Since Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, went fully online on June 3, there has been much buzz regarding whether or not Bing will dethrone Google as the top search engine.
Unlike other search engines that have tried and failed to compete against Google, Bing already has tons of hype and ads. Bing’s debut featured an $80 -100 million dollar online, television, print, and radio advertising campaign in the United States.
Much of the buzz that Bing has received is due to its unique features. Bing has the ability to save and share search histories on Facebook and email. In addition, search suggestions are in real time as queries are entered, and a list of related searches are on the left side of search results.
“From a user interface perspective, there are some obvious similarities between Bing and Google,” said Pamela Stoffregen-Gay from User Centric, Incorporated. “Despite providing similar functionality, Bing added a few features that make its search results page form a three column layout whereas Google's search results page has a two column layout.”
Bing also has multiple search products. Services include health, images, local businesses, maps, news, shopping, translator, videos, travel, and xRank, which lets users search for celebrities, musicians, politicians and bloggers, read short biographies and news about them, and track their trends or popularity rankings.
Though Bing has received much buzz, Google regained attention at the Google I/O Conference, last week, by introducing a new project called Google Wave.
Google Wave is a new communication and collaboration tool under development that promises to allow people to work together more productively online by meshing instant messaging and email.
The "Wave" consists of conversations and documents that are used by several people at once and can include rich text, photos, videos, maps and more. Everyone participating can insert, edit or reply directly on the wave concurrently. In addition, developers will be able to build applications into Wave, much like Facebook, and it will also allow you to embed content into third-party Web sites and blogs.
What has generated so much excitement is the fact that by mixing social networking, email, and instant messaging technologies, Google Wave will change what a social network can be. It will change publishing from being available from one person to multiple parties, to being available to multiple parties at once.
Experts feel that Google Wave will attract more third party developer talent to the Googleplex, a way for Google to deepen its business challenge to Microsoft.
The recent introduction of Google Wave has added a significant amount of buzz to the Google vs. Bing debate. Though many feel Bing has the potential to replace Google as the top search engine, only time will tell.
Managing Director of User Centric, Incorporated Gavin Lew stated, “The value has to be there as a search engine. Assuming the underlying engines are sufficiently good, Bing does have some very nice features. Bing expanded on what Google created. There is potential, but first experiences have to be good in terms of the value provided.”
The Bing vs. Google Debate Gets Heated
Published: Monday, June 22, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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