Bing Cashback Can Cost You Money 333
Posted
by
timothy
from the wotta-boggin dept.
from the wotta-boggin dept.
paltemalte writes "Microsoft and various retailers have teamed up to bring you cashback on purchases made via Bing's price comparison feature. There is a little snag, though — it seems that when you have a Bing cookie living in your browser, some retailers will quote you a higher price than if you come with no Bing cookie in your system."
MS Liability? (Score:2, Interesting)
The first thing that came to mind... (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise ... price variations based on cookies (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise ... price variations based on cookies ... is old news. I remember reading about how cookies resident on the user's machine can cause different quoted prices to appear years ago ... probably five years ago at least. I was able to test it at the time using two browsers with different cookie loads. It's definitely happening. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was a /. story years ago that first mentioned it.
Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just had occasion to visit a Microsoft developer's website earlier today. Very rare event, believe me.
After browsing, I always clear out my cookies.
I went nowhere near the Bing "decision engine." But lo and behold, there was a cookie for "bing.com" in my cookie cache before I cleared it.
So, is Microsoft inflating Bing's numbers? Visit any Microsoft site, and you get a Bing cookie counted as a search on Bing? What gives?
Re:"Is this legal" is the wrong question (Score:4, Interesting)
This is microsoft we're talking about, I don't think any non-physical action is even CAPABLE of hurting them at this point. They've just got too much money to harm by anything short of either a standard oil style breakup of the company.
Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:5, Interesting)
MSDN's search is powered by bing. So... no surprise?
Re:MS Liability? (Score:3, Interesting)
Could MS be liable in a class action lawsuit if it explicitly offered or otherwise encouraged this practice? This story could have teeth.
What makes you think that MS encourages a practice that makes prices LESS appealing using its search engine?
I'm more inclined to believe the official statement that it was a mistake (i.e. item went on sale at some point but got updated wrong in the Bing index).
Maybe the shop was truly giving an higher price but that's a totally absurd practice. I would have understood if they had given a price that with the 2% cashback was the same than without (the price appears the same to the costumer and the shop cashes more in), but 50 bucks more?! Also, change a price under 699$ to go above the psychological 700$ level?
Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Original poster here.
Here's the thing - I didn't use the search function on MSDN.
I knew the exact site I was going to, and did zero search.
So now what is the explanation?
It is? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is slightly more userfriendlier(ish) than Google.
How is that even possible? Google is a plain white web page with a text box and a logo.
Re:No surprise ... price variations based on cooki (Score:3, Interesting)
"When you go to Dell and click through as a home user vs a small business, the prices are different for the same machine!"
Yeah, and my residential phone line costs $25.00/month while my business line costs $120.00/month. There is no discernible difference in service level between the two.
WTF Verizon?
Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why set the cookie?
Re:Hehe (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually IE was "The Internet".
Bing is OK. I've tested it sometimes and gave me good results, sometimes better than Google. Google is too targeted by SEOs, for examples when searching for reviews one has to skip over a few results to find the meat. There is actually a service called Give my Google back which filters those SEOed sites.
Re:It is? (Score:1, Interesting)
A lot of time when I search for something technical I get tons of useless links to acm, ieeexplore, arxiv etc. sites that give one set of data to googlebot and another to non-paying visitors. With bing (and practically any search engine that doesn't have something to do with google) there's no such problem.
Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the case of bing, I really don't see a big deal about it at the moment. Bing cookies are benign compared to google or yahoo cookies which are used to access multiple services. That may change of course, for example Hotmail users must now accept 3rd party cookies, and it's Microsoft's attempt to do what the other sites do and create a strong association between a user, their searches and any other service MS thinks it can monetize.
If you were feeling paranoid about this, the solution would be to get your email through MS / Yahoo and your search through Google or vice versa so there is little chance of the two worlds being associated. Or use a lesser known service, especially a pay service. Or avoid webmail apps entirely. Since Yahoo is constantly discussed as a takeover target by MS, it may be best to avoid combining MS and Yahoo together.
I'd add that it's not just cookies people should be worried about. Flash shared objects are, IMO, a far more serious concern. They work on the same principle as cookies but they're browser independent and reside in a different place. Very few people are even aware they exist, or think to clear them out. Even if you deleted all your cookies, a 3rd party could (and many probably do) use shared objects in conjunction with cookies to keep that strong association. In the future you can throw Silverlight in there too as another way that sites can acquire limited local storage.
Re:Credit Cards? (Score:4, Interesting)
Slimy Bountii (Score:5, Interesting)
And to top it off, he's a competitor. Pretty slimy.