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Bing Is Impersonating Google (bing.com)
9 points by Sephr on Jan 5, 2025 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments


When you search for 'Google' on Bing, you are currently presented with a fake Google-esque search page that displays and auto-focuses a new empty search field.

Microsoft is misleading people into thinking that they are on another search engine by not propagating the original search query into this search field.

Note: I've heard that you may have to be signed out of Microsoft in order to see this behavior.


That's not exactly the behaviour.

What they do is they insert an additional block that vaguely resembles Google -all white, input box centred under a generic image which could maybe remind you of some Google doodle- right below the header and above the search results. [0]

That input box is empty, but the input box in the header is still populated with your query.

That input box is also generally similar to Google's but then again it's the exact style they already use in their -Bing's- normal search box, just with an all white background.

Something they do is they scroll right to the inserted block so you don't see the Bing header. But, sincerely, saying that this impersonates Google or that it misleads people into thinking they might be on Google seems fairly dubious.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/gE27rid


This behavior is clearly intended to confuse the user, with the effect of making inattentive users think that they aren't on Bing.

On mobile, you never see the Bing header due to the auto scrolling behavior.

If any other company tried to pull this, I imagine that they would be blocklisted by Google.


I never said that it misleads people into thinking that they might be on Google.

The aspects that you're bringing up aren't particularly relevant since everything you're describing is auto scrolled away.


> I never said that it misleads people into thinking that they might be on Google.

But, two comments above...

> Microsoft is misleading people into thinking that they are on another search engine




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