Bing a Google search alternative described as decision engine ??

I was pleasently surprised when I first heard about the new decision engine Bing, in times when the verb “to Google” being included in the dictionaries as a description to search something on the world wide web. What happened to Microsoft Live Search and what is a decision engine ? Background information on the bing.com website states:

“We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world calss search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.” [ref01]

Personally I truly like the idea that Microsoft wants to deliver an experience beyond just search. Honestly the Google-search-engine does its job very well, it even has market shares of 70% (and more in some countries),  and in that respet it’s hard to change your habits.  You need to offer something more and something better: -a different experience, rather than just search-. 

According to the interview on yahoo finance it’s very hard to quantify or measure the “amount of being better”, in order that people want to change their habits.

Kedrosky says: “You’re trying to replace a product people are reasonably happy with, with something where it’s not clear what the quantum improvement is.” [ref04]

However you can look at the problem from two sides: (1) a comparison with Google search, and (2) the improvement over the current Live Search.  Personally I do think that Bing is a significant improvement over the current Microsoft Live Search, simply because it offers more inter-connected searches.

Images

With one search term, for example HTC Touch Pro2, you can quickly search images, get only shopping tips, or find news items about the search term. The screenshot above shows in the images “tab” options to filter on size, layout, or color in order to narrow down your search more easily. Let’s zoom in on some of the added features described on the bing.com website as:

Shopping

“Features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and price predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price – help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket.” [ref01]

I truly like the concept, since I now use different price-comparison websites in order to search for the optimal pricepoint for the device or item I want to purchase. The challenge however is to get those locale, national and international price comparison websites onboard of the Bing-ship. In that case it certainly can save you some money, and I’m really curious about the pricepredictor and other services. I furthermore want to remark that I just put in one search term, and simply switched “tabs” to get acces to different types of information.

xRank

A final highlight I want to mention is the so called xRank, which is an overview list of celebrities with rises and drops of stars based on the results of search queries. The cool thin is that it not only shows the lists, and search volumes, but it gathers also information about the artist: (1) biography, (2) videos, (3) images.  In fact this is the only “tab” within Bing where I see the connection with video content.

 

Some thoughts and considerations

Let me start to remark that Bing is currently still in technically beta-status, so I guess there is still room for improvement and finetuning. However in the first concept I like the inter-connected search options, and the idea of quickly switching between different types of information all about one search topic.

Furthermore I certainly like the idea that Microsoft is trying to go beyond the idea of just “searching”, and offer additional “services”. Compared to the current Microsoft Live services, there seems to be a large expansion in addtional offering. Microsoft is cerntainly trying to create value for the end-user, and I do believe that there is potential in the price-comparison website integration.  I just received word that you can download a bing add-on for Internet Explorer 8 over here !

Also the mobile website is up and running already, please have a look at Todd Ogasawara’s article @ Mobile Content Today and Jack Cook’s article @ Experience Mobility for additional information about the mobile version.

However there are also aspects to consider, like the impact of realtime information flows with services like Twitter or other social networks.

“Live data pouring in on a real-time basis – a fire hose of data,” is both compelling for users and a “very different thing architecturally” from how search is currently structured [...]” [ref04]

Furthermore I think, despite the fact that I’m not a www-expert, that it will be a challenge to get the price comparison websites onboard and offer them a piece of the value in the value chain. Also I don’t see expansion in the video-direction, while there is a lot of anticipated growth and increasing ammount of video content, which is uploaded onto the web.

Despite some question marks I think you always need to be open to explore new things. Therefore give Bing a try, look at the nice and daily changing back ground image, and follow the upcomming developments. If it will become the beacon on the web, just like the Batman light beacon in the Batman movies, we all don’t know.  Read some additional articles of Todd Bishop about Bing @ the Techflash website, and Mike Temporale’s early writings about this new services @ MobileJaw (part 1) (part 2) !!

What are your ideas, thoughts and experiences of the recently launched decision engine called Bing ? Give the beta a try and let us know, what you think or what could be improved ??

 

Reference list:

1. CONCEPT:  Bing – A better way to search from Microsoft
2. MOBILECONTENTTODAY:  Bing Mobile Web Site & 800-BING411
3. HOME:  Bing- start your search over here
4. YAHOO FINANCE:  Search Wars: Forget Bing, Google Has More to Worry About from Twitter
5. DUTCH COWBOYS:  Microsoft’s Bing wil Google-gewoonte breken  *DUTCH*