Microsoft, in Search of an Edge

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Whether the people who are using Bing will stick around remains to be seen. But they should, because Bing has some features that Google lacks. For example:

Homepage photo. Maybe this seems ridiculous, but looks do matter, especially on the Web. Go to Google and you get a big white page with a search box in it. Bing, on the other hand, sets the search box into a high-resolution photo of some gorgeous location, which changes every day. Hover over the photo, and you pull up text boxes with a bit of information and links to even more info. It sounds frivolous, but these really are amazing photographs. And they're kind of addictive. "We've been surprised by how much people have reacted to the image on the homepage," Tiedt says. "People are really connecting to it. They say, `I can't wait to get up and see what the Bing image is for the day.' It's so simple, but it has been a huge hit."

Specialized search. Microsoft has added specialized search capabilities in four areas: shopping, travel, health, and local information. Supposedly you get better, faster, more accurate results when you're doing things like shopping for products online and want to compare prices. Have you ever tried to research something health-related on Google? You're just as likely to get fringe results from less reliable sources as you are to get anything you can trust. Microsoft does better by tapping into sources like the Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society.

Twitter search. Type in a keyword, and in addition to getting links to photos and Web sites and videos, you get some Tweets. This is still pretty limited, but it's cool to be able to get real-time info. Google doesn't have this, but no doubt they are working on it.

Hover. Type in a keyword, pull up the results, then "hover" your mouse over the search results and you pull up a little bit of info from that page, which lets you skip answers that aren't what you're looking for. It's a neat little trick and a useful way to save time and avoid dead ends.

Videos. As with Google, you can choose "Video" from a menu across the top of the search page. But Microsoft does Google one better. It pulls up a huge page of videos and lets you preview any of them by hovering your mouse over the thumbnail. In other words, you can play the movie without actually opening the link. This one is a huge time saver. Or a huge time waster, since Bing makes it way too easy to just sit at your desk watching video after video.

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Posted By: Aditya Mookerjee @ 07/21/2009 6:45:43 AM

The reason why I use Google, is because it is very simple and convenient to use. People usually know what they are looking for, when they use a search engine, perhaps, they know more than me, when I use a search engine. So, the most convenient layout for a search engine, is what people look for. I feel, that Chrome, the web browser, complements the virtues of the Google search engine admirably. I use Chrome, because I feel it is the best for Google.
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Posted By: brenhegarty @ 07/14/2009 11:59:59 AM

According to Toolheads logic, if I wanted to do a search on the former presidents Bush I should make sure to include their names or title in the search phrase as there are many more bushes in areas relating to horticulture etc than politics.
I am sorry but I would expect at least some hits on the presidents as well as garden plants. He seems to be confusing quantity with quality.

As to his comment on searching for McDonald I would expect more hits on the fast food business rather than an obscure baseball player. The fast food chain is world wide and may be listed in connection with results relating to the environment, business, nutrition etc whereas most non Americans have no knowledge or interest in baseballl. I would expect the results to reflect this. I had no problem with Bing listing results on small town America but I would have expected some reference in the first 10 pages of results to a major figure of the second world war.
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Posted By: dantalion @ 07/14/2009 6:31:51 AM

I think the logic of toolhead's criticism is more problematic than the choice of search words used by brenhegarty... To put it bluntly toolhead, the fact that Google responded correctly to the non-specific search terms while Bing did not is the reason that Google has dominated the search market for the past eight years. It great that you can sit smug and offer us your infinite wisdom about the lack of intelligence of human beings, but I would like to see how smart you would be if you decided to Google a subject you genouinely had no clue about. What search terms would you pick then? How would you know if these search terms were the most appropriate ones (remember, your intelligence cannot help you here because you are in the dark)? Google has proven itself as probably the most successful Artificial Intelligence project in history precisely because it can return relevant results based on vague searches. This is exactly the way Google and Bing should be compared. Everything else mentioned in this article is gimmicks, which are not the point of search. But I guess for truly intelligent people like toolhead, gimmicks are more important.