Windows 8.1 Bing passes local PC searches to advertisers


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Computerworld - Talk about having things both ways! A few months ago in its "Scroogled" ad campaign, Microsoft was complaining about how Google uses your search terms and Gmail contents to deliver targeted ads. Now, Microsoft is touting how Windows 8.1 uses your search terms to deliver targeted ads, even when you're doing searches on local drives.


Do people at Microsoft ever talk to anyone outside their own groups? Does the Bing team need to be introduced to the Scroogled team? Scroogled? How about Bing-Bang-Bungled?


Windows 8.1 is still in preview, but when you do a local search in it, your results will include both local and Bing-provided hits. Microsoft will then use your search terms for targeted ads.


 


More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241524/Steven_J._Vaughan_Nichols_Microsoft_Bing_bang_bungles_local_search


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And it takes about a half of a second to disable it.  Not that I'm justifying it's existence, that sort of thing cheeses me off in other OS's too. Hopefully there will still be support for OpenSearch (federated searches) like in Windows 7, would love to see that integrated nicely into the start screen.

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At a guess, if you disable all the bing options on this page, MS won't mix bing with local search?

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Yes, very nice, but it doesn't say anything about sending your local searches to Bing. That's what the article is about.

This isn't new to 8... I'm doing online searches through Explorer in Windows 7 using the same mechanism as a local file search, 8 just has it on the start screen too (which I wish I could do in 7's start menu).  That's why the option to disable it is there.  

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I've turned that off and don't get bing results. I'm searching for "Mouse" or "Display" on my machine (for control panel hits) - I don't need an ad showing me to buy a mouse or a new monitor.

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This is surely a questionable move at best, since Windows is a paid for app. One that's pretty expensive in some guises (Pro is nearly ?200, in software of that price I don't expect ads, even optional ones)

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If you're searching local files and folders, it does not pass the search. It only passes the search term when you search "Everywhere", which includes Bing, which includes advertisers.  Article is BS FUD. 

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People,

 

This article is about the fact that LOCAL searches get sent to bing. Not about the fact that Bing searches shows up when you hit search.

Yes, and this isn't new to Windows 8. This isn't even unique to Windows.  I can do the exact same thing in 7 and my Linux desktop right now, just kind of gimped in the 7 start menu version of it.  It doesn't care if it's local or remote, it's a unified search system. If it's searching "everywhere", that means exactly that.. everything it has access to. It's just going through the available sources for search info. Turn it off if it bugs you that bad, click click done. I do take offense at the ads though.
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Yes, very nice, but it doesn't say anything about sending your local searches to Bing. That's what the article is about.

Turn that off and local searches stay local.

 

I did not even bother opening the article because the author is a well known troll. The article is stupid.

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I think people have the wrong idea about what it's doing when it's turned on.  First off it's not sending any local file info to bing to scan and push ads to you, all it does is pass the search term you type in the search field over to Bing at the same time.  It's basically doing two searches at once and giving you the results in one place, the search pane.  The search pane doesn't show you ads either, it shows you links.   You only see ads when you bring up the new Smart Search "app", if you click on one of the top results to a local file or control panel/pc settings area of the OS then you don't see ads.   Besides, you can turn it off, if it really bugs you.    I bet the majority won't care though, the general computing public doesn't think twice about sharing their info online to some service as we've seen.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Old news and actually this is pretty cool. Everyone goes nuts when they hear the word ad but there's very few ads there and they are all related to the search terms. And as other apps are designed to use the new API they can hook into the search terms, so once search can take you not to only different wen sites but apps as well.

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