Saturday 20 June 2009

Microsoft Bing vs Google

Microsoft Bing was released recently to limited fanfare, some tech sites raved about the quality of results while others had a more of a ‘We’ll see’ attitude. Interesting is that Google appears to be very worried about Bing, not ‘just’ standard worried but really very concerned http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42847/140/ and I understand why; http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ runs comparative searches across Google Search, Bing and Yahoo and the results are very interesting; the site results are anonymous though it is an Microsoft employees web page.


The searches I ran gave one vote for Bing and one Yahoo and none for Google, which leaves me wondering what formula Microsoft has finally got right in their search algorithms. Onsite with customers earlier this week I had the opportunity to see other IT professionals using Bing search and augmenting the results with a Google search for comparison so Bing is making its way across the tech community.


Personally I believe Microsoft have not got the UI sorted yet, Google search is basically a text search page and contains no distraction, the images decorating; Http://www.bing.com don’t appeal to me, but then Microsoft have a history of over the top images and colours. I prefer the bland Google experience as I go to search - I know exactly where the search box is.


I find the Google search window to be less intrusive, I am not sure of the reasons but the Bing search frame below, jumps out as not being ‘Clean’. The feeling to me as a layman seems to be that Bing is pushing me somewhere (There is no advertising), odd?



Maybe the background image will become Prime advertising real estate, Coca-Cola anyone?


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