Just this month, Microsoft, via its Windows 11 Insider Preview, made it incredibly more complicated to switch to Chrome as the default browser by making users change their preference per file type instead of just once for everything. Bing, the company’s search engine, is the default for Windows devices since it’s built into the Edge browser.
Because Google has been in the midst of accusations regarding similar practices with its defaults on Android, you’d think that these problems were founded, but a lawyer for Alphabet – Google’s parent company – has recently stated that they have submitted evidence to the EU General Court that reveals something entirely different than what Microsoft’s ‘Scroogled’ ads would have you believe.
Apparently, the term “Google” is by and large the most commonly searched keyword on Bing, pointing to the fact that users aren’t exactly forced to use Google Search so much as they do so by choice. On some level, I’ve got to imagine that this is quite embarrassing to Microsoft.
We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is by far Google. People use Google because they choose to, not because they are forced to. Google’s market share in general search is consistent with consumer surveys showing that 95% of users prefer Google to rival search engines.
Alfonso Lamadrid, Lawyer for Alphabet Inc.
The aforementioned ‘Scroogled’ ads were created between 2012 and 2014 in an attempt to prove that the results Google Search and Shopping pulled up for users were inferior to those of Bing. It was a sort of smear campaign that didn’t exactly turn out how it was meant to.
Over and over again, reports flooded in saying that Bing’s results were less accurate, transparent, and useful. Today, Scroogled.com directs you to Microsoft’s ‘Resilience’ campaign, which is meant to show ‘how organizations can succeed, even in the face of significant challenges and uncertainty’. Am I the only one that finds this funny?
Source: Bloomberg
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