Microsoft Bing is trying to spoof Google UI when people search Google.com
Microsoft Bing is trying to spoof Google UI when people search Google.com
Microsoft seems to have rolled out a pretty interesting change that spoofs Google.com UI when you try to find Google when using Bing.com.
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Kind of fucked up but tbf Google does similarly shady stuff.
Please just use duckduckgo (or SearX).
DDG is just Bing under the hood
And Searx is the same. And startpage is just google.
But the point is they don’t track.
DDG was letting Bing track users. They may have stopped now that they got in trouble for it.
Wait really?
Best I could find was this arstechnica article from 2022:
Microsoft trackers run afoul of DuckDuckGo, get added to blocklist: Search privacy company still needs Bing, but won't allow Microsoft's trackers. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/microsoft-trackers-run-afoul-of-duckduckgo-get-added-to-blocklist/
Yeah that would be it:
Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results
I couldn't remember the details exactly, but basically up until then they were allowing Microsoft tracking despite all their advertising claiming they wouldn't track users.
SearX is dead; you should use SearXNG now.
I feel like Microsoft is way more shameless about their shady stuff. They've been messing around with impersonating google/chrome for awhile now, they recently had that thing where they would copy all your open chrome tabs, and then when you started your computer it would open edge with all your chrome tabs to trick people into using edge instead.
They aren't afraid of people complaining about them, they are afraid of the government, and they fulfill a hefty amount of contracts for the gov
I would use anything else before DDG, the primary function of it which is searching, generally feels sucky
Why? DDG is fine for search, and the bangs make up for any issues.