Microsoft has been trying for years to lure Google users to Bing, and in the latest twist of events, introduced something a bit sneaky, yet seemingly effective.
As noted by Windows Latest, now, if a user opens Bing without logging into a Microsoft account and searches through Google, the system delivers a page that looks very similar, but actually, the person receives further search results through Bing itself. It sounds confusing, but it all becomes clearer if you watch the video kindly recorded by the journalists at 9to5google:
The window that Bing opens looks very much like the Google doodle, and even contains the standard search bar. At the same time, Microsoft automatically scrolls the page down a bit to mask its own Bing search bar, which appears at the top of the search results.
Under the camouflaged interface, Bing still displays Google search results.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but spoofing the Google home page is another tactic in a long history of tricks to confuse users and limit choice. This new year, Microsoft has sunk even lower,” wrote the head of Google Chrome Parisa Tabriz in a post on X.
Of course, this is not the only trick in Microsoft’s collection of attempts to lure users to Bing or Edge: from time to time, pop-up ads appear in Chrome on Windows suggesting a switch to the Microsoft browser.
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