How Bing is out-innovating Google

[Ironman273]

How Bing is out-innovating Google

By Jay Yarow, Business Insider

August 2, 2010 3:04 p.m. EDT

(Business Insider) -- Google is one of the smartest, most innovative companies in the world, but in its core business -- online search -- it's being routinely shown up by Microsoft's third-place search engine, Bing.

Bing is a surprisingly fast-moving, innovative product -- and it's forcing Google to play catch-up time and time again.

Years ago, for example, Google set itself apart from other search engines by focusing on making its homepage load faster than everyone else's, including a very simple design with a white background.

Then, last year, Microsoft launched Bing with a colorful, photography-driven design.

When Bing's look became popular, Google launched a feature to enable its users to make Google look colorful like that, too. For a day, Google even replaced its default background with an image, mimicking Bing's look. Google users were not impressed with the decision, however. They howled, and Google quickly reverted back to the plain white look.

The decision to change its layout and then to undo the change shows that Google is feeling the pressure of Microsoft going hard into the search space.

And this wasn't the first time Google's hand was forced by Microsoft. In October, Microsoft announced at an industry conference that it was integrating Twitter results into Bing. Google was upstaged, since it hadn't announced a Twitter deal yet. The company scrambled to get Twitter integration, which it announced just hours later. The move looked desperate.

Google has also borrowed Bing's look on its search results pages.

When Bing launched, it tried pursuing search from a different angle than Google. Industry observer John Battelle wrote that Microsoft was trying to help "people make decisions in a new way." It was doing this by breaking up search results into categories. Instead of getting just 10 blue links like Google offered, you get subheadings for each result.

So, type in "Friday Night Lights," for instance, and you get "News," general results, videos, then "cast," then "episodes." At first, it's a bit jarring, but it can be useful by breaking up search results into what you need. Just over a year after Bing debuted, Battelle noted that Google was changing its design to follow the search design Bing was using.

For all of Bing's new ideas, it hasn't translated into big gains in users. The latest numbers from comScore show that 63 percent of searches in the U.S. are performed on Google, but just 13 percent are done on Bing.

Thanks to that huge share of search, Google has built a wildly profitable business. Meanwhile, Microsoft is losing billions online, dumping money into Bing and other properties.

So, while Microsoft gets credit for innovating and forcing Google's hand, it's not paying off.

Source: CNN

[spacer]

All the "innovation" in the world does mean anything if your searches don't return useful links. Google, in my opinion, still leads the pack in search result relevance.

[thealexweb]

All the "innovation" in the world does mean anything if your searches don't return useful links. Google, in my opinion, still leads the pack in search result relevance.

this, it annoys me that FaceBook now uses Bing as its search engine.

[jakem1]

Let's not forget the recent changes to Google's image search as well which makes it an exact copy of Bing's image search.

It's funny because if the tables were turned the blogosphere would be going crazy about how Microsoft copy. When Google do it nobody says a word.

[Lechio]

Google FTW. Bing! is only good for advertisers, spam sites and spyware. Most of the results on Bing! return just that, with the intended site being quite down the list.

This "article" has everything but objectivity, just another praise the Microsoft advertising machine.

[Nagisan]

Let's not forget the recent changes to Google's image search as well which makes it an exact copy of Bing's image search.

It's funny because if the tables were turned the blogosphere would be going crazy about how Microsoft copy. When Google do it nobody says a word.

Only if Microsoft had a decent search engine.

I tried the blind search test thing awhile back, and like 9 out of 10 tests that I did personally, resulted in better results from Google.

What Bing! needs to innovate, is a decent search engine.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Google FTW. Bing! is only good for advertisers, spam sites and spyware. Most of the results on Bing! return just that, with the intended site being quite down the list.

This "article" has everything but objectivity, just another praise the Microsoft advertising machine.

You should maybe read the article....

Bing has brought about some good changes for Google.

Personally Bing should be renamed Bling, much prefer the simpler look of Google.

[HawkMan]

Google FTW. Bing! is only good for advertisers, spam sites and spyware. Most of the results on Bing! return just that, with the intended site being quite down the list.

This "article" has everything but objectivity, just another praise the Microsoft advertising machine.

oh more anti MS drivel with no substance or proof from our resident lechio.... surprise..

oh and what part wasn't objective ? it listed feature Bing invented, and that where then copied by Google. and it didn't even cover them all or even the most blatant, like the aforementioned image search.

[acnpt]

I like my search engine to be simple and fast, that's the reason google became so popular.

Shame they are now 'innovating' for PR than usability.

[Elliott]

I still get much better results from Google. Then again, I've been training Google for years now. I imagine if I gave Bing a one month trial, it would be spitting out pretty similar results by the end, but I've just never bothered because I see no reason to switch.

[marc2003]

All the "innovation" in the world does mean anything if your searches don't return useful links. Google, in my opinion, still leads the pack in search result relevance.

bing-o. :shifty:

[jakem1]

Only if Microsoft had a decent search engine.

I tried the blind search test thing awhile back, and like 9 out of 10 tests that I did personally, resulted in better results from Google.

What Bing! needs to innovate, is a decent search engine.

Yes, Bing has a way to go when it comes to matching search results but there's more to a good search engine than just search results. As far as I'm concerned Google are ahead when it comes to search results and maps but Bing aren't far behind in those areas and are ahead in others. It wouldn't take much for me to switch over to Bing, especially when they are improving their site at a faster rate than Google.

By the way, I think the quality of Bing's image search results has always been better than Google's.

[Nagisan]

Yes, Bing has a way to go when it comes to matching search results but there's more to a good search engine than just search results. As far as I'm concerned Google are ahead when it comes to search results and maps but Bing aren't far behind in those areas and are ahead in others. It wouldn't take much for me to switch over to Bing, especially when they are improving their site at a faster rate than Google.

By the way, I think the quality of Bing's image search results has always been better than Google's.

If Bing! returned better results I personally would have no problem switching to it. Until then, I will continue using Google, no matter how fast Bing improves.

Google...?

Is that the search engine with a funny name that's trying to be a replacement for Bing?

No, its the search engine that returns relevant results.

[Anibal P]

Even the moronic customers I help at work get ****ed off when their search engine gets ninja'd by bing, bout lost it on day when a customer binged for Google to then do a search :)

Even stupid people know bing sucks

[lamminium]

Bing has been working well for me. :)

[Lechio]

oh and what part wasn't objective ? it listed feature Bing invented, and that where then copied by Google. and it didn't even cover them all or even the most blatant, like the aforementioned image search.

Google has had image search for ages... Long before the failed MSN search > Live and now Bing!

[brentaal]

Google has had image search for ages... Long before the failed MSN search > Live and now Bing!

He's talking about the redesigned Google Image Search.

[Nagisan]

He's talking about the redesigned Google Image Search.

Which I have on 1 computer on my network but not on my other computer. Kind of annoying, if I use one computer I get to use the redesigned interface, but on my other I have to go back to the old one.

[Lechio]

He's talking about the redesigned Google Image Search.

So Bing! copies image search from Google, and it innovates when it makes a few cosmetic changes to it. Gotcha. ;)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

So Bing! copies image search from Google, and it innovates when it makes a few cosmetic changes to it. Gotcha. ;)

It's the other way around - the re-designed Google Image Search is a more or less direct copy of the Bing Image Search.

[brentaal]

So Bing! copies image search from Google, and it innovates when it makes a few cosmetic changes to it. Gotcha. ;)

Stop spinning things.

[Dysphoria]

In the last several years, Microsoft seems to be more of the follower than the leader in innovation.

[Inklin]

I still prefer Google and I likely always will. I just don't feel comfortable using Bing, or any other search engine after years of being used to how Google works and somewhat looks!

[Solid Knight]

Both engines give me bad results most of the time anyway. For example, you want to buy some transformers that aren't robots from cybertron. And of course both give you an onslaught of crappy blogs no matter what you're looking for. They need an option to filter out blogs entirely.

[LaP]

I think MS did a great job with Bing. The search results are good. Better than what they used to be couple of years ago.

But MS needs to improve the support for country outside of USA. Bing Maps is awful for Canadian. I live in Qu?bec City and did try Bing Maps and the maps are outdated and not accurate at all (a lot of lakes and small roads are missing). Google Map is vastly superior for people living in Quebec. So if i'm gonna use Google Maps then i'll use Google as my homepage and not Bing.