Bing's World Cup Predictions are only for English regions

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 14, 2018
Microsoft, Search
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Companies like Microsoft showcase computer technologies that can be used to predict outcomes of events regularly. The football World Cup 2018 starts today and it should not come as a surprise that Microsoft took the opportunity to predict the outcome of all group stage world cup matches.

When you search for world cup predictions on Bing, you may get a neat listing of all group stage matches of the World Cup 2018 and predictions on which team Bing thinks will win the game.

Predictions are not up for all games but they are provided for most games. There are not that many surprises as Microsoft's AI concluded that favorites such as Germany, Brazil, or France will win their group stage games.

bing world cup 2018 predictions

Tip: You can also search for matches directly and may get predictions for those even if the full list of matches and results does not provide those at the time.

Bing predicts, for example, that Spain will win against Portugal, when you search for FIFA World Cup 2018 Portugal vs Spain 15/06/2018. Just replace country names and the date to get predictions for other matches.

portugal spain

But this article is not really about the World Cup or match predictions but about Microsoft's constant neglecting of users who don't live in the United States.

Bing is a global search engine that provides localized results and is even used as the default (and only) search engine of the Windows 10 operating system if you keep web search functionality enabled.

If you search for world cup predictions, you get the neat listing of game predictions by Bing only if you use the United States version of Bing or have set Bing to another English-speaking region. If you search using localized versions of Bing, you don't get the list if predictions at all. It is as if they don't exist, and that is even if you have set the interface language to English.

It can't be something technical that prevents Bing or Microsoft from displaying results

You can switch to United States in Bing to use the United States version; it is highly suggested that you do as it is quite common that Microsoft publishes new features only (or first) there.

It can be something small like predictions on who is going to win the World Cup 2018 in Russia, but also major changes that add new features to Bing.

bing switch country region

Do the following to switch to another region:

  • Go to Bing if you are not on the site already.
  • Select Menu > Settings.
  • Click on Country/region, or load https://www.bing.com/account/general directly.
  • Select "change your country/region" on the page under Country/Region.
  • Select United States - English.
  • Scroll down and click on save.

Bing is switched to United States in the process. You can select a different English-speaking region instead and will get the predictions as well but you will still miss out on new features that are more often than exclusive to the U.S. version of Bing.

Now You: Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by restricting features to certain regions? And, which team is going to win the world cup?

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Bing's World Cup Predictions are only for English regions
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Bing's World Cup Predictions are only for English regions
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When you search for world cup predictions on Bing, you may get a neat listing of all group stage matches of the World Cup 2018 and predictions on which team Bing thinks will win the game.
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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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