Comments on: Microsoft Bing: The first real Google alternative

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, is the first real contender for the Google crown. It does things a bit differently, not much that's worse, and quite a bit that's better. Will it be enough?

[pentest]

Who cares about stylish it is?

If it can't consistently return good results, and the reviews are mixed thus far, it is worthless.

[TheDiplomat78]

Did you even read your comment before you posted it?

[massfat]

If you can't stop your trolling, you're worth less than worthless.

[geinie]

oh man, that's the fact


never expected at least in my lifetime that I would be even trying to use any other search engine apart from google... that true now. but for the first time in my surfing experience I am using the newly launched bing.com parallel to google.com

it's an awesome experience using bing, it's now 5 days since I am using it, and really a good competition to google and yahoo
<a href"http://www.gnugroup.org>Gnu Group - ILG</a>

[franglais--2008]

Once Bing starts caring about search results in the rest of the world, i.e., France, I'll consider using it on a regular basis.
Until then, re-bonjour Google.

[Mtheory101]

I don't want or need a fancy or fun search engine. I want a utility that gives me fast and accurate search results. Bing will fail because they don't get that most people use Google precisely because of this.

[slapppy]

Exactly. MS has money to burn with the dual cash cows and besides this new search engine name is just plain stupid. It's like some old, tightwad, kill joy person trying to be cool and comes up with BING.

[TheDiplomat78]

I still use Google to look up stock info, but I use Bing for the videos and images. For news I use both but mostly Bing. I have been using Google exclusively for 5+ years and Bing is a true competitor. The thumbnail videos are one of the coolest features on Bing.

[foobula]

The main problem I have with Bing is that I just don't believe Microsoft can be an unbiased source of information. I don't believe for a microsecond that Microsoft won't take every opportunity to cross-promote its own products or its many-tentacled business relationships (NBC Universal, Intel, etc.) at the expense of topics that it might be sensitive about (Google, Apple, etc.) Even if they don't bias their web search results, I'm quite certain they'll bias their news results or shopping results in any way they can. I trust Google a lot more, and therefore Bing will always play second-fiddle until my perception of the M$ corporate culture changes.

[lefrere_dotmac]

You are right of course. The big question is whether the lack of trust will matter in the marketplace. My guess is that is won't matter. There are enough indifferent advertisers and consumers for Bing to make $$$$$. It's no different than in other markets - and the result is Gresham's Law ("bad money drives out good money"), meaning that eventually bias in search results will be the norm. And we all lose. But that could be 5 years away. Right now, short-term rules. Short-cuts to hitting sales targets for search advertising and introduction fees include bias and cross-promotion. That's what happens with big bonus schemes in many companies (not just Microsoft). Winner-take-all schemes encourage laxity. The rewards are so big that you make a fortune even if you get the occasional huge fine. As monopolies do.


I know Microsoft corporate culture very well. And some of the people leading this effort.

[gravy jones]

I like Bing and it returns some good results. I have found its technical results, at least related to programming, are just as good or better than Google results. I will start to use it more and more alongside of Google.

[hhhhhhhhhmmmmmm]

Wow. I can not believe that people like microsoft's artistic impression of the web.

Do me a favor. Go to bing, type in something like Dslr camera. Now notice the ad in the upper right of the screen. For sony Dslr's, hhhhmmmmm. What could this mean.

Now look to the top left of the window. Click shopping. OH NO. It is only, only, SONY DSLR'S. But only sony. Why, microsoft would not be only giving you it advertisers? Microsoft would ever do anything that evil, would they? No, really?

Well maybe the canon or nikon link on the left would fix this problem.

Canon shows you nothing. Only the lowest and cheapest of all of the canons. The xsi rebel. It does not show the 40d, 50d, 5d mark II, nor the 1ds mark III.
Wow. No evil here.

Now lets us look at the nikon, which at least offers a little more options.

But in both cases you have to jump through hoops in order to view the camera.

After jumping through the hoops, it takes forever to load the page, of course. Only to find that you are going to pay hundreds more for the camera.

For example.

d90 with lens is running about 1,100.00 else where.

to get the d90 from bing, the average seems to 1,200. With 3-7% back. And you still have to jump through hoops to get it.


From reliable stores.

Now do other searchs, Bing is just Live with new name. It gives you microsoft's interpretation of the web.
Sold out to the lowest bider.

[deathstar2000]

When it comes down to it, when you search for something you want results. Bing simply does not return nearly as many results as Google. Put "el dorado hills" "7447 grassy creek" in both. Bing has 5 results, Google has 18. I found the same pattern over and over, with Google yielding much more results. Sometimes Google has thousands more with the exact search term.
So if you are searching for basic information and want to see happy photos and video, I guess Bing works. But if you do actual research, Google blows its doors off.

[cognitivejuan]

I think that the people that are getting into Bing are just getting into the new shiny thing. I see no improvement in search from Google. If I search for a city it gives me a bunch of irrelevant hits (job postings, restaurants, attractions, etc..) which is what I don't want. Normally I want a map and that's exactly what google gives me. I get links to maps but that's just more steps. All this other stuff could be useful if I used all of it a lot but I don't and if I was I would search for "<city name> attractions" and so on. I don't like how the image suggestions are at the very bottom. I do think it looks nice and I like the informative pictures but none of that has anything to with what I use a search engine for. I really tried not to be a Google elitist about the whole thing but Bing sucks plain and simple. It's just an old hat on a new face. MSN, Live, and Bing have all just been more signs of Microsoft's lack of understanding for what the public needs. I mean even if the search were comparable could Microsoft even come close to competing with ALL of the FREE services offered by Google. There are a LOT and they keep adding more everyday. Not to mention Google is just a better company than Microsoft. At least Google tries to come up with solutions to problems out side of it's bubble. Microsoft is just greedy. I can't remember anything philanthropic that Microsoft has ever done. Don't let Microsoft fool you into thinking they are the underdog here they still own the operating system world and last I checked all computers still have an operating system. Not all of them use internet search.

[sean_001]

I use the best. Bing is the best so far.

[ZetaZeta_]

Elaborate.

[J-Hawaii]

Best what? Best Microsoft web search tool? That's like caring which is the best Land Before Time movie.

[shrillary]

The problem with products from TinyLimp (aka MicroSoft) is that they do not get better. As the design oversights and flaws and security breaches typical of slip-shod development are manifest, "upgrades" will consume more and more resources, become less and less reliable, reveal lethal interaction with other software, and become less and less satisfactory in the presence of a reduced bandwidth connection. Anyone that doubts my predition should review their experience with the various versions of Windows and IE. Personnally, I am glad, however, that TinyLimp has decided to step on Google's toes. Now maybe Google will step in and do what TinyLimp has never done: Deliver a rock solid operatiing system.

[samtheman_is_me_already]

You have got to be kidding.

Re-brand 'live.com' and all of a sudden, presto, [or is it 'bing'], it's now competition to Google?

I expected better critique from Cnet.

[oddperk]

First off, anyone saying Google is a "better" company than Microsoft has an argument but isnt being fair with their measures. Microsoft is 3 times larger than Google. They have changed the face of computing. Like them or hate them, every single one of you who posted on here went through a Microsoft product at some point. Not Google. So put things in perspective. Second, since we are talking about comparable products, I would agree that in the sense of pure search, Google comes out slightly ahead so far. But anyone who says the choice to layout the images in your own way is not better on Bing would then have to argue that the Google news section is not better because of the same feature. Again, your not being honest. I do think that the mouse over activation of videos in the search results is a really cool feature. Also, the "birds eye" view of maps on Bing vs Google's "roof top" view is an obvious improvement. Finally, anyone who pays attention to the statistics of search, websites visited, etc will see that Bing was built for the majority of users. If your doing research work at your University, you'll probably use Google. But for everyone else, Bing may be the best. Heres a test to prove my point... at both sites, type in mlb... Google offers 1 score and 1 future game and its first link is to a MLB scoreboard. Bing offers an ad, its first link is to mlb (as asked) and below that shows several games, results from yesterday, games today etc. For me, that IS better.

[hhhhhhhhhmmmmmm]

Microsoft is 3 times bigger because of unethical behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

Bing is just microsoft selling out to the lowest bidder.

[slapppy]

@hhhhhhhhhmmmmmm

No one will believe you. Most still believe BG wrote MS-DOS, and most believe Windows UI copied nothing from Apple, and Apple stole Xerox UI. You know the one that they all assume that it worked exactly like the first Macintosh OS in 1984.

[foobula]

Microsoft doesn't get "extra points" for being ubiquitous. It's gotten to where it is by being 25% clever, 50% lucky, and 25% monopolistic. I may be slightly off on my percentages, but if anything Microsoft gets low marks for being soooo late to the party in so many areas... in OS stability, with MP3 players, and now with search. What are we, ten years into Google's reign, and *just* now the biggest, most powerful company in the universe finally comes up with a worthy competitor? Bravo.

And your 'mlb' example is pretty lousy. Both sites come up with mlb.com as the first hit, and both bring you within one click of full game results. Here's a counter example: search for "UP Showtimes". Both give you a list of showtimes for theaters in your area, but Google gives you one-click access to purchasing tickets, which Bing doesn't. Perhaps Microsoft is holding out until Fandango gives them a bigger cut of the action.

[shmariam]

It is more than a worthy alternative to google. To start with now wolfram alpha has the number one spot with computed answers. As for the other searches am staying with Bing and who know may be it will be my default soon.

[slapppy]

We can resolve all these arguments and fact checking with each other in one move. So give me a second while I "GOOGLE" the information.

[oddperk]

Most points taken. (especially the Fandango theory) But again, comments like "3 times bigger because of unethical behavior" and "most powerful company in the universe" are disingenuous. Comes across as dishonest with a "haters" mentality.

[c-n-e-t]

Bing - The most discussed topic on the internet since its launch has created quite a hype. Quite a lot of people were rushing over to try Bing and to take it for a spin. Given the nature of my work I too decided to take Bing out for a test run, for this experiment I obviously had the previous search data by Windows Live on the websites I optimize. I decided to check a few general keywords and some other random keywords (if you are wondering, yes I did search for my name as well, call this egoistic but at some point we all are tempted to do that). I wanted to see how much Bing had changed its website ranking algorithm, after experimenting with various keywords, I decided to look for "Company Formation" in order to check the ranking of http://www.formationshouse.com
My conclusion? Well I thing Microsoft did a good job here, something that I believe people weren't expecting. Specially to launch it before the actual date of launch was to many people ... well un-Microsoft. The results are better than before and the results that are grouped into the relevant categories to make it easier to narrow down the results, the image of the Bing page changes everyday to give it a fresh look, however even though it a huge improvement over Live Search but it still doesn't come up to the Google's search quality but at this moment I can say that this is definitely a positive step from Microsoft in the right direction and I can expect Google to be thinking the same and am pretty sure that it will come up with something to make sure that it still continues to lead the search engine market.

[Will_Cox]

There is a lot of room for improvement from Microsoft's latest search, just as there is for every other existing search out there. There may not be anything ultimately groundbreaking or different from the Bing experience as there is from a Google or Yahoo, but over time that company might have the tools to be the next leader depending on where these other companies decide to focus their attention.
Don't be surprised if some other lesser-known search sites begin to take off over the next few years and challenge. Meta search engines such as eZanga.com are growing all the time and focusing more and more on an efficient search experience rather than just charting out a plethera of unrelated material, which makes most of the bigger engines frustrating at times.
Google still reigns, but it's very possible that people will grow out of their comfort zone and start looking elsewhere if other search engines can catch their attention and provide an equally pleasant experience.