Bing: Am I Missing Something?
By Ed Oswald | Monday, June 1, 2009 at 10:24 am
Well, the tech world is all aflutter over Microsoft’s Bing, which as Harry pointed out early this morning is live in preview mode. I have tried this search engine, and honestly I am not seeing what the big deal is over it.
Yes, this is a massive improvement over Live Search — I 100% agree with that. I don’t know what Microsoft may have been going for that other than to rebrand MSN Search after it went Live-crazy. I always found Live Search to be severely lacking in the results department.
Bing definitely improves on that. But I don’t see where it excels over what’s already available out there on the Internets. I’d argue that Microsoft’s latest effort for all intents and purposes merely matches Google, rather than surpassing it by any great distance.
In the end, is this enough to make people switch? I doubt it. Most of us are quite comfortable with using Google for our daily searches, cause it works well. Why would we want to switch to another that only seems to really “skin” what Mountain View was already somewhat doing?
This is not to say by any means that Bing will be a failure. #1, it will get a huge boost in the next month or two simply from interested surfers wanting to see what the buzz is all about. #2, it is an improvement, and not everybody is so tied to Google that they won’t switch.
For me however, Bing just isn’t it. I’m glad to see Microsoft is finally serious about search — but I don’t think matching your competition is going to win the day in the end.
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[SHOCKER] Did you really expect any love for Bing? Says:
June 1st, 2009 at 1:07 pm[…] Bing: Am I Missing Something? via Technologizer Money Quote: […]
June 1st, 2009 at 10:57 am
Did you notice the presentation, organization of results? Much better than Google.
Also, did you check shopping? Kudos to cashback (finally someone is sharing the search revenue with the buyers!)
And more, The farecast predictions are AWESOME! Just try “sea to sfo” and see the price chages in the next 30 days.
Not to mention local…much better.
I think Bing makes Google look old and slow and boring.
June 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am
I’d say matching Google on day 1 is pretty impressive. And it only takes a little extra effort to see where Bing beats Google (see previous commenter). It’s a long race ahead, might be a bit premature to declare a victor a few hours after launch (cuil.com was another story — squandering a lot of un-deserved goodwill right out of the gate with horrible performance and terrible search results).
June 1st, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I guess. But matching a far larger competitor has proven to never be a successful business model. In playing around with it, I’m not seeing how it will be able to surpass Google in it’s current form.