Bing: 5 Things You Didn’t Know

For a company like Microsoft, ruling the desktop and laptop markets just isn’t enough: Now the company aims to take Google down a notch with a cool, fast search -- sorry, “decision” --engine called Bing, which looks better and executes searches more intuitively. The reason for MS going up against well-entrenched players like Google and Yahoo! on their home turf is unclear, but it’s just possible that Microsoft is looking for a salve to put on the sting from the Zune’s failure to assassinate the iPod. Or maybe it’s an attempt on MS’s part to take a swipe at a more agile player that’s been chipping away at its core businesses lately. At first glance, Bing looks like a pretty compelling service, but only time will tell if most of its traffic will be from browser-embedded search windows or from getting people to stop going to Google when they need to find something.



1- Bing has already surpassed Yahoo! in search traffic


According to Dublin-based StatCounter.com, Bing outstripped Yahoo! almost immediately after its launch to take the No. 2 search engine spot. Search engines being what they are, second place equalled 5.6% of the global market and 16% in the U.S., so we’re not talking about numbers that even scratched at Google’s dominance of the marketplace, but as far as strong starts go, Bing’s wasn’t bad. Yahoo!’s CEO, Carol Bartz, doesn’t seem worried. “They’re not going to get scale through Bing. They’re going to get some temporary interest,” she says. The market seems to be bearing this out: As the novelty factor wears off, Yahoo! has regained its second-place position, but not by a whole lot. It’s also interesting to note that the vast majority of Bing’s traffic came at the cost of Google’s numbers, while Yahoo!’s users remained pretty much constant. Our vote for the biggest obstacle to Bing’s lasting market penetration? That goofy name.

2- Bing wasn’t the only search engine to launch last week


While Microsoft would have loved to be launching Bing into a total vacuum, a well-saturated market is still a place where a $100 million marketing campaign can get you traction. So, it’s too bad for Microsoft’s busy little bees that they launched their “Google killer” into a field that has just had its paradigm shifted by not one, but two new sites: Wolfram
Alpha and Google Squared. To be fair, both sites are far more likely to put butterflies in the stomach of geeks than they are to move the masses into a new relationship with information. However, the more press inches there are dedicated to Wolfram
Alpha and Google Squared, the less there are for Bing. And then there’s Google wave, which is nothing like Bing, but rained on the Bing launch party by virtue of being announced simultaneously.

Whether it’s for novelty or you’re tired of Google’s CAPTCHA, it’s worth your time to check out Bing…

3- Microsoft has already spent a lot to promote Bing


Microsoft sees Bing as something special; special enough, in fact, for a $100 million advertising campaign. For the rollout, MS tossed aside its usual admen at McCann in favor of JWT, to which more and more Microsoft business has been going as of late. As for the campaign, we’ve been given to expect it to be on the quirky and fun side at first, just to catch our attention before getting down to the nitty-gritty of how the decision engine works in later ads. That being said, the first TV spot, though quirky and poppy, is also messy and incomprehensible, so we’re not sure how much value MS is getting for all those dollars. Business Week’s Peter Burrows says that even the news of the ginormous budget has helped generate Bing buzz. And according to Advertising Age, a large budget for a national product rollout sits somewhere in the vicinity of $50 million, so it’s clear that MS really wants you to Bing where you’d usually Google, which brings us to…

4- Microsoft wants you to use “Bing” as a verb


OK, it’s clear that A) “Live Search” is just too boring and old-school a name for today’s market, and that; B) A totally re-jigged service usually does better with a totally re-jigged name, but Bing? Why not stick with the portal’s prerelease moniker, Kumo? It was so cool and had so much world beat that you could almost hear djembes in the background every time someone named the site.

Well, turns out that Microsoft’s bigwigs are looking at the use of “Bing” as a verb as one of their goals. And some would say that it’s the Holy Grail of search engine marketing. But where using an onomatopoeia for the moment of epiphany should be an astute marketing move, it’s really just a lousy choice to get your verb on with: Who wouldn’t feel mildly goofy telling a friend or a co-worker to Bing it?

5- Bing is just one of several big Microsoft ventures


Microsoft has been very busy lately. Not only has the company’s engineers and marketing people been burning the midnight oil over Bing, but they’ve been prepping Windows 7 for prime time. Microsoft engineers are apparently finishing up Win 7 development to get ready for the new OS’s launch this October. Early reports say that it’s going to be expensive as hell. We have also been led to believe that Windows Mobile 7 will be released at some point in the second half of 2009, though Motorola won’t commit to having the OS on its phones any sooner than 2010. This year’s E3 also saw the announcement that Last.fm will be coming to Xbox Live Gold subscribers later in the year. With all these developments coming down the pipe, it’s clear that Microsoft is working hard to keep all its eggs out of the same basket.