Every now and then, a controversial issue triggers a flood of online discourse. For our Noise Filter feature, the WHIR pans the raging rivers of opinion for shining nuggets of useful commentary.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In its latest effort to usurp Google’s search engine dominance, Microsoft has deployed Bing (www.bing.com) worldwide, a search engine with a distinct effort to help customers use search to make better decisions – specifically making purchases, trip planning, health research, and finding local businesses easier.
Within hours of its launch, Bing reached six percent of the search engine market share, largely coming from Microsoft’s legacy search engines, which redirected to Bing, but also a number of Google and Yahoo! users checking out the new tool, according to Market Share reports.
In celebration of Bing, Microsoft illuminated the Seattle Space Needle Tuesday night, spelling out “Bing” in lights. The critical online community, which has been testing out the new search since it went live Sunday, however, has been putting it through its paces. Like any new product, it’s not all bright lights and fireworks, but it does show promise.
Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer proudly trumpeted the launch of Bing as the next evolution in searching:
Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find. When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.
An AdAge article, “Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search,” shows that Microsoft is not only putting considerable research and technology into Bing, but also serious advertising money:
The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That’s a big campaign — big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.
Philipp Lenssen did his own comparison between Google and Bing, publishing his findings on Google fan-blog, Blogoscoped:
[O]ne thing Google has been doing exceedingly well in the last years is proper indexing and ranking of very new stuff…For a comparison, I wanted to see how well Bing does on more fresh topics. The Google & Bing comparison tool comes in handy for tests like these….In the end, quite a few queries resulted in Google and Bing doing equally good while quite a few other queries resulted in Google doing substantially better.
Wolfgang Gruener from TG Daily made note of the relative complexity of Bing’s design, suggesting they keep it simple:
Google’s search pages are light weight and fast. There is everything you need and nothing you don’t. They may not be pretty to look at, but they are practical. I am sure that the layout can be improved, but it seems that Microsoft is trying to reinvent the wheel with Bing. Where Google is simple, Bing seems to be complex. The front page carries a picture with random information of the day few people who are looking for specific information are interested in.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch acknowledged that Bing is a viable alternative to Google (which is quite a feat), however, it has a lot of catching up to do with Google in terms of gaining user confidence:
I like it. And I’d consider using it as my search engine. But like many people I’m used to Google and I know how to find the things I’m looking for. Bing returns very different results for a lot of queries, which is great. But it also means spending time learning how to use Bing to get what you need out of it. I’ll spend that time because it’s my job. But for most people, they’ll stick to what they know, and that’s Google.
