I'd rather forgotten it existed.
It was only last week when I was trying the new Microsoft Edge on my MacBook[1] that I emitted a spontaneous chuckle when the browser immediately defaulted to Bing.
A few days later, news emerged that Microsoft is going to force Office 365 Plus users to wallow in Bing's glories[2]. Would people tolerate this? Would they come to see what they'd been missing by using Google? Or would they form a Binging Resistance?
In any case, how could you decide which search engine is better? Is it just that most people use Google, which gives Google all the data it needs to constantly improve?
Moreover, what makes a search engine better? More varied results? More up-to-date results? It's not as if there's always just one right answer to a search. And then there are all those ads that populate Google Search and look for all the world like search results. Or is it that the search results now all look like ads?
In any case, I suspect most people think that by searching they're accessing some decisive truth. As Google's search liaison Danny Sullivan told CNBC a couple of years ago[3]: "One of the big issues that we're pondering is how to explain that our role is to get you authoritative, good information, but that ultimately people have to process that information themselves."
In the spirit of Senatorial objectivity, I decided to try a little test. It wasn't scientific. It was just for my personal, information-processing edification.
I asked five seemingly relevant questions of both Bing and Google. Then I examined the results.
1. Is Bing Better Than Google?
Bing's results led to a Lifehacker analysis. It