Will Bing's big bang'¦ bash Google?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 29 May 2009 08:03

Opinion and Analysis

Basking in the new launch limelight is Bing.com, Microsoft’s new search thing which aims to massively boost its share of the search engine market, but while things look good at the launch event, the real battle gets down to business in less than a week!

After more than a decade of competition in search, in which Google has grown to garishly gargantuan greatness and gazillions in profit, Microsoft’s Australian “MSN” partnership with “PBL Media”, called “NineMSN”, has made a declaration: “Today is the day competition starts”.

This proclamation came from Alex Parsons, the Director of Search at NineMSN, neatly putting aside the last decade of search competition with the hoped for promise that Bing really will go off with a bang, for consumers, advertisers and Microsoft itself.

Arriving next Wednesday, June 3 (Australian time, thus likely June 2 in the US), NineMSN (or ninemsn as they call themselves these days) is in an almost unique situation. Unlike in the US, Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger are the two most popular products in their category in the Australian market, something Ninemsn will use to promote Bing relentlessly.

The “default” home page of Internet Explorer is “MSN”, which defaults to Ninemsn in Australia, and because so few IE users have changed their default page, Ninemsn says that 70% of Australian Internet users touch its home page every month.

While Hotmail and Messenger aren’t the top products in the US (think Yahoo Mail and probably Yahoo Messenger too, over there), Microsoft has had a decade or so’s worth of free publicity for its various MSN Search and Windows Live Search incarnations, and yet Micosoft search share of users has continually declined – so just how valuable will all of this truly be for Bing?

In fact, it leads me to another question. With Microsoft.com being one of the most popular sites on the Internet, why has Microsoft bothered to create a whole new brand, which it now must fund, advertise, promote and the rest?

Why couldn’t Microsoft have simply promoted “Microsoft.com” as its search destination? The planet knows about it, and advertising Microsoft.com would be a much quicker and much easier thing to do.

But… I’m not some Ivy League marketing graduate, and with Microsoft being the master of marketing (at least when it comes to operating systems), I’ll have to let history be the true judge of whether “Bing” was a brainy choice, or just bone-headed.

Still, it’s incredibly easy to see why Microsoft wants a much bigger share of the search and advertising pie. Google makes billions from it every year, and in Australia alone, Ninemsn says the Australian search market will be worth AUD $800m in FY 2010, something that has transformed search into the “new rivers of gold”.

Microsoft is bringing it on with Bing, promising that the era of “limited choice” in search is “going to change” – with consumer behavior set to determine whether or not to sing Bing’s praises, or to instead proclaim Bing a load of bunkum.

So, what’s Bing actually like, and what is Ninemsn (and thus Microsoft’s) strategy in differentiating Bing and proving to consumers that it really is different – and not just another “Cuil”?

Please read on to page 2…