I've been using Bing since I found the Bing Rewards (http://www.bing.com/rewards), which gives you a point per 2 searches and lets you redeem the points for something later on. I have not found myself going back to Google, yet.

So each point is worth between $.007 and $.01 (based on the gift card conversions).

Assuming you make 50 searches per day, you'll make at most $.50 - is it really worth it for a half dollar a day?

I don't know... $0.50 (Bing) vs. $0.00 (Google). What is better for me when I can still find whatever I need to find in both?

Weird that you find them comparable. I've compared the two and Bing's results are just kind of weird (old results and non-related results come up). It's worth 50 cents a day for me to have decent results.

When did you do the comparison? In the summer of '09 when Bing launched I gave it a shot, but just did not like it as much as Google. A few months ago I went back and tried it again, and have not gone back to Google since.

I've tried it a few times since it launched and just did a quick try doing a self-Google. Again, less useful results than Google.

Google have a special case for vanity / people searches. I don't think that searching for yourself would given an accurate representation of the two search engines.

Same here. I had switched much earlier. The rewards just make the deal a bit sweeter

$0.50/day could pay for an EC2 micro instance... :-)

If you really were getting 2 points per search I'd do it, but I just tried it out and it doesn't work that way, you only get points by taking advantage of their offers which are similar to Dropbox's free storage promos and WoW quests: How do I earn credits? You earn credits by taking advantage of offers that may include searching or exploring features of Bing. Offers are found in the Rewards credit counter located in the top right of the header on Bing.

And this buried a bit deeper: Search and earn. Earn 1 credit per 5 Bing searches up to 8 a day until Apr 30.

I really hope that I'm not using anything you created on the web. I would hate to be a customer of a service whose owner think 150,000 users are insignificant.

Those blogs were posted in 2003 and 2006. We are in year 2011. 5 years in tech industry is like 20 years in other industries. Just sayin'

I'm pretty sure they aren't making as much money as they want, though. If they make some deal out of Youtube, it would be win-win. Plus, another win for users (as long as it's free or cost at a decent price).

I'm so ready to cancel my cable tv.

Awesome. However, you said this is a "startup". How are you going to monetize this besides the obvious (ads)?

The long-term goal is to have a subscription service that tracks performance issues. There are other possibilities, like ads, referral programs, consulting, etc..

As a lot of people said already, this is very creepy. Yet, there will be tons of users who would use this...

By the way, can you get notifications on multiple people? (now, that's really creepy)

Pretty cool. Why not have another column for comments instead of making users to click? Maybe put this as an option for users to select, because I'm sure there are a lot of people who are using widescreen monitors and are not fully utilizing it. I'm suggesting this as an option, because there are other batch of people who uses vertical mode.

SO probably doesn't want too many unregistered users floating around. Also, one of success metrics for an Q&A site is the number of registered users. So, it does make sense to force users to go through almost painless process of registering before they really start engaging in the site.

I went through 8 interviews (over the course of 8 months) before I got an offer from Google. By the time Google gave me the offer, I already accepted an offer from the other company. I told the HR of Google that their process sucks (of course, I said it indirectly) and she agreed with me. I'm glad to hear that Google is finally making changes here.

Are they still limiting it to only PhDs and Masters? That to me always struck me as their biggest mistake.

The common perception from people in the industry is that many of the best programmers are self taught. That doesn't preclude doing a degree of course, however even the really good programmers I've met that did degrees say that they really ramped up their learning efforts after leaving university (and that was my experience too).

I work at Google, and have a BS in CS from The College of New Jersey. So if they ever filtered on graduate degrees or prestigious schools, it's no longer the case. In fact, your description of a self-taught programmer fits me pretty well.

I don't think they ever limited to only PhDs/Masters (I have 3 friends working for google, none of them holds a phd or masters degree)

They did in the early days.

Good to know they've unbent a little on that as well. Of course it then begs the question "how then do you hire good programmers?". Solving that problem would be really interesting (my pay might go up :D )

I work at Google. I have a BSCS from Ohio State.

If you're smart and experienced, your degree doesn't matter much for engineering.

No they asked me to interview even though I dropped out of uni for my bachelors.

I doubt that Google ever tried to hire only MS/PhDs. I went through interviews and got an offer when I was only a BSCS student. I also know a lot of people who don't have MS/PhDs and work at Google.

On your 2nd point, I totally agree with you that self-taught programmers should actually get a degree in CS or any related major. Although the programming classes might bore them out, there will be courses and professors who will take them to somewhere they would have never known before. This is just my generalization and, of course, will not apply to everyone ;)

Same here. I agree that IE6&7 were bad, but I didn't have to "hack around" for IE8 and IE9. Of course, if you do need to hack around, then you are probably not doing what is considered as "standard". A lot of things that we, early adapters, talk about (e.g. HTML5) aren't standard, yet.

This modern browser crap is getting old. I have no problem browsing internet with both IE9, Chrome, and Firefox.