{"id":655938,"date":"2013-05-03T05:08:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T09:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betanews.com\/?p=147499"},"modified":"2013-05-03T05:08:14","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T09:08:14","slug":"sorry-microsoft-im-switching-back-to-google-but-not-entirely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/655938","title":{"rendered":"Sorry Microsoft, I\u2019m switching back to Google (but not entirely)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Fifth in a series.<\/strong> Nearly two months ago I gave up Google and switched to Microsoft<\/a>. Although I tried not to have any preconceptions, I\u2019ll be honest and say I thought (based on past experience), I\u2019d be swapping a set of mostly superb products and services for a collection of inferior alternatives and hate every moment I was away from Google.<\/p>\n

That turned out not to be the case. Now my experiment is over, I find myself impressed with some elements of Microsoft\u2019s offerings, but frustrated with others. So here\u2019s a summary of my overall experience.<\/p>\n

Configuring everything took a little while, and there were hiccups along the way<\/a>, but that\u2019s to be expected — I\u2019ve been using Google\u2019s services for years and while Microsoft\u2019s versions are understandably similar, they aren\u2019t (for the most part) exact clones.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve covered my experience with Bing previously<\/a>, and while I like Microsoft\u2019s search site, it\u2019s too much of a compromise for me to use permanently. In order to get the most from it I need to change my country from the UK (where I live) to the US (where I don\u2019t). I don\u2019t understand why Microsoft has decided to create a pretty decent search site with lots of cool features, and then only made a fraction of those features available outside of America. I assume it\u2019s a money thing — the company wants to put all of the available resources into its largest market — but even so it\u2019s frustrating.<\/p>\n

So as much as I like Bing, I have no real choice but to switch back to Google. For now at least.<\/p>\n

I say “for now” because that could well change in the future. I recently chatted with Bill Hankes, Director of Bing Public Relations at Microsoft (you\u2019ll be able to read the full interview on Monday) and he told me that Bing is looking to expand its offerings globally and will announce more details when available. Which all sounds very positive.<\/p>\n

Goodbye Gmail<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written about my experience with Outlook.com<\/a>, and I\u2019m still enjoying using the service, so I\u2019m going to stick with it for now. But I\u2019ll be honest, there are some things about it that frustrate me.<\/p>\n

While I still get the occasional piece of spam in my inbox, far worse is when clearly genuine mail — filtered by Gmail beforehand — gets junked. SmartScreen still seems pretty dumb at times, but it has got better over the two months I\u2019ve been using it and I\u2019m confident it will eventually get as good as Google\u2019s spam detection. Or nearly as good anyway.<\/p>\n

Even though I\u2019m not a massive Skype user, the integration of the chat service into Outlook.com gives me a further incentive to stay. (As an aside, I find it interesting that while most of Bing\u2019s best features are currently American-only, Skype for Outlook.com<\/a> was rolled out in the UK first).<\/p>\n

IE10 — Better Than Expected<\/strong><\/p>\n

Internet Explorer has a reputation for being the best browser\u2026 for downloading other browsers with. That\u2019s unfair. Once you\u2019ve configured it how you like it, it\u2019s actually not a bad program. There are some elements I really like, such as the tab implementation, and security and privacy tools. Its HTML5 and CSS3 support is very good, and the browser is obviously integral to Windows 8. But IE is simply not for me. Although I appreciate the ability to pin sites to the Windows 8 Start screen, I can\u2019t use the Modern UI version because that\u2019s not how I work. I\u2019ve currently got 15 browser tabs open at the moment, and that\u2019s very light for me. I usually have a crazy amount of tabs on the go.<\/p>\n

Although I had no real problems with using the desktop version of IE on a daily basis, the truth is I miss the extensions I take for granted on Chrome so I\u2019m switching back to Google\u2019s browser.<\/p>\n

Summing Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

My experience over these past months has taught me that Microsoft\u2019s services aren\u2019t bad. In fact they are mostly pretty good, and you could easily switch to using them full time if you\u2019re prepared to overlook a few problems here and there. My swap was never about boycotting Google as part of some grand gesture, so I have no problem with going back to using its browser and search services once more.<\/p>\n

Although Google\u2019s recent actions, like closing Reader and making all roads lead to Google+, are irritating as hell, the search giant gets away with it because it produces mostly excellent products and services for free.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d certainly understand if any readers did decide that enough was enough and choose to make the break away from Google. To those people I\u2019d say the transition is easier than you might think. Outlook.com and Bing are good straight trades and Internet Explorer is a decent browser — provided you use Windows 8 and don\u2019t require any extensions that aren\u2019t available (although you could just use Firefox).<\/p>\n

The interesting thing for me now will be whether, once I\u2019ve gone back to Google, I start missing Microsoft\u2026<\/p>\n

Photo Credit:<\/strong> Pixotico <\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifth in a series. Nearly two months ago I gave up Google and switched to Microsoft. Although I tried not to have any preconceptions, I\u2019ll be honest and say I thought (based on past experience), I\u2019d be swapping a set of mostly superb products and services for a collection of inferior alternatives and hate every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-655938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}