When Microsoft first announced their new search engine and Google competitor, Bing, back in late May, I didn’t really give it much thought. I still don’t. In fact, I don’t personally know any non-techie person who has brought it up in general conversation. While that may not change, it might be worth examining a few noteworthy aspects of Bing.
Microsoft is billing Bing as a “decision engine.”- It uses attractive and lightweight graphics. For people who want an interesting design on their search engine interface, this may be a plus.
- They’re experimenting with Real Time Search. For now, this just means they’re including recently posted Twitter content from a few celebrities and tech industry personalities. But real-time search is a hot topic at the moment and they’re actually doing something with it.
- For developers and webmasters, Bing provides an API (Application Programming Interface) and some basic tools.
It’s also worth noting that Bing has taken one percent of the search market share from Google since their announcement. From April to June, Google’s market share fell from 79.1% to 78.5%. Yahoo remained consistent at 11%, and Microsoft went from 7.2% to 8.2%.
It seems hard to imagine anybody dethroning Google as the king of search, but with a Yahoo redesign/rebranding also due in the fall, it will be interesting to see how the search engine space race continues to develop!
In the meantime, here are a few links to some of the more lively news stories Bing has been creating:
Kayak to Bing: Stop Copying Us! (wired.com)
Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it (The Register)
Google Does Not Mock Bing (Vijay Gill)
(syndicated from blog.netcrafters.com)
