I’m a bit suspicious of any article such as the one on the New York Times – where they state that Bing is Better than Google. First off, Google did not become popular because it ran a great online campaign. On the contrary. Google aimed its focus at those of us who were not happy with bloated software, the Open Source Community to be exact. Every person world-wide who invested time in open source were fans of Google, critical mass was instantaneous, the average nerd or geek who invested large amounts of time, building online communities and online friends, grew to substantial numbers. This very same marketing strategy is now categorized as “Social Marketing” which is an essential part of “Viral Marketing” campaigns – a community which continuos to drive the strongest of these campaigns, such as President Obama’s Election Campaign.
The one key element that many of us share, is the dislike for bloated software. Bloated software is synonymous for Microsoft. Apple has always locked on to this very same philosophy – simple is better – and has managed to edge into the PC market by large percentages. Yet still, the PC giants continue to “candy color” their wares and hope the new world would buy their products. When will they learn?
So Bing came into the market, due to it’s marketing efforts, it earns some users and now the world is crying Google is Dead. Bing’s pretty – I’ll hand that to them, but like all Microsoft Products, this one will end up bloated and broken. In the end, this girl will stay with Google.
I have not met a single person that types “bing” in the address bar to do a search. I have however seen many organizations use “Bing” as the default search engine as put out by their less-then-competent IT staff (for reasons equally as mysterious as to why they ban FireFox). The Bing popularity numbers are most certainly less then honest, I just wonder how long it will take for investors and stock analysts to see that.
Good article, I agree that people like us would like to stay away from bloat. Microsofts ads are aimed at people who seemingly don’t know how to use search engines. To me, “Google” is synonymous with “search.” <3
how does a search engine become bloated? It either works or it doesn’t. You can compare the results of searches here:
http://www.bing-vs-google.com/
Bing returns results as quickly as Google does, and the results are similar. I think Microsoft created a top notch product with Bing. As technologists/engineers, we need to give credit where credit is due. They have been the only ones that have been able to come up with a search engine that can give Google a run for its money.
As for the Open Source community embracing Google, that happened at a time when Google had the “Don’t be Evil” motto (which it has since dropped: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/google_quietly.php). It houses more personal user information then any other company on earth.
I don’t accuse Microsoft of not maintaining user data, but lets call it like it really is; one is as bad as the other. Sticking to Google because they once gave me a warm fuzzy feeling is no longer a good enough reason.
I personally use both search engines. I don’t find one to be any better then the other.