Bing’s Caught with its Pants Down

Whoa! This just amazed me.  It’s “old” news now, but a week ago Shane ONeill reported in CIO that Bing search results were fixed.  Yes:  natural search results were manipulated to return pro-Microsoft and/or anti-Apple or anti-Google results.  You need to read this article–I’m not going to repeat the details — and it seems the problem has been ‘fixed’ — though searching Bing for ‘why is windows so expensive’ just now (evening 11 Aug) returned a #1 result whose point is ‘why are Macs expensive?’.

The important thing is, search results have to be trustworthy. Once you blow it on the trust issue, you cannot get it back.  I cannot help seeing Microsoft’s testosterone-driven culture overwhelming its thinking head here.  So stupid, so self-defeating, and most of all, so confirming of what a lot of people already think about Microsoft.