Apparently Not Too Many People In Europe Care About Having Microsoft's Bing 'Forget' Them

from the bing-is-already-forgotten dept

Fri, Jul 11th 2014 5:51am — Mike Masnick

It's no secret that Google has a much larger market share than Microsoft's Bing search engine -- especially in Europe where Google has been much more successful than its competitors. However, Bing and other search engines are still subject to the terrible EU Court of Justice ruling on the right to be forgotten, which has resulted in Google removing a bunch of links. As we noted, Google was flooded with requests, and had to set up a process and staff to handle them all -- something it hasn't done a very good job with so far.

So, what's Microsoft doing? Well, it's taking it's time, but is promising to get a request form similar to Google's up. It doesn't sound like it's going to have to hire a very big staff to do so, because it appears that Microsoft's biggest concern in Europe may be more that it's been forgotten by Europeans. Almost no one is asking Bing to forget them:

When Google released its web form on May 30, for instance, it received about 12,000 requests within the first 24 hours. Microsoft is thought to have received fewer than 20 requests that day.

Ouch. That's almost insulting. Hell, even we received a request under that ruling (though a bogus one).

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Filed Under: bing, europe, right to forget
Companies: google, microsoft

15 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2014 @ 5:58am

The new Microsoft advertising slogan, use Bing, we will give you the dirt on the politicians!
/sarc
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 11 Jul 2014 @ 6:09am

I think part of the problem is Google is constantly in the news cycle.
IFPI demands 4.5 million links removed.
**AA's demand 1000 bajillion links be removed.
Random newspaper sued Google for kajillions for daring to point people at them and make them relevant.
UK MP claims Google making trillions from piracy advertising to build moonbase to hide laser cannon to destroy children.
(what, I'm sure this will be a headline in that one UK paper shortly)

People are starting to equate Google with the Internet.
Something bad happens online and it always is Google's fault.
Google always finds a mention in news stories, lawsuits, public criers screaming how home taping is killing the music industry.

Well that and Bing is well... ummm... not that good.
Their claim to fame for a while is we load awesome pictures behind your results, making your searches take that much longer to load on your laughable connection speeds.
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Michael, 11 Jul 2014 @ 6:23am

Dear Google,

It is our understanding that you are working on an appeals process to allow websites to contest a submission based on the Right to be Forgotten to get their website put back onto the internet.

In the meantime, we are hoping that you have a manual process as our website http://www.bing.com has apparently been removed from the internet. Please let us know what documentation you need to make this site available to Europeans again as soon as possible.

- Microsoft
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mcinsand, 11 Jul 2014 @ 6:35am

You gotta remember how Bing gets its results...
Google busted Bing for using Google and then repackaging the search results. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Google 'forgetting' someone doesn't also result in Bing not showing a search on that person.
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Manok, 11 Jul 2014 @ 6:47am

Obviously, the first "forget" request Google processed was from someone named "Bing".
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Ninja (profile), 11 Jul 2014 @ 7:02am

Re:
Nah, they wouldn't scroogle people like that!
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Ima Fish (profile), 11 Jul 2014 @ 7:48am

"I read on Bing that you're a child molester."

"What's a 'Bing'?"
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2014 @ 7:57am

Microsoft isn't the Juggernaut they used to be, but they're still well established on the business and consumer desktop.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2014 @ 8:34am

Cause & effect
So is Bing being ignored because no one thinks of them or are they being ignored because RTBF users run a Bing search for the unflattering content, find nothing, and conclude there is no need to submit a RTBF request? Maybe Bing is being spared from RTBF because their index does not return any RTBF-worthy material.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2014 @ 8:40am

Bing is incapable of finding what you want, that's why.

I was trying to find some videogame guide I had read before, and I tried it on Bing to give it a try. I gave up after a few minutes of trying, I couldn't even find an alternate link that was just as good or better then the link I was looking for.

I switched to google and ran the same search, the first search I did found the guide I was looking for.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2014 @ 10:16am

"Apparently not many people in europe care about Microsofts Bing"

there, fixed the headline for you

The thing is, most people here don't think about Microsofts searchengine at all. It is simply a non issue because barely anyone uses it at all. You have a better chance to find users of duckduckgo or yacy in any given population than users using bing.

Bing is simply not relevant in europe.
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John Fenderson (profile), 11 Jul 2014 @ 10:22am

Re:
DuckDuckGo uses Bing in its backend. People who use it are, in part, using Bing.
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DannyB (profile), 11 Jul 2014 @ 11:57am

Re: Re:
Maybe you mean they wouldn't Microshaft people that way.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jul 2014 @ 11:12pm

Since Bing doesn't actually exist (it's just re-packaged Google results shown with wallpaper behind and contains exactly zero percent original search material), wouldn't this mean being de-listed by Google would have a knock-on effect on Bing itself? (Unless Bing uses search results from the US Google site of course)...
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Toom1275, 14 Jul 2014 @ 6:19am

Heh. Was reading too fast and misread "EU Court of Justice ruling" as "EU Court of Jesters ruling". Not too inaccurate.
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