Bing bashes on Google's gates

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 15 November 2011 17:23

IT Industry - Strategy

Microsoft's search engine Bing wants to do to Google what Dyson did to Hoover.  Typically category killers become generic terms - think Hoover, Kleenex and Biro - but as Dyson's proved, even category killers can prove vulnerable.

In its latest search salvo Microsoft has stripped the beta tag off its Bing Australia search engine. After two years in beta the tool has finally been declared finished and ready for the Australian market.

It might not have been finished but the company claims even the Bing beta secured 7 per cent of all local internet searches.

Stefan Weitz, senior director of Bing Search US is currently in Australia, and acknowledged to iTWire that as far as brand was concerned it would be hard to compete with Google in the keyword search sector, but he said; 'We are sort of OK with that.'

Instead Bing was intended for more 'complex nuanced queries'.

'The web is a high definition proxy for the real world. It gives us the opportunity not to link to a page '¦but connect people with an action with the web as their transport.'

While he stopped shy of using the term semantic search, Mr Weitz is clearly pointing to more informed search, where the search engine 'learns' about a user's preferences from a variety of sources including social networks and GPS systems, gleaning insights about what they might be looking for.