When a Problem Comes Along, You Must Bing It
WTH! Bing is actually a pretty good search engine. Windows Live Search is dead. Long live Bing. Oh, and, Google, your arse is on fire.
Bing is finally live, at least wherever my IP addresses direct. I started testing Bing against Google this morning. My reaction is what Microsoft marketing demanded I have about Windows Vista but didn’t: “Wow.” Actually, that’s fraking Wow! Who could have guessed.
There’s a shocking transformation going on at Microsoft. It’s wicked scary, scarier than Quentin Tarantino directing a Nazi war movie. Microsoft is starting to do really good user interface design. The UI and concepts behind them help make Bing so damn appealing. Bing makes Google look cluttered and ugly.
It’s strange Microsoft’s hit-or-miss record getting to Bing. The company applied new UI concepts to Office 2007 and Windows Vista. They helped make the productivity suite a hit, but contributed to the operating system’s doom. By comparison, Windows 7 UI hits in all the places Vista misses—and more.
Google UI design used to be good for its simplicity. Years ago, I praised Google search for simplicity that hid complexity from end users. But as I’ve watched Google products evolve, I see how poorly the UI design really is. Google’s early approach—offering a simple search box instead of a portal page—was brilliant. Or so I first thought. Now I see that Google went simple because good UI design actually isn’t a corporate cultural strength. Google does barebones really well, particularly in products where algorithms, APIs and synchronization can hide complexity. But products like Google Apps are really quite cluttered, and many newer services are geek to set up.
By comparison, overcomplexity has long defined Microsoft’s design approach. Microsoft couldn’t do simple well. Where early iPods synced by plugging them into the computer, media players using Microsoft’s PlaysForSure required Wizards or other multi-step setups. Past is past. Dramatically, Microsoft is starting to do good design and to apply concepts I first introduced on this blog back when it was my personal site. The list of four concepts later became six. Good products must:
- Hide complexity
- Build on the familiar
- Emphasize simplicity
- Do what they’re supposed to really well
- Allow people to do something they wished they could
- When displacing something else, offer significantly better experience
Microsoft Brings Discovery Back to Search
Bing is refreshingly clean and uncluttered, particularly compared to Google search. Microsoft has talked about the concepts applied to Bing since launching Windows Live Search 2.0 in September 2007. I had my doubts, based on Live Search, but no longer. Microsoft’s task-oriented sidebar works really well offering up additional search criteria and options.
Microsoft might really have found the way to fix what’s wrong with search: Keywords. There is nothing natural about keywords. When looking for your cell phone do you think: Car, bedroom, kitchen or bathroom sink? No, you ask yourself: Where is my cell phone? But so far, natural language search doesn’t work so well.
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Microsoft has compensated by offering search subcategories that help people refine their searches without asking. Bing thinks of what you might not have. I find myself discovering more through Bing searches than through Google, Windows Live or Yahoo. Shortlist of task-oriented Bing sidebar features that extend search discovery:
- Relevant keywords appear with some searches, like products
- News search categories include “locations,” “blogs” and “RSS”
- Very obviously placed option sorts by “relevance” or by “most recent”
- Pop-up menus offer quick information and additional links to listed results
This is very, very, very important: Google’s long-term search business model is fundamentally flawed, and Bing exposes the problems. The first: Aforementioned keywords. The second: Time spent online. I can already see that Bing—at least this early incarnation—is user-search specific. By comparison, Google search favors keywords, which also generate revenue.
Google search practically assaults searchers with paid placements. Bing offers very few, surprisingly. If Microsoft applied David thinking, new rules of engagement would undermine the Google Goliath. One approach: Remove keywords and keyword advertising altogether. Google has assaulted Microsoft’s business by giving away for free—and subsidized by advertising—stuff the software giant must charge for. Microsoft could return the favor, by giving away Bing essentially free to gain search share against Google.
Is Google Search Sticky Enough?
Switching search engines is as easy as typing in a new Web address. Google has spent millions launching new services designed to make search sticker. Desktop software is very sticky. Businesses running Office or Windows find more reasons to stick than switch. For example: Costs associated with enterprises swapping out products is usually prohibitively high. Services like Gmail or Picassa are much stickier than search, and they will be more so as Google ties more services to its Chrome browser. As an economy, Google search depends on keywords. Microsoft must break their hold.
There is perhaps a business model in doing just that, which circles back to topic of time spent online. Somebody at Microsoft is either incredibly brilliant or undeservingly lucky. Bing’s UI changes the rules for search engines and quite possibly redefines what will be the future search business. The motif keeps the searcher on the query page for longer time than Google. Search has been more of a waystation than destination. You type in a few keywords, click search, refine the search keywords and click again. The process repeats until the searcher finds what he or she is looking for—or not.
Bing’s UI holds the searcher in place. The sidebar offers more categories, keywords and other refinements with each click. The searcher stays right where he or she is. The motif makes Bing more destination than Google, meaning searchers will spend more time there.
Time online means something, particularly to advertisers. Google’s keyword approach is more transactional. Jack Searcher types in keywords, which gives him results, some of which might generate cash for Google and its partners (e.g., through paid placements). Bing has the potential to be more functional should Microsoft choose to capitalize on the amount of time spent on a single Bing page. Contextual advertising has punch; it’s part of what makes Google’s keyword approach so effective. But Microsoft could offer even better contextual advertising—through paid placements, banner advertising and even embedded ads within info pop-up windows—all changing as Bing helps the searcher refine his or her query.
Something else: Because Bing helps you, without a prompting, the emotional context of searching changes. Google search is impersonal. Bing is surprisingly personal. That personality will be important as Microsoft begins Bing marketing. It’s not rocket science. People like to use products they feel good about or that makes them feel good. Bing’s friendlier UI contributes to that good feeling.
I’ve got some advice for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Forget Yahoo. Carol “I’m far too old and too stupid to know what the Internet is” Bartz won’t give you anything. Yahoo’s CEO wants too much, and you don’t need her stinking search share anyway. Bing is good enough to take on both Google and Yahoo. You’ll get her search share organically, and for a lot less money. That $80 million to $100 million you spend advertising Bing should get you much more than the $44.6 billion you almost foolishly spent last year trying to buy Yahoo. Never underestimate the power of advertising, particularly if the product is good. Bing might just be good enough.
Do you have a search story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.
I generally agree with the article, but at the moment I tend to find too many of the searchs are woefully out of date compared to Google, which seems to scan much more aggressively. Until they up the frequency of the crawls, it isn\’t going to knock Google off my desktop.
How does Microsoft currently monetize search?
Great read, Joe!
I have frankly been amazed by Bing and Microsoft this year and in a very good way.
Bing, Windows 7, Exchange 2010, VS 2010, SL 3, Project Natal for the Xbox (hint hint… natural user interfaces with touch will mean that you do not actually have to touch anything at all – just point and wave your fingers, hands, face and body in the air). Just amazing stuff!
Keep up the great articles!!!
Interesting!
I think the person who wrote this article is very very intelligent.
What I do miss at the moment is personalization (something like iGoogle) and I’m not quite sure why video or travel search for example is not available to most of the international users. I’m aware that they are trying to “localize” the search results, but to have something available is still better than nothing…
It took me quite some time to find out that I need to select US as a country to get all the features Bing is offering at the moment…
But anyway, it seems that Bing is a step to the right direction for the MSFT.
Hi Joe:
This is my second time on your blog, as I was directed to your blog about Microsoft Money being retired, and then happened on this. Your synopsis is quite thorough. In addition, Microsoft is also trying to differentiate itself by focusing on 4 verticals, so it will be interesting to see how they exercise those connections over time.
Having listened to one of Microsoft’s execs, Scott Howe, 10 days ago in NY talk about Bing, I also commented on Bing in my blog…which touches on some other points. You might find it interesting. http://rgsmanagement.com/SeveriniBlog/2009/06/for-microsoft-will-bing-ring-in-their-2010-new-year/
Bottom line to me at least is whether Bing can build enough market share quickly enough to put Microsoft into search player status. I don’t think Microsoft is looking at the Bing business model as a slow-growth program over several years.
Ralph Severini
Very thoughtfull observations.
Google keeps messing around experimenting with the front page. They don’t seek permission to alter my browsing experience, so I told them where to get off. I’ve dumped google in preference to Bing, Google is dead, long live the BING.
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With Windows Live Search, pretty much the same way as Google: Keywords. But Microsoft does better with banner advertising than sponsored placements.
What’s missing, Lloyd, is mobile. Microsoft needs to apply more of this improved UI approach to mobile. Why did the company buy Tellme?
Boy, where to start, Joe…
Yes, the read is that Windows Mobile has a long way to go in terms of UX design and consistency across the board. There are of course a lot of other perspectives where Windows Mobile has real strengths that are much harder to appreciate. Signals/RF performance, power, and integration at the object level. It is fair to ask, which is harder to build and replicate consistently across so many different networks, device types and carrier ecosystems and which therefore, is more evolved. I think Windows Mobile has a great many strengths and it will be easier, for Microsoft to make substantive progress. I think this is useful, too, when one evaluates all that the company has done and is doing this year – seemingly out of nowhere, so many great technologies have emerged… BUT is it really from nowhere? I think not. I think a great many fundamental elements had to be redefined and rebuilt. Vista was built as the foundations were re-tooled and early on, it was bumpy, but one could tell (should they have looked deep enough) to see that under the massive weight that the company’s structure was, an entirely new company was emerging from within itself. We could see it, and we stuck to a baseline that played to the available strengths and delivered products around Vista and things like Exchange 2007, that were and remain great – they just took more work. For example, many are now looking at E2K2010 like it is the second coming, but anyone who fully leveraged E2K7 is already there – it just took more work. I think like all the other areas that we see what seems to be surprising progress, isn’t really all that surprising at all. The thing I really admire, win, lose or draw, is that they didn’t quite, or allow themselves to be defined. Like them as a company or not, the people, and I do mean “people” have shown some real character as well as some serious technical chops. I think a great deal of energy has been wasted by detractors pointing fingers – and I think they are going to regret not having worked as hard for as long. As such, I think Windows Mobile’s second act is going to blow peoples’ minds. As I have watched them come into the channel where we work, many have been fearful. Not us. It’s made us better and in some areas we kick the heck out of them. In others we get stomped. But like playing against a better team, it has made us better at all we do.
The Tellme buy was smart, and like other natural interfaces and their development, I think we’ll see the results of that work next year. It coupled with truly natural, in the air, interfaces is going to change the way we look at and use mobile devices.
The problem I fundamentally see: Microsoft needs an operating system that can do handsets and laptops, like Apple and Google. At the core, Windows Mobile is under appreciated. But there’s too much complexity at the surface.
My theory is that Bing is going to use affiliate marketing to monetise. The flight search and shopping results were the major tell for me. If you search for Barcelona to Amsterdam you do not get any of the ‘decision’ features, but New York to San Fransisco does which means they are hard coded because they rely on business agreements.
I think that is the big idea behind Bing, all of the flight prices and shopping results are sponsored. I know for a fact that Google’s shopping results are independent and have more information so I am probably more likely to trust them. A search for ‘apple ipod’ shows the prices on Google but nothing on Bing. It is interesting that Bing gets the URL wrong, they show apple.com/ipod whereas the correct URL is apple.com/itunes.
Haha, now why didn’t I write that, billybob? Affiliate marketing makes lots of sense.