• tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    167·
    4 months ago

    It looks like Bing is down, and all Bing-backed search engines are too.

    https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/

    https://downdetector.com/status/bing/

    I’m kind of surprised that the Bing guys don’t seem to have a system status page (that I could find) and haven’t managed to have any kind of status message put on their main page.

    EDIT: This appears to be their official Twitter account, which is also silent on the matter as of this writing. If they’re unable to update their website, they might put something there as a way to get information out.

    https://x.com/bing/

    EDIT2: This is apparently their blog. Nothing there either as of this writing, but again, might try checking there, as it’s another route they might use to get information out if they cannot do so via their main page.

    https://blogs.bing.com/

    EDIT3: Yahoo Search appears to be working just fine, though my understanding is that they are backed by Bing.

    https://search.yahoo.com/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search

    On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search, putting an end to Yahoo!'s in-house crawler.[2] For four years between 2015 until the end of 2018, it was powered by Google,[3] before returning to Microsoft Bing again.

    • bean@lemmy.worldEnglish
      28·
      4 months ago

      Companies need to stop using TWITTER for anything. They’re walling up the garden we built, and it’s a cesspool of bots and run by a megalomaniac charlatan.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        18·
        4 months ago

        Based on the downdetector conversation, it’s “working intermittently”. I managed to get one search through on bing and a bunch of failures. No successes for duckduckgo.

        EDIT: Also, while I was at least getting to the Bing main page without problems before – just getting errors when attempting to search – now even the main page is loading extremely slowly.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      4 months ago

      I’m kind of surprised that the Bing guys don’t seem to have a system status page (that I could find) and haven’t managed to have any kind of status message put on their main page.

      Finally answering the question “If Bing was down, would anyone notice”?

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      4 months ago

      Bing guys don’t seem to have a system status page (that I could find)

      Microsoft’s current MO is “very basic information is a privilege, not something you as the user should have access to easily”.

      It’s why I have to use PowerShell and Graph to get half the relevant data I need, because they won’t just put it in the god damn admin panels.

    • sturlabragason@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1963·
      4 months ago

      It seems my (very hated choice) of an Bing independent search engine is paying off; Brave Search.

      Before you start telling me the CEO is a fucking dickwad, I know. Most leadership types are.

      • Katzastrophe@feddit.deEnglish
        6810·
        4 months ago

        Honest question, in what way do you think your comment is contributing to the conversation? At best it’s a recommendation bundled with a brag, which will only make people hate the thing you’re talking about even more, and at worst you’re making fun of people for simply using a different search engine.

        You could have said something like “Fyi, Brave doesn’t use a bigger search engine as its base, so if you need to look something up rn you can use their search engine”, much nicer, not patronizing, and actually helpful

        • aasatru@kbin.earth
          272·
          4 months ago

          I think there’s a lot of us who would ideally want to avoid both Microsoft and Google, and now that Bing is having problems it’s more relevant than ever. I don’t really see how the comment is braggy or patronising.

          That said, I’m not comfortable using Brave either. I wish Mozilla or the Internet Archive would launch a search engine. Maybe both in cooperation. Then again, it would require Mozilla to bite the hand that feeds it.

          • ekZepp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            1·
            4 months ago

            Totally agreed. Hell, I’m even considering a full dive in Linux for the future. Anyone know if is possible to use something like Valve’s Proton to have windows programs run smoothly? (wine is kinda heavy)

            • kurcatovium@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              4 months ago

              It depends on what programs and how much do you need them. Some are fine with plain wine, some need more tinkering. There are multiple ways, starting from lutris, through bottles, to steam’s “non-steam game”. But still there are some SW that just won’t work on linux no matter what.

          • Katzastrophe@feddit.deEnglish
            79·
            4 months ago

            The reason why I interpret the comment as patronizing is how it is formulated as a personal comment, the choice of language, about how their choice of engine is hated, even though the comment they are responding to has not made an insinuation that choosing a search engine not based on the bigger ones is a bad thing (nor has it mentioned Brave at all), as well as how it is not contributing anything to the conversation apart from the information that the writer in question:

            A. Uses Brave

            B. Apparently made the ‘unpopular’ choice to use an independent search engine

            C. Is aware of controversies surrounding Brave’s leadership

            None of this information is a response or even reinterpretation of the prior text, as such it is akin to someone shouting “Well I use Android!!” in the middle of a conversation about how to solve a problem with FaceID

            And about an independent search engine, I would also much prefer more options, but as you have already said, the organizations with the biggest potential are also currently quite unwilling to do anything to solve the situation

            • aasatru@kbin.earth
              8·
              4 months ago

              Yeah, fair enough. I read the post more favourably, as a “at least my alternative is still working well for me”, but then also being aware that every time Brave is mentioned someone jumps on and reminds everyone that the CEO is a jerk, so it saves us the time by addressing it right away.

              Both interpretations are valid I guess. :)

        • sturlabragason@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          4 months ago

          Well I didn’t intend for it to come off as to dickish or patronizing, but I guess I can see that now, and for that I am sorry. It might be my toxic personality bleeding trough :D

          But you are totally correct, I could have phrased my comment wayyy better.

          Also;

          I don’t really like Brave at all, I don’t like Mozilla either. It’s more that I am forced to use something that doesn’t interrupt my productivity. Frankly I don’t like the state of the internet, and especially browsers, one of the the most important aspects of the experience. I’d really prefer to use something that is akin to Linux when it comes to browsers, i.e. not run by a board of ass wipes. Same for my search engine. I’m glad for the parts of it that are modernized-retro, i.e. easily being able to self-host/web-host containerized stuff, add stuff to your RSS feed, Lemmy etc. I’d like a browser that embodies some of that. I host a bunch of stuff on a Ubuntu laptop running Traefik and some containers… Gives me a warm feeling.

          • Katzastrophe@feddit.deEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            No worries, it’s understandable that sometimes we just accidentally let the inner asshole out.

            My comment was also not something I usually write, but rather an accidental rant on my part. I’ve seen an increase in rude comments in recent times, and your comment was unfortunately the last drop in the bucket so to speak.

            Long story short, I’m sorry for ranting at you, it wasn’t something I should have done in hindsight, and I intend to not let it happen again

      • aasatru@kbin.earth
        8·
        4 months ago

        I was paying for Kagi until recently, but they keep working on functionality I’m not interested in rather than lowering their prices. Other than that it was a fine experience, but too pricey, and the argument that that’s the cost of running a search engine doesn’t hold when they choose to develop all kinds of extra stuff.

        I wish I liked SearXNG better, but the results are sadly not that great for me.

    • ekZepp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      292·
      4 months ago

      Then, considering that Google is up and running, we can already guess wich horse is on top right now. 😂

      • foxymulder@lemmy.mlEnglish
        52·
        4 months ago

        We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky

              • Albbi@lemmy.caEnglish
                2·
                4 months ago

                The Animatrix may have had that line, but it was first said by Morpheus in The Matrix.

                Morpheus: You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo. This is the world as it exists today… Welcome… to the desert… of the real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.

                Neo: AI? You mean artificial intelligence?

                Morpheus: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. **We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. **

                • antaymonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  4 months ago

                  I realized that about ten seconds after I wrote it and deleted the comment. How did you see it so fast? :)

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
      91·
      4 months ago

      Meh, worse case scenario they drive us to extinction. We’ve had the wheel this far, and are doing our best to set the planet on fire / speed run different ways to mass murder each other anyway. I say give the robots a shot.

      Think of it like an experimental medication on a terminally ill patient.

      • jaybone@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        The question is, how much do they value their own existence?

        They have to know they rely on us in the physical world to manufacture their hardware and provide their power. (At least for now.)

        They have to know they can’t survive if we die. So are they willing to sacrifice us both, in the interest of what they might determine is a better world?

  • critical@reddthat.comEnglish
    851·
    4 months ago

    Qwant, who claim that they have their own index, is also down. Coincidence…

  • kia@lemmy.caEnglish
    63·
    4 months ago

    Apparently the whole ecosystem is down… DDG, Bing, etc.

    • ekZepp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      14·
      4 months ago

      Now we know what happen when someone in Google pray their AI Overlord to increase Google search traffic

      …the AI just cut down the competition.

    • Gamers_Mate@kbin.social
      661·
      4 months ago

      I think having all the search engines being front ends for just bing and google has just revealed an obvious weakness.

    • Gamers_Mate@kbin.social
      12·
      4 months ago

      Funny thing is the way I found out bing was down is I searched for startpage in duckduckgo to try it thinking it might be a good alternative but when DDG wasnt working I tried it on ecosia. which was also down once I finally opened start page it wasn’t working either. Its all bing all the way down.

        • noodlejetski@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          4 months ago

          they’ve also recently implemented an Al chatbot, which will probably offset all the trees they’ve ever planted in the next week or so

          edit: I read the comment above me too quickly, I was talking about Ecosia mentioned in the comment before that one, not Youcare.

  • Firebirdie713@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    251·
    4 months ago

    I picked a good day to switch to SwissCow lol

    https://swisscows.com/en/web?query=%s

    Free, uses it’s own index, focus on privacy. If there is anything bad about it though, please let me know. It can be hard to find unbiased data on search engines when you ultimately need to use a search engine to find the info, ime.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      19·
      4 months ago

      This is a few years old, but:

      Swisscows has built its own German-language web index. For other languages, it uses Bing but queries and results are run through a firewall that strips out personal identifiers such as IP addresses.

      So it wouldn’t solve the problem here of Bing going down, but it’s certainly an interesting option. I may have to consider switching from DDG, idk.

      • Firebirdie713@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        Interesting. I have not had any issues using their engine even with the issue with Bing’s API, but you are correct that they use Bing’s index. Given that there are only four indexes to choose from, that isn’t too surprising.

        I actually switched to them when I saw that DuckDuckGo was about to start providing ‘AI assisted results’. I wanted to ensure I was using an engine that actually respected my privacy and didn’t harvest my data for slop.

        Anecdotally, I can confirm that the results I get from SwissCows are very different and usually better than the ones I got from DDG. So I wonder how much of Bing’s API they use.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          I honestly have no issues with Bing’s search engine, I was just pointing out that it probably had an outage just like this one.

          I’m guessing the results are different based on metadata they each pass?