Bing: Difference between revisions

'''Microsoft Bing''' (also known simply as '''Bing''') is a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft, and developed by Microsoft AI.

==Consumer impact summary==

===Censorship in China===

Microsoft has been criticized for censoring Bing search results to queries made in simplified Chinese characters which are used in mainland China. This is done to comply with the censorship requirements of the government in China.<ref>{{cite news |last=Kristof |first=Nicholas |date=November 20, 2009 |title=Boycott Microsoft Bing |url=http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/boycott-microsoft-bing/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091123194315/http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/boycott-microsoft-bing/ |archive-date=November 23, 2009 |access-date=March 31, 2010 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> Microsoft has not indicated a willingness to stop censoring search results in simplified Chinese characters in the wake of Google's decision to do so.<ref>{{cite web |date=March 23, 2010 |title=Activists applaud Google's censorship move, China grumbles |url=http://www.itpro.co.uk/621706/activists-applaud-googles-censorship-move-china-grumbles |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111028071727/http://www.itpro.co.uk/621706/activists-applaud-googles-censorship-move-china-grumbles |archive-date=October 28, 2011 |access-date=January 30, 2012 |publisher=IT PRO}}</ref> All simplified Chinese searches in Bing are censored regardless of the user's country.<ref>{{cite news |date=November 20, 2009 |title=Boycott Microsoft Bing |url=http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/boycott-microsoft-bing/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091123194315/http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/boycott-microsoft-bing/ |archive-date=November 23, 2009 |access-date=March 23, 2010 |work=The New York Times}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=February 12, 2014 |title=Bing's Chinese enigma |url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/02/internet-censorship |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180107064213/https://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/02/internet-censorship |archive-date=January 7, 2018 |access-date=January 6, 2018 |newspaper=The Economist}}</ref> The English-language search results of Bing in China has been skewed to show more content from state-run media like Xinhua News Agency and ''China Daily''.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Liu |first1=Charles |date=May 17, 2016 |title=Bing Goes Full-on Censorship in English Search Results Within China |url=https://thenanfang.com/search-engine-bing-com-featuring-skewed-results-china/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180107175119/https://thenanfang.com/search-engine-bing-com-featuring-skewed-results-china/ |archive-date=January 7, 2018 |access-date=January 7, 2018 |publisher=The Nanfang |df=mdy-all}}</ref> On 23 January 2019, Bing was blocked in China.<ref>{{cite web |date=24 January 2019 |title=China blocks Microsoft's Bing search engine |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/24/china-blocks-microsofts-bing-search-engine |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208042303/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/24/china-blocks-microsofts-bing-search-engine |archive-date=December 8, 2019 |access-date=January 24, 2019 |website=[[TheGuardian.com]] |agency=Reuters}}</ref> According to a source quoted by ''The Financial Times'', the order was from the Chinese government to block Bing for "illegal content".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Yang |first=Yuan |date=2019-01-24 |title=China blocks Bing access in curb on last foreign search engine |url=https://www.ft.com/content/714ac466-1f64-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221211191251/https://www.ft.com/content/714ac466-1f64-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65 |archive-date=December 11, 2022 |access-date=December 17, 2021 |work=The Financial Times}}</ref> On 24 January, Bing was accessible again in China.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Lanxon |first1=Nate |date=January 24, 2019 |title=Microsoft's Bing accessible again in China after hours of outages |url=https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsofts-bing-accessible-again-in-china-after-hours-of-outages/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190125130828/https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsofts-bing-accessible-again-in-china-after-hours-of-outages/ |archive-date=January 25, 2019 |access-date=25 January 2019 |publisher=Bloomberg News}}</ref>

===Child pornography===

A study released in 2019 of Bing Image search showed that it both freely offered up images that had been tagged as illegal [[child pornography]] in national databases, as well as automatically suggesting via its auto-completion feature queries related to child pornography. This easy accessibility was considered particularly surprising since Microsoft pioneered [[PhotoDNA]], the main technology used for tracking images reported as originating from child pornography.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Constine |first=Josh |date=January 10, 2019 |title=Microsoft Bing not only shows child sexual abuse, it suggests it |url=https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/10/unsafe-search/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230220184238/https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/10/unsafe-search/ |archive-date=February 20, 2023 |access-date=February 20, 2023}}</ref> Additionally, some arrested child pornographers reported using Bing as their main search engine for new content.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Keller |first1=Michael H. |last2=Dance |first2=Gabriel J. X. |date=November 9, 2019 |title=Child Abusers Run Rampant as Tech Companies Look the Other Way |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/09/us/internet-child-sex-abuse.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191202200034/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/09/us/internet-child-sex-abuse.html |archive-date=December 2, 2019 |access-date=December 2, 2019 |newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref> Microsoft vowed to fix the problem and assign additional staff to combat the issue after the report was released.

===Malware===