Is Microsoft trying to stem its losses from Bing?

If Appledystopia is right in its 2020 article, Microsoft loses US$1·5 milliard per annum on Bing. So maybe that explains why it’s worsened so much. Microsoft might well be finding ways to cut its losses, and servers cost money. Pity that none of the Bing clones are saying anything, not even Duck Duck Go’s usually […]

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Nice try, Marissa Mayer, but no conversion

I had a chuckle at Marissa Mayer saying that Google results are worse because the web is worse. As I’ve shown with a site:lucire.com search, which is a good one since our site pre-dates Google (just), Google is less capable of providing the relevant pages for a typical search. I know how web spiders work […]

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For most sites, Bing continues to shrink

The New York Times’ presence on Bing has plunged back to the thousands—it was 2,723 on August 2   Back in July, I ran site: searches on a small range of websites to see just how bad things had got with Bing. In January, I can report some have gone worse. And back in July […]

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This surely makes it blatantly obvious that Bing is near death

Here’s a site I’ve always liked: Techdirt. It’s incredibly influential, and reports on the technology sector. Mike Masnick’s run it for the same length of time as I’ve run Lucire (25 years, and counting). And when it comes to Bing’s index collapse—or whatever you wish to call it—it’s no more pronounced than here (well, at […]

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The reality of Chinese Language Week for many Chinese New Zealanders

‘Chinese Language Week’ has rolled around again, and if you look on Twitter, there are plenty of Chinese New Zealanders (myself included) and our allies miffed about this. And we get the usual trolls come by. First up, it’s not Chinese Language Week. It’s Mandarin Language Week. I have no problem with the promotion of […]

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Far more important news

Among all the royal hoop-la, it’s nice to come across this vital 2014 article while on Mastodon.     To the scientists who analysed 1,893 poos, and other waste, thank you for your mahi.   All right, a couple of remarks about the royal coverage. First, I’ve heard from a legitimate news source, words to […]

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The Lucire tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

I wrote the below in Lucire—even though plenty of publications have covered our monarch’s passing, it still felt right to acknowledge it. After all, she had appeared in Lucire a few times.   With the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday UK time, it would be remiss of this magazine to not mark […]

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Red Points Solution SL walks right into it, attempts to shut down free speech via DMCA

This is too good. Now, Hearst Communications, Inc. was sensible enough to realize that what I raised was real, and a senior VP put me on to a colleague dealing with Hearst Magazines International. Nothing yet, but I wrote a release, sent it to a few colleagues, and published it on Lucire describing what had […]

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Companies worth millions engaging in fraud, and Google is their weapon

Yesterday morning, we received a second notice with two more URLs—one with wholly our own content—from Hearst SL and its contractor, Red Points Solution SL. I’ve done a bit more digging and it’s usually fraudsters who engage in this behaviour. You can read more about them in Techdirt, Mashable and Search Engine Land. With their […]

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Attempting re-entry into Bing’s Pubhub

In early July, I wanted to see if we could add Lucire to Bing as a news source in their Pubhub—after all, Google has us as one, as Yahoo, Altavista and Excite had back in the day. And I’d say that 25 years of publishing with an international team might qualify us as being media. […]

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