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35 Comments
- rolf, on 11/07/2009, -0/+16I tried Bing. Idk about it being better than Google. Honestly, Google is good enough for me right now just to stick with it. The problem Linux had for years trying to convert people from Windows is applying to Microsoft here with Google's search imo: even if you come with a better product (which I'm not sure is the case here), people just have an routine whose inertia is hard to overcome and make them change.
- rolf, on 11/07/2009, -1/+14Android seems to have been more a reaction to iPhone - have to give it to Apple here - they weren't first, but they came through with a breakthrough product.
Mozilla and later Firefox have to be given credit for hitting Internet Explorer first and hard. Google Chrome seems to be more about addressing the shortcomings of Firefox (not being multithreaded, and more and more frequent crashes taking down the whole browser).
I would say Google's brilliance after Search is Gmail, which not only does email, but voice and video chat (thoroughly killing Yahoo's offering), calendaring and documents (which is closer to MS Office's market).
Google Voice, if developed correctly, will be the next killer app, but that is aimed against telecoms with its cheap international calling rates and probably interest businesses the most.
Google Wave probably will be just killer.
I don't think they are aiming at Microsoft. They are aiming at what peope want and don't have yet, which is even better. A ton of Linux distros have emulated MS for years and haven't gotten mainstream traction (beyond Ubuntu). - Zelgadiss, on 11/07/2009, -7/+16LOL, I sure part of it has to do will all the ill-will they generated over the decades.
- eq2s, on 11/07/2009, -3/+8FTA: "Microsoft put out a first basic product that didn't come close to matching the market leader's. But Microsoft has a history of stubbornly staying the course, refining its wares, investing in development, until gradually the products become strong enough to push out the competition."
Rather than substantially improving it's products Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive conduct by using it's O/S market share to damage competitors (eg netscape).
See Microsoft - A History of Anticompetitive Behaviour and Consumer Harm". http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumer ... - IphtashuFitz, on 11/07/2009, -0/+5Agreed. Bing is decent, but there's just not enough to make me want to switch. In fact one thing I vastly prefer to Google over Bing is that Google's home page is very simple, while Microsoft, in typical fashion, tries to make it glitzy by having photographs for it's background with hotspots in them, etc. Microsoft has clearly never heard of K.I.S.S. Granted in this day of broadband it doesn't cause much of an impact on most, but as far as I'm concerned it's just an unnecessary waste of bandwidth.
I'll keep using Google as my primary search engine simply because it's still good enough as far as I'm concerned. If I don't like the results I get from Google I'll still do what I always do and try running searches on other search sites like ask.com, yahoo.com, etc. Only now I'll probably use Bing as well as another alternate. But there's just not enough reason to make them (or any others) my primary search engine. - Eaststand, on 11/07/2009, -2/+6I dont use Bing because its terrible, its that simple. Search results are wierd to say the least and sometimes dont even relate to what you were searching for. Its one redeeming feature is the image search, yet even that doesnt yield anywhere near as many results as Google.
Its a good first try, and I'm sure in a few years will be awesome, but right now its unusable.
And Bing is a very odd word. Google is gibberish I know, but it sounds less stupid when you say it out loud. I would never say Bing out loud. - highwebl, on 11/07/2009, -2/+6The search market created Steve Ballmer?
- daddymcguire, on 11/07/2009, -3/+7Google has been around several years, hence the familiarity with the name. What do you think people thought the first time they heard the word "Google"? The same thing you're spewing now about "Bing".
- Gibletoid, on 11/07/2009, -1/+5There, they're, their.
- WhoDoneIt, on 11/07/2009, -4/+7what?
- fuzzynyanko, on 11/07/2009, -1/+4Actually, Firefox for me defaulted to Google, not that I minded and in fact expect from just about any web browser
- Eaststand, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3well OK then, I was trying to be nice there. Its just terrible then.
- JohnnySoftware, on 11/07/2009, -1/+3Microsoft has been trying for half a decade to get their search engine to be something the majority of people on the web would use. How do you get "first try" as a way to describe Bing? It's Live Search with some pixel veneer.
- ColinGreig, on 11/07/2009, -3/+5Microsoft was too large, and too short sighted on shareholder profits, to quickly adapt.
Apple is entering the same situation now, IMO, with some of the decisions they are making.
... give Google 15 more years and we'll be rooting for a new underdog. - dragossh, on 11/08/2009, -0/+2You are completely right, Android was born in 2005 as a reaction to iPhone.
- Deranged, on 11/07/2009, -1/+3FTA: "That was the case with its Internet Explorer browser, its SQL Server database, its Exchange messaging server and its enterprise software applications."
I know a ton of people who use Firefox, mySQL (or PostgreSQL), and have a Blackberry synched to their business's Blackberry Enterprise server.
Sure they have competition, but they're not "pushing out" their competitors, Just making the game a little more competitive, which is healthy. - mudgie, on 11/07/2009, -4/+6I just don't find any compelling reason to switch to Bing. It does the same thing as Google, except they show a random photo every day which makes the website ugly. Pass.
- jv2k, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1This is the number one reason why google will never be dethroned.
In the early days google stood out from the pack allowing for more thorough and comprehensive list of search results. Ask, webcrawler, yahoo, msn, aol, they all failed to match up. Once google took market share there just wasn't any going back. Now that every other search provider has caught up the question is why should anyone switch? Yahoo had a leg up with it's mail, chat, and media services back when Google was just a search bar with a colorful logo and a blank background, but with the advent of the superior gmail and other services Google has effectively kicked yahoo to the curb(some marketing could help out though).
So bing is a new site. It doesn't really work all that much better than google(a side by side comparison showed it was more scholarly when I typed in stuff like "sex" but that's about it) and as a creature of habit I'm more likely just to google the answer to all my problems. The problem is that it's hard to convince people to switch from google. The search market isn't like the car market, or the OS market, any other market. All the contenders are generally equal with google being the one who was good first. Googling has become synonymous with searching for something online and it's going to be impossible to change that because there is no vastly superior alternative. - sndream, on 11/07/2009, -0/+1The first one who have a breakthrough in semantic search will rule the market.
- zer0mass, on 11/07/2009, -3/+4Chrome, at least on Windows, asks if you want to keep Google as your default search engine when it is first installed. The Linux version does not, but it is still in beta but at the same time I don't think many Linux users will want to change it to Bing.
- Eaststand, on 11/07/2009, -2/+3lets not, eh? Some of us like our computers to work with software and things. Unusual I know, but thats life.
- abbathdoom, on 11/07/2009, -1/+2The way to increase Bing market share is to switch IE to use webkit or gecko. If they can kill off any reason for anyone to switch to another browser they can keep millions of people from switching from Bing to Google in the process. Really there is absolutely no reason why Microsoft shouldn't be using an open source rendering engine now, except out of stubbornness and/or stupidity.
- jv2k, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1I think they were talking about the early years back when Microsoft kicked netscape out.
- krisrm, on 11/07/2009, -1/+1That was probably the most poorly written rant I have ever read... I'm still not sure what your point was, even after a page and a half of text. Well done.
- frygar, on 11/07/2009, -4/+3Google just works better and is a better company, overall. One, I might add, that isn't laying off thousands. How 'bout them apples, microserfs?
- eavesdrop, on 11/07/2009, -8/+7bing it doesnt sound cool, thats why they're failing. And Microsoft Live Search? I hope Bill thought of that, that'd be the only excuse. They're trying again and again. Give up already.
- slippeh, on 11/07/2009, -6/+4When I first heard "Google" I thought "googol"..which made me think "maybe that's how many search results they can provide"
Google > Bing - JohnnySoftware, on 11/07/2009, -5/+3This is kind of a silly article you realize as soon as you see, "there is one market where Microsoft's doggedness has failed to pay off: search".
Search is not a market it is a free service and the revenue comes from ads, not from doing searches. Owning a comprehensive web search service also enables research and data mining to do research like Google's "Ghost in the Browser" white paper that identifies Microsoft's IE+Windows as the chosen target of web viruses by analyzing their designs across the board. And of course part of the technology helps you pick good choices for ads to adorn a given web page.
Microsoft has not done well in the portal space. MSN is not so hot and Microsoft Live did not really catch on. Admittedly, it is hard to create an enduring web portal that actually makes money. The only one that comes to mind that has done a super job of both is Apple's iTunes.
Yes, iTunes has thrived for half a dozen years and counting, making tons of money each year, being wildly successful, and harnessing lots of web technologies under its hood. It is a done deal though. Other kinds of portals like iTunes could be created. Music/podcasts is a done deal now but other kinds of commerce or service portals could be created that are profitable and long lived.
Microsoft Live Search was not such a big deal. Renaming it Bing and hyping it got a surge of gawkers that then declined somewhat. Microsoft Mobile market share is tiny compared to Apple iPhone market share, and Apple only introduced their product 2 years ago.
Maybe Microsoft needs web search and its costs could be offset by some advertising that does not increase the attack surface of pages to web browsers. Microsoft's security/maintenence groups need to be trawling the web constantly to find web viruses and Trojans that target MS-Windows, or that have infected MS-Windows servers. Web based ads do not seem like a good primary revenue generator for Microsoft, though.
Xbox took half a decade to turn a profit. It is profitable now but for years it was losing the company money. The iPhone dominated its market in about a quarter of that time and had no problem being profitable almost immediately. The iPod and Apple iTunes online music sales were similarly successful.
IE seems like a big cost center not a revenue center. it is probably costing Microsoft Windows sales - exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do. Many customers are harmed every day while using it and it complicates IT workers' chores and developers' duties.
The computer software division generates a lot of income but it has taken a huge hit throughout this year and that is a big part of the reason Microsoft's workforce is being pared down a lot. Windows 7 was a shot in the arm financially but technologically, it has not strengthened the product itself in its weakest areas. The software division still rakes in well over a billion in profits and it is the heart of Microsoft.
Google does a lot of stuff that provides valuable service to Microsoft's Windows customers. Google has yet to sell or even give an OS away and it seems dubious that Google Docs applications are eviscerating Microsoft's MS Office revenue.
One of the oddest characteristics of Google's ads is they don't attack web browsers such as IE when they display. They don't contain Flash - so no Flash exploits. They do not show any images (hopefully, they do not contain invisible ones) so they don't present a risk of JPG/WMF/GIF/etc. OS/browser programming flaw exploits. Ads often increase the amount of threat on a web page - Google Adsense ads seem like they have very little intrinsic threat. So, Google has actually helped lower risk for Microsoft's customers and reduced ill will to Microsoft. When was the last time you heard about an enterprise getting attacked by malware from an Adsense ad?
Google has not attacked the integrity of Microsoft's software products - other things have. Google has not attacked Microsoft's customers - other entities have. Google has not made Microsoft's software more expensive to use - other things have. Google has not put pressure on Microsoft to fix certain bugs very quickly - other things have.
From keeping up on the industry news, it seems like the premises of the article are wrong. Google is not Microsoft's worst enemy. Google is one of the companies propping Microsoft up - the biggest and the strongest to do it quite so directly, ignoring Windows OEMs which are its biggest customers now and traditionally.
That is where a rival would attack and destroy Microsoft. That relationship between Microsoft and the Windows OEMs is their Achilles heal. Microsoft has not favored it much in the past month. They're directly competing with the OEM's on direct retail operations, and at the same time calling OEM customizations/freebies crapware or the like and characterizing their own equivalent in glowing terms. They're dis-ing the OEMs and Google didn't make them do it.
While it is probably true Microsoft craves the ad revenue that powers Google, there are more ways to make money than taking or supplanting something that already exists and does it in a way that helps you. Actually, creating products once again would be a good start. Microsoft offered lots of new software products to consumers in the 1990's but pare them down in the 2000's. Maybe it needs some new "compelling applications". Where is the killer app for MS-Windows for the 2000's from Microsoft?
Most of Microsoft's ills at this moment are a direct result of it attacking platform neutral technologies, trying to take them over or kill them off. The way Microsoft has done that have jeopardized its users, its customers, and the safety of using its platform. Ironically, platform neutral media - the web, the Internet, music CD ROMs, and USB memory CDs have each vigorously attacked MS-Windows in the past 1-4 years. The job of protecting the user from communications/storage media has languished and so has the creation of killer apps for the "personal computer" user.
Microsoft's worst enemy is that it picks the wrong things as its worst enemy, while its OS gets owned by everything users commonly connect to a PC except the KVM & mouse! How could they not notice this?
There are many markets that failed to pay off and this article has missed a lot of points about Microsoft, the web, and web searching/advertising. - Eaststand, on 11/07/2009, -6/+2Linux isnt a better product, it hasnt failed because people are used to windows, its failed because nothing works in a straight forward way, and is unneccessarily complex. Even as an experienced IT user and worker, I just want things to work, and for me to do complex things inside the program, rather than ***** about for a while just to get installed. Thats why noone will ever use Linux for anything other than servers.
- matt.rubin, on 11/07/2009, -14/+10Of course google is ***** brilliant.There mission is to take down Microsoft so naturally they asked themselves "where is Microsoft the weakest?" Oh of course, Windows Mobile. Boom android hits the scene. It most definably now more popular than windows mobile. Internet explorer weak? sure we will do one, Chrome! they are going to dismantle Microsoft at the core, Windows.
- DonAlfred, on 11/07/2009, -5/+1"boom". How's it going for ya Steve? BOOM!
- theoccupation, on 11/07/2009, -11/+3You wanna know why Microsoft cant cut it in the search business?
Because they're ***** product is call BING!
That is the stupidest ***** name, on that alone I wouildn't use it. And also, using it sounds like ***** also.
Guy 1: Yo, how did you find those naked pics of Kim Clijsters!!!
Guy 2: It was easy, you just Bing it!!!
That sounds ***** dumb, let's try that again.
Guy 1: Yo, how did you find those naked pics of Kim Clijsters!!!
Guy 2: It was easy, you just Google it!!! - WhoDoneIt, on 11/07/2009, -15/+6Microsoft rams their search engine down your throat and I've seen less than capable computer users start up their machine lately and ask what the ***** is Bing and why is this the first page they now see when they open a new IE browser.
While Google may do certain things behind the users back, at least they aren't forcing me to use their search engine.
I'm sure half of those 9% of users are using it because they don't know how to get rid of it. - prakash1234, on 11/07/2009, -17/+3lets use ubuntu linux now
- LightSpeed4, on 11/07/2009, -22/+7Microsoft just released bing and has devoted a lot to search. They have over 3000 engineers working on bing now and have made some innovative decisions which is why i use bing. This article is from pcworld which likes to suck up to apple and google.
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