

Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better - healthylivingal
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/technology/personaltech/09pogue.html?_r=1&ref=technology
For the last 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, “Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it.”
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jacquesm
The funny thing is that there is one major reason why I don't see bing taking
a substantial number of people away from google, which is that on the whole
google does what it should do, there isn't enough dissatisfaction with google
to get people to switch in droves.

When google took on altavista pretty much any single keyword search on
altavista was 50% or more spam.

That single item is what gave google traction. They didn't spend any money on
advertising their service, it just worked, and so much better than the
competition that if you had tried it once you were sold.

I don't remember any 'altavista side by side with google' comparisions at the
time that gave you the impression that it was too close to call.

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johns
If they can be good enough to keep people from switching to Google when Bing
is the default through OEM deals or IE downloads they'll gain significant
market share. In the short term just keeping people would be a victory.

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axod
Wonder what the default will be in Google Chrome OS...

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josefresco
Haven't you learned? It's only bad when MS does it.

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TallGuyShort
Next thing you know the creators of Bing are going to release their own
operating system!

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tc
Unwittingly perhaps (or necessarily), Microsoft has just done Google a huge
favor. By virtue of Microsoft delivering a reasonably competitive search
engine, Google is now in a much better position to show that they are not a
monopoly. Back in the old days, IBM, then Microsoft liked keeping Apple around
for the same reason.

Conversely, Google has completely dropped all pretext of its former hesitancy
to tread directly on Microsoft's turf, releasing operating systems, mobile
devices, browsers, hosted office applications, and working to obsolete
Exchange (Google Wave).

In the end, there can be only one...

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josefresco
Nothing has really changed. Microsoft just rebranded their search engine and
Google continues to create products in an attempt to 'surround' MS for a
battle in the future. And as always Uncle Sam is still watching the MS
monopoly in operating systems, as well as Google's monopoly in search and
neither has taken a hit to it's main business. Did I miss something?

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tc
It's the same game of chess, but the pace seems to be picking up, and the
strategic value of each piece placement is coming more clearly into focus. The
players are locked into their strategic choices, and are now becoming more
reactionary. We'll see more forced moves before either side starts shedding a
lot of pieces.

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sb
_just for the record_ : in case you are not in the US, most of the described
features in this article do NOT work, you have to switch to "US" in the
country locator (top-right corner) -- at least i had to, probably i am too
stupid to "get it right" any other way... (probably some non-US residents
could tell me whether i am nuts or not)

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tonystubblebine
Has anyone actually taken a hard look at Bing? I get that it has interesting
bells and whistles, but I think the search results are incredibly naive.

For example, when I search for my company I get 7 pages of results that are
pages I host. Then finally at the end of page seven there are links to our
TechCrunch and TradeVibes pages. I think having some diversity of results is
important.

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trezor
I'm using it as my default search engine and has done so since the official
launch. It was pretty much just a "lets try this thing out" kinda experiment.
So far I have seen no reason to switch back to google.

Short summary: My opinion on bing

    
    
      * For regular searches, it does the job
      * For image searches it is infinite better than google
      * For video searches there is no way I'm going back to google
        unlees they catch up
    

So just like you need a compelling reason to switch away from google, I need a
compelling reason to switch back.

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madh
Your comment made me try out Bing for image and video searches. Recently I've
been searching for videos quite often on Google, and most of the time, I've
been disappointed. Bing is nice. I particularly like being able to easily
select the source.

A quick Bing success story: I was showing Bing to a cousin from abroad who was
debating going to Vancouver. The Bing background image was The Sunken Garden
at Butchart Gardens in Victoria. Great coincidence.

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andrewljohnson
There is no comparison, and here's proof. Google hits my website basically
every couple of seconds. At this rate, Google will crawl my site in total a
few times a year, since we have millions of pages.

Bing, Yahoo, and all the rest only visit a few times a day. At this rate, they
will spider my site completely....ummmm... never.

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josefresco
It's not the _quantity_ , it's the _quality_ that matters. Google has stated
this publicly and while it's impressive they're indexing your site every few
seconds, that might not be a good thing, or the 'right' thing for a search
engine to be doing.

I could care less which search engine has the farthest reach (with few
exceptions). What I (and most users I would suspect) really want is the best
set of results that fulfill my query.

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andrewljohnson
Except it's really hard to know the quality of the page until you actually
crawl it. PageRank graphs only take you a small percentage of the way to
judging quality.

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blhack
Maybe bing is better, but the keyword there is "maybe".

Even if it is, this is the same battle between blu ray and dvd. Similarly to
DVD, google is _good enough_ that the jump to blu ray/bing isn't really worth
it to people (if the benefit is even visible to them).

Sorry, microsoft, but I think google is going to win this round.

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josefresco
I agree, there needs to be a giant leap in search interface or capabilities
before anyone unseats Google.

Although I do hold out hope that a small underground 'open' competitor will
emerge .... someday. A boy can dream can't he?

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TrevorJ
Search has become a commodity in the eyes of most people who aren't power
users. That is to say, as long as it works, one search engine is pretty much
the same as the other.

If somebody is going to erode Google's hold on the market significantly, they
are going to have to introduce entirely new features, or come up with a search
that is orders-of-power better than Google. That is to say, the superiority
has to be readily apparent to a human user and not just a slight improvement
that can to be proven only by empirical testing.

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madh
As search has essentially become a commodity, it seems that marketing would be
the way to erode Google's dominance.

Also, just wait for msn.com to take on the Bing branding.

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brown9-2
don't they mean " _does_ " Google one better"?

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zandorg
"goes google one better" on Google = 966 "does google one better" on Google =
12,500

So yes!

