Microsoft Bing vs Google

[dwarakesh]

The software giant Microsoft has fired a fresh salvo in its war with search giant Google. The company's revamped search engine called Bing aims to do to Google Search, what Google's Chrome aimed to do to Microsoft's Internet Explorer: weaken the dominance.

At stake for both the technology giants is the growing web advertising pie. Incidentally, this is not Microsoft's first attempt to thwart Google's Internet dominance. In the past too, the company has made many not-so-successful attempts to shake Google's Internet hegemony.

However, Bing shows promise feels analysts. The search engine traffic figures for the first few weeks too are positive. Here we present to you how the two stand vis-a-vis each other in features, appearance and many other counts.

[dwarakesh]

Home page

Bing: Bing brings a colourful user interface for users. It has a side panel bar that displays search with related and history links relevant to users' search terms. The serach engine features a different background image everyday. The search engine comes with a set of related services, including Bing Travel, Cashback and Maps for Enterprise. Bing focuses on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision (Shopping), planning a trip (Travel), researching a health condition (Health) or finding a local business (Local).

Google: Google for long sports a cleaner and simpler looks. The search engine displays stark white page with a search box. The upper left corner of Google home page links to other Google services including email, Maps, Orkut and images

[dwarakesh]

Features

Bing: Some of the new features in Bing vis-a-vis Google include getting directions to locations with only one mouse click, and the ability to hover over a search result to see more information, without having to open a new link. The 'decision engine' promises to make things like buying a digital camera, booking a flight or searching for a restaurant easier by serving up results based on similar previous searches. Bing also has some other little-known but useful features of its old search engine. These include, smart motion preview, photos on the home page, Bing 411, Bing Mobile and Local Business Centre.

Google: Google recently introduced new features in its search engines to attract users, making Microsoft's task even harder. The Explore Google Search page displays 16 different Google search features including Movie Times, weather, dictionary, calculator, stock quotes to name a few.

[dwarakesh]

Porn

Bing: Internet security experts warned that Bing gives users easy access to pornographic material. It is possible for anyone, of any age, to view explicit pornographic videos without even leaving the search engine. Bing has a "autoplay" tool that lets users preview videos simply by hovering a mouse over them. The tool may become a liability because users can have easy access to porn videos on Bing, and not have to log on to one of the porn websites.

However, recently Microsoft said that it has adjusted its search engine to make it easier to filter out porn. Also, the search engine doesn't return any result on the keyword `sex' from India. However, if you tell the search engine that you're from USA, or any one of the European countries (users can easily change country without even logging in), several links are returned.

Google: Google too seems quite porn-friendly as the search engine throws huge number of links for the keywords porn or sex. The search giant too displays pages from India.

[dwarakesh]

Marketshare

Bing: Microsoft grabbed 12.1 per cent of US Internet searches for the week June 8-12, according to data released by industry tracker comScore. That is up from 11.3 per cent in the June 1-5 period -- the week in which Bing was launched -- and up from 9.1 per cent the week before that.

Google: In May, Google got solid 65 per cent of US searches. As for comparison, in May, Yahoo had 20.1 per cent and Microsoft had 8 per cent share.

[dwarakesh]

Branding

Bing: Though Bing takes on the world's number one search engine Google, it is not a search engine or rather not just a search engine. The software giant dubs Bing as a "decision" engine, rather than a search engine. According to Microsoft, Bing is not just another search engine, but a decision engine that will help people in taking decisions. As its official release said, "Microsoft Corp unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions."

Google: Google places itself in the web search engine category. Google's search engine accepts queries as a simple text and breaks up the user's text into a sequence of search terms.

[dwarakesh]

Going Live

Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc on September 7, 1998. They had four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world. Now Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, and employs over 20,000.

Bing: Microsoft, which has been testing the search engine internally under the name Kumo for several months, launched the new service, re-christened Bing in June 2009. Microsoft Bing aims to counter the growing dominance of Google Inc in the Internet space and earn a larger share of the growing Web advertising pie.

[appu.s8501]

nice features....

bing is decision engine...good...

wat kind of decision it going to take while compare to google 6th sense detection

[dwarakesh]

Ad campaign

Bing: Microsoft has not put any figure to its Bing ad campaign. However, reports peg advertising blitz to be around $100 million. In a series of spots, Microsoft tries to suggest that the Google search experience is cluttered, irrelevant and confusing. Though the campaign doesn't directly mention Google, the target is clear.

The campaign develops a theme similar to the one Microsoft used in its earlier commercials directed at Apple. In commercials targeted at Apple, Microsoft challenged ordinary people to find attractively priced laptops. All scenarios showed a laptop based on Microsoft's Windows platform to be the more cost-effective alternative to Apple. The theme of both campaigns being that while Google and Apple may have sexier brand image, but it is Microsoft products that offer pragmatic and affordable solution to consumers. The company is reportedly also doing some things on Facebook and Twitter, including a photo contest where the community will get to choose a winning photo to become the backdrop for Bing itself on a particular day.

Google: The company so far has not come out with any ad campaign that answers to Microsoft's ad campaign.

Source: indiatimes