Jul 9th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Is Bing Better
David Pogue says there’s more to life than Google and folks should consider Bing, Microsoft’s competing product:
At first, Bing is pretty much Google. Oh, there’s a big National Geographic-y photo on the home page instead of plain white, but otherwise it’s the same deal: a Search box; a menu that offers to complete what you’re typing; and inconspicuous links to Images, Videos, News, Shopping and Maps.
Once you hit Enter, however, you can’t help noticing Bing’s more concerted effort to get you answers faster. To minimize the clicking, the hunting, the dead ends.
I dunno . . . the last really tough Googling I did was an effort to turn up a good graphic showing Soviet/Russian life expectancy trends and Bing was way worse on that score.
40 Responses to “Is Bing Better”
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July 9th, 2009 at 8:35 am
For me, Google Books has become an irreplaceable tool.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:39 am
typical microsoft….
“bing” has been around for quite a while….it’s just been called “live”.
For regular searches I find it rather clunky compared to google, but it does have two nice features:
1. cashback when you buy stuff by searching for it through Bing
2. bird’s eye view on maps — in some ways I prefer this to street view, since you can see stuff that isn’t on the street….
July 9th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Matty:
In Soviet Russia, engine searches for YOU.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:53 am
It’s a re-written press release. All of his examples of why Bing is better come from Microsoft’s original marketing materials. He doesn’t even bother to come up with his own search examples. It’s a lot like the political reporting: I don’t know whether it’s laziness or corruption.
My favorite is that a google for “bing canon sd870″ finds this link from a month ago, which compares bing and google using as an example, yep, a Canon SD870. Looks like the writer didn’t even to do his own searches for this article.
http://thesmallwave.com/2009/06/10/microsoft-bing-theres-a-lot-here-to-like/
July 9th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Yes, and I’m sure Matt Y and all of you are impartial observers, right?
Listen, Google represents exactly the kind of pernicious, dangerous monopoly that Microsoft never actually was. The fact that people act like it isn’t is simply an artifact of marketing and public relations. I have no great love for Microsoft, and I’ll probably stick with Google. But the fact that people are so knee-jerk to dismiss whatever Microsoft produces says a lot about whether their opinion is a product of a discriminating critical mind, or of cults of personality and group think. And it is simply the case that a lot of people who were so, so scared of the corporate power run amok in the case of Microsoft don’t even begin to ask themselves if a company like Google having such a breathtakingly broad power over how we sort and access information is dangerous. And that means, essentially, that they’re flakes, and not to be taken seriously.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I don’t really understand what Freddie is saying. How could a subjective judgment of search result relevance be “impartial” and why would that matter? Pogue likes Bing’s toolset better, but Matt’s comments echo what I’ve heard from other people, which is that Google still gives the best results for day-to-day searching.
Given that Google has no capacity for lock-in with their primary product (unless they were to drive all other search vendors permanently out of business) I don’t really see the problem. Monopoly or not, Microsoft has a history of pushing too hard when it has massive power, and Google has yet to show any such tendencies. Google does need a close eye from critical observers, but you overstate the extent of their present dangerousness. If you want to undermine Google on principle, push Cuil or Ask–not Bing.
I certainly hope Microsoft continues to try to beat Google. Their ability and willingness to throw money at weak markets has produced some good results–Xbox Live and its influences on Sony and Nintendo are a big part of why the console gaming market is thriving; the Zune and its marketplace are the best competition Apple has for iPod/iTunes.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Shorter Frankie:
I’m sticking with Google, but my reasons are pure & objective, not like you group think, partisan flakes.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Isn’t Bing the one that runs TV ads bragging about how it won’t give you as many answers as Google? Which, to my mind, seems exactly the oppostie of what I want in a search engine . . .
July 9th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Re: Freddie. Why should we be impartial? Google gives most of their stuff away for free. They practically invented the business model of making money without the users paying a dime. Microsoft charges exorbitant prices for their shitty software and upgrades. Anyone use a Vista machine .. nuff said. MS-Office is OK though but too expensive. Google has been the best at protecting the privacy of their users while msn and yahoo folded like a stack of cards. Google has been on the frontlines of new innovations while Microsoft’s biggest hits have been borrowed ideas. In time Google might become as evil as Microsoft but for now they are clearly the better company.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Whoever designs the next search engine, they should call it RA, for “research assistant.”
July 9th, 2009 at 9:44 am
I have found that Bing is roughly equal to Google. On most searches they give basically the same results. Sometimes Google gives me better results, sometimes Bing does.
On the whole I like Bing’s UI a lot better, but for the tough searches Google seems a little better on the whole, though as I said it varies from search to search as to which is better.
The only person I have talked to who has used both that had any kind of strong preference either way prefered Bing just because he didn’t like supporting Google since the owners of Google support so many lefty causes, which I suppose is as good a tie breaker as any.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I dunno . . . the last really tough Googling I did was an effort to turn up a good graphic showing Soviet/Russian life expectancy trends and Bing was way worse on that score.
I dunno . . . your post on the topic wasn’t very good. Maybe you should’ve used Bing.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I think it’s funny that when you search for “google” on Bing, you get one hit — http://www.google.com.
However, when you search for “bing” on Google, you get actual search results.
So thanks, Microsoft, but no thanks. You’re still the douchebags you always were.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:14 am
They practically invented the business model of making money without the users paying a dime.
That’s a pretty hilarious claim.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:18 am
“you can’t help noticing Bing’s more concerted effort to get you answers faster”
Yeah, I hate it when Google acts all lackadaisical. This is the most retarded statement about a web service that I can imagine.
I always liked Google because it loaded really fast when using a modem.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Stephen Tobolowsky’s life insurance salesman character in Groundhog Day kept saying “Bing!”
‘Nuff said.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Another experiment: My first name is a common name that’s spelled unusually (no, it’s not really Gmorbgmibgnikgnok), so searching on my name in Google yields only stuff about me.
However, my name is also a subset of a common English phrase. Bing has decided that my name isn’t a name, so it returns only pages with that English phrase in the URL. Nothing about me.
So basically, Bing’s claim of “we’ve got extra smarts so you don’t have to” works well only if you’re looking for something in the mainstream. But Google does that stuff pretty nicely already.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
“we’ve got extra smarts so you don’t have to”
Why don’t you just come right out and say, “We’re the search engine for the feeble minded.”
July 9th, 2009 at 10:50 am
The problem that Google competitors have is that they don’t just have to improve on Google’s technology but they also have to overcome the amount of training people have at making google work well for them. I think the only hope to steal away market share from them is specialized searches such as video searches where Googles really isn’t that great but neither is anyone else.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:54 am
You used google for russian life expectancy?
Two words: Wolfram Alpha
July 9th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Dunno, haven’t seen the ads. But fewer results is exactly what I usually want from a search engine; any of them can give me a million useless entries, but there’s usually only a handful that I want to see. A good engine finds just those.
I kind of rotate between the big three; Google, Bing, and Yahoo! – prefer one for a few days until it fails me, switch to another, prefer that for a while, and so on.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:08 am
By impartial, of course, I meant only that one’s opinion should be based on the actual quality of the service, and not on your larger antagonisms towards a company. Yglesias is on record as saying (and I quote)”Microsoft=evil”, so I doubt that he is offering an opinion based on the actual quality of the search engine. It’s actually pretty obvious that I was saying that, but reading comprehension, I guess, is a scarce resource.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Freddie, do you think we’re debating the merits of the PS3 and the XBox 360? Only teenagers care about that kind of brand loyalty.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:44 am
If somebody has repeatedly referred to a company as literally evil, yeah, I’m not gonna expect a worthwhile critique from that person about a new product from that company.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I think Microsoft is going to run into the same problem they had with the Zune vs. ipod…when there is a market leader that is unbelievably well established (ie Google,) you can’t just be as good, or really, even just a little better, but a LOT better in order to change people’s minds and get them to switch. Bing seems like a reasonable product. But it certainly isn’t BETTER than Google, and I think is going to continue to run behind. Sort of like the zune was probably as good as an ipod, but didn’t have the mindshare or existing base, and is now floundering with something like a 4% market share. Microsoft’s history in the search space has been, charitably, a mess, and while I think this is probably a good product, I don’t think it’s going to catapult them into a position of market leadership.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
That may just be the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I dunno . . . the last really tough Googling I did was an effort to turn up a good graphic showing Soviet/Russian life expectancy trends and Bing was way worse on that score.
Wolfram Alpha (see last graph) is pretty good at stuff like that. Takes a little getting used to though. Searching for “russian life expectancy” gives an excellent result, for example, while “russian life expectancy trends” gives you “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
July 9th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Given that Google has no capacity for lock-in with their primary product… I don’t really see the problem.
The lock-in monopoly power is on the advertiser side. Because Google is so much more heavily used than any other search engine, Google can do a great job of wringing every last cent from advertisers. Which, in turn, means you pay more for products advertised on line.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
[...] Matt Y: I dunno . . . the last really tough Googling I did was an effort to turn up a good graphic showing Soviet/Russian life expectancy trends and Bing was way worse on that score. [...]
July 9th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Microsoft says that bing is better for shopping, which is somethign an awful lot of people do on the Web, while searching for Russian life expectancy graphs is a fringe case. A search engine that does the former well pleases a lot of people; the latter, not so much.
As I see Microsoft’s strategy, in Zune, Google, or some other businesses, it’s not to surpass or destroy the competition but to have a reasonable and growing market share in markets that are themselves growing. There’s money for everyone to be made.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
As BingFreeSince09 (#4), Pogue didn’t put much work into his column. Trade columnists are even lazier than their political siblings, as is trade journalism in general. They are completely dependent on the vendors for ad revenue, and the writing and story selection reflects that.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
go to Wolfram Alpha, type “life expectancy in russia” and get all the stats and graphs you need right away. a lot of stuff like that doesn’t even need googling.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
They may have succeeded with the Xbox 360, but they failed miserably with the Zune:
Microsoft’s latest forays have been against competitors who are not weak, dying, or stupid. The Zune phone (should it ever come to pass) will be a day late and a dollar short of the iPhone. Bing’s “debut” has gotten less press than the fact that Google wants to release its own OS.
One reason the Xbox 360 succeeded was that Sony bungled the rollout of the PS3. Until that point, the original Xbox was a money-losing placeholder.
IMHO, Microsoft cannot adapt to a world where the software is not the front-and-center star of the show — i.e., they’re always going to try to stick that paperclip in your face and make you buy it, too.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I tend to be resistant to software that claims to simplify your life by hiding information from you; it feels dumbed down, an insult to my ability to handle complex information.
Bing definitely trips that impulse, and it’s even worse when dealing with a tool where looking for information is essentially the point.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
BingFreeSince09,
As the author of the piece you linked to, I can tell you all the searches were my own. The search was for the Canon SD860 (not 870), and I used Google’s link to the 870 as an example of the “garbage” it sometimes provides. My review wouldn’t have even appeared in your search if Google itself hadn’t screwed up when I searched for the 860.
My other searches were for Toyota’s Prius and Yamaha’s Star 950 motorcycle.
http://thesmallwave.com/2009/06/10/microsoft-bing-theres-a-lot-here-to-like/
July 9th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
It seems like bing has a bit of a problem filtering its results for relevance. Google may have aggressively cornered the search engine market, but at least its algorithms prevent it from returning dangerously inaccurate results.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
“I had to do some tough Googling today” has an almost gritty ring to it. I Googled all godamn day. As a matter of fact, I Googled my fingers to the fucking bone. I need a drink. Who…is with me.
Whereas: “I working my ass off Binging last night.” Something wrong there. “I Binged her and found out she was cheating on Brad.” Egads.
Poor Microsoft. So brilliant. So dumb.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I Googled and Binged the phrase “Soviet/Russian life expectancy trends ” Matt’s post came up as the second item on Google but was nowhere to be found in Bing. I don’t know what to make of this.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
I don’t know what graphic you were looking for exactly, but you might want to work on your googling skills if you think this was “tough”
An image search for “+russia life expectancy” turned up a good chart on either bing and google, though google gave me tons of similar charts while bing primarily returned pictures of dogs for some reason.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&q=%2Brussia+life+expectancy&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=%2Brussia+life+expectancy&go=&form=QBIR&qs=n
July 10th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Google and Yahoo are both better than bing, by a long shot. I tried Bing (their advertising/rebranding dollar had its effect on me), wasn’t impressed.
Google seems faster and usually more accurate than Yahoo. But both are heads and shoulders above bing. Sorry Microsoft, better focus on something you’re good at.