It's being reported that Microsoft plans on spending 100 million dollars in a marketing blitz for their renamed search engine, billing it as a brand new product rather than just Microsoft Live with a new look and a few new features. My question: Are they going to fool anyone?
The first advertisements bill Bing.com as a "decision engine" that will cure "search overload," but the first thing people will see when they go to the decision engine is that it looks and acts almost exactly like Google, including the same basic color scheme in the search results. Sure, there are some differences, like a search history and similar searches shown to the left of the results. But people will care most about the results themselves, and they aren't going to find anything in them that is mindblowingly different than they already get out of Google.
In fact, this first commercial might actually backfire a little, leaving a bad residue in the mouths of anyone going to Bing looking for a real "decision engine" -- you know, something more like Wolfram|Alpha than a Google clone.
Personally, I don't think they'll be able to buy their way into a sizable chunk of the search engine market unless they actually buy a search engine. And from all reports, Yahoo is still not interested in selling their search engine to Microsoft.
Want to compare them for yourself? Check out this cool page put together by BlackDog SEO. It will let you put in a search term and see results from Google and Bing side-by-side.
Prior to adding Geographic Target to its Webmaster Tools, a site’s host server had to be physically in the country of origin to be listed under “pages from…” – Bing’s Webmaster Center doesn’t offer this option, so don’t go changing hosts just yet if that’s a concern.
it will never beat google, google is the best.
The results are not “mindblowingly different than they already get out of Google…” that’s praising with faint damns, isn’t it?
I’m a huge Google fan. Nevertheless I’ve been using Bing as my default search engine for more than a week now. My impression? It’s comparable to Google on most things, but much better at finding content that happened to be in a blog post. Google’s index seems to have a seriously negative attitude toward material in blogs that aren’t megafamous, even if there’s no other good source for that search.
Bing can also add titles to search results based on links that point to them, which enhances the quality of summaries. (Although I can see it becoming a problem if someone famous links to your site with the words “This Site Stinks…”)
I found it very (sorry for the term *STOOPID*) for Microsoft to change the name from “LIVE SEARCH” to this awfoule “BLING” thing. Although I think that the changes made are a good thing. (It’s usually (but not always good) to give users more power behind their keystrokes, was the name change really necessary?
Bing is way better. Google has been over-rated for some time now.
Much like the Mac Vs. PC commercials pointed out, having Microsoft throw a bunch of money at marketing a substandard product (i.e., Vista) will not guarantee success.
Here’s a tip:
Hey Mr. Gates, et. al: The world wants stuff that works! The first time.
Let’s see,..not Live Search, Windows Live, etc. anymore. These “jokes,” were supposed to enable us to sign-in to ALL M$N Services ONCE per session. They were touted to be secure & convenient. They were neither. They DID make one suspect that M$N had been hacked, because one HAD to sign-in,sign-in,sign-in, sometimes after only turning a page. M$N staff were very offended when asked if their site(s) had been hacked. We will probably have to endure more endless Patches & security warnings, & no responce from M$N Support, which will be attributed to, “unusually high traffic volumes.”
THEN,stay tuned;
“Forget all you know,..a new & improved offering from Micro$oft,sure to make Sauce of Mac Apples & to free us to pursue our lifestyles, unencumbered by tech-knowledge.”
Yipee! Should we sell our 8-tracks, Leisure Suits,Snoot Boots & GM Electric Car to prepare for this Techno-Epiphany? Or, should we all “duck & cover?”
Google seems to offer more relevant results from the few searches that I have done in both.
As far as MS throwing money marketing Vista, it appears that I see a lot more Mac commercials unless you count the ones with the fat guy representing PC as Vista commercials.
Vista is way superior to any OS apple has ever produced. However, it has obstacles that other OSes don’t have to deal with. One, it is the defacto with over 90% of market so all the thugs go after it as far as virus creations, etc. Two, as apple itself admits, MS has to deal with various manufacturers and the majority of Vista problems were caused by it being new to PC manufacturers. Ever since I upgraded to service pack 1 and disabled a couple of multimedia options that came with my PC (not vista), the OS has been every bit as reliable as my old XP with a lot more refined look and feel and additional options. Windows 7 is just vista additionally refined which should be very nice.
Google knows how to search but Microsoft knows how to write operating systems. Throwing money at advertising such as MS is doing to overtake Google and apple is doing to overtake PC doesn’t work without substance behind it.
I find the passion of MS haters that defy all logic very amusing.
Google is trying to take over the universe. They harvest your info when you use all their wonderful apps like gmail, Google maps, Google Earth, Sky (next, it will be underwater). Then, when they get hacked, what happens? And in the meantime-ADS, ADS, ADS!
Still as ageist as Live. We wont be using it.
I also oppose ageism, and if AgeistWebsites won’t be using Bing, I won’t be using Bing.
I LOVE GOOGLE FOREVER.IT IS ALWAYS THE BEST.
the advertising for bing is so confusing that no one i’ve spoken to knows what the heck is being advertised. they were surprised to learn it was for bing, a new search engine.
and what is with that dsktop picture? why is it there? give me the clean, unobscured web page of google.
so far, they both show the same results. except i did do one search that got four hits in google and none in bing.
i’ll stay with google.