Scott Hanselman

Bosom Buddies: How to make Google Chrome use Microsoft Bing for Search

June 01, 2009 Comment on this post [27] Posted in Musings
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image Microsoft's new Search Decision Engine called Bing is live now (in preview/beta). I thought Bing meant "Bing Is Not Google" but apparently "bing!" is the "sound of found." Found it! Bing!

If you use Google Chrome as your browser you can make Bing your default search. Here's how:

  1. Click the Wrench Icon in Google Chrome and click Options.
  2. Click "Manage" under Default Search.
  3. Click "Add" and make the form look like this:
    Add Search Engine
  4. Now with your new Bing entry selected, click Make Default.

scott hanselman - Bing - Google Chrome 

Go give Bing! a try. I'm going to use Bing for the whole month of June and see how it goes. I'll blog my results.

Technical International Note: If you're outside the US, while Bing is rolling out over the next few days (it's literally rolling) you can temporarily force it to think you're in the US with this Bing URL.

Feel free to post your Bing tips and impressions here in the comments, or follow @bing on Twitter.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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June 01, 2009 13:56
From what I tried so far, google is far superior still.
Just try some random ones:
"U-2" - Should give you the group and the aircraft of that name (both ok)
"U-6" - Should give you unemployment numbers (bing fails) (ups, did USA reach 15.8% actual unemployment)
"submarine" - Should give you something about submaries (bing gives something with submarine in the domain name, just not good enough)
"Peter Pan" - Should give movie/book results (Both ok, but the bing results are half dutch and ukranian sites that I would never be able to understand without google translate)
"7" - Should give 7-zip, windows 7 (Bing totally fails with only korean sites)

So... Not worth my time to ever visit that engine again.
June 01, 2009 14:07
Dennis...when I search Bing with those terms...

* U2-I get those.
* Submarine...I get pictures of subs, a link to Wikipedia, and a page of Submarine stuff. What are you seeing?
* I'm not seeing ANYTHING you're seeing. I see the movie, etc...

Try the US link (and remember that are still rolling out world wide.): Bing US
June 01, 2009 14:19
Problem is, "Bing" (*snicker*) will never make any dint in Google's market share unless it is significantly, instantly, obviously and unambiguously better. And it isn't.

Inspired by that "Hey, grand-dad can be cool too"-name, I tried a search for "Chanandler Bong". Bing gave me a list of useless myspace profiles, Google sent me straight to the urban dictionary, which explains that "In Friends, [Chanandler Bong is] Chandler Bing's name as it appears on his TV guide when delivered."
June 01, 2009 14:27
I searched for ("Sancho Fernandes" hi5) in both Bing and Google, and Bing yield no results. =(

That came as a surprises since I looks like, (to me), that Bing is better when looking for technical content.

Note: I used de US link.

Cheers ;)
June 01, 2009 15:05
I tried all of the searches people say returned bad results, and I can't reproduce any of them. Everything I tried is returning valid, useful results.
June 01, 2009 15:20
My version of Chrome already had Bing in the list of search engines, along with some other candidates.

It appears that once you've performed a search, Chrome adds it to the list automatically.
June 01, 2009 17:32
If "Bing" stood for "Bing Is Not Google" then you'd have yourself a bit of an infinite loop on your hands :) ...
HB
June 01, 2009 17:56
Some people need to get real about search engines. Google was not that good when it started - and it still is not as good as it could be. Yet people praise Google because of AdWords / AdSense and making money from ads - not because of the search engine results. If you really want to test Bing then make it your default and actually try to use it for a few weeks - not one or two searches. These one or two searches posts are just silly. I can do one or two searches on Google and show fails too. Look at Tablet PC and you'll see sites that haven't been updated in years near the top - FAIL. Look for netbooks and see trash scrapper sites - FAIL. Look for UMPC and get websites that are dead - FAIL. ROTFLOL. Want me to keep going? And that's just the first few minutes of trying to use Google after not looking in the past 6 months. Google FAILS. Google SUCKS. Google Oogle Boogle Puke.
LPH
June 01, 2009 18:21
Most other pages (including this one) turn the Firefox or IE search button blue, indicating that you can add them to your search providers. Why does the Bing page not just have this embedded link too? When I first visited in Firefox, there was a clickable link on the page to add it, but when I clicked it and then declined, that link disappeared - apparently permanently.
June 01, 2009 18:25
Tried looking for Ipod touch in UK with various search engines:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=ipod+touch&form=QBRE&scope=web&filt=all
http://www.ratingsworld.co.uk/ProductList.aspx?cat=0&txt=ipod+touch&Sort=3&Price=110_399&Brand=9&BrandName=Apple
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=ipod+touch&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB&aq=f&oq=
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?rd=r1&p=ipod+touch&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-838
http://uk.ask.com/web?q=ipod+touch&dm=ctry&qsrc=0&o=312&l=dir&siteid=

Bing presentation looks clean.
The ratingsworld shopping search engine gives me what I want when shopping.
Google, Yahoo and Ask all give similar results.

I think MS will fall down because their crawlers are not as active as those of Google and Yahoo.
June 01, 2009 19:09
first time you go to bing page, if you go to the options in chrome and change the default search, bing is already in the list at the bottom. you just have to make it default. another way to add it rather than manually.
June 01, 2009 19:23
I just tried Bing for the first time and I love it!
June 01, 2009 19:48
Bing Vs Wave , can bing be up to the mark.
Bing is nice i could find inforamtion , but how will microsoft get google traffic to use Bing.
what is their plan, cna they beat it.

thanks
sunil
June 01, 2009 21:37
Hey I searched for "custom software development portland or" and my company showed up on the first page. I think I like Bing! Look for www.custominfosystems.com on the first page.
June 01, 2009 21:41
Seems quite nice :)
June 02, 2009 9:26
I like it. The searches are returning useful, relevant links for me.

But what I also love is the image search. You get a scrolling list of photos which fills dynamically as you scroll down. Then as you click on a photo, the search results get shown down the left side of your screen while the image you clicked on is shown to you - so you don't have to go back and forth or juggle multiple tabs to look at multiple results. Its like an instant slideshow of your search results.

Videos is even better. Here, as you mouse over one of the results, the video starts playing right there in the thumbnail ! Makes searching for the right video much much faster.

I also like the way it fetches extra text from the returned links and shows them on the right side as you hover over a result. This makes it easier to decide if the link contains the text you are looking for in the right context.

The whole user experience is much better than Google at this point. And while search quality is obviously the prime criteria, the user experience matters a lot too.

June 02, 2009 12:43
Seems to work as expected, might give it a try as my default search engine the coming days, google needs more competition :) The guys at bing might want to tweak the face recognition on images though, as it showed me a picture of a guitar :P
June 03, 2009 1:52
Ahh, reminders of Groundhog Day...
"Ned... Ryerson?"   
"Bing!"
June 03, 2009 15:13
June 03, 2009 15:37
Ahh hell! Using Bing! for a month:

I’ll take you up on that
June 04, 2009 0:19
I use bing to search for crack XP serial keys: Win Xp Serial, and it lists the keys :) very objective search or decision engine
June 04, 2009 12:44
I agree einarwh, if Bing or any search engine want's to seriously take market share from google it has to be radically different or innovative and provide something that google doesn't. Just trying to providing slightly better results won't by far be enough. Google is to synonymous with internet search that for people to move away requires something else. It almost like the huge market share Internet Explorer had a couple of years ago, while better alternative browser existed it has taken years for users to switch and still IE6 has a huge market share, the analogy is not 100% accurate, but the basics are the same.

June 04, 2009 22:40
@Torkel:

If Bing wants to succeed in search and give some real competition to Google, providing better search results is the first thing they need to focus on. Nobody will waste their time if Bing can't provide better results.
June 05, 2009 2:32
So far I dont mind it. I will use it for the month of June as well and test the results. Definetly better than MSN and cleaner as well, but we'll see
June 07, 2009 6:29
I am trying Bing as my default search in Chrome. I want to like it. The video search and sampling makes for some snappy info gathering. There seems to be a growing number of things to like. Am I sensing that Microsoft has a new generation of cool programmers beavering away in Redmond? Bring it on guys! More! And thx to Scott for the tip on making Bing the default in Chrome because I had not managed it on my own.
June 19, 2009 5:32
Bing Is Not Google; Is MS refering to their search engine as GOD via Douglas Hofstadter?
January 18, 2010 17:21
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.