A hundred million mistakes: Microsoft's Bing search engine

http://goodexperience.com/2009/06/microsoft-has-a-probl.php

by kqr2 • 17 years ago

43 51 17 years ago

ErrantX• 17 years ago

He does begin to make a valid point - but he is stil totally wrong. M$ needed a search engine - and Bing is actually pretty good: fast, decent results and useable day to day - it WILL get market share. What they needed was mass excitment to bring people to the engine - hence the huge budget.

And look at the stats already - ok so they might not be sticky stats but that is a HUGE amount of traffic. They are pitching $100 Million on people liking what the see when they visit to check out the hype.

Bing also has very little obvious M$ branding on it - which is another good tactical move to try and avoid the anti-MS vibe affecting opinions.

in all this has been, so far, a great exercise in marketing and product launch.

The crucial thing that proves this guy has no clue what he is talkign about is in the second comment to the blog he replies to a post about how Natal will "change the console world".

> Thanks, BJ... and that's a perfect example of a good > experience getting spread online... you're talking about > Project Natal because you genuinely think it's good, not >because it has a clever ad campaign or because some > talk-show host said "Natal" in a funny voice.

As we've already seen Natal is just an engineered tech demo - all it IS at the moment is marketing hype and a clever ad campaign to swing attention to the Xbox at E3........

chris112• 17 years ago

What I had really hoped was that Bing had a good search engine for shopping for computer hardware. There really isn't anything great out.

Froogle's ok, but sometimes gets bad results. So that $30 hd turns out to be a $30 cord. And it's kind of hard to comparison shop when you're going by the lowest price, and the lowest price is not the correct item.

I guess that this is an area for a human-powered search engine. Newegg's search is a really awesome example of how good search works. Unfortunately, Newegg is only one company, and I have not found a search engine that does something similar.

madh• 17 years ago

Have you tried pricegrabber.com?

chris112• 17 years ago

No I hadn't. Thanks for mentioning it. The site looks pretty good.

blhack3• 17 years ago

I tried really hard, but I just can't take this type of writing seriously.

Summary: Microsoft wants to expand their search market. They plan on spending a lot of money advertising this. This is a bad idea.

Guy who wrote this, listen up:

People do not giving a flying shit about the underlying architechture of any product they use. They do not care about the quality of results. They do not care about the logo on the top.

They care about how they feel when they're using things.

Lets look at apple's ipod. Yes, they are absolutely successful. Why is this? Is it because they have a massively superior product to anybody else? Or is it because they have advertised the living hell out of it to the point of an ipod being a fashion accessory/status symbol?

Haha, ipods are so hip, what, are you behind the times with that other mp3 player? Haha, look at how happy I am with this terrific, iPod, I'm with it! I'm hip!

The ipod isn't better, the feeling is better.

Look at the bing homepage compared to google. They have a nice big graphic on there with lots of colors. Its kindof beautiful. Oh, and the graphic changes all the time! Isn't that great? It's like you'd have to go to the page a few times a day to see all the pictures.

(now I'm adopting that annoying, sarcastic writing style. Sorry)

In search, getting results is the easy part. The part that keeps people coming back isn't content, its the feeling that they get when they're using the product.

novum• 17 years ago

I'm not so sure. Perhaps the iPod feels better, in part, because it is easier to use, faster, holds more music, or integrates better with your computer?

These can be objectively measured, whereas "feeling" cannot.

axod5• 17 years ago

You're wrong. The iPod was significantly better. People bought it. then it became 'hip' and 'cool', and some people only bought it because it was hip+cool.

I had several mp3 players before an ipod and the difference in usability was massive.

For a search engine, results are pretty much the only thing that matters. That's why google won.

tybris• 17 years ago

Maybe for the first 3 months, by that time other companies got the message. So Apple started to advertise, advertise and advertise until everyone had a white on pink burned into their eyes.

blhack3• 17 years ago

I apologize, I should have been more specific. What I should have said was that results were important when web search was in its infancy.

It has been refined to the point of irrelevance.

makecheck• 17 years ago

The iPod could store a person's entire music library, which other players at the time could not do. That was a major selling point. While advertising wouldn't hurt, you can't say that a few commercials were the only reasons anybody wanted one.

dionidium• 17 years ago

What? The Archos Jukebox had the same capacity as the first iPod and was released a year earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod

yan• 17 years ago

I want the feeling of getting what I'm searching for and the ability to skim and find it instantly on the results page without distraction. This isn't as subjective as feelings.. You can easily come up with a set of queries you used in the last year to find what you were looking for and ask: did the search engine return it as top N results?

edit: in general, as far as marketing is concerned, I agree that you should be in the business of selling feelings around your product, but I think you over-generalized.

pg2• 17 years ago

Microsoft would love it if this were true. They may even convince themselves that it is-- that their stuff is just as good as Apple's or Google's, just not as fashionable. But it isn't true.

As companies, Apple and Google are both obsessed with making great things. Not with fashion, with engineering. Ask the people who work there. Microsoft isn't. Their history as a company has convinced them that there always has to be a shortcut to dominance-- that they don't have to obsess over craftsmanship, because they can use money or power to buy market share. Their plan to spend $100m marketing Bing shows their priorities haven't changed.

ashr3• 17 years ago

With all due respect, this is where I do not agree.

Microsoft is a company with a very diverse product spectrum and $60B in revenue. One has to give them some credit for sustaining high level of revenues and profit growth. It would be only fair to consider that they do have a lot of very smart people who can perhaps tell when is a short cut (FAST, Powerset ?) a better way to success and when the sheer commitment to high level of craftsmanship is the primary way.

With the search business being so dominated by Google (and for very good reason), introducing an entirely new brand name like Bing is a LOT of work, just to get people's ears and eyeballs. To overcome such a huge startup latency because of a new brand, a $100m investment in marketing sounds perfectly reasonable. Overall, I think they are investing a total of ~$500m in the online business operating expenses for the year.

te_platt• 17 years ago

It seems like I remember a lot of stories like this about Microsoft before the Xbox came out. Microsoft is going to compete against Sony and Nintendo? Yeah right! --Turns out they did OK.

Maybe Bing will work out and maybe not but that's no reason not to try. I'm sure Microsoft is very aware of the risks involved and the other places it could have invested the money going into Bing. I'm also sure they're aware of the money and power that goes to whomever controls search.

Retric2• 17 years ago

They are still billions in the red.

MS subsidized the hell out of an expensive product for 8 years, spent insane amounts of money on advertizing, AND bought software companies to increase demand. Yet it's still fighting for the number 2 spot and are a long way from making back their sunk costs.

  Sony: 136 million (PS2) + 22.73 million (PS3) 
  Nintendo: 21.74 million (GameCube) + 50.39 million (Wii) 
  MS: 24 million (Xbox) + 30 million (Xbox 2)

It looks like Sony traded 3rd place to win the HD movie format war so it's probably a huge win for Sony. And Nintendo is still printing money from the Wii system. It's hard to say what the long term trend is going to be.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

Ok, first of all, it's unfair to say that they're "fighting for the #2 spot" because the combined total console sales of last generation + this generation put them in #3. They're in the #2 slot for this generation, which is all that matters at this point. You don't gauge market position by looking at product sales over multiple generations.

Second, the Xbox division is profitable. Does that mean they made back their sunk costs? No, but they're on their way, and I think the original point was the MS has so much money that they can enter a market big, pour the money, and wait for things to turn their way. The Xbox is a good example of that.

breck• 17 years ago

Each search = predictable $$. Spending $100M will increase searches and ad clicks. Which means they will get some, or even more, of that money back. (Could $100M get a higher ROI elsewhere? maybe, but unless you know the revenue per query MSFT makes I wouldn't call the marketing campaign a mistake).

quizbiz• 17 years ago

That's an interesting perspective that isn't getting enough of the spotlight.

robryan• 17 years ago

There is also the aspect of trying to catch up to Google, even if it isn't a great investment they may see it as there last real chance to catch Google. Customers probably wouldn't respond well to another rebranding in future.

Theres also the emotional aspect, you'd imagine Steve Ballmer would like nothing more than to take Google down a couple of pegs.

jgilliam• 17 years ago

Microsoft's DNA is to copy or buy things, it's simply what they do. It started with QDOS/86DOS.

ssn• 17 years ago

If you look at Google's top products, most of them come from startups they bought: YouTube, Blogger, Docs, Maps, Earth...

I can only think of GMail and Reader as products that were originally developed inside.

pg2• 17 years ago

I believe Google Search was developed internally.

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

I'm sorry to say, but a $100 million spend on advertising is peanuts in this game. Google's revenues last year were $16 Billion. Two thirds of that, or $10 Billion came from Google owned pages (read search advertising).

So, if my coctail napkin calculations are correct for every 1% share of their search advertising business Microsoft stands to gain roughly $100 million plus punch a competitor in the nose. Not bad. I wouldn't be suprised if Microsoft picked up an additional 5% of the search market with Bing. That means $500 million more in revenue.

People forget that online and search businesses accounted for just $850 million of Microsoft's $60 Billion total revenue last year. Their revenue streams are pretty well diversified, and they can afford to bleed money in search for years if necessary.

Google's primary source of revenue is search and advertising. Any serious loss of market share in that business is going to hit Google where it hurts: the bottom line. They have enough cash to take a few lumps. But, they've been around for 10 years, and they are still clining to a single source of revenue. That puts them in a dangerous position.

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

This is just senseless Microsoft bashing from someone probably incapable of original thought. The irony of saying "It's those effing customers. They keep choosing the best experience." to bash a company that owns 95% of the OS market is clearly beyond him. He clearly understands little or nothing about economics, marketing, consumer behavior, etc.

Saying Microsoft should invest in areas not owned by Google is like saying GM should build planes because Toyota isn't.

jsqurred• 17 years ago

I think that this is probably the most insightful comment on this page. Microsoft can probably afford for Bing to fail, because it's not their bottom line. Their bottom line is licensing with OEMs and large businesses.

I love Google products, but from a business perspective, their only source of profit is search advertising from their search engine. They are basically bleeding money through Youtube every single day with apparently no clear way to generate revenue.

If Microsoft can focus on the domain of searches to very profitable topics, such as airline tickets and hotels, and provide a better user experience through statistical analysis and information, they can carve out a part of the search revenue. No one is going to seriously use Bing for casual search, Google is too good and too entrenched for that. But, perhaps for some areas, they might turn to Bing.

mistermann• 17 years ago

Not to mention, I think a large part of google's advertising revenue has got to be a waste of money for the person paying, it just hasn't been figured out yet.

jsz0• 17 years ago

First off, Bing is basically a photocopy of Google with a couple different features. If you put the two side by side you won't get significantly different search results. The only real difference is layout. (video thumbnails, etc) So that being said if Microsoft has a product that is more or less equal at this point they obviously need to advertise it to gain marketshare. Is anyone actually unhappy with Google search? No, not really. So Microsoft's only hope is to at least get a large number of people to try it -- even if they only try it once or twice. There's more opportunity for growth there than simply trying to wait for people to become dissatisfied with Google and search out alternatives on their own.

Very few (if any) Microsoft products have experienced real organic grass roots growth. They've always been forced into the market Top Hat style. Since they don't have any real monopoly to tie Bing into they obviously have to try a different method here. They tried with both MSN and Live to leverage IE for more marketshare and it didn't work. You can't really blame them for trying something different. When you're dealing with a mainstream consumer oriented technology advertising is very important.

spectre• 17 years ago

Microsoft needs to take a look at how google became popular in the first place.

I got told told about by a friend at school and how it was much better then yahoo. I didn't believe him but after trying I was really impressed. I then told my parents about it and they had the same reaction I did. Since then my entire family has been using google.

If Microsoft wants to beat google at search they need to invoke the same kind of reaction in people.

froo• 17 years ago

It really astounds me when people think that Microsoft has to instantly beat Google. I think they're looking at it from the wrong point of view - They only really need to beat Yahoo at this stage.

Microsoft are throwing $100M dollars at an advertising campaign, when you compare that to the tens of billions they were willing to spend on acquiring Yahoo for their search business last year, its a cheap investment.

Hell, I'd wager that since they'll be recuperating some of the costs through search advertising, that the $100M spent will only be the beginning. I think we will all see more advertising spent in the future.

If Microsoft is serious about search, this $100M is a cheap gambit.

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that Google's users are so entrenched that they wont be able to steal any of them, yet they do manage to take all of Yahoo's users, that means they still would control essentially half of the search volume that Google would control.

$100M for a glimpse at that outcome is cheap, especially when they have the cash reserves to do it.

So like I said, they just have to steal Yahoo users, which then puts them in a really good position to outdo Google.

If history has shown us anything, when it comes to technology & consumers, the more technically superior solution doesn't always win (eg, betamax vs vhs or IE vs Netscape)

sker• 17 years ago

I wonder what decision is driving them to screw their chances in other countries. Because that's what they're doing. Anyone who gives it a try outside of the US is probably never going to look back.

One of the reasons for the rebranding was because people wouldn't give Live another chance. Now those same people are gonna see that Bing sucks and that image will get hard printed on their mind.

I already recommended it a couple of times to people in my country and they always tell me it sucks. I'm not gonna spend the extra effort of telling them to switch to the US version. They don't pay me to do that.

chanux• 17 years ago

>>According to a Microsoft exec in charge of the launch, "The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising."

No doubts, he is a MS guy.

chmike• 17 years ago

I don't agree with the author of the article when he writes that we don't need another search engine. We definitely need alternative search engines here because the quasi total control and monopole on the information funnelled to nearly all internet users is a very serious problem. This is too much power in the hands of one player. In addition to the incredible amount of knowledge it has on everyones searches and thus interests and works, it is in a position that would make it possible to totally bias and corrupt the perception a user can have on knowledge published on the web.

There is also room for improvement in the "experience" provided by google.

But I fully agree with the authors on the evaluation on the Bing stuff. My experience of bing, by comparing search results on the scientific topic I'm working on, where disappointing. Microsoft results appeared to be highly biased toward particular scientific institutions which, I have heard, have some research partnerships with Microsoft.

An advertisement campaign may catch attention, but it won't change the experience perception. A very good point of the article author.

ironsam• 17 years ago

"Sure, lots of people still pay the upgrade tax on Windows and Office every two years, but only because they have to."

My primary OS is Window's XP, which I got in 2001-ish. That's a little more than 2 years...

A hundred million mistakes: Microsoft's Bing search engine

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