Bing passes Yahoo, steals share from Google?
Summary: There are reports saying that Bing had an extremely successful launch -- both stealing share from Google, and "leapfrogging" Yahoo at the same time. Can this actually be happening?
There are reports saying that Bing had an extremely successful launch -- both stealing share from Google, and "leapfrogging" Yahoo at the same time. Can this actually be happening? We will know more once we see details from sources like ComScore in the near future.
It's hard to argue with statistics -- so I guess we should look for an explanation for what may have happened. When a company like Microsoft wants their way, they will do almost anything to make it happen -- including playing a bit dirty.
What happened then? Well, you may not have heard about some disturbing behavior coming from Microsoft -- they hijacked the search feature in IE6 after Bing was launched. Anyone who had Google set as their default search provider in Internet Explorer 6 woke up with a new search engine: Bing.
I am curious how an "accident" like that is even possible, but anyway the "glitch" was fixed fairly quickly, and everything has gone back to normal -- just as I suspect those statistics will.
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Talkback
I'm confused..
Read around. Bing got some really impressive reviews, don't you think that people might be really using (or trying at least) it? Which explains the statistics?
You used this one bad news and completely discreted all of Bing's positive reviews. Yup I'm totally sold on your article. NOT.
Of course you are!
M$ are the masters of understanding market forgetfulness, they are the masters of using dirty tricks to take out the competition.
You are very very confused, voluntarily or not you are also suffering from amnesia.
silent.griffin or steve.ballmer?
You are so anti-MS
Chrome pushed Google's dominance.
greatness.
So Gladiatorcn.. do you like Gladiator movies?
Yes most people went out and tried a few searches with Bing to test the waters for themselves. But MS also hijacked IE 6 as a sly trick to fluff the numbers. I suspect the bing curiosity may last another week or two and then things will go back to normal.
MS might just get bing to become an adjective... Once people realize MS is using bing to gather their information and sell it to various marketing companies. So instead of saying' "I got scr3wed", I would say, "I got Binged".
Stick with what you do best
When you stray from your path and start dabbling in what you don't or can't do well (MS making a search engine or Google making a browser, for example), you get what is known in today's trendy kid slang as "epic fail."
Both Bing and Chrome are crystal clear cases of "epic fail," and MS and Google need to wake up, smell the coffee, and get their full attention back on what they do best.
The value of competition
An argument could be what Google does best is search, and also the best search we have is by Google. Only a fool would argue that Google's search is the best is could be. Why shouldn't Microsoft have a go at it?
You could say the same for Microsoft
As to the "Google apologist" theory, I don't see Google using patents to enforce vendor lock-in like Microsoft does. Google has been an active participant in setting web standards that are not encumbered by patents. Their Chrome browser, which is just starting to get wings, is an attempt to prevent MS from subverting web standards for their own purposes.
If Microsoft were truly confident of their abilities, they would take all their patents and sign them off to the Open Invention Network.
We can copy their ideas, but not their brains. If they are so smart, they don't need patents, vendor lock-in or dirty tricks to compete.
The actions of Microsoft suggest otherwise. They need government protection to compete via their patents. They need dirty tricks to keep everyone else down while they "innovate". They need vendor lock-in to buy time so that they can introduce a new product.
Just my two cents.
Ha, your anit MS just kicked in. :-) n/t
They need their patents....
Er, I think what Microsoft does best ...
Nobody thought they could do word processors, or spreadsheets, or file servers, or email servers, or TCP/IP stacks, or browsers, or SQL databases, or phone software, or games consoles, or online games, ...
The list goes on. If it's software, they can probably make a fair old go of it.
Google on the other hand is a one-trick pony, and that trick isn't Search anymore. Google's strength is in advertising, and nearly all of that is built on the search. Everything else is a loss leader to Search/Ads. If their Search share starts to slip, even just a little bit, so might the ads, and their stock price might start to slide. That could be a slippery slope if you don't have a Plan B.
Here is what happened.
When Bing went live, a bug in its implmentation of this search resolver didnt correctly parse the provider code, and it therefore defaulted to using Bing.
I think a proper journalist would have been able to do the 10 minutes of research necessary to discover this.
Considering IE6 has about 16% of the usage share (according to NetStats, often regarded as Microsoft friendly), and that this would only occur with users searched via the address bar, I think its highly implausable that this alone would generate enough search traffic to leap-frog Yahoo.
More likely is that many people were simple curious and wanted to try it out. Many/most of these folks will revert to old habits, and go back to whatever they were using.
Accessing Bings impact after less than one weeks is totally idiotic. Lets come back to this in a 3 months - just enough time for Garrett to go do a "Journalism 101" course.
Journalism?
I was trying to be polite ;-)
But much of what is written here is not even good op-ed. Anti-Microsoft (or Apple, or whoever) ranting is not a compelling read.
Some stuff here is good, but much of it frankly looks like a 10 minutes work in a feable attempt to put something behind a link-bait headline.
Create a new page with junk and sell adspace. ;-)
"Lets come back to this in a 3 months"
The "bug" just happened to "push" people to Bing.
Far from game changing but OK.
The OMers finally have an option.
Major problem for Google and Yahoo
Also, its not google !!, thats is a big plus, as google has constantly proven that being evil is a SOP (standard operating procedure) for them.
I dont trust google,
But it is good to see, that as Google tries to enter the OS and software market, the leaders of the OS and software market are responding in kind by entering (and soon dominating) the search market.
It's all fair then, MS is not doing anything that Google has not or would not do, or is not planning to do.
More competition can only be a good thing for the comsumer
You trust Microsoft then?
But that's not the main reason why Bing is at a disadvantage. Bing is disadvantaged because Google is perceived as being more cool and innovative than MS.
Fact is, MS is not cool in the eyes of consumers. That's why Zune cannot make much of a dent against Ipod market share and why Bing will end up as a second tier search engine. MS has a perception problem and that is not easy to overcome.
Bing would have a better chance if it were not affiliated with Microsoft.
I tried out Bing a few times and the results were mostly adequate, but it will have to be game-changing to succeed, and I don't see anything game-changing about it. If some aspect of Bing proves to be a consumer must-have, Google and Yahoo can always emulate it and quite possibly improve it.