Can Bing be removed from Android phones?

[cageordie]

If I wanted to give traffic to MS I'd be looking at an MS based phone. As it is I wouldn't put them out if they were on fire.

So this is a deal breaker for me. Having Bing in my user experience is not going to happen. I'd rather switch to another carrier or keep my dumb phone.

If it can be removed, or at least made to never darken my doorstep again, then my family will be going for Android phones in the very near future. We may have to wait for the Droid 2 though since my other half likes to have a physical keyboard.

[demmo86rt · Accepted solution]

If it comes pre-installed then, no (with one exception that is beyond the scope of this forum.) I'm surprised that this would happen on a google powered phone but, with some gentle research, it appears that verizon may perform this snafu. So far, that I know of, this hasn't happened yet on any current android phones. As far as not using it, you can always just go to google in your browser. The amazon mp3 store is a similar case for me. I get my music other ways, so I don't use it.

[AZSALUKI]

yeah....it may come with bing (although it's nowhere on my incredible?) but that doesn't mean you have to use it. they all come stock with a voice search that is powered by google, not bing. so you are safe with the voice search. and the default home page on my browser was google. so if bing is on the newer androids, it would be easy to get around EVER having to see or use it. i know bing was the default search on my env's mobile browser....but it's no part of any of the droids i've seen. it's just a search engine right? so use google or somethin else. the browser on these droids are not like the dumbphones. thay are like sitting at your pc. you can set home pages, install other browsers (which many people do....like dolphin, etc), etc. anyhow, i'm not sure where you are seing bing because i've never come across it on my droid device. if you're anxious for a droid, have your other half look at the lg ally (true qwerty)

[cageordie]

What they have been doing on the crackberry is removing other search options. On the Samsung Fascinate they have replaced Google as the search engine and the map application.

http://www.neowin.net/news/verizon-making-bing-only-search-option

Anyway, before I will spend $600 on three of these things I'll have to be assured that there is a way to make Bing not the integrated search engine and map provider. I don't want to spend two years poking around menus while a bing search box sits there laughing at me.

[cageordie]

Figures. Until I have a specific solution I am not going to spend money with Verizon/Android though. I don't want to be forced to have the commercial internet experience they want to feed me, I am already paying good money for this service and it should be what I want, not an ongoing additional revenue stream for them.

[fezzik]

You can download the Google Mobile services.  A couple of companies have done this.  The Samsung one will have Bing by my understanding and some of the ones on AT&T have Yahoo to appease AT&T who is tied with Yahoo somehow.  All of the google mobile services are downloadable and I can't imagine how Bing would replace maps unless Bing somehow also replaces the Navigation.  In my book making BING your system Default services on an Android phone cripples the phone. 

I have to say I hope it doesn't take these companies as long as it looks like it is going to, to learn to give people what they want.  But I guess that for 90% of the people buying phones the core functioning of the phone isn't all that important in purchasing the phone just in complaining about it later.  People complaining that Android stinks are probably using some kind of custom configured UI.  It's not the OS or even the Phone it is the manufacturers and the providers that are crippling phones in an effort to some how sell more or something. 

I get some of the limitations.  They are there to protect the network from crashing, what I don't get is Putting a bunch of software on the phone that no one wants like City ID or others that not only does no one use it but everyone complains that it pops up after every incoming call.  If I had wanted it I would have downloaded it.  If I wanted to use Bing I would use Bing.  There is a reason BING is 4th place in internet searches in a field of 3 search engines (I believe they are even being beat by companies that are now defunct or part of one of the others yeah they are doing that bad).  I can see it now when asked in a survey please rank the following 3 search engines in the order you use them Google, BING, and Yahoo.   The answers would be #1 Google, #2 Altavista, #3 I don't really use anything other than Google.  Altavista was the only other one I used to go to standard before Google really caught on. 

Yeah.  Sorry for the rant.  I am a bit tired of this.  Android was supposed to be all cool because it was Linux and customizable and all that, and now that the phone companies are claiming open open open and congress has called for open open open and put restrictions on some of the network bands they sold to be open open open it frustrates me that the power of Linux has been stripped from the OS, Some phones are coming out now that are locked down so that they "can't be rooted", and unnecessary bloatware that sucks batteries and inconveniences customers are loaded to the phones and cannot be removed, and not only can they not be removed they cannot be deactivated.  I'm sorry if I wanted a bunch of decisions made for me and a bunch of unnecessary junk on my phone I would get a Windows Mobile phone.  Seeing how well they are selling I would say most people agree with me.  If things keep on in this direction then I hope someone comes out with a viable alternative.  Maybe HP can do something cool with Palm now that they own them. 

I love Android but I am becoming more and more frustrated with the way it is going.  Custom user interfaces that can't be turned off, software that can't be removed, phones that can't be rooted (not that it is a good idea but for people willing to take the chance and know what they are doing it really should not be removed), other, and in my opinion, inferior search services are replacing the company that made the OS, and no BASh.  I just don't really get what is going on but as a whole I like Android more than most I just really wish they would make some changes.  Make the Custom UI's available as downloads separately from the OS, restrict it to your phones or for each phone.  It would make updates faster and give more flexibility.  Let us turn off and get rid of bloatware.  Even Windows lets you remove stuff you don't want for crying out loud. 

[cageordie]

Verizon has their own front end, they have been adulterating phones this way for years, so my LG Dare is not the phone it should be. I'd like to be able to just buy a phone and use it on the network, but that's not how Verizon roles. On AT&T I bought my first phone from them, then replaced it with a Motorola phone I bought on Amazon and then a lovely little Nokia E51 that I got from Tigerdirect. But I couldn't make calls in a lot of places where I go and AT&T would drop my calls four times on the journey home. So here I am at Verizon with a slow network and messed up phones, but at least I can make calls most places and they don't get dropped.

Anyway, Motorola, Samsung and Verizon all have agreements to use Bing for search and to push adverts. Neither of which is acceptable to me. I am paying for this service so I am not going to pay to receive adverts I don't want to see. 

Verizon doesn't want Google for navigation because they have the very poor Verizon Navigator, which is kind of like "my first GPS application", though to be fair it has improved from totally unusable to bad.

Part of the reason that I got Verizon in the first place was for the family (teenage daughter) locator, but that worked about as well as those old FSO cars used to and it didn't take her long to realize she just had to leave her phone at school to evade tracking. Which is how she got it stolen, so now she has no phone. 

I am quite willing to hack the phone to dump the things I don't want. I have friends at Google and Motorola, so maybe if I get a Droid X one or other of them can reprogram the thing without the garbage Verizon and Motorola add. 

Unfortunately the coverage is just too important, so I can't jump ship and go with another carrier. If I didn't travel to Nevada and northern California I'd go with Sprint, but sometimes they have no coverage for hundreds of miles where Verizon still limps along.

Verizon gives poor coverage in many places where Sprint and AT&T give none.

[demmo86rt]

I completely agree with fezzik. It's unfortunate that phone companies are taking advantage of android's open source design. They sign contracts to make money but that don't allow us to decide what we do and don't want on our phones. Do they really think that they are that much smarter than everybody else. It's just too bad that so many users are looking for an iPhone experience and don't understand what these phones are capable of. That still shouldn't be a reason to not allow us to remove non-critical aspects of our phones that cripple them by using up resources. It's stuff like this that get me closer and closer to rooting my phone, I just can't afford to replace a brick so I will probably have to wait until my NE2 is available.

[AZSALUKI]

i'm with you demmo. i'll root when i can have a backup droid. right now, if i brick it i am stuck with my env touch (don't get me started on that phone). once i know i could grab a moto droid or even an eris for under $100 on ebay, then i may give it a try. but right now, the moto's are STILL going for $225+ if it's in good shape. i figure after this summer and all of these new droids are out, there will be a ton of various used old droids for a lot less on ebay.

[demmo86rt]

I just know that when I do, I'll be kicking myself for not doing it earlier *sigh*