THE unthinkable has happened - Microsoft has developed an online service that compares favourably with the competition. The Redmond giant has done away with its Windows Live (formerly MSN) search engine and replaced it with something called Bing. And it works.
Perhaps I'm not being entirely fair in calling Bing's success unthinkable. Microsoft's online products aren't all crap. They may be late to the game in most cases, but when they do finally catch up to the market the products themselves are often on par. Live Maps is an example of this; it's easily as good and as usable as Google Maps.
And there's nothing wrong with being late to the game, although Microsoft isn't really tardy. The company has provided a search engine, of some sort, since the early days of the web. Bing is just the first good one, and provides modern search functionality based on solid algorithms.
When Google launched in the late 90s search engines were nothing new. They had been around for almost a decade and the market was tied up by Yahoo!, Lycos and other established names. Some thought Google crazy for even attempting to launch a new search engine.
A breath of fresh air
Bing isn't just another new service from Microsoft, but representative of a new approach to the market that is underpinning all of the software giant's products. Windows 7, Office 2010 and other new offerings from Microsoft all hint at a company that is less proprietary, more open and more aligned to current trends.
Windows Vista, at launch, was technologically behind other operating systems. Linux, BSD and Apple's OS X were streets ahead of Windows at that stage - part of the reason Vista was late, as Microsoft tried to play catch-up with the market.
Windows 7, on the other hand, is every bit as stable and snappy as its competition, and keeps up with trends on the cutting edge.
And whereas Microsoft used to shoehorn customers into using its services and doing things its way, in Windows 7 users can choose third-party services to incorporate. You don't even have to use Internet Explorer in Windows 7; it can be completely stripped out of the operating system.
Windows 7 is a platform in the truest sense of the word and embodies a shrewd take on the market from Microsoft. But I'll stick to my Mac, thanks.
Back to Bing. Since launching the new search engine, Microsoft's revenue from search advertising jumped up 8%.
This is not surprising, given the initial interest in the new service, but the fact that it's good means people will come back to continue using it. Microsoft is in the game to stay. I even believe the rumours that Google is worried - if only just a little.
Why Bing brings market cheer
I like Bing. I like that it's fast, I like the interesting images it presents on the front page and that change every day. I even like the silly name, which may be a sympathy deriving from my unfortunate surname.
I also don't mind the fact that it thinks I live in the UK until I explicitly go to www.bing.co.za. Extended search options for things like video, however, are not supported for the South African region.
When you do use Bing to search for video it will present content from several sources, including Youtube - the video service owned by Google.
But the best thing about Bing is that it brings some much-needed competition to the search engine arena. Google, the gentle giant, has pulverised the market. Yahoo! lies bleeding in one corner, and a pile of corpses in the other.
No one came close to Google, until now. Competition is good. It will keep Google on its toes and apply some pressure to the market, which means better products and services for you and me.
The only thing Microsoft has done wrong with Bing is try to convince us that it's not a search engine. Instead, Microsoft calls Bing a "decision engine". They should have tackled Google head on and called Bing what it is: a highly capable search engine.
The recently launched Wolfram|Alpha, on the other hand, really isn't a search engine. As a computational knowledge engine, Steven Wolfram's brainchild represents a new paradigm in computing as a whole, which is a good few years away from its tipping point. Until then Google and Bing are it.
As Microsoft continues to play catch-up and introduce new products, I will offer one word of advice: be careful with silly names; they aren't always fun. I speak from experience.
- Fin24.com