following protocols:
  • XML
  • JSON
  • SOAP
Query examples:
  • http://api.bing.net/xml.aspx?AppId=YOUR_APPID&Version=2.2&Market=en-US&Query=YOUR_QUERY&Sources=web+spell&Web.Count=1
  • http://api.bing.net/json.aspx?AppId=YOUR_APPID&Version=2.2&Market=en-US&Query=YOUR_QUERY&Sources=web+spell&Web.Count=1
  • http://api.bing.net/search.wsdl?AppID=YourAppId&Version=2.2

Software

Toolbars

The Bing Bar, a browser extension toolbar that replaced the MSN Toolbar, provides users with links to Bing and MSN content from within their web browser without needing to navigate away from a web page they are already on. The user can customize the theme and color scheme of the Bing Bar as well as choose which MSN content buttons to present within the user interface. Bing Bar also displays the current local weather forecast and stock market positions.[44]
The Bing Bar features integration with Microsoft Bing search engine. In addition to the traditional web search functions, Bing Bar also allows search on other Bing services such as Images, Video, News and Maps. When users perform a search on another search engine, the Bing Bar's search box will automatically populate itself, allowing the user to view the results from Bing, should it be desired.
Bing Bar also links to Outlook.com, Skype and Facebook.[45]

Desktop

Bing Desktop 1.3.475.0
Microsoft released a beta version of Bing Desktop, a program developed to allow users to search Bing from the desktop, on April 4, 2012.[46] The initial release followed shortly on April 24, 2012, supporting Windows 7 only.[47] With the release of version 1.1 in December 2012 it supported Windows XP and higher.[48]
Bing Desktop allows users to initiate a web search from the desktop, view news headlines, automatically set their background to the Bing homepage image, or choose a background from the previous nine background images.[49]
The discontinuedLive Search versions of the Windows Sidebargadgets
A similar program, the Bing Search gadget, was a Windows Sidebar Gadget that used Bing to fetch the user's search results and render them directly in the gadget. Another gadget, the Bing Maps gadget, displayed real-time traffic conditions using Bing Maps.[50] The gadget provided shortcuts to driving directions, local search and full-screen traffic view of major US and Canadian cities, including Atlanta,Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montreal, New York City, Oklahoma City, Ottawa, Philadelphia,Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto,Vancouver, and Washington, D.C.
Prior to October 30, 2007, the gadgets were known as Live Search gadget and Live Search Maps gadget; both gadgets were removed from Windows Live Gallery due to possible security concerns.[51] The Live Search Maps gadget was made available for download again on January 24, 2008 with the security concern addressed.[52] However around the introduction of Bing in June 2009 both gadgets have been removed again for download from Windows Live Gallery.

Market share

Before the launch of Bing, the marketshare of Microsoft web search pages (MSN and Live search) had been small. By January 2011, Experian Hitwise show that Bing's market share had increased to 12.8% at the expense of Yahoo! and Google. Bing powered searches also continued to have a higher "success rate" compared to Google, with more users clicking on the resulting links.[citation needed] In the same period, comScore’s "2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review" report showed that "Bing was the big gainer in year-over-year search activity, picking up 29% more searches in 2010 than it did in 2009".[53] The Wall Street Journal notes the 1% jump in share "appeared to come at the expense of rival Google Inc".[54] In February 2011, Bing beat Yahoo! for the first time with 4.37% search share while Yahoo! received 3.93%.[55]
Counting core searches only, i.e., those where the user has an intent to interact with the search result, Bing had a market share of 14.54% in the second quarter of 2011 in the United States.[56][57][32][58]
The combined "Bing Powered" U.S. searches have declined from 26.5% in 2011 to 25.9% in April 2012.[59] By November of 2015, its market share had declined further to 20.9%.[60]

Marketing and advertisements

Live Search

Since 2006, Microsoft had conducted a number of tie-ins and promotions for promoting Microsoft's search offerings. These include:
  • Amazon's A9 search service and the experimental Ms. Dewey interactive search site syndicated all search results from Microsoft's then search engine, Live Search. This tie-in started on May 1, 2006.
  • Search and Give - a promotional website launched on January 17, 2007 where all searches done from a special portal site would lead to a donation to theUNHCR's organization for refugee children, ninemillion.org. Reuters AlertNet reported in 2007 that the amount to be donated would be $0.01 per search, with a minimum of $100,000 and a maximum of $250,000 (equivalent to 25 million searches).[61] According to the website the service was decommissioned on June 1, 2009, having donated over $500,000 to charity and schools.[62]
  • Club Bing - a promotional website where users can win prizes by playing word games that generate search queries on Microsoft's then search service Live Search. This website began in April 2007 as Live Search Club.
  • Big Snap Search - a promotional website similar to Live Search Club. This website began in February 2008, but was discontinued shortly after.[63]
  • Live Search SearchPerks! - a promotional website which allowed users to redeem tickets for prizes while using Microsoft's search engine. This website began on October 1, 2008 and was decommissioned on April 15, 2009.

Debut

Bing's debut featured an $80 to $100 million online, TV, print, and radio advertising campaign in the US. The advertisements do not mention other search engine competitors, such as Google and Yahoo!, directly by name; rather, they attempt to convince users to switch to Bing by focusing on Bing's search features and functionality.[64] The ads claim that Bing does a better job countering "search overload".[65]

"Decision engine"

Bing has been heavily advertised as a "decision engine",[66] though thought by columnist David Berkowitz to be more closely related to a web portal.[67]

Bing Rewards

Launched by Microsoft in September 2010, Bing Rewards provides credits to users through regular Bing searches and special promotions.[68] These credits are then redeemed for various products including electronics, gift cards, sweepstakes, and charitable donations.[69] Users are given either Member, Silver or Gold status at one given time based on how frequent they use the program.[70] Initially, participants were required to download and use the Bing Bar for Internet Explorer in order to earn credits; however, this is no longer the case, and the service now works with all desktop browsers.[71] The Bing Rewards program is similar to two earlier services, SearchPerks! and Bing Cashback, which have now been discontinued.

The Colbert Report

During the episode of The Colbert Report that aired on June 8, 2010, Stephen Colbert stated that Microsoft would donate $2,500 to help clean up the Gulf oil spilleach time he mentioned the word "Bing" on air. Colbert mostly mentioned Bing in out-of-context situations, such as Bing Crosby and Bing cherries. By the end of the show, Colbert had said the word 40 times, for a total donation of $100,000. Colbert poked fun at their rivalry with Google, stating "Bing is a great website for doing Internet searches. I know that, because I Googled it."[72][73]

Search deals

As of Opera 10.6, Bing has been incorporated into the Opera browser, but Google is still the default search engine. Bing will also be incorporated into all future versions of Opera.[74] Mozilla Firefox has made a deal with Microsoft to jointly release "Firefox with Bing", an edition of Firefox where Bing has replaced Google as the default search engine.[75][76] However, the default edition of Firefox still has Google as its default search engine, but has included Bing in its default list of search providers since Firefox version 4.0.[77]
In addition, Microsoft also paid Verizon Wireless $550 million USD[78] to use Bing as the default search provider on Verizon's BlackBerry, and in turn, have Verizon "turn off" (via BlackBerry service books) the other search providers available. Users could still access other search engines via the mobile browser.[79]

Bing It On

In 2012, a Bing marketing campaign asked the public which search engine they believed was better when its results were presented without branding, similar to thePepsi Challenge in the 1970s.[80][81] This poll was nicknamed "Bing It On".[82][83] Microsoft presented a study of almost 1,000 people[84] which showed that 57% of participants in such a test preferred Bing's results, with only 30% preferring Google.[85]

Adult content

Bing censors results for adult search terms for some of the regions including India, People's Republic of China, Germany and Arab countries.[86] This censoring is done based on the local laws of those countries.[87] However, Bing allows users to simply change their country/region preference to somewhere without restrictions – such as the United States, United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland – to sidestep this censorship.

Criticism

Censorship

Microsoft has been criticized for censoring Bing search results to queries made in simplified Chinese characters, used in mainland China. This is done to comply with the censorship requirements of the government in China.[88] Microsoft has not indicated a willingness to stop censoring search results in simplified Chinese characters in the wake of Google's decision to do so.[89] All simplified Chinese searches in Bing are censored regardless of the user's country.[90]

Performance issues

Bing has been criticized for being slower to index websites than Google. It has also been criticized for not indexing some websites at all.[91][92]

Copying Google's results

Bing has been criticized by competitor Google for utilizing user input via Internet Explorer, the Bing Toolbar, or Suggested Sites, to add results to Bing. After discovering in October 2010 that Bing appeared to be imitating Google's auto-correct results for a misspelling, despite not actually fixing the spelling of the term, Google set up a honeypot, configuring the Google search engine to return specific unrelated results for 100 nonsensical queries such as hiybbprqag.[93] Over the next couple of weeks, Google engineers entered the search term into Google, while using Microsoft Internet Explorer, with the Bing Toolbar installed and the optional Suggested Sites enabled. In 9 out of the 100 queries, Bing later started returning the same results as Google, despite the only apparent connection between the result and search term being that Google's results connected the two.[94][95]
Microsoft's response to this issue, coming from a company's spokesperson, was: "We do not copy Google's results." Bing's Vice President, Harry Shum, later reiterated that the search result data Google claimed that Bing copied had in fact come from Bing's very own users. Shum further wrote that "we use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt into sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users." [96] Microsoft commented that clickstream data from customers who had opted in was collected, but said that it was just a small piece of over 1000 signals used in their ranking algorithm, and that their intention was to learn from their collective customers. They stated that Bing was not intended to be a duplicate of any existing search engines.[97]
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