Comments for Bing Goes Live.com - Is it More Than Just Hot Air?

Bing Goes Live.com - Is it More Than Just Hot Air?

2009-06-01T09:50:10Z

Microsoft's new search engine Bing unexpectedly went live tonight, including a re-direct from http://www.live.com - previously Microsoft's 'personalized start page' destination. So search has usurped a Netvibes-like start page as Microsoft's default homepage for its web services.

In last week's launch announcement, Bing was being bandied about as Microsoft's latest attempt to steal market share away from Google. In particular, according to Microsoft, Bing will focus on four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business. We took the new search engine for a test run tonight.

]]> A note about the branding. Microsoft isn't known for its clever (or even coherent) branding, but we truly wonder about the decision to place images of hot air balloons on the bing.com homepage. What is that trying to tell us - that Bing is powered by hot air?

In any case, a search for our current topic de jour, "web 3.0", brought up fairly similar results for Google and Bing. Although, frankly, we found that Google's Universal Search, which mixes different types of results together in one page (such as video in the example below), gave us a better search experience here. In Bing, you have to click 'Videos' to get multimedia about Web 3.0.

Bing - "web 3.0"

Google - "web 3.0"

How about testing one of the four areas in which Bing is supposed to be focusing? Let's pick 'searching for a health condition'. My favorite search is for "diabetes type 1", so I keyed that into both search engines:

Bing - "diabetes type 1"

Google - "diabetes type 1"

The main difference between the two search engines is that Bing offers more options on the left, including special sections for symptons, medication, children, etc. It also offers 'related searches', which is typically helpful with health-related searches.

As usual, Google offers a straight list of results, but again with Universal Search (in this case news and video results inline with normal webpage results). With Google you can get more options, but you have to click "Show Options..." - and we're not sure how many users will do this. To be honest, I haven't once clicked it in my daily Google searches since it went live a couple of weeks ago.

So, Microsoft's Bing does hold promise in this type of search. Maybe it's not all hot air after all...

Comment from Daniel on 2010-10-22

2010-10-23T06:25:04Z

I like the preview feature in Bing. When you look at the search listings and move your mouse near a search record, it opens a small window that shows a preview of what is inside that website. This could save a lot of time excluding websites that you might not want to visit. Also given the fact that yahoo search has joined Bing, it might become a force soon that users and marketers cannot ignore.

Comment from Caz on 2010-10-22

2010-10-22T08:42:07Z

After a Microsoft "update" the Bing pop up came up. Although it said OK or "no" hitting the No brought up another pop asking for me to confirm that i wanted the programme to change details on my hard drive - again i refused and guess what the Bing first pop started again. It has taken twenty minutes for me to get rid of this and this included shutting down! I would never use a programme that needed to hijack users this way.

Comment from sarah on 2010-03-16

2010-03-17T00:54:58Z

it works for me. but i am a beginner.

Comment from Business Articles on 2009-10-31

2009-11-01T04:28:58Z

I think Bing can catch up to Google at some point. It's hard to count out Microsoft.

Comment from ugg on 2009-09-10

2009-09-10T08:57:07Z

I guess we've got to try and see, would be good to have some competition, but only if it actually works.

Comment from Hydraulic Valves on 2009-09-08

2009-09-09T06:42:34Z

I thinks google is the best.

Comment from Random Person/devoted microsoft customer on 2009-07-07

2009-07-08T06:49:44Z

Wait, nevermind, it started working again. All's well. And hey as long as my hotmail works and I don't have a virus like I feared, Bing's alright

Comment from Random Person on 2009-07-07

2009-07-08T06:39:19Z

Okay let me just say something. Ummm..Ever since this Bing thing happened I can't get to my mail and every time I try some random stupid page pops up with links that I don't want. How do i get to my mail? It's really confusing. Does anyone know how to switch back to the old Hotmail.

Comment from Tom Carroll on 2009-06-28

2009-06-29T06:53:04Z

Bing seems to be hijacking people who are attempting to reach their hotmail or msn mail and then the people at B
ing and Windows live expect the users to work out a fix. It is crazy. And even when you get to the search engine you can't get to your mail. It is a true Frankenstein or maybe Frankengates.

Comment from Danny on 2009-06-18

2009-06-18T14:01:38Z

Accidently landed on bing homepage via hotmail. Had no clue what it was so typed into the search field "what is bing?" Nothing useful came up but typing the same in google got me the answer straight away.

Comment from Sara on 2009-06-17

2009-06-18T00:48:38Z

This is by far, the worst search engine I have yet encountered. It doesn't bring up all the results, and worse yet, everytime I try to sign in to Hotmail, it redirects me to Bing as soon as I enter my password. I thought I was being bugged, or hacked. Why hadn't Microsoft bothered to let anyone know about this new thing? Gay.

Comment from Kameron on 2009-06-17

2009-06-17T08:58:12Z

"That's right," the man said. "I couldn't remember the word." He was the only t, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 175 million active users in amount of visitors, making Facebook the most popular social network, followed by MySpace and Twitter.other human at the loading dock this morning. The man didn't have a name, just a number, like the rest of the robots. Paris, at Night.

Comment from Daniel Lynders on 2009-06-15

2009-06-16T01:45:34Z

Am i the only one to notice the amount of extra advertising crap at the top of the Bing search results when compared to Google? That would annoy me to no end! Put ads and products at the bottom and information at the top. The internet (more specifically "Search" engines) should achieve their primary objective which is to provide information and/or links to informative sites - not to peddle crappy wears that relate only slightly to the text inputted in the search box! Goodbye Bing for Me!

Comment from fauzan on 2009-06-04

2009-06-04T18:05:41Z

I don't think having an image in the background is a good idea. It adds nothing to functionality and just slows page loading. I'm in Bali, and one of the things I love about Google is the quick page load in this part of the world where internet is not so fast.

Anyhow, if I want to see nice images, there are tons of places on the Net that I can.

I don't know, but one reason I don't like Microsoft in general is they always put too much clutter. Their interfaces are never really clean.

Comment from free virtual worlds for kids on 2009-06-04

2009-06-04T17:58:26Z

Don't really notice the 'show options' button when I search using Google. Bing looks promising.

Comment from Chris Ronk on 2009-06-03

2009-06-03T19:47:56Z

I've been testing Bing for the past couple days. While I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, I try to keep an open mind.

While I do not notice a big difference in the quality of search results; I do like how the results are laid out.

Comment from Visio Guy on 2009-06-03

2009-06-03T11:45:19Z

The image search is quite nice - it serves up the next images as you scroll (like on Windows Live), and the interface is cleaner than it was on Windows Live.

Also the filtering criteria are conveniently at hand on the left. Seems pretty cool to me.

Btw, start-photo data point: I have the mountain scene. I thought it was the Alps, since I'm in Munich, but it looks more like New Zealand actually.

Comment from Daniel on 2009-06-02

2009-06-02T09:32:14Z

Is Bing using RDFa?
Some results (books movies etc) have sippets like Google and Yahoo.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T20:30:29Z

Benney #21, thanks for picking that up *blush*. I've corrected now.

Comment from Dean on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T18:23:39Z

Wow, I'm impressed they deployed early. Kudos to their team!

Comment from Sunil on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T16:13:23Z

How dumb was it find a message in the image. Any idiot would know that it's just a good quality image which will keep changing.

Amazed with surprisingly good resuls bing shows up and love the non-texty rich interface.

Comment from Don't get it on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T15:36:03Z

I really don't get people complaining about Microsoft and their monopoly whilst they only want one Google. What about them?! The good guys aren't that good anymore...

Comment from website promotion services on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T14:38:30Z

Yes, I try it , nice one, perfect look, but still google is the best, hope in future it will be side by side with google

Thanks

Comment from J.J.Aby on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T13:54:06Z

Its just so silly to compare it with google on day one. What I can say is that Bing has a lot of potential, and hey,lets hope it just doesn't become another google... why would we want another one, lets hope its get better somehow.

Comment from Benny on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T13:49:22Z

Sorry for the nitpick, but unexpectantly is not a word. It's unexpectedly

Comment from ITrush on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T13:36:03Z

Interesting.. the site loads fast and at the same time it's clean.

Comment from MacStories on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T13:21:10Z

Tried it, it seems just another Microsoft low-budget service.

Back to Google.

Comment from Bravelittlememe on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T13:08:45Z

Another look at Bing's features, in particular the image search:

http://bravelittlememe.com/post/116211905/bing-is-microsofts-new-search-any-good

Comment from hj on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T12:51:12Z

Not for me!

I was inclined to try it but when I saw that homepage...

WTF is the purpose of that image, it adds no credibility.

Bing: definitely NOT FOR ME!

Comment from Marcello on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T12:20:17Z

When I type in my name, my personal website comes out on top. Does anything else matter? :-)

Comment from say-web.com on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:56:05Z

1st. Bing is a clone and not original
2nd. When Google left Yahoo, they had the technology. In the current case, they want to figure out what Google is doing.
3rd. Google has an arsenal of millions adsense search boxes, email and everything else search related. In order to compete they would have to develop that front as well, currently close to non existent

Looks to me their problem that they have too much cash to invest. It could be an inexpensive enterprise, yet, another failure, could further damage the company's image after Windows Vista.

If Microsoft search revenue affected directly the price of the stock, this would be an easy short sell.

Comment from venkat on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:49:53Z

Google gives more info as it indexes more sites,still long way to go to see about bing.

Comment from Nathan Zeldes on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:26:40Z

As to the hot air balloons - forget the allusion, and note that this is a page with text, controls and links on it. Colorful, distracting pictures are NOT the optimal background to make text visible. Google could easily have made their search page background into a magnificent image - and, wisely, they've kept it white and usable.

Oh well, at least the balloons aren't animated ;-)

Comment from Todd on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:24:03Z

Until I can pull apart Bing's crawler bots and compare their behavior to Google's, my default position remains - Bing is a weak "me too" offering release solely to route people to purchasing Windows desktop OS via IE browser entanglements.

Prove to me that search results are not being weighted in favor of web pages written in .NET generated by IIS.

Prove to me that results from searches conducted in IE, running on un-pirated copies of Windows, are *not* different from searches conducted with FireFox on Linux, or Safari on a Mac.

Comment from Desiree twitter @desi on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:20:19Z

When I typed in 'twitter' on Bing, it returned 416,000 links, while Google returned a whopping 541,000,000.

It seems like when it comes to number of searches, Google still leads the race.

I like Bing though! I think it's more precise and stylish.

The changing backgrounds is quite nice.

Comment from Technology Slice on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:14:01Z

I still prefer Google. Google seems to be more up-to-date.

Comment from MartinT on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:13:12Z

Good comparison post. I've just had a play with Bing and I must admit I was fairly impressed. The images by the way seem to change with what country you search 'from' - if you go to the top right and click on the country you are currently searching from you can select another country Select the US and you get the balloons - at least I did.

Comment from Minal on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T11:06:08Z

Looks like the background image changes daily.

On the bottom right corner are back and forward arrows to see the rest of them. They caption on which days background it was.

Bing seems fairly US centric to me. I tried a few local, NZ, searches and did not get much good hits. I love some new features and styles it presents.
- Previewing videos directly from the search result - just hover over
- with travel - the details on price projections and how selecting a price can take you directly to check-out. Saves a lot of time

Well for now, I have set it to my default search for a week.

Comment from Kimberly on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:41:58Z

No matter the quirks, let's face it, EVERY market(er) has hype. It's the way it is. But what I'm SEEING, is a better search engine. A good one. Terrific potential. I can't help but lol because Googles newest changes made them the most biased worthless search engines available. Perfect timing Bing. Lovin' that.

Comment from dreig on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:40:41Z

I don´t see anything too amazing in Bing. Not even the launch has been so remarkable. In spanish, it seems that it is even worse. We must wait for improvements....

I´ll write in spanish about it.

Many thanks for your blog.

Comment from anon on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:25:13Z

I did some searches in the shopping section and it seems like they have deals with affiliates. From what I saw, if you convert through Bing, MSFT gives cash back on certain purchases. 15% on a pair of kicks I want! I may have to buy them now. Kudos to MSFT for realizing that users will need tangible incentives to make the switch from Google.

Comment from Lev Cribb (twitter @levcribb) on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:24:39Z

Interesting review and comparison of the two. While I have penned my own thoughts in my blog, I agree that it shows promising features.

However, there are many questions that remain and which we'll only be able to answer by giving it a good try for a while. This is what I am thinking:

1. Will going away from the clean Google interface to a busier page mean Bing moves closer to Yahoo and other sites like it?

2. If the search results are largely the same (similar for the searches I have done so far) why bother switching to Bing?

3. Will Bing become a search engine focused on the US, or will the functionality (restaurant reviews, flight search etc) match requirements for other parts of the world?

I guess we've got to try and see, would be good to have some competition, but only if it actually works.

Comment from Tim on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:19:38Z

Is this post much more than hot air? ;-)

Comment from Vicky on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:17:24Z

A couple of hours ago it was a snow leopard - I wondered if it was some veiled reference to Apple. Looks like it must change every hour.

Comment from Paul Anthnoy on 2009-06-01

2009-06-01T10:12:19Z

Interestingly - whilst you get hot air balloons - I get something different - a hill top scene from what looks like a middle eastern country!