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Interesting that they'll combat child abuse but they still haven't changed their attitude towards [suicide].

A Google search for the term [suicide] gets you a onebox search result with a phone number you can call for help, plus some essentially harmless ads and results: http://i.imgur.com/aEzc1Tt.png

A Bing search for the term [suicide] gets you no help line phone number but does offer a bunch of prominent "related search" suggestions like [Easy Suicide], [Painless Suicide], [Painless Suicide Methods Pills], [Pictures Suicide Hanging], [Suicide Methods]: http://i.imgur.com/XEtevKf.png

This is actually better than it was a year or two ago, when you would also be offered special media content regions like [Videos of Suicide], [Pictures of Suicide], but it's still not very good!

Difficult to avoid the conclusion that although Microsoft is eager to reduce certain kinds of politically popular crime, they care less about harm reduction than their competition.



My Google search results don't contain a number either, and my related searches include "suicide methods", "suicide video", "suicide notes", etc.


By the same token, google cares less about child abuse than the competition? Or maybe they just have a different view on when their intervention is appropriate or helpful.


Or... They simply might not have been as competent as their competition in addressing it. I realize MS-hating is popular around here but we need not jump to the worst conclusion every time.


The Bing folks are very competent and extremely sharp — they just clearly have different priorities.

Back when I was with the company, I brought this concern to the internal search feedback team's attention once or twice a year.


It's not an especially novel idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Suicidemessageggb01252006....

...I suspect they want to avoid "copying google" yet again unless ordered to do so.




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