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by burnblue 5157 days ago
Am I the only one who is bothered by how similar the Bing results look to Google results?

To illustrate my point, one of these is Bing and one is Google: http://d.pr/i/4KA5

Does this not cross an ethical line?

3 comments

Your UI is not generally the thing you should be innovating with. The purpose of a UI is to be intuitive. The most intuitive thing for a user is the thing they already know.

I work in game development, and this kind of thing comes up a lot. For example, if your going to make a console FPS, you should make damn sure your controls are as similar as possible to Call of Duty and when people make the user interface for an MMO these days, they should probably start with whatever WoW's UI is doing.

When you are looking at a decision like "What colour should I make these item rarities" you might think it's a good idea to change them just to be different from a competitor, but why change for the sake of change?

UI improvements can certainly be made, but you have to balance them against familiarity, which is a huge factor that shouldn't be discounted. Remember that in any product, the UI is a means to an end, not the thing itself. If Bing wants to innovate, they should do so by providing better search results.

Yahoo is also very similar. It's been this way for years.
The colours are literally almost the same! Such a shameless rip-off.