Bing vs Google
08 Sep 2009
Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying out the Bing search engine instead of my usual Google. Bing is Microsoft’s revamp of Live Search, which was its revamp of MSN search.
I’ve never really liked Microsoft’s offering to the search engine industry, mainly because I don’t like its online presence. I hate MSN, I hated hotmail, I don’t like Live mail. I think they are all inferior products, and I really can’t understand why people don’t make the switch to Google’s online products. Up until now I would never have given Microsoft’s search engine another look, but I don’t like things staying the same for too long so I thought I’d give it a spin.
Firstly, I think Bing is much prettier than Google. They have a new background image every day, and the whole design is obviously more deliberate than Google’s 1990s colour scheme. I appreciate that. I never liked Google’s boring logo, nor its ugly results page.
Also, the images search function is light years ahead of Google’s. With Google you get 20 pages of about 100 image thumbnails that you have to laboriously scroll through. With Bing you get a sidebar of thumbnails which is refreshed with Ajax. You never have to leave the page, and you can still view all of the thumbnails it finds. I like the efficiency, convenience and cleverness of it.
They’ve copied Google’s novelty logo idea. Google puts up a special image for Christmas, New Years’ and special occasions, like famous scientists’ birthdays. There the focus is on learning more about, e.g., the famous scientist. With Bing, it’s more about you using their search engine, which I don’t like. It’s a sneaky way of promoting yourself by promoting someone else. It’s funny to see how deep that runs in Microsoft. They’ve resisted web standards, preferring instead to release their own proprietary codes, right up until IE7. I really hate this tendency in Microsoft.
As for what was going through their heads when they called it Bing, I can only hazard a guess. It’s a dreadful, awful name. Interesting to see that they’re stepping away from all their other branding (Microsoft, MSN, Windows, Live, etc).
I hate, and will always hate, multimap. This is probably irrational, much like my hatred of Yahoo. And there’s video adverts on the main page. I hate video adverts.
As for the quality of its search results — obviously the most important thing — I haven’t really looked into it all that much. I guess my expectations in that area are mostly unconscious ones, so I’ll continue to do side-by-side comparisons for a while till I find out what I prefer.
So far, Bing doesn’t feel like proper searching yet. I must confess I don’t really care. (It’s not exactly the most hugely important question in life, is it.) What wins is whatever works easiest. Bing is pretty and excellent with images and media, but has a dreadful name. Google has a boring design, but it’s familiar.
It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out in the long run. My personal prediction is that in a year or so they’ll have another rebrand (they’re on their fourth as it is). We’ll be introduced to “Swish”, or some other equally silly name, but unless they do something fundamental to searching online muchbetter than Google it will fail to raise much interest.
Maybe pay people every time they use Bing. And change that wretched name!
hi I have been using bing for three months now and l quit love it. the problem is people just hate ms and wont give their products a try. its only fair that on gives something a try before people go bad mouthing it. yes in the beginning they were sites that weren’t in their search results but with time l have seen that improve. the look of their page isn’t as dull and boring as google, their results now pretty much match google and even better at times. google results are more biased towards their partners of late. and l can proudly say l no longer google, but l now bing. love it.
Awesome. I love the fact you don’t just hate Microsoft for the sake of it.
I search bing for “called it bing” and “bing is a shitty name”, seems that there are many out there who share my opinion.
The only reason i don’t use bing is because it soundS crappy.
For me it’s the same deal as the Zune, wtf is that?
Like tune or zoom? WTF!?
What is the name of that product trying to tell me?
Ipod is simple, the name tells me it’s about me, ipod, i store your music for you, so it’s my narcissistic music collection.
People who like apple products are on average are going to be more narcissistic, but not everyone is reach, thus the success of apple’s media player products which are actually competitive on a price/performance basis with the rest of the market.
Now Bing, like Ding, when a lightbulb switches on it your head or eureka I’ve found it, but it’s B for…? WTFH!??
Should have called the Zune, the Microsoft Play make it so you can share audio streams via Wifi, have people in a group listening to the same thing and share playlist information and songs(with some limits don’t limit the amount of play a song can have but the time a song can remain on a device.)
Have the tag line “it’s fun to play together” but don’t make it sound cheesy, make it sound casual.
Use the colour purple in marketing(just a feeling i have).
With Bing just call it any fucking thing else, Microsoft Search or Reach or Onyx or Super Search Engine Xtreme yes SSEX.
The name of Microsoft’s products are crappy that is why they are unpopular or at least pays an important role.
I doubt it’s pure coincidence i hated Windows Vista but loved Windows Seven or 7.
Some more ideas for microsofts search engine.
Or Super Extreme Search Engine S E X E Or Super Search Engine Extreme S S E E if Microsoft has no balls.
People would see the little joke in the name and that would be endearing, people don’t want to need Microsoft to try to copy Google with their name that makes no sense but has become a cultural meme i.e Googling things.
No one is going to be binging shit, binging sounds too similar to binning, it’s just overall a crappy name.
People might SSEX things though, or SSEE things or SEXE things, Reaching or just plain old Searching would work and i’m sure there are many more ideas out there that are better than Bing.
Microsoft need to get a reputation as a more vibrant company and antithesis to Apple and alternative to Google.