Windows : Mac :: Google : (?) - It happens to be “bing”
June 30th, 2009 by Salim HemdaniBelieve it or not but Microsoft’s newly evolved search engine bing is nothing less than the answer of the above analogy question. You must have solved many of these analogy questions during your SAT exam. When I apply my knowledge and understanding to the question“Windows : Mac :: Google : (?)”, my answer is “bing”.
Remember when Apple release it powerful Mac OS X operating system, almost every single pundit in the industry agreed that Mac may not be the most powerful system for productivity but it is certainly the coolest and the best for creativity. Young people care more for creativity and less for productivity. Windows simply felt old and outdated. Mac operating system took off since then and market share for Mac is still increasing at a growing rate. This time bing hits a home run. After the launch of fully revamped bing search engine (or as they call it decision engine) Google search kind of feel old and out dated.
Some people say bing = “But it’s not Google”. I could not agree more. As Windows can never be Mac, bing can never be Google. In fact this time it is better for Microsoft to craft its own path and define its own destiny in search engine. The cool informational home page imageand vibrant brand colors have some kind of enigmatic charm. The creativity of bing may not appeal to mass population yet but as I know it many young kids simply love bing. They think bing aligns more with their taste.
While there are many features that make bing cool (and I will let you find out most of them yourself), I believe for me following are the best:
- Home page image: Everyday bing has a fresh new vibrant image that simply amazes me.
- Image search: Image search has never been so good. Every single query provides with an option to pick an image and do “find similar”. Additionally the in-browser searching and navigation of the images is absolutely next generation thinking.
- Video search: This is where despite the ownership of “You Tube” Google has failed to show value. Thumbnail preview in bing is simply outstanding.
- Shopping: Oh the cash back program. Spend 1,000 on a gadget and get some money back to go have a ice cream this summer. J
- News: Google has a strong lead in this field but bing has gone a step further by adding ability to search only blogs… I love that feature. People’s opinion matter more than journalists’ won’t you agree?
The list is simple but shinny. bing’s appeal to my creativity (which is not abundant) is noteworthy. I am an avid Google user but nowadays I go to bing for more than ½ of my search queries. It is fun and engaging. Google search results are still the best. So when I am searching for something very critical (items on which my job is dependent on :)) I still believe in Google but for everything else I go to bing…
– Salim Hemdani
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3 Responses to “Windows : Mac :: Google : (?) - It happens to be “bing””
At best I\’d take the analogy Google:Bing :: Firefox:Opera.
I mean, Opera\’s a perfectly adequate browser. But there was never anything compelling enough to lead many people to switch. I really tried Bing, but my experience was that the results were no better, so I decided to stick with what is familiar.
P.S. As an MS employee, you might want to write this in a more balanced tone if you don\’t want to be perceived as a brown-noser. You seem way too excited about the fact that Bing has an image on the home page, for example.
Hi mk,
Thank you for taking time to read my blog post and for commenting on it. And thank you for the P.S. I might come across as a brown noser but the fact is I am truly excited about bign and I don’t mind showing my excitement. My previous blog post about Google Chrome was equally exciting despite it is a Google product. I am technology and company agnostic as every Razorfish employee is… Nevertheless thank you for the advice
Salim Hemdani
salim.hemdani@razorfish.com
At first, I wasn\’t really impressed by Bing. As time goes on though, I\’m finding more and more I actually like about it. Bing has absolutely not replaced my general Google searching, but it has made some significant inroads.
For instance, I often use Bing now for code & technical information searching. I do NOT use bing for historical/history related research (such as political/country/culture histories). It seems to provide a seriously slanted result set in many searches about historically relevant events. This is both very worrisome and frustrating. I\’m not sure why it ends up with rather skewed results, but it does for whatever reasons.