Quora: Do Microsoft Employees Use Google at the Office?

Leave it to our neighbors at Mountain View-based Quora to make it easy and fun to learn how two technology giants—Microsoft and Google—handle pokes about the other.

Microsoft's largest campus outside of its Redmond, WA headquarters is in Mountain View, down the street from Google. At this campus, Microsoft employees work on Bing, X-Box and other research. 

That's why this exchange on Quora, "Do Microsoft employees use Google at the office?" caught my attention. But it shouldn't be that surprising. Don't Googlers use iPhones? (There must be a Quora forum on that one!)


Posted by Anonymous Votes by Robert Love, I work at Google on web search., Ron Gross, A Xoogler,Murat Yatagan, sr. spam fighter @ Google, and 4680 more.

I am studying at Purdue University. Companies come here to hire students for full time and internship positions. Like many others, Microsoft too came. I attended the talk by Microsoft employees. The talk was about the new software and technology being developed at Microsoft.During the presentation showing off a software or technology the presenter said, "Suppose you want to know about something. You goo." A short pause followed by applause by the audience. All including the Microsoft employees start laughing. After a minute, the presenter continues ""Suppose you want to find something. You bing it." And then goes on..

Dave Quick

Microsoft To the Max: A small collection of employees - but what they lack in number they make up for with absolute commitment - lots either join directly from college or it was their be all end all goal in life since pre-college to be a Microsoft employee.  There are the die hard employees that drive only Fords so they can use Microsoft Sync with their Windows Phone 8 and Surface RT on the way to their office where they drink out of the Microsoft coffee mug they bought from the campus store so they could match the free SWAG (stuff we all get) sweatsuit and t-shirt that is Microsoft emblazoned.  These are the folks that still think macs and iPhones should be banned from the campus wireless...

Microsoft Light:  A majority of folks.  Most often folks that were hired into the company from another gig - or they at least interned elsewhere if they are college age.  Go along to get along.  You're given a PC, you're given an opportunity to buy a windows phone 8 and a surface rt and expense them - so do it - you don't really care about the phone and tablet wars - the devices seem good enough and you can get your mail when you need it and you can connect to sharepoint through the firewall without having to remote access services connect to corpnet.  Bing is the default on the corporate image that you get with F12 boot from network wipe of the machine you just got handed - so why change it.  Seems "good enough" in US for head queries (and it really is).  If you're really wanting google you use the internal service that allows you to view both google and bing and vote for who had better results.

Cassidy Williams

Nobody ever asks, "Are Google employees allowed to use Bing?"

David Gómez-Rosado

I worked at Microsoft, and yes. They use Google, they use Macs, they use many competitors' products... I found it the only honest way to learn about the landscape they tool within. And I highly respect the ability of not growing religious around your own beliefs. Seeking, learning, being open, inquisitive, self-critical... Those are the hallmarks of a great company (and great people) that strives for self-betterment.

Anuj Agarwal

My friends at Bing & Microsoft do. 

There is no shame in using Google even if they are Bing engineers. Atleast they have the guts to compete with Google. Not to forget that it is Bing's existence that keeps Google engineers on toes and pushes them to keep innovating.

Not to forget most Googlers use Facebook daily.

What's your search engine of choice? Share in comments!