We’re circling back to Bing’s little tantrum. The one where where it wiped out TCAP from search results and calls it “algorithmic”. How adorable. Every post from our blog and Substack gone. In tandem. Hundreds of pages vanished like a guilty conscience in a boardroom. All still live, all still indexed elsewhere. Just not in Bing’s shrinking sandbox.
They call that coincidence. We call it cowardice in code.
You can practically hear the fluster in Redmond: the world’s most insecure tech empire pretending it’s a neutral search engine while huddling under the same blanket as Cummins – a diesel giant it literally partnered with. Microsoft and Cummins clinked glasses in 2017, cooing about “fuel cell innovation” and “sustainable data centres.” Translation: PR foreplay disguised as climate tech.
“All of the partners are committed to environmental stewardship”, chirped now-CEO Jennifer Rumsey. Sorry, Jen.
Sure they were. Now the lab rats from that little eco-lovefest run the infrastructure that quietly de-indexes anyone pointing out the fumes.
The Cloud That Chokes
You’d think Microsoft would have better things to do than protect Cummins’ reputation, but here we are – both bound together like a PR suicide pact. Cummins gets greenwashed credibility from Microsoft’s datacentre halo; Microsoft gets diesel grit under its ESG fingernails. And when TCAP starts publishing receipts, Bing suddenly forgets how to do the one thing it’s for: search.
They’ll say it’s the algorithm. Always is. But algorithms don’t panic in sync. They don’t wake up one morning and decide to erase every Blog and Substack post from a single source. That’s not AI – that’s somebody’s hand hovering nervously over the delete key.
Call it a glitch if you want. It’s the kind of glitch that smells like boardroom sweat.
The Optics from Hell
This isn’t censorship. It’s desperation. Microsoft already looks like the kid who peaked in high school, still bragging about Windows XP. Add Bing – their second-rate search engine for people who think Edge is a personality trait – and you’ve got a company clawing for relevance in an ecosystem that forgot it existed.
And now this: a clumsy, visible attempt to hide a critic of its corporate bedfellow.
A diesel manufacturer caught cheating emissions tests.
A tech company preaching sustainability.
A partnership that makes hypocrisy look like strategy.
“We’re committed to innovation”, they said. Sure – innovative ways to vanish the evidence.
The Thing About Bing (Revisited)
Bing’s not evil. It’s worse: incompetent. Too stupid to play it off, too fragile to ignore criticism. The kind of insecure offspring that deletes your work because it can’t argue with it. Microsoft calls it “trust and safety”. Everyone else calls it “tantrum and denial”.
We didn’t lose a platform. Bing lost a fight. And not a fair one either – the kind of fight where the heavyweight punches itself in the face out of panic.
Closing Line
Bing’s hiding the truth and our work like Cummins hides emissions data – badly. Both should stop pretending it’s technical.
It’s fear, plain and simple. Fear of being seen. Fear of being found. Fear of what comes up when you actually search.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project