http://www.bing.com


release in june 3rd
anyone gonna at least give it an honest try?

5/28/2009 11:49:47 PM

If Google isn't broke, why fix it? Why reinvent the wheel?

5/29/2009 12:20:29 AM

Microsoft's been trying to make a credible entry into search for how long?

I'm sure this one's going to be different, though...

5/29/2009 12:55:22 AM

i'll bet the functionality sucks on any browser other than IE.

5/29/2009 1:17:41 AM

Bada ?

5/29/2009 1:21:24 AM

Quote :

"If Google isn't broke, why fix it? Why reinvent the wheel?"

They just want a bigger piece of the search market with Bing, not the whole market. They're at like 8% now, a jump to 10% would probably pay for all the marketing and development costs.

And.....

5/29/2009 8:21:09 AM

This might be a huge blunder for Microsoft or the best decision they ever made. Basically, if it's not significantly better than google, why would the average person change? "Just google it"

5/29/2009 8:38:05 AM

IBNoen

5/29/2009 9:01:43 AM

binger

5/29/2009 10:09:45 AM

^ I hardly know'er!

5/29/2009 10:26:47 AM

But ... but ...

But It’s Not Google.

5/29/2009 10:37:00 AM

i might look at it, but i'm not going to use it. i like google b/c it's simple and doesn't use all these graphics/flash/moving parts.

5/29/2009 10:39:29 AM

I, too, support Google.

5/29/2009 10:52:25 AM

if you're in teh know your Noen

5/29/2009 11:19:46 AM

My grandma and grandpa are gonna fucking love this. It's a lot different than Google is right now and helpful to people who need assistance with their internets.

5/29/2009 11:32:58 AM

Brand names are interesting. You hear people say "Go Xerox this" when they don't have a Xerox copier. Or, "I need a Kleenex", when they don't have that brand of tissues. People will be saying "go Google it" for some time, even if that's not their search engine of choice.

The wording isn't what's important, but the opportunity to reposition the brand name itself. People may be turned off my Microsoft name. So far as I can tell, they aren't associating their name with Bing, whereas, Live search is definitely brand associated. This can have good or ill effects. How many gamers really know its "Microsoft" Xbox for instance?

Anyways, be curious what their long-term strategy is for this. Brand repositioning isn't done lightly. (And, as always, Slashdot had a good discussion on this if anybody wants to read more).

[Edited on May 29, 2009 at 5:43 PM. Reason : .]

5/29/2009 5:43:36 PM

What Bing is better than google for:

Travel - Plain and simple, google doesn't do this. And it's WAY more user friendly (and faster) than Orbitz, Travelocity or Priceline, and seems to be on average ~$10-15 bucks cheaper for every flight I check against.

Video Search Videos play on hover. Data results seem to be about the same, but just having the hover+play feature makes a big difference. It also indexes most of the major network sites for tv shows, but I still like Hulu a LOT better for that.

Shopping I'm sure Microsoft is losing assloads of money on this, but cashback is AMAZING. This past winter, I got a 28" monitor and a Wii for almost 50% off the lowest retail price I could find, because of massive discounts just for purchasing through the shopping link. This is probably the only feature of live.com that I'm glad they've kept.

Web Search Three reasons I think it's really worth giving bing a shot, if not making it better than google for regular web searches:

1) They fixed their result sets. Wikipedia is finally prominent, and for obscure searches (especially technical stuff), their accuracy matches google almost exactly. Results seem to be much better pruned against spam links, but that may just be my limited searches
2) Auto-suggest, rather than auto-complete. This has already helped me on at least 20% of my searches. It seems like the same thing at first, but auto-suggest is REALLY powerful.
3) The context bar to the left. Related searches, categories and search history have all made real impacts on my day to day usage. Google doesn't do this, and it's painful already not seeing it there when I'm on google and not bing.


---------

What sucks balls?

Image search. Results are terrible in comparison to google images. The interface for bing (and previously live.com) is LIGHTYEARS better than google images... but bad data makes it worthless. And unfortunately this is probably 30%+ of my search usage, so I still use google a lot.

Maps. It doesn't look integrated like the rest of bing's sections. Virtual Earth just doesn't even come close to the ease-of-use of google maps. Don't even bother trying it... you'll give up in frustration after 2-3 minutes and just go over to maps.google.com

Local. Local is actually REALLY handy, but because it's tied directly to the Virtual Earth maps... well you can't really do much with it. For looking up phone numbers and addresses, it's pretty darn good though, and much better than google's local feature. Integration kills it for me though.

News. Their news section is just a joke. Google wins here hands down... although to be honest I don't think Bing/Live has yet made much investment in this area.

[Edited on May 29, 2009 at 9:09 PM. Reason : .]

5/29/2009 9:09:10 PM

Quote :

"If Google isn't broke, why fix it? Why reinvent the wheel?"

I fucking HATE it when people say this kind of shit. Yes, google kicks ass and I don't foresee a replacement any time soon. But you know what? People didn't think search was broken before Google:

Quote :

"Suffice it to say, search was not top of mind for most Internet executives in the late 1990s. Search was a commodity- a feature that was "good enough.""

-"The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture"

Google got to the game late. And if everyone just gave up at that point, we'd have a pretty shitty internet.

BTW, another great quote from the same book:

Quote :

"At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "F*cking Erich Schmidt is a f*cking pussy. I'm going to f*cking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm goign to f*cking kill Google." Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay.... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards.""

5/30/2009 6:36:13 AM

Quote :

"But you know what? People didn't think search was broken before Google"

I can assure you that they did. You were probably in elementary school back when Google debuted in '98, and we had to deal with yahoo, lycos, hotbot, excite and a giant list of shitty search engines that were ALL horrible. The first time I used google 11 years ago was the last time I ever used anything else.

That said, Google's been the search king for over a decade now, and I'm glad someone else is even attempting to compete with Google as this will help keep Google from becoming complacent.

5/30/2009 9:41:53 AM

heh. My friend tried to buy the 'bing' domain name 5 years ago (big Friends fan), but the guy who owned it wanted thousands of dollars.

5/30/2009 9:52:12 AM

^^I remember how shitty they were. was every person on the internet waiting for a better search engine? no, I don't think so.

5/30/2009 10:22:25 AM

i remember using alta vista

it sucked balls.

5/30/2009 11:51:55 AM

Yea, I used AltaVista before Google too ... and at some point some friends tried to get me to use DogPile, but I couldn't get over the retarded name long enough to even think about using it.

While the features and ability look really nice, Bing is a retarded name, I don't care who you are. Google is not and never was a retarded name, it actually means something but is misspelled.

I will, however, eat my words if Bing becomes successful despite the name.

5/30/2009 12:01:42 PM

i remember in middle school everybody used ask.com or something like that.. it was one where you type in an entire question. apparently they were all too fucking retarded to figure out what keywords to use

5/30/2009 12:48:40 PM

Quote :

"I can assure you that they did. You were probably in elementary school back when Google debuted in '98, and we had to deal with yahoo, lycos, hotbot, excite and a giant list of shitty search engines that were ALL horrible. The first time I used google 11 years ago was the last time I ever used anything else. "

Couldn't agree more.

5/30/2009 12:56:01 PM

Quote :

"anyone gonna at least give it an honest try?"

To be honest ... no.

It's simple: I don't trust Microsoft.

There is a certain amount of trust you put into any company you hand over your private data to (search terms, e-mail, financial profile, etc). Seriously, think about how much information you 'give' to Google on a daily basis. While Google is a profit driven company like any other and being international and on the radar of international politics they do have a history of unpopular decisions I still consider them better then MS. I do welcome the competition since inevitably it should make Google even better I don't plan on switching search engines.

[Edited on May 30, 2009 at 2:06 PM. Reason : +]

5/30/2009 1:54:42 PM

^There are a lot of arguments I can buy into for not using Microsoft products.

That one is just plain ignorance. Google seems to trust them just fine, as they run Windows and Office internally. They just licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft to use for their mobile mail sync service. "I don't trust X with my data" is just stupid. If you have a bank account, a driver's license, or own any property, there's a pretty good chance that data is sitting on a Windows server somewhere.

If anything, the privacy policy and history of customer data for most other technology companies is far better than Google's.

5/30/2009 2:20:55 PM

Quote :

"If you have a bank account, a driver's license, or own any property, there's a pretty good chance that data is sitting on a Windows server somewhere."

Apparently I wasn't clear enough. My concern isn't whether the data is stored on Microsoft products as that argument would, in fact, be stupid. This isn't a technical argument at all.

My point is that I do not trust Microsoft, the company, with my data. I have no intention of giving it up to them.

[Edited on May 30, 2009 at 2:31 PM. Reason : +]

5/30/2009 2:25:16 PM

If Microsoft actually wanted your information, they'd already have it.

5/30/2009 4:17:43 PM

know what i just realized? bing stands for But It's Not Google

[Edited on May 30, 2009 at 8:55 PM. Reason : or Bing Is Not Google]

[Edited on May 30, 2009 at 8:55 PM. Reason : ok so maybe seth godin made it up. ]

5/30/2009 8:54:33 PM

^yes, I read that post too. Why would microsoft call their own product "but it's not google". that's kind of self-defeating, right?

"Bing is Not Google" makes sense: it's a geeky, self referencing acronym. In fact, Microsoft getting caught up in how clever they think it is is the only reason I can see for them choosing such a dumb name over the previous name, Kumo (seems like a much better name to me)

microsoft has done this at least once. XNA: XNA's Not Acronymed.

5/31/2009 5:51:53 AM

Hahaha, I knew this was going to happen....

Type "Virtualization" into Google search. Wikipedia comes up first, then VMware. VMware is the clear-cut leader in the Virtualization realm, so that makes sense.

Type "Virtualization" into a Bing search. Wikipedia comes up first, then (OMFG!!!), Microsoft shows up ahead of VMware. One PAGE ahead of VMware. Funny, cause the preferences that show as you are typing make no mention of MS, but the fifth preference is "Virtualization VMware" . However, the left side related searches suggest you try "Virtualization Microsoft"

I'm sure there will be hundreds of instances like this...

6/1/2009 2:13:58 PM

http://www.bing.com/search?q=virtualization+software&form=QBLH
vmware is the first link for virtualization software.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=virtualization&form=QBRE
Microsoft is the 3rd for virtualization.

the microsoft site has virtualization in the url, vmware does not. I doubt theres anything evil going on here.

[Edited on June 1, 2009 at 2:41 PM. Reason : a]

6/1/2009 2:39:27 PM

Link 1 - As well it should be. Pretty coincidental that Microsoft Virtualization Software is the #1 related search and Virtualization Vista is #2. Also coincidental that it's placement is different than Google and Yahoo.

Link 2 - Google and Yahoo have VMware ahead of MS. Bing must be a better engine I guess....

EDIT - Bing does not list http://www.vmware.com/virtualization or http://www.vmware.com/technology/virtualization until page 3, however, both Google and Yahoo do on their first pages.

I don't really care, but that shit could get annoying fast.

I do wonder if they will continue their paid ads on Google and Yahoo though, beings that they can pepper any tech related search on Bing with a PPC ad.


[Edited on June 1, 2009 at 3:10 PM. Reason : edit]

6/1/2009 3:02:12 PM

I could see Bing's search assistance on the left side as something that could challenge google but all that will happen is google will integrate a similar feature into their search and bing will become less utilized. A buddy of mine the other day predicted that in 5 years google will have less that 50% of the market share of search though... his prophecy may be coming true hahaha

6/1/2009 3:35:51 PM

Quote :

"A buddy of mine the other day predicted that in 5 years google will have less that 50% of the market share of search though... his prophecy may be coming true hahaha"

I doubt that

http://blog.compete.com/2009/01/16/december-search-market-share-google-yahoo-live-ask-aol/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/google-gobbled-up-90-percent-of-all-us-search-growth-in-2008/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/google-gains-us-search-market-share-in-april-2009-comscore/

6/1/2009 3:48:13 PM

6/1/2009 7:19:14 PM

No bias here, clearly not.....

[Edited on June 1, 2009 at 8:18 PM. Reason : .]

6/1/2009 8:15:51 PM

haha

6/1/2009 8:20:46 PM

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/customsearch/thread?tid=7e907aa8280aa661&hl=en

6/1/2009 8:28:43 PM

^^ and ^^^ that is pretty disappointing I will personally be forwarding these shots on... ugh

6/1/2009 8:54:13 PM

Quote :

"...I'm sure there will be hundreds of instances like this..."

Try "micro" and a space on both Noen, yeesh

[Edited on June 1, 2009 at 9:11 PM. Reason : d]

6/1/2009 9:04:46 PM

Firefox:chrome::google:bing

why anyone would change is beyond me

6/1/2009 9:12:59 PM

I only got to play with Bing for an hour or two today, but most of the results were better or the same as Google for what I worked with.

I get that there is a bias on Bing for MS products, but there is also a bias in Google for Google products, why wouldn't there be?

6/1/2009 9:48:55 PM

6/1/2009 9:53:12 PM

whats the difference between a bing search result and a network solutions domain place holder?

6/1/2009 10:12:55 PM

is that a riddle? say it again, i'm good at these

6/1/2009 10:15:48 PM

Quote :

"Firefox:chrome::google:bing why anyone would change is beyond me"

This could probably go in another thread but...

I think chrome is by far the better browser. I don't have to wait for updates to download every other day. It also seems to startup a lot faster.

6/1/2009 10:52:36 PM

Quote :

"I get that there is a bias on Bing for MS products, but there is also a bias in Google for Google products...."

Bing has a retarded bias. Like if an NC State alum created a multi-million $ search that returned "Philip Rivers" #1 for a "best football player ever" query or "www.ncsu.edu" for a "prettiest college campus" search.

6/1/2009 11:17:30 PM

^let's be real here, that's simply not true.

Searching for window and getting windows results is entirely different from searching for "the best search engine" and getting bing (btw, both google and bing return almost the same results for that query).

If you want a little reverse bitching, try searching for "documents" on both engines. Google Docs show's up #1 on google, #2 on bing

Or mail: gmail is #1 on google, mail.com is #1 on bing.

A lot of this isn't corporate favoritism, a lot of it is the queries of users, which absolutely effect index results. Who on bing is going to be searching for mail and looking for gmail? Very likely they will be using google.com to look for that google service.

So lets use a LITTLE common sense here. That said, there's some good examples in here of Microsoft (in my personal opinion) needing to re-center their results on some common queries.

6/1/2009 11:37:07 PM