How Microsoft's Bing came to be
After leaving Microsoft in 2001, Brian MacDonald found it tough to find his second act. He was involved with a few start-ups and arranged some real estate deals in the Seattle area. He even built a boat in China.
But none really offered the challenge he was seeking. So, when he had a meeting in February 2007 with Microsoft search boss Satya Nadella, he was inspired. That night, he went home and cranked out a 10-page paper on the challenges and opportunities he saw for Microsoft in search. It was in Nadella's in-box the next morning.
Brian MacDonald, the creator of Microsoft Project and Microsoft Outlook, came out of retirement to help redesign the user interface for Microsoft's search engine.
(Credit: Microsoft)"I just want to work on the biggest problem in the industry," he said. By April, he was back at a desk in Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus.
MacDonald could hardly have found a bigger task than entering the search fray. After three years in the search business, Microsoft had yet to make any significant headway despite having spent billions of dollars.
"Search is kind of the Mount Everest of the industry right now," he said. "That's really the mountain that you want to climb."
He's been back at the company two years now, and Microsoft still finds itself at base camp, struggling to reach double digits in market share and its online business is losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter.
But Microsoft hasn't given up on its expedition. This week, it takes an important step. After months of testing within Microsoft's walls, the software maker is publicly detailing its plan to revamp its search engine under the name Bing.
The update consists of a new look, a new name, and new capabilities for the product. And in the process, Microsoft hopes it will also get a fresh start in what has thus far been a painful journey.
Several of the features are things championed by MacDonald. In particular, the new engine has a left-hand navigation pane for moving among different types of searches. Kumo also breaks a search query down into a number of possible categories.
When one hovers over a particular result, they get a pop-up window with more information, such as the query terms in context on the page.
In other cases, Microsoft is bringing more information into the results themselves. Type in "Amazon" and one will get not only links to that Web site, but also the company's hard-to-find customer service phone number. A search for UPS will let one track a package directly from Bing.
While potentially useful for customers, it could also be a sticking point among those whose content it is borrowing from so liberally. Product searches, for example, aggregate both user and professional reviews from various sites directly within the Bing result.
"I don't think we are trying to do something unnatural to have the person stay within the site," MacDonald said, adding that in the end the company thinks it will drive more people to the pages it is indexing.
With Bing, Microsoft also makes its interface more similar when one moves among different types of searches, such as photos or news. It's not unlike the way Outlook has some common interface tools that remain consistent even when a user switches from calendar to contacts.
"You get a different tailored experience but you still feel like you have stayed in Outlook," MacDonald said. "That's very much the integration model we have been going after."
Perhaps the biggest thing, though, MacDonald said, was the fact that the new design is opened up to allow more innovation down the road, as opposed to the classic search page with its single page of generic results.
"The 10 blue links alone makes it hard for an engineer to have that brainstorm in the shower," he said. "You need that extra surface area."
In one example, Bing now allows full articles to be shown within the search engine both for Wikipedia articles indexed by Powerset as well as for health topics, using content licensed from the Mayo Clinic.
In choosing MacDonald, Nadella said he admired the way that he could see opportunity where others saw mature markets. His approach with Outlook particularly resonated with Nadella.
"E-mail existed, calendaring existed, and contacts existed," Nadella said. "He changed the way people interacted with those applications."
Tapping MacDonald meant dealing with someone very unlike himself. In contrast with Nadella's neat desk, MacDonald's office is so cluttered his assistant was once asked if it was an office or a store room.
"We're different," Nadella said. "I don't work like Brian."
But creating some difference was an important cultural shift that needed to occur, he said. "Out of that will come the creative breakthroughs," Nadella said.
One of the big debates was on another of MacDonald's ideas--putting a picture in the background of the main search page. Each day, Microsoft has a different photo on its search page. It's designed as the kind of thing to get someone to check back each day, but some inside Microsoft saw it merely as a graphical distraction that slowed page load times.
Bringing back MacDonald was just one part of Nadella's strategy. The other piece was creating a deep science background to replace a culture that had been based on marketing other people's technology. To lead the effort, he convinced Harry Shum, the head of Microsoft research Asia, to join the search effort.
"He brought about that change in our engineering." Nadella said. Early on, the company's ranks were mainly filled by folks from research or other parts of the company. "Lately, of course, the Yahoo parade has been great for us," Nadella said.
As pleased as he is with some of the changes, Nadella's goals appear to be rather modest. If Microsoft were to go from 9 percent share to 11 percent by next year, he would consider that a success.
"I would say those are great gains," he said. "It's not a share battle that is going to go from 8 or 9 (percent share) to 20 in a quarter."
For his part, MacDonald said he wasn't always sure he wanted to go back to work at Microsoft. He said that he had long had thoughts of how the company could win in search, but added "I wasn't always sure the company was...fully committed."
These days, he is more convinced--sure enough that he sold that boat he built in China.
"It was, literally, a slow boat from China," MacDonald said. "It took days to get anywhere. It wasn't really compatible with the time commitment I need in this job."
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Leave it to Microsoft to create software that you cannot use the way you want to use it.
Brian MacDonald should be selling burgers! F#$$%%$
Those who do everything do nothing well. Microsoft should learn that lesson and stick with Windows and Office. Windows 7 is special, I say that as I write this on Windows 7 RC1. But if Microsoft stopped trying to make the iPod killer, the Google killer, the Logitech killer, and so on, just imagine how much better Windows 7 could have really been.
Microsoft is big enough to try its hand in many things and still come out on top in most of them. So it can try to make the iPod killer, the Google killer, the Logitech killer, and so on..and it is only now that Microsoft has started performing to its potential..Windows 7, Zune HD, Bing...all are great offerings.
I use 15 to 20 Google online apps and services.
I use 4 or 5 Yahoo online apps and services.
I do not use any Microsoft online apps or services.
Microsoft needs to develop its online presence. It needs to develop a dozen online apps and services and create a single brand for all of them. Example: Bing Search, Bing Calendar, Bing Mail, Bing Docs etc. If Microsoft stays fragmented in its online presence there is no hope for this singular product Bing. You no what they say Bing Bong!
Microsoft already uses the name Live as a brand just apply it to search and have part of it be live results.
Wonder why that is...
There. Fixed that for you. I use outlook at work because I'm not given any other choice. If I want to get my email from the proprietary Exchange server, I have to use it. It doesn't mean I like it. It's easy to have a large market share when your marketing strategy is essentially "we'll make them an offer they can't refuse."
I think we should all be glad that Microsoft spent money on redoing the engine rather than remarketing Live.
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/compatibility/Details.aspx?type=Software&p=bing%20Client&v=bing.com&uid=4&pf=1&pi=5&c=Communication%20%26%20Internet&sc=E-mail%20%26%20Messaging&os=64-bit
How does this relate?
And all I see are IE screenshots. There are more browsers in the world.
When it comes to search, Microsoft has been "all hat, no cattle".
So I won't be surprised if bing turns out to be "Vista Search".
Bing rather then people who game SEO and come at the the top of Google Search result. Lets hope for something new and useful this time from Microsoft
Don't get me wrong, I think innovation is great, but knowing Microsoft's past, if they get a foot hold in the Web, then it is downhill from there.
Just think what they did when they won the browser war. No innovation for 6 years. Then they destroyed many good companies with great software innovations for Windows by bundling their own stuff.
Make no mistake, you cannot trust Microsoft. At least Google is proven so far to be non-biased in Search. You cannot say the same for Microsoft. They will skew results to suit them if they have to.
Thankfully I cannot see that happening as the Web is a platform that is independent of any company. It is not owned like Windows.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/09/pay-per-post-google-uses-every-trick-to-beat-yahoo-in-japan/
Maybe in some instances they are biased as you point out.
Even though I disagree with the strategy in that article, Google is still a better leader than Microsoft could ever be.
Like I said. The Web is a platform owned by no one.
This is why you see Google as the search engine, Cisco routers, E Bay as the seller of second hand goods, YouTube as the video portal, Facebook as the social netowrk, Twitter as the microblogging network, and every other service out there.
It is owned by no one or all of us.
Windows is a proprietary platform that is expensive and lacks the features and services of the Web.
Windows is declining in importance, and the Web is increasing.
- by sand_dunes May 29, 2009 11:15 AM PDT
- Sorry, I may not fit in here but I'm not into the MS bashing thing and I really like Bing. Like the photos and layout, all of its cool. Great search capacity, nothing but good marks here. Google is so yesterday and MS did a good job. I'm sold and see ya later Google.
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