Bing
bing.com
bing.com
This is right in line with their "surprise! it's a PC" campaign. If one watches the corresponding campaigns, Apple is unabashedly proud of being Apple, Google about being Google, but Microsoft seems to be embarrassed about being Microsoft.
I am rather curious where this will go, and how consumers will react. Of course, Microsoft wins if people ignore the company and just buy the product.
One ironic aspect of this: one can see this as Microsoft trying to compete by offering "better customer service," if you can call repackaging search results "customer service." Perhaps it's better termed as "superior, seamless customer experience."
Perhaps they're onto something. If Google really doesn't offer better data than Microsoft or Yahoo, then Google's advantage is in their Brand. Microsoft can combat this by starting a new Brand, and stand behind it with the same quality of data, but a superior customer experience.
EDIT: On second thought, Microsoft may be behind the game again. The target to chase shouldn't be Google Search. I suspect it should be Facebook and Twitter. Google Wave might leapfrog Microsoft here.
We'll see. A lot of things stand in the way of Bing gaining traction, the least of which is a product that itself has no traction. IMO, naturally.
Testing indicates its not the result quality that makes people like Google's results better, but the brand. So I agree - going directly after the brand makes a lot of sense.
Classic case of something that was a tactical advantage becoming a key weakness.
We spend $300,000 a month on AdWords and have a team of 5 people we can talk to at any time.
You could make the same observation about the fact that people use Kleenex and not Kimberly-Clark Wipes.
Not only is this not about Microsoft, it's not about Search either. It's all about Decision now, in a sort of semantic landgrab.
> You could make the same observation about the fact that
> people use Kleenex and not Kimberly-Clark Wipes.
On a branding level, some things work better if corporate branded, some if independetly branded. You can't just throw the same brand identity at everything.
Imagine for example using "Procter & Gamble Soft Soap", "Procter & Gamble cleaning fluid", etc.
The brand is it. And branding doesn't sink or swim based on name alone, but it isn't a trivial factor.
And the reason I brought up brand is that Microsoft has to build one now. And for that task, the letters matter.
Quality of results (and speed) matters most. Brand starts to matter when a product or service becomes a commodity and competitors need to differentiate themselves, which is essentially the situation we find ourselves in now with search. But to say that brand is all that matters is a little simplistic. If Microsoft has truly created a better search product in terms of results and/or speed then brand matters much much less.
But I do agree that there is a perception that Microsoft doesn't know how to innovate in search and on the web generally, so the decision to leave the Microsoft name off of Bing makes complete sense.
They started going to Google for whatever reason and stuck there because for many years it was light years ahead of the rest in terms of quality. Now it's going to take a much better search engine to top them. And if Microsoft made that engine, they could just leave it at live.com and grow (and at least it'd have the old 8% market share to start with). And if they don't, they can change the name every week and totally disavow any involvement but it still won't matter.
It's more like the other 99.999%.
Anyone else notice that? Microsoft is using the GNU style recursive acronym. Irony at its finest.
Most of my searches are tech related. Google is pretty painful, but I hold little hope that bing is going to be my salvation. When in the name of <insert your favorite deity> is anyone going to implement HN-style modding for search results?
I think MS has something worthwhile here - they've realized that people are looking for information, not links, and if they can get good data together, they stand a good chance of beating Google at the search engine game, without ever building a traditional search engine.
Google already has it. Have you played with SearchWiki?
In a way, search engines already account for up-modding by factoring in which links you click on when you are given a page of search results. But you are more likely to click on results already at the top, so I wouldn't give too much weight to that information.
The SearchWiki concept has a lot of potential if Google decides to go down that path though.
The real problem with SearchWiki (or other upvoting/downvoting) is that you keep going back to the search page while your search is failing. As soon as you click through and find the page that you want, you stop - you do what you wanted and get on with your life. Whereas if that is the page you need and bookmark it (granted your point that we don't bookmark everything), that is a true and accurate indicator of success.
Since HN was explicitly mentioned upthread, it would be interesting to know how many people upvote/downvote stories (which you have to get back to the main page to do) versus comments (which are in your face in their totality when you are asked to vote). I can only speak for myself, but I vote on comments massively more often than I vote on stories, exactly for the reason I described. So in order for SearchWiki to really work for me, I want to express my happiness when I am viewing the target page, not the search page. (I am sure this can be accomplished in theory, I just don't think the support is currently there).
I remember a while back in the UK there was a study to actually measure real attentiveness while the TV was on. Cameras were installed inside people's TVs to record the viewers so their focus could be noted. This was all very clearly explained to them, but as time went by, and people being people, they eventually started to forget the camera was there; so in some cases the poor researchers got a bigger share of, err, domestic activities than they bargained for.
It's not explicit, just like all sorts of other ranking details and polcies are secret, to keep manipulators in the dark as long as possible.
From http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/google-searchwiki-l...:
"At this time we aren't using SearchWiki to influence ranking but it is easy to see how that could happen in the future," says Marissa Mayer.
I suppose they are going to wait until they get a meaningful amount of user data before they start using it.
Only a Q&A - but the up/down voting on answers is kinda nice.
I think that digg or (dig) is actually a great name for a search engine. I think for the branding after the fact it has to be something that works in a verb. Bing it! is better than live or MSN search it but still, bing?... Cannot help but think of Chandler Bing and it isn't as mathematically cool as Google is.
But I guess Bing does mean these, as to which it will become is yet to be determined.
- Bing is a Unix program which is essentially a ping with added network throughput measurements. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(program)
- Bing is a Chinese term used to describe dough-based Chinese flatbreads, pancakes, unleavened dough foods, or indeed any food item with a flat disk ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread)
- A slag heap (also called bing, Boney piles, culm, waste coal, Terekons (Russian), gob piles, or slate dumps) is a pile built of accumulated tailings, which are by-products of mining. ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(mining)
- Prison solitary confinement, a term used by inmates; A heap or pile, such as a slag heap en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bing
I'm all for market competition and I realize that MS feels as though they HAVE to do this, but this seems a lot like MS's failed attempt at revamping their search a few years ago. And back then they had the advantage of having an operating system that people didn't despise. Without a good tie in (unfair advantage) with an OS and what appears to be an attempt to get people to shift the way they search I think this is doomed.
I firmly believe it's a case of tech echo chamber at work.
I will add that when I gave instructions on disabling UAC it did result in "oh, that's good" type of comments. But I did that proactively. Never had them come to me seeking relief from it. Kinda like when a loud furnace shuts off in the winter and it's so much more pleasantly quiet, but you didn't even notice it when it was on.
There is only one Bing, Chandler Bing!