The software giant Microsoft has fired a fresh salvo in its war with search giant Google. The company’s revamped search engine called Bing aims to do to Google Search, what Google’s Chrome aimed to do to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer: weaken the dominance. At stake for both the technology giants is the growing web advertising pie. Incidentally, this is not Microsoft’s first attempt to thwart Google’s Internet dominance. In the past too, the company has made many not-so-successful attempts to shake Google’s Internet hegemony. However, Bing shows promise feels analysts. The search engine traffic figures for the first few weeks too are positive. Here we present to you how the two stand vis-a-vis each other in features, appearance and many other counts.

Home page

Bing: Bing brings a colourful user interface for users. It has a side panel bar that displays search with related and history links relevant to users’ search terms. The serach engine features a different background image everyday. The search engine comes with a set of related services, including Bing Travel, Cashback and Maps for Enterprise. Bing focuses on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision (Shopping), planning a trip (Travel), researching a health condition (Health) or finding a local business (Local). Google: Google for long sports a cleaner and simpler looks. The search engine displays stark white page with a search box. The upper left corner of Google home page links to other Google services including email, Maps, Orkut and images.

Features

Bing: Some of the new features in Bing vis-a-vis Google include getting directions to locations with only one mouse click, and the ability to hover over a search result to see more information, without having to open a new link. The ‘decision engine’ promises to make things like buying a digital camera, booking a flight or searching for a restaurant easier by serving up results based on similar previous searches. Bing also has some other little-known but useful features of its old search engine. These include, smart motion preview, photos on the home page, Bing 411, Bing Mobile and Local Business Centre. Google: Google recently introduced new features in its search engines to attract users, making Microsoft’s task even harder. The Explore Google Search page displays 16 different Google search features including Movie Times, weather, dictionary, calculator, stock quotes to name a few.

Porn

Bing: Internet security experts warned that Bing gives users easy access to pornographic material. It is possible for anyone, of any age, to view explicit pornographic videos without even leaving the search engine. Bing has a “autoplay” tool that lets users preview videos simply by hovering a mouse over them. The tool may become a liability because users can have easy access to porn videos on Bing, and not have to log on to one of the porn websites. However, recently Microsoft said that it has adjusted its search engine to make it easier to filter out porn. Also, the search engine doesn’t return any result on the keyword `sex’ from India. However, if you tell the search engine that you’re from USA, or any one of the European countries (users can easily change country without even logging in), several links are returned. Google: Google too seems quite porn-friendly as the search engine throws huge number of links for the keywords porn or sex. The search giant too displays pages from India.

Marketshare

Bing: Microsoft grabbed 12.1 per cent of US Internet searches for the week June 8-12, according to data released by industry tracker comScore. That is up from 11.3 per cent in the June 1-5 period — the week in which Bing was launched — and up from 9.1 per cent the week before that. Google: In May, Google got solid 65 per cent of US searches. As for comparison, in May, Yahoo had 20.1 per cent and Microsoft had 8 per cent share.

Branding

Bing: Though Bing takes on the world’s number one search engine Google, it is not a search engine or rather not just a search engine. The software giant dubs Bing as a “decision” engine, rather than a search engine. According to Microsoft, Bing is not just another search engine, but a decision engine that will help people in taking decisions. As its official release said, “Microsoft Corp unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions.” Google: Google places itself in the web search engine category. Google’s search engine accepts queries as a simple text and breaks up the user’s text into a sequence of search terms.

Going Live

Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc on September 7, 1998. They had four computers and an investor’s $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world. Now Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, and employs over 20,000. Bing: Microsoft, which has been testing the search engine internally under the name Kumo for several months, launched the new service, re-christened Bing in June 2009. Microsoft Bing aims to counter the growing dominance of Google Inc in the Internet space and earn a larger share of the growing Web advertising pie.

Ad campaign Bing: Microsoft has not put any figure to its Bing ad campaign. However, reports peg advertising blitz to be around $100 million. In a series of spots, Microsoft tries to suggest that the Google search experience is cluttered, irrelevant and confusing. Though the campaign doesn’t directly mention Google, the target is clear. The campaign develops a theme similar to the one Microsoft used in its earlier commercials directed at Apple. In commercials targeted at Apple, Microsoft challenged ordinary people to find attractively priced laptops. All scenarios showed a laptop based on Microsoft’s Windows platform to be the more cost-effective alternative to Apple. The theme of both campaigns being that while Google and Apple may have sexier brand image, but it is Microsoft products that offer pragmatic and affordable solution to consumers. The company is reportedly also doing some things on Facebook and Twitter, including a photo contest where the community will get to choose a winning photo to become the backdrop for Bing itself on a particular day. Google: The company so far has not come out with any ad campaign that answers to Microsoft’s ad campaign.

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Bing, earlier known as the Kumo is finally here. Announced at the recently concluded D: All Things Digital conference, the Bing is Microsoft’s first dedicated attempt to challenge Google’s domination in the search arena. And prima facie, it seems to be a very good attempt indeed if we are to go by the worldwide reviews received soon after launch. Bing is all set to replace Windows Live Search and will be fully operational, starting Wednesday – although it’s available in most countries now.

It’s now time for us to take a first look at Bing. Does it really have what it takes? Will it ever replace that Google homepage of yours? Before we delve further into this, let’s just try to shake off our prejudice (is that the right term?) most people have for anything that originates from Redmond. That, coupled with the unshakable faith in Google, makes for a nice combination, which usually ends up in most of us writing off any competition (to Google) even before actually trying them out. Remember Cuil? Anyone? So, has Bing managed to catch Google with its pants down? Or is it a product you can pass? Read on.

The Look

First off, what strikes you is the look of the Bing homepage. It’s loaded with nice wallpapers that seem to change on a daily basis. On a closer look, you notice that you can find the story behind the wallpaper by hovering your mouse over various “locations” on the image. The interface is quite basic and intuitive – as good as Google.

The only complaint here is the image that some people might deem is an unnecessary addition. For others, this might be a welcome change from the white, too minimalist, simple Google page.

Searching

The most important function of any search engine is the way it displays search results and Bing does it pretty well. The good thing about Bing is the way it throws the information at you in a much uncluttered, unconfused manner. The keywords you feed in are further used to “suggest” you more results. There is a related searches bar on the sides, similar to Google. As for the results, it does come up with what you are actually looking for most of the times. However, this one actually needs some time for you to “settle” in. Maybe a month down the line, we can comment if Bing can really replace Google, or even Yahoo for that matter, which if you’re not aware, is in second position in the search engine segment.

What we liked about the web results are the “snippets” of information that you see beside every search result link. To get an idea of what I am talking about, take a look at the image below. Once you search for a term and get a page with the search results, all you need to do is to hover your mouse over the thin line on the side of the list, and it will display what else is there on that page. Although I am not very fond of these mouse hover initiated things, this one does it in a very unobtrusive way. Nice!

Bing also comes with the expected Video, Image, Maps and News search. You can “personalize” your image search by choosing categories like size, color and even people. In addition, if you click on any of the images, it opens up the image — but at the same time, it shows rest of the images in a pane at the left. This lets you avoid hitting the back button for looking more images. The infinite search functionality does away with multiple pages and search results are added as you scroll down. This might be good for faster connections and PCs. As for videos, it has also been in the news for its ability to play explicit (amongst other) videos right from within the search results page. This has drawn sharp criticism from certain quarters. Well, coming to think of it, even though Google doesn’t allow you to play videos right from within the results page, it is capable of displaying explicit content by just changing the preferences. This also holds true in case of images. Bing comes with a similar option and it leaves me perplexed why only Bing is being singled out. You can search videos by length, screen size, resolution and source. Pretty neat!

If you are in India and are checking out Bing, it is interesting to note that you simply cannot search for things using keywords that Bing thinks might return sexually explicit content. Therefore, if you search for something as simple as “sex”, you will get no results. Period. If that was not all, there is no option to change your preferences so that you may complete the search using the aforementioned keyword.

If you are really looking for something, the only option now is to switch to one of the other localized pages (preferably U.S.) and you will get what you want there (ahem!). I am unsure if this is a bug or whether Bing India considers these words taboo!

Verdict

Bing sure is a good, robust search engine. Some of the features it has come up with are downright revolutionary when you compare it to Google and number two, Yahoo. Credit is due for Microsoft for providing users a capable, well thought-out search engine. You might take some time getting used to the “new set of search results” though. They have also managed to create a buzz around it and all that needs to seen is whether people will start using the service regularly. Technology enthusiasts and certain sections of this niche community might like the service and may even use the service, but replacing Google with Bing is a huge decision even for them. To replace what has become synonymous with search might be difficult and we do not see Google losing any market share in the near future. What Microsoft is looking at is the adoption of Bing by the layman, your average Internet user who still swears by Google and in some cases, is simply unaware of the fact that there is another option out there! Microsoft has had a good start with the Bing by creating the buzz around what is actually a nice search engine. However, it has a long, weary road to traverse before it could be a Google replacement. Microsoft however does seem to have Yahoo in its sight first!

Have you Binged yet? Let us know your opinion about Bing by participating in our poll on the homepage.

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