Bing gaining momentum? | Hacker News Reader

Bing gaining momentum?

news.moneycentral.msn.com

15 pointsjcartano23 comments

I like a lot of what google does. Rather, I am addicted to a lot of google services. But its right about time that there is some competition in search space with google. Monopoly of anyone is not good. I am a Bing man now. :) I love a lot of things about bing: interface for video/image search, cashback and the ability to watch previews of video without leaving the page, thus, saving a lot of time.

how much did they pay you to say that?

ha hah, just kidding, I actually kind of like bing, and you know why? the nice pictures.

I wish they would show the pictures on the results page as well.

search results ain't bad either ;)

Yeah - I feel very much the same as you - although since Google 'needs' competition - I would prefer it if it came from someone other than Microsoft. I'm just relieved that Google seems to be very good at not abusing its power. They push a lot of community projects and encourage others - it's nice.

Bing does have a nice video/image search. I've never been terribly impressed by Google's algorithm for image search. I don't know how either algorithm works, but I get much better results from Bing, and the interface is very nice. I've always appreciate Google's very simple, informational interfaces, but I can't help but love the user-friendliness of Bing. It seems like they actually put a lot of thought into it.

Everyone wants to be the next search engine but no one seems to be able to do it, even for a niche.

Microsoft has the 500M to market it, and the who knows how many billions to build, and they already having paying advertisers. They know how to contact companies with big ad budgets... Not many other tech firms have all that in place, I don't think a startup could handle it. But then again, Google did it as a start up.

Search wasn't even a business when Google blossomed in the late 90s. Altavista was a halo product for Digital. Yahoo used it to drive traffic to its services that made money. Etc. Etc. Etc. Every search engine then had a "Try this search on [Yahoo], [AltaVista], [Excite], [etc], [etc]" snippet at the bottom of each results page.

GoTo changed everything with text ads and Google was the first company to turn search into big business.

In other words, I agree with your larger point :)

While I'm not necessarily arguing the accuracy of the story, it surely wouldn't hurt to put in a disclaimer stating that MSN and Bing both owned by the same company.

I don't care about the story as much as I am interested in trying to figure out what Microsoft did differently because Live was launched in a very similar way, minus the Hulu crap.

Is that really true? I don't recall the product rolled out at the Live launch as having much of a distinguishing value proposition. Bing, on the other hand, is notably different than Google in several respects, so first-time visitors have a "take away" from the experience. If the purpose of the rollout ad blitz is to "induce trial", it's up to the quality of the match between the product and the product positioning to get people back for subsequent visits.

Live rebranded a bunch of MSN services and the marketing centered on personalization. Live Search was a rebranding of MSN search, with some new enhancements like the image search and it was heavily promoted.

Marketing around release. When live launched it sounded like a PR move to bring their "online strategy" under one unified brand name. Basically no reason to look if you didn't like MSN. With the bing launch there was more of a "we are doing something different and actually trying to compete" feel to the whole thing. That actually made me curious enough to try it.

The difference is that Bing returns quality search results; Live search did not.

People tried live search a few times then left. People try Bing and then come back for more.

That is a fair point. I do think this report comes from briefing.com and when msn authors an article they mention that Microsoft owns msn.

Well considering they're pretty much saturating the airwaves with commercials, it'd be pretty shocking if they weren't.

I believe ask.com also used the same strategy, but with markedly different results.

Considering that most people neither know nor care what an algorithm is, I wasn't surprised. Ask made the classic mistake of talking more about possessing superior technology than the supposed benefit to users.

Rather than reading "How awesome Bing is", I'd rather know how exactly Bing is different than MSN or Live search.

Also, didn't Microsoft acquire Powerset (company that 1 of the github founder worked for)? Any news about Microsoft integrating it to Bing? or Bing is a completely separate technology?

According to my server logs, Bing surged for one week and then fell off mostly.

Here is a less biased source - although same basic story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10266390-56.html

As a test, I've been using Bing as my default since their launch and I don't miss Google yet. Bing is a very good product, imho.

I actually set Bing as my default search engine just to actually test it out in day-to-day searches, because testing a search engine by searching for your name or "test" is completely useless.

So far it delivers very good results, except for development topics, where Google does much much better.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bing actually does evolve into a viable competitor to Google.

No.

Says who, msn?

yes, it's easier for people to say and spell the word Bing than it is to say and spell Google. And it is good to give Microsoft some business what with the economy and all. I just wonder what the family of Bing Crosby thinks about all this. "Bing it and find out" is a new catchphrase circulating around.

and the users of HN think they are so smart and intellectual, that Bing being a simpler word could in no way give it any success. yet this is in fact the case. "Bing it and find out" is brilliant. Why would that comment be voted down other than people who can't understand that? They can't understand so they vote it down. It's called Marketing, folks. Marketing, plain and simple. People are stupid, they gravitate to Simple things, Easy things. Why do you think Microwave dinners are so popular? Nearly have their own entire aisle at the very center of every supermarket in America, because they are Simple and they are very profitable. People like simple things, and Bing is a very simple word to say and write. Go ahead and vote this comment down as well, I could care less. But I am right and everyone who votes it down knows it.

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