Microsoft ‘Bing’?
Microsoft is at it again. The Redmond, Washington company is set to unveil its next iteration of search technology at an industry gathering this week. They have tenatively named this new search index “Bing” as a sort of verbal representative for that lighbulb that goes off in your head upon a new, supposedly great, idea. Other monikers it has thrown about is Sift and Hook. So what else has Microsoft been doing with its free time besides purchasing 4-letter domain names?
Microsoft’s goal is to challenge Google in its search dominance. Google has become an international household name and Microsoft badly wants that. Microsoft has happily sat on their success for the better part of the 90s and 2000s. But with market share shrinking, its competitors popularity increasing, and Vista crashing, Microsoft needs a crutch and it hopes that… Bing… will be it.
We will see. But like our test of Wolfram Alpha, I don’t see anything that Microsoft can do to drive a wedge into Google’s market. It’s almost an ironic dose of its own medicine: Microsoft dominated the personal computer market for almost two decades with little that could be done to stop it. Apple came up with an ingenious little device called the iPod that was a complete game changer for the company. The iPod single handedly thrust the company back into relevance and it hasn’t stopped since.
Although Microsoft is in no danger of going under, they are looking for that “game changer” that will set the company back into technological relevance. A dominating search engine could be the way, but that hill is very, very steep.
We will see.
New York Post article: http://www.nypost.com/seven/05262009/business/microsoft_bing_ing_it_on_google_171003.htm
