
Did Bing Just Leapfrog Yahoo Search? - azharcs
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/05/did-bing-just-leapfrog-yahoo-search/?awesm=tcrn.ch_3Cj&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com
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tlrobinson
I think TechCrunch has discovered their preferred linkbait title format.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=safari...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en-
us&q=allintitle%3Adid+just+site%3Atechcrunch.com&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=)

Come back in a month once the press frenzy has died down and we'll see.

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grignr
Or, if you prefer:

<http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Atechcrunch.com+did+just>

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jsonscripter
For some reason I just feel icky using Microsoft products when there's a
fine/better alternative.

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lyime
It is all in your head, my friend :). Bing is actually pretty good.

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tlrobinson
I'd love for Google to have some serious competition... just not from
_Microsoft_. I feel like Microsoft has had their turn.

I just want some unknown startup to come out of nowhere and take a bite out of
Google.

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sker
Well, a startup _is_ doing this. Powerset is supposedly behind Bing.

Do you honestly think an unknown startup can take a bite out of Google and not
get acquired in the process?

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mahmud
1) Microsoft had two horses in the race, MSN and Live, both redirecting to
Bing now.

2) Microsoft owns the largest botnet in the world; forcing a browser update
and setting the home page to a Bing query is a good way to improve your
ranking ;-)

3) I trust "statcounter" as much as I trust Compete, Alexa, and the other
user-side traffic analysis and statistics services taken individually. Let's
get data from a bunch of them and let's average them out, etc.

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sidmitra
Windows 7 + Bing + Project Natal.... Microsoft is certainly garnering good
vibes these days.

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cma
The force IE6 Bing homepage redirect (even for google users) gave off
distinctly unpleasant vibes.

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xexers
I work for Microsoft. Before bing 80% of internal search engine traffic was to
google. The reason MS employees used google instead of live search was pretty
much the same across the company - live search sucks.

However, MS employees finally have a decent search engine made by Microsoft.
Bing is good. There are 100,000 employees that likely just switched from
whatever they were using before to Bing. That might affect the stats a bit.
Plus, those employees will tell their friends and families.

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profgubler
Does it have to dethrone Google to be a success? I don't think so. If they can
take away 5 points in marketshare from from Google that is a huge success and
will draw in a lot more money for Microsoft. If they take five points from
Google, they are also likely to take away 5 points from yahoo and that is a
huge gain. I think Bing is a good search engine, nothing revolutionary, but
every product doesn't need to be revolutionary to be successful.

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KirinDave
Also keep in mind Bing is a start. It's a change to the brand name timed with
some fairly significant technical refreshes and some obvious ideological
changes about search.

There is a lot more to the space of "search" as we move forward into the next
decade, much of which Google, Yahoo and Microsoft haven't even tried to move
forwards on. Hopefully the kind of technology and infrastructure related to
search will start to be re-purposed for other uses.

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jnorthrop
Bing recently garnered lots of press with its release. That lead to lots of
people looking at it and a sharp jump in viewers. It'll fade.

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kirse
I de-Googled my browser at work for the sake of trying out Bing and so far
I've only needed to use Google once.

Overall I'm very happy with everything except a few search annoyances. Bing
Image search vs. Google Images is no comparison, the Wikipedia "enhanced view"
is simple but great, Live maps > Google Maps with the birds-eye view, so
pretty much all my regular usage has been slightly improved by Bing.

That's a win and I'll probably stick with it for now. Right now I'm using
Google just for comparison sake to see if Bing is "on track" with searches.

I think a lot of people are to the point where they are willing to give
"Google competitors" a test drive, and most of them fail instantly (Cuil,
etc.). Bing hasn't done that, so we're all pretty surprised.

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callahad
I'm doing the same. For search results, Bing works. I prefer Google's
prominent ranking of Wikipedia, but I've been able to find what I need on Bing
in all but one case.

However, before this week, I was completely unaware of how frequently I use
Google for non-search queries. Things like "-40 F in C" or searching for
"Place X to Place Y" and clicking on "Maps" to get directions. Bing doesn't
even come close to matching my expectations / muscle memory in those cases.

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itgoon
Bing is nice. I don't think it is such an evolutionary leap as to dethrone
Google, but I could see it keeping Google from becoming complacent.

MS seems to have subdued their biggest dragon: the results are much more
relevant. In fact, all three have gotten really good in that regard.

That was what always killed me about MS' search offerings: nice bells and
whistles, but it was so poor at its basic function.

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chmike
Comparing results on the scientific domain I'm working on, my conclusion is
that google result is still far more pertinent. For some unknown reason the
result obtained from bing are strongly biased toward very specific
institution.

Bing is not going to replace google any time soon and throwing millions in
marketing campaigns won't turn it into a more useful and efficient search
engine.

But there is room for improvement though, and more"competition" and valid
alternatives would be beneficial for everybody. We are totally dependent on
the answer returned by google who can the strongly bias the data we "find" on
the web.

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dkasper
One of my favorite parts of Bing is the "Popular Now" items at the bottom.
Very cool to add that "real time" feature, reminds me of the twitter "trending
topics".

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quizbiz
Microsoft should have released Bing separately, only slowly leaking out that
Microsoft was actually behind bing.

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grignr
I forgot Yahoo _had_ a search engine, so this doesn't impress me much.

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pierrefar
In short, no.

One swallow and summer and all that.

