Problem solving, marketing, and Bing

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July 15th, 2009

Microsoft’s newest rebranding of its search engine (is this the 3rd?) is coupled with an $80 million marketing campaign and an assortment of TV ads. These TV ads follow the conventional marketing tactic: define a problem and present a solution. Problem: Search doesn’t work, offering the wrong results for your query. Solution: Bing, the first decision engine.

But that problem doesn’t exist.

Microsoft’s incredibly annoying ads (and I liked the weird Seinfeld ads) are better suited for the late 1990s when search really didn’t know what words went together or how to best serve results. Now, search works pretty well.

If I search for breakfast or lcd vs. plasma, I get results for breakfast food and which kind of TV to buy (even without putting TV in the search query). This is the same on Google, Yahoo, and yes, Bing, and has been true for about a decade. So Microsoft’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

Mostly, Microsoft’s massive marketing campaign did more to impress the press and investors, who did their part to claim Bing was winning or posing a real threat to Google, which has been shown not to be the case. At best Bing is just a more publicized version of Windows Live. Let’s remember, Google became Google with no marketing at all (and only started advertising a little last year). Having good products helps.

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7 Comments

Tom
July 16, 2009 at 10:42 am

I’m no fan of Microsoft, but I’ll say this.
1. “Decision engine” is definitely marketing speak, but…
2. There is room to improve search–both the results and the experience of those results–particularly if you’re not really experienced in how search works and how to get the best results by choosing your terms.
3. Bing has built in a lot of a lot of genuine improvements, both in results and in user experience. While Google is still my primary search tool (not least because it’s built into my browser), already I’m running searches on both in situations where I’m having trouble finding the correct result. And in at least two instances I’ve encountered, Bing gave me a useful result where Google didn’t.
4. Finally, just by number of domains, the internet is two or three *orders of magnitude* larger now than it was when Google launched in 1998. Success in the internet marketplace in 2009 is a very different ball game than success in 1998. Yes, you need a good product, and in some ways Bing has a better product than Google. But that doesn’t matter if nobody knows about it…

Jade
October 21, 2009 at 9:39 am

Bing does give search results much like Google but i would have to say that Google still gives more relevant search results.

Jimmy Sy
November 2, 2009 at 6:34 am

i have been using the BING search engine for a couple of weeks. it seems to be as good as Google but for some reason i would still want to stick with Google search engine

Carmen Gomez
December 30, 2009 at 1:10 am

BING search engine is just as good as Google. In my own personal experience, Google does give more releveant search result than Bing but the difference is very small. **

Leon Murray
April 28, 2010 at 10:09 am

I use Bing and Google whenever i want to find something on the internet. I think that both search engines are very good. .

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