Wednesday, November 11, 2009
It certainly is good to see Microsoft working the innovation thing, especially in the consumer space with its Bing search service.
The ultimate goal is to gain market share for Bing, from striking deals with hotter companies like Twitter and Facebook to doing a massive advertising and marketing campaign to making constant feature upgrades.
This is one of those weeks for Bing, with the launch of a spate of new features that show a lot of chutzpah.
But whether all this will spell significant changes in market share compared to dominant rival Google is still an open question.
Looks like Bing’s September market share decline was more an anomaly than anything else. According to the latest figures from Hitwise, Bing’s share of the search market increased seven percent in October, evidently at the expense of both Google and Yahoo.
Microsoft’s new search engine Bing unexpectedly went live this morning ahead of its scheduled June 3 launch date and it’s already done much to distinguish itself from Microsoft’s previous efforts in search. Certainly there’s far more verb potential in Bing than “Microsoft Live Search,” the service it’s replacing. And — beyond all this silliness about Bing’s prowess in adult entertainment queries — there’s a lot to impress.
At D7, Walt Mossberg interviews Steve Ballmer on Microsoft's new search engine, "Bing"--among other topics--and Ballmer introduces two new buzzy catchphrases: "Verb up" and "Bing me!"
As expected, Microsoft debuted the long-awaited upgrade to its search engine at D7 this morning. And, as expected, its name is Bing. Debuting along with it, a proliferation of Bing services: Bing Travel, Bing Cashback, and Bing Maps for Enterprise. Here's the press release on the announcement in full.
What’s in a name? Apparently, the answer to Microsoft’s many search problems. As we previously reported, the software behemoth plans to debut its new search service at our D: All Things Digital conference later this week, and when it does it may have a new name. Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search, and prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as… Bing.
