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Clarifying my Bing.com thoughts
Some clarifications on my "hundred million mistakes" column, on Microsoft's new Bing search engine. The dozens of comments have brought up several good points I thought I should address:
Several comments asked me what I think of the Bing.com user experience. It's good. The search results page is nicely laid out (a near clone of Google), and the extra rollover features will be helpful to that subset of users who use it. The results themselves seem to be pretty complete, too.
In other words, Bing.com offers mainly what Google offers, with some extras. And in turn, I'd add that Google offers mainly what Bing.com offers, with some extras. They're both good search engines; there's no major breakthrough on either side.
And that was my point: Microsoft launched a copy of Google and is spending a hundred million dollars to tell people to switch from Google to Bing, which offers nothing significantly different or better. In this experience-driven age, copying the market leader is not a catch-up strategy. Microsoft has lots of resources and lots of talent and can and should do better than this.
I remember several years ago Yahoo made the press for a major ad campaign - not sure how many millions, but it wasn't cheap - touting Yahoo Search, telling people to switch away from Google for no clear added advantage. We've seen this play out before. (Incidentally, Yahoo owns a great competitor to Google, in search, but has done little with it... a column I keep meaning to write and hope to soon.)
One or two comments brought up the XBox. There Microsoft entered a mature console videogame market dominated by Nintendo and Sony and carved out a significant market share. Very good point. In that case, though, Microsoft created something different and better than the market leaders - a super powerful game console, offering Halo (a game exclusive to the Xbox), at a more affordable price than the PlayStation. All together that created a compelling customer experience for the share of the gaming market that went over to Microsoft. Once again, I don't see how Bing.com is doing anything to significantly compete with fast, easy, free Google search.
In a way this is a heavyweight fight we've never seen before: two competitors offering a similar service, with one company spending a hundred million dollars, and the other spending zero. It says something about the times when one can predict the zero-spender as the winner.
As for those commenters who worry that I'm bashing Microsoft or have a "deep-seated prejudice" against it, I'm not sure what to say, given that I'm offering Microsoft advice for how to succeed. I will admit, though, to a strong bias - in favor of creating a good experience. If a company creates something good for users, I'm in favor of it. It's when a company is capable of so much more, yet chooses an increasingly outdated strategy to burn its money on, that prompts me to offer my two cents.
I am basically giving bing a few weeks of usage to see if in every day life it helps me to find things quicker. So far it's pretty much on the same par as google.
I can't see Bing making a serious dent to Google's position. It either needs to offer something seriously different that vastly improves the way we search, or show more relevant search results than Google. Neither of which do I see Bing achieving. The guys are Cuil are trying out new things, but their results are often less relevant then Googles - lets not forget the guys at Cuil at ex-Google exmployees, so if they can't beat Google, who can?!
MS doesn't need to give people a reason to switch to Bing from Google, but to make people familiar and comfortable, and to keep them from switching *away* from Bing to Google. Remember, Bing is now the default search engine in IE (and in any browser that uses Windows' default configured search engine).
In the end, Microsoft could care less about the results copying the Google search engine provides. That is not the end game. It's the advertising dollars they can generate from the Google ad model they intend to copy.
In case you thought you were unimportant, it was only through your newsletter that I discovered that Microsoft was behind Bing. Just the other day someone posted a map link to it and I was like where did that site come from? I didn't investigate...but now thanks to you, I know! :)
Aren't most businesses just copies of other businesses with a slight tweak to how things are done? Since this is about customer experience, though, here's my two cents on how Bing improved over Google.
Bing has a superior image & video search screen than does Google, in my opinion. It offers choice of layout, and also doesn't limit your search to just the one screen of results, something you can't do with Google unless you have a browser addon.
Just those two little things will help Google realize that there IS competition and get on the ball to continue evolving and creating even better experience. It seems they've been resting with regard to their search results pages. Maybe not on their ranking formulas, but definitely on layout.
I think there's more than a pissing contest when comparing Bing vs. Google search.
I think Microsoft is in this for the long term, and they are going to be enhancing Bing further. Suddenly, they appear like a nimble start-up vs. Google who has been slower to change.
What's notable with Bing is their API and how they are encourage innovation around it (e.g. competition http://willcodeforgreen.gnomedex.com), 2) Bing's Powerset semantics doing its work in the background, 3) piping-in additional information to surround the search experience (like Kosmix), 4) innovations in the UI.
See this paraphrazed comment from Peter Norvig, head of research at Google "Norvig’s first answer to the Bing question was to say that he likes the idea of innovation in the user interface. He thinks that there is a lot of room for more such innovation, and for a lot of different reasons. Historically, there has been too much emphasis on getting the ranking right, at the expense of all else. Of course (he added) a quality ranking is something that you absolutely must have. But for too long it has been the only thing that has been worked on, and that needs to change. He thinks Bing has made some good steps, and that there are a lot more that can be made as well."
I was there and heard him unexpectedly praise Bing's UI.
http://irgupf.com/2009/06/19/semantic-technology-search-panel/
"In this experience-driven age, copying the market leader is not a catch-up strategy"
Now that Google has announced that it is entering the PC Operating System space I hope you reserve the same scrutiny for them. Initially it may actually offer a better experience, competitive products often do. I anticipate a day when, once succcessful, the Google PC will no longer be free, there will be so many widely varied customer demands (languages and regionalization, usage and applications, consumer and buisness needs) that the experience will seem burdened by serving so many agendas. Of course because of its success it will have caught the attention of world wide hackers and be constantly failing and causing you to do automatic updates to plug holes. But I bet it will have a great search engine and a mediocre me-too browser.
But, Google's proposed OS is NOT copying the market leader. They are offering something different ... something that is supposed to let you get connected to the internet within a small number of seconds after you boot. How long does it take an XP or Vista system to boot and get you to a point where you can run IE (or Firefox or anything else)? The time is measured in minutes.