Commentary
Hold Up The Bing Bandwagon
- by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, June 4, 2009
I seem to be in the minority. Everybody (including fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman) seems to be jumping on the Bing bandwagon. It's generated some good initial reviews, and Aaron goes as far as to say, "Bing is far and away the most serious challenge to Google that anyone's ever posed."
I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong. Bing is a good step forward for Microsoft. It shows they're serious about search. But unlike Aaron, I don't think Bing is going to make a significant difference in market share numbers. I think Microsoft will get a temporary blip, causing everyone to rush to pronounce Google's imminent death, and then everyone will go back to searching the way they did before: on Google.
Wanted: Revolutionaries!
Search needs an iPhone. Bing is a Razr. Bing is a repackaging of the same old experience, the same blue links. Microsoft has added some filters and additional navigation. But at the core, there's nothing revolutionary about it. It won't break a habit.
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Here's the fundamental problem. Microsoft says search is broken, and Bing is the answer. If Bing is the answer, it must mean that search wasn't really that badly broken. In fact, it must have been barely scratched. Because the Bing experience really isn't that different than my Google experience. Bing narrowed the gap, but they didn't jump to the other side. It seems to me that it wasn't search that was broken. It was Live Search that was broken. And, if we agree on that, than Bing is a pretty effective band-aid.
What We Need is an iPhone of Search
But what if Microsoft is right (as I suspect they are), and search is broken? What if we could have a significantly better search experience? What would it take to deliver that? It requires scrapping all preconceived notions and starting over. It requires an approach like the iPhone.
The iPhone isn't a mobile phone, it's a mobile Web and computing device. The phone is secondary. The iPhone is in the middle of changing the way we interact with online. We squeeze, spread, stroke, tap and shake. The iPhone also opened up an ecosystem of functionality. The App Store is the true genius of the iPhone: little bits of integrated functionality, making our lives more fun, more productive and more connected. Apple never intended to catch up. It intended to vault over the competition, changing the rules and opening a new marketplace. Apple strategists had nothing short of revolution on their minds.
What Bing has done is heated up the search race again, and that might be the best thing that comes out of its launch. The amount of ink generated already shows that we all want a more competitive search space. Google has had it relatively easy for a long time.
Catching the Wave
Ironically, the most exciting thing I saw last week got lost amongst all the buzz about Bing. Google's Wave does for email what I am proposing for search: it takes the current status quo and completely shatters it. Wave may be an integral piece in a new, richer world of online functionality, delivered to you through the Chrome Browser. Google is slowly assembling a critical mass of SaaS applications that threatens to change our concept of how we do things digitally. As those pieces come together, count on search to be at the core of it.
If I were Microsoft, that's what would be keeping me up at night. Its empire was built on a foundation that's over 20 years old: the concept of desktop applications. It has struggled to move into the new world of SaaS. But Google seems to be getting it and building a new world order around it. Now, that's a revolutionary concept.
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Editor's Note: Yesterday's Search Insider was initially emailed to subscribers with the wrong byline. It was Aaron Goldman who wrote it, not Gord Hotchkiss. We apologize for the error and any confusion.
I like Bing. I remember telling colleagues some years ago about Google when it launched.
This morning I was doing some search and without even thinking, went to Bing first. That said, I reached a few info dead-ends and went to Google.
But this to me at least, seems the first viable competitor to come along in quite a while.
We'll see.
It depends how you see search evolving. If you think the iPhone is simply the pinnacle of mobile communication and there will not be anything better then you're probably right - Bing isn't the final version of search. But if you realise that the iPhone is simply another iteration, an interim point to another, even better, model, then you might see that Bing is an evolutionary step. Sure, it doesn't have all the answers to search, but it's a big step on from what we have at the moment.
Gord - well put. Agree that Bing is more of a catch-up to Google than a vault-over and there is room/need for a game-changing iPhone-like product -- eg, something like Hunch.
That said, catching up to Google is still a big deal. Every incremental % of search share nets millions of dollars in ad revenue. Per my column yesterday, it's going to take some drastic action for Bing to really close the gap in search share (including buying Yahoo search) but it can be done.
As for breaking the Google Habit, I posted this link in my response to your comment yesterday, but thought I'd share it again...
Breaking the Google Habit: A 12 Step Program
http://digitalseachange.blogspot.com/2009/06/breaking-google-habit-12-step-program.html
Starting in Search and working within some SaaS models, I see Google as making most of the advances as of late with finding ways to package up all of their offerings into centralized hubs or at least that seems where they trying to go.
Bing just spending an hour in it or so, has some really nice UX features that make it a good step in the right direction, but not enough for me yet to abandon Google. The preview onhover state is nice, the related searches and history on the left is great and the video autoplay onhover is nice.
Will Google and I ever break up? Probably not, but I might just keep Bing as my mistress ;)
That white oval on the top right of address bar has Google. When it is changed to Bing, that will be the money changer. And who's to say Google is just sitting on the sidelines? I leave the opinions to the experts.
Have tried Bing once so far. Was actually surprised at how much of a Google clone it was in looks. Wasn't all that impressed with the additional search selections suggested by the engine. All in all not different enough to cause Google problems, esp. since we know the big G will not just roll over and take it.
iPhone of search. interesting take. I think that fits with the whole underlying theme Bing has now surfaced and that Balmer's been saying for a while; Search, is not done yet... at all.
I do wonder sometimes if our friends at G get a bit of a break sometimes by many folks when it comes to innovation credit. It is interesting that the G Wave notion of a "webtop" is something that Mark Andressen RELEASED in 1997 with Netscape Netcaster http://money.cnn.com/1997/04/15/technology/netscape_netcaster/
This adaptation of the old PointCast push technology generated a web app/OS that fundementally woke up the OS marketplace in general, even though it didn't succeed commercially. Wave is only small adaptation of the theme that Barksdale & Andressen had in 1997, updated to make facebook even a bigger time suck and blur communications-type even further. At a time where people are yearning for contextual relevance in this data overload, Wave seems to throw fly against that notion completely.
It'll be interesting to see now there has been a significant leap in the search space, how G reacts. In the end, the clear winner will be the average person (outside of the industry) that prior to all of this, still couldn't find what they were looking for with existing search experiences.
Friends at Microsoft..
I really hope you're right. I hope that Bing is just the first in a long series of improvements. I'd like nothing better than a tight race of innovation. Look at what it's done for the mobile space, which seems to be finally living up to it's (up to now) over hyped promise. It would be good for search, it would be great for users, and, with that, great for advertisers. The current situation isn't good for anyone, including, in the long run, Google. So please..amaze us! So far you've conditionally and mildly impressed us.
Okay..having just seen the first of the Bing commercials...all I can say is a massive case of overpromising and under delivering. As I said in the first column..I have no problems with Bing as an incremental improvement in search from Microsoft. What I have a huge problem with is duping users into thinking it's something far more than it is. Hell bent for glory? Come on!