LOL.

Image: imgur.

Yes, they’ve finally done it. After months of talk about incorporating the mounds of real-time data to which Google has access, they’re finally piping it all into their own search results. The sources they listed are some pretty big names: Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, and Jaiku, among others — and that’s not counting the major media outlets they’ve also tapped to glean time-sensitive information.

See the official release for more details.

Annoyingly, of course, all anyone can say about this (aside from it’s about damn time) is that “Bing must be nudging them to be more competitive.” I can’t help but recall the fact that Google was in talks with Twitter regarding real-time search results several months before Bing ever existed.

Yesterday, I read in Mashable that big Redmond released the newest beta adventure for their upstart search engine, Bing. I wasn’t originally planning on posting anything about this, because it’s non-news, but it’s been irking me all day.

So what was this release? They’ve apparently come up with a visual search. This idea all on its own isn’t so bad, it’s even novel, and I think it’s worth a shot just to see how it goes, but that’s not the issue here.

The issue is this: In order to use this experimental search, and that’s bold for a reason, you must install Silverlight. Really Microsoft? You want to try to force the most unwanted of all media software in the history of media software on the public just to try an experimental feature for your crappy search engine?

Try it yourself: Bing Visual Search.

In what universe, exactly, is Microsoft living? Becuase it’s certainly not this one. They don’t seem to have the simplest grasp on reality — not one decision they make seems to make any sort of business sense.

I’m glad it really doesn’t affect me personally, since I absolutely shun any shred of the garbage they push as software. That doesn’t mean that I’m not bothered when I see it happen, considering most people do actually use their rubbish. I’ll end my rant now, before it goes all Dennis Miller and consumes the rest of my database.