Bing vs Google

June 24th 09, 09:40

It's even got it's own sound effect, but is Microsoft's new search engine really going to challenge Google's dominance?

The usual Microsoft bashers are already giving it a hard time, it's even been dubbed "But It's Not Google" but what's it really like?

Doing the same search on Google and Bing is the only real way to compare like for like in terms of search results and there isn't a lot of difference. The results are listed differently, with the video previews in particular pretty cool and the categorisation useful, but there's drawbacks too. The 'did you mean?' feature of google is automatic on Bing, but that's annoying if you didn't mistype your original query.

And Google indexes much deeper, i.e. it shows more results, which whilst you wouldn't go through all the pages, means that it is searching more sites. Bing will probably catch up but this is significant at least in the short term. But the short term is where this will battle is most significant.

The advertising is good but it's probably quite telling that the YouTube versions of the ads far outstrip the features video that Bing has also posted. Do users really know the difference and why they should switch? I don't think so.

Google has become part of our everyday life, whether it's search (and it's new search features), Gmail, iGoogle apps and the introduction of Wave (the new collaboration tool) coming soon. It's even become part of our everyday parlance and gained an entry in our dictionaries.

But would you ever Bing something?

I don't think your typical user will take the Pepsi challenge and do identical searches comparing like for like results and it's for this reason I think they'll struggle. But never underestimate Microsoft, oh, and a $100million advertising campaign!

Barnaby Ellis
Head of Digital
GyroHSR London