In what is surely going to be a short-lived “experiment”, Microsoft’s search engine Bing now tries to “disguise” itself as Google when users enter Google-related search terms within Bing.

From The Verge:

If you use Bing right now without signing into a Microsoft account and search for Google, you’ll get a page that looks an awful lot like… Google.

I had to use an incognito browser to get it to work (even though I didn’t appear to be signed in), but it definitely does look like the Google Doodle (although it doesn’t spell Google). I doubt most users would notice that the URL is still “bing.com” and the “Powered by Microsoft” in the top-left of the screen.

Like The Verge article points out, though, this isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) time that Microsoft has walked the line between misinformation and outright deception of its users:

Microsoft has a habit of this kind of behavior. We’ve been cataloging every trick Microsoft has used to convince people to switch to Bing or Edge instead of Google and Chrome over the past few years. Microsoft has modified Chrome download sites, added pop-up ads into Google Chrome on Windows, injected polls into Chrome download pages, and even used malware-like popups to get people to ditch Google.

Not a great look from a company known for not great looks.