Microsoft's Answer to Google Search - Bing

Microsoft’s Search Woes

To anyone who has been paying attention for the past decade, it should be obvious that Google is the undisputed king of search engines. This is best illustrated by the fact that Google currently controls over 60% of the search engine market.

Many people do not even realize that Microsoft has been making a concerted effort to cut into Google’s significant portion of the market. Do you know the name of Microsoft’s current search engine? It is Live Search. Unfortunately for Microsoft, “Live Search” is quite far away from achieving the status of becoming a word in the English dictionary.

Currently, Microsoft holds less than a 10% share of the search engine market. This is probably what led to their current massive push to unseat Google. Microsoft’s newest initiative is a new search engine called “Bing.” The project has been underway for quite some time under the development name “Kumo.” Just as with many new popular websites, the name tells us nothing. 

Bing was designed with the intention of providing a better search experience to millions of people across the world. Interestingly, about 60% of Internet users are already satisfied with their current search engine. This is not good news for Microsoft, as it indicates that—at most—40% of the market is up for grabs. While Bing does present some innovations and changes that are sure to win many, it is unlikely that they will be able to pull a significant portion of that 40% market share.

While it remains to be seen just how well Bing will fare in the Google-dominated search engine industry, chances are that Microsoft can not do any worse than they have been. Some of the initial features promised by Bing are actually quite interesting, and Microsoft has gone a long way to ramp up its efforts to match Google’s product. Only time will tell whether the software giant’s work will allow it to actually surpass Google by enough to gain a significant market share before Google retaliates.

What Bing Brings

The most notable change (so far) that Bing brings is its name. Microsoft is known for its simple and utilitarian names (Live Search). By choosing a nonsensical name such as Bing, Microsoft is treading into largely unknown territory for itself. Many experts across the industry herald the change, as it is a catchy name with international appeal. Others decry that the name has nothing to do with the product and will require all that much more marketing investment.

Microsoft is branding Bing as a “decision engine,” rather than a simple search engine. This is illustrated by Bing’s numerous features that attempt to integrate information with search results. This follows a recent trend for search engines to begin including information along with search engine results. Users like to see exactly what they are looking for as soon as possible. If Bing is able to satisfy this demand better than Google is, then it is possible that it could gain a foothold in the market.

Bing integrates such information as medical advice, news, product reviews, and page excerpts seamlessly with its search results. The medical advice is a new offering that may be handy to many. It pulls information from top medical websites and puts it right at the top of the search results, increasing the likelihood that people do not have to dig down into websites for what they seek.

From an early review from CNet, Microsoft actually offers better news results than Google does. Bing’s results are more up to date and more accurate. This could prove to be a vital feature in cutting into Google’s market share.

Bing also offers the ability to view a text excerpt from each of the search results. By hovering your mouse over a result, you will be able to view some of the text from that page. This should speed up the search for information, as users can determine faster whether a site is relevant or not. It is also a huge boost to dial-up users, who will not have to wait to load each page, only to find that it is not what they were looking for.

Bing also seems to offer a better listing of “related search terms” than Google does. While most engines now offer this, most of the time, the related terms are not that helpful. However, Bing has apparently revolutionized the technology and actually made it a tool that could provide exactly what you were looking for without you realizing it.

Interestingly, Bing actually does a better job of presenting video results than Google does. Bing lists them in a format similar to the way in which Google Images currently does, while Google itself has an outdated vertical listing. Google will no doubt address this issue, but for now Bing has the upper hand in an environment with which Google should have no issues.

Commercial Aspects

The main focus of Bingappears to be on commercial interests. For example, Bing includes user and expert reviews of products as well as prices. One very notable feature is that it also includes a cash back feature for many products. This is going to give it a substantial leg up over Google’s product search. If nothing else, people do love to save some money. This is also a feature that Google is unlikely to be able to replicate in the short term, as it involves extensive negotiations with countless retailers.

Another notable feature is Bing’s approach to airline tickets. It lists the cheapest fares as well as a trend chart of when the tickets are most likely to be cheaper. This is made possible by Microsoft’s purchase of “Farecast,” an airline ticket price forecasting program. Though this is a nice feature to have, it is questionable how it will help Bing gain much market share. This seems to be a very specific application in comparison with search engines as a whole. After all, there are already websites completely devoted to what Bing offers here.

Similarly, Bing offers reviews and pricing from local restaurants and other commercial interests. Although there has been no direct evidence of it, it is logical to believe that Microsoft will also offer services similar to Google's, who lists the top results from its mapping software for local businesses. Microsoft claims that Bing will allow you to save time and money with the way in which it searches local businesses. It will take more time to determine whether this claim is based on Bing's actual offerings, or is just some marketing jargon.

While Bing's offerings on product searches are impressive, Microsoft still has a long road ahead to combat Google in this field. The Google product search is already quite solid and still offers some features that Bing does not. Microsoft is going to have to analyze these differences and think hard about which features they want to copy and which they are just going to try to live without.

What it Means for Google

If nothing else, Bing is definitely a threat to Google’s substantial margin in the search engine market. While it is unlikely that Bing will seriously cut into Google’s share in the short term, many of the features of the new search engine have definite promise. What Microsoft has shown is that it is willing to join the new technology revolution that Google started, and that it has the power and creativity to become a rival.

Google still has its invaluable brand recognition that it can lord over almost any other company in any other industry. When people are looking for something online, the natural inclination for most is to simply “Google” it. Of course, there are die hard fans that will stick with their beloved product no matter what (such as Google). However, the people that these search engines really care about are the mass public. To the mass public, brand recognition is everything.

From early reviews, Google actually has slightly better search results than Bing does. Top results are often more relevant and easier to read through. Google has the advantage of experience and technology. While Bing will likely work hard to make up this difference, it is quite a big advantage in the early stages of Bing’s release.

Google also has the advantage that software technology is remarkably easy to replicate. Once Bing is released, Google will doubtlessly be quickly analyzing every single aspect of the new search engine. In fact, Google engineers will probably be the people with the most familiarity with Bing outside of Microsoft. Depending on the technology, Google will be able to develop a response in anywhere from a week to a year. Google probably already has plans for how it is going to combat some of the previously mentioned features that Bing has advertised.

What is key is whether Bing will be able to capture a significant market share before Google can ramp up its development to respond to Bing’s new technologies. If it can, then it will have a base from which it can proceed with future development and potentially overthrow Google. If it cannot manage to do better than its predecessors, then Google will remain the undisputed champion until the next competitor comes along.