jun 6
2009

Hating Bing

Even though everyone instantly knee-jerk hated on Bing, Microsoft's new search engine launched last week, it quickly doubled Microsoft's search size and flew by Yahoo in popularity. Update: Oh, this is cool. Someone built a blind search engine where users compared the results of the big three and voted on the best. Bing apparently was winning!

12 comments

Let's see if that sustains past the weekend.

posted by Aaron at 2:24 AM on June 7, 2009

Amazing. Well, props to MS then. Can't hate them for pulling it off, even if the victory is minor.

posted by Brian Van at 3:52 AM on June 7, 2009

cuil was probably beating yahoo in its first day or two. :-)

bing is already tanking. marketing and the ie6 lock-in will help MS, but i don't think google is sweating it too much.

posted by adm at 8:10 PM on June 7, 2009

Hmm.... what happens a week or three out is irrelevant, right? What matters is whether, over the next few months, when I can't find what I'm looking for with Google and I give this Bing thing a shot, it delivers the goods.

And let's face it -- there are times when Google is infuriatingly dumb, and it shure as hell could be improved on. I happen to think that it's _extremely unlikely_ that MS would be the ones to do that improving, but I'm more than willing to be proven wrong.

And if all that happens, I see no reason why I wouldn't use Bing as my primary search engine, and the whole search engine tide couldn't shift.

posted by alesh at 12:25 AM on June 8, 2009

i tried it it was great for use thanks

about me

posted by jerryford2009 at 10:16 AM on June 8, 2009

I think non-google search engines will only surpass google if a groundswell of neterati proclaim it to be the tits, like something out of that Gladwell book. That's what happened with Google from my perspective. I just remember hearing "it's so much better" back in my Yahoo days. There was an almost Apple-like shiny shiny cachet stylishness to the buzz about it and about identifying as a Google user. Curious, I checked it out, it worked fine, and I liked the clean and simple interface. I don't know that I really noticed that my searching was any better, but I stuck with it. Maybe it was the silly name. I don't think the bulk of users recognize that there are things Google can't or doesn't find. We non-sophisticated users seem to get by well enough with what it does find and don't really think about what else might be possible. Sad, surely, but I thin also true. So in regard to adopting a new search engine, it seems like it will be hard to convince many people why they should even bother checking it out unless it becomes the cool thing to do. I think I did one search on Cuil, said "huh" and never went back. Haven't even gotten that far with Bing. They need one of those astroturf campaigns like the political groups gin up so it seems like all the People Who Matter are using it.

posted by Eric at 10:51 AM on June 8, 2009

Why is there so much emotion (positive and negative) when a news story focuses on Microsoft? Let's stick with the facts and how they might or might not impact us. In what ways is Bing better or worse than Google or Yahoo? How will (or should) Bing's introduction affect marketers? Here are my newest thoughts on Bing, Yahoo!, and Google.

posted by Marco at 12:02 PM on June 8, 2009

Bing does a nice job of categorizing search results. It has a nice layout and does a fairly decent job of anticipating my intention.

Try searching CNN for instance...they cut away all the clutter and give you just one option. I think if they can get this right most of the time, people will come to expect it.

I still go to google when I want to find info on obscure subjects but for the meat of my day to day searches, bing has been treating me right.

posted by ryanol at 2:28 PM on June 8, 2009

New search engines appear intriguing because when you pop your name into them, you get a different batch of results than you're used to seeing. Bing helped me find a minor review of the same-named competitor of one of my clients that had resisted Google's "smarter" searches.

That was cool. The lame results for my other searches wasn't.

posted by Mark Gisleson at 9:29 AM on June 9, 2009

The image search is awesome. I also really like the travel feature, check it out if you haven't already. I bet a lot of people overlook Travel on there, but it's already better than sites like Expedia and Priceline IMO.

posted by ShellMedia at 10:32 AM on June 9, 2009

MS's massive ad budget will keep it propped above Yahoo for a while, but I think it will fall back into the old Live slot of 3rd.

posted by French Rocket at 7:24 PM on June 9, 2009

I think that MSN's massive ad campaign is paying off. The jury is still out about whether they can sustain this share of the SE audience. Let's see them put their money where their mouth is in the long run though.

posted by George at 2:06 PM on June 11, 2009




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