It’s been more than 10 years now since the boys from Mountain View opened up shop, and (almost) ever since then, Redmond has been trying to catch-up with the search giant known as Google. Microsoft has made a variety of different attempts to try and make this work, from MSN Search to Windows Live Search to Live Search – not to mention search deals they’ve made with companies like Facebook – and yet Google continues to dominate. Is that all going to change with Bing?
Bing does have some advantages that other versions of Microsoft’s search didn’t – it has an appealing look, some bells and whistles like the integration of Farecast for travel, and Microsoft is taking a different approach to market Bing. Bing isn’t a search engine, it’s a Decision Engine.
When searching for something like a dedicated server, for example, you’re likely to get similar results regardless of your search engine. When you review those results, how often do you immediately get the result you needed? Did you want an Intel server or AMD? A managed dedicated server or will you manage it? Did you want to buy one or do you need hosting? You click on one result, hit the back button, click a second, back, refine the search terms, click again, etc. etc. Bing tries to take some of the extra clicks out of the equation – with related searches, search history, and mouseovers with additional information about the page. Is it enough to make users switch from Google? I’ll let you decide.
For more information about Bing, check out these links:
Bing vs. Google vs. Yahoo: Feature Smackdown