Has Bing Already Overtaken Yahoo? 319
nk497 writes "Microsoft's newly revamped search tool Bing has already overtaken Yahoo in the US and globally, according to StatsCounter. The net traffic watcher said Bing has topped Yahoo 16.28% to 10.22% in the US, and 5.62% to 5.13% globally. Though the firm noted Bing's popularity may drop off after the excitement wears off, the firm also said: 'Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo at a cost of $40 billion it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated.' Google, of course, still leads by a considerable margin."
Re:Not really (Score:2, Insightful)
>>There is certainly a very long way to go before it even begins to approach google.
Not only that, but people's search habits are not at all easy to change. I suspect Bing will take a while even to approach Yahoo.
as much as it pains me to do this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Redirects (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before M.S. sends out an update that automatically redirects URL typos to Bing?
Amused by their general marketing.. (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Their marketing strategy seems to be to push the name 'Microsoft' as far away as possible. Interesting they view their own name as a liability in this space.
2. 'Bing is not google' abbreviation seems particularly weird. Suggesting that currently google has an oppressive, monopolistic grip on the search industry, leaving little choice but to have to go with them as they are the defacto standard. The company that wants to save a market from an oppressive, de-facto standard monopoly is.... Microsoft?
They are not idiots, stop with the snobbery (Score:5, Insightful)
I did a little experiment. I loaded up IE, hit the search button, typed something in, and ran the search. Whaddayaknow, Bing comes up with the search results. So every idiot that has the same Windows installed as the day they brought it home from Walmart with IE as the default browser and the little search button as their only gateway to the world is going to use Bing whether they know it or not. Apparently there are quite a few such idiots. Are we surprised?
People like you are why IT people get a bad rap.
Why is someone an "idiot" who does not care what search engine or browser they use? You are into (or do it professionally) IT, so this sort of thing is important to YOU. I bet in other fields, maybe for example sake investing, people could say "Wow, you're an idiot for not performing a split. Moron!"
Fact is different things are important to different people. It doesn't make them an idiot.
It's the apps stupid! (Score:3, Insightful)
Around a decade ago, it was enough to have a better search engine to get people to switch. But in the meantime, google has me hooked on mail, sites, and documents. Other people use other apps, but just like Microsoft snagged the desktop OS market based on it being the default on commodity hardware and then maintaining it with applications later, I believe Google will keep it's top spot on the same idea.
Migrating from a search engine simply is a lot of hassle now especially since it's diminishing returns, I have a feeling that "perfect" results and google and maybe even bing won't be that far apart from each other. Also, a decade ago, the internet was more of a wild west in terms of searching for information about some topics far and wide. You just didn't know what sites had relevant information. These days, a great majority of my searches start as "X Y wikipedia" because now there is a centralized spot for info.
I applaud Microsoft's effort though. Competition is always a good thing and might bring something unexpected or at least keep google honest and on its toes. Also, the bing page has learn/copied the good part of google, and that is the minimalization. A far cry from the horrendous "portal"idea that Yahoo, MSN, comcast.net, AOL, and others are still attached too.
Re:Indeed (Score:1, Insightful)
What were your search terms? I could find plenty of information in all three engines. It all depends on how you structure your queries. For example, "Immigration in Germany" in quotes like that would almost certainly give you good results for something like this. I used
"Immigration in Germany" pre-ww1
as my query and got plenty of results.
Re:Now I'm waiting for the new Bing ad onslaught.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's the apps stupid! (Score:3, Insightful)
Bing does have that "see bits of videos straight from the search page by hovering over the image" feature. I'm sure they'll remove it as soon as publishers and porn sites complain.
Re:They are not idiots, stop with the snobbery (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not criticizing you for commenting, he's criticizing you for calling these people "idiots".
Having different interests/priorities than you doesn't make someone an idiot.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
When I saw this story on Slashdot just now I thought - is this a story or a paid commercial promotion? It is clearly way to soon to be evaluating the impact of bling (or whatever it is called - I am not paid to help establish brand recognition so I won't repeat it). It should also be obvious that there will be a lot who will click it out of curiosity alone and never go back again, as I did. Since Microsoft has made it clear that they intend to spend a fortune to promote bling, all articles become suspect since we are all well aware of how Microsoft routinely buys journalists and bloggers, and that in fact this is their preferred method these days. In the end, I arrived at the decision that this is simply a timley story like any other to the Slashdot editors who know that we are interested in all things Microsoft. Obviously this site wouldn't enjoy the success it does if they pass off paid commercial promotions as subject matter, but there are so many others doing this that if I were an editor I would take pains to avoid even the appearance of such a thing.
Re:It's the apps stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's the apps stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Redirects (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair's fair. Yahoo only gets traffic via of all the browser-hijacking toolbars it's managed to sneak onto people's machines.
(Or is it because Yahoo's adverts create more of an emotional connection with people...?)
Re:-1 HopeDashing (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry.
They'd just game them separately with twinned sites & such.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really not that hard. Click the little drop down beside the search box, and pick "Find More Search Providers". Two clicks, really. Google even features prominently on the (Microsoft-hosted) search engine page that appears.
Ignore the retards that will appear to say "get firefox" with some witty 4 item list (often including "???. Profit!" while clapping the bottom of their hands together in short bus glee.
Overtaken? (Score:2, Insightful)
mo magic with marketshare numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
So "Bing" is another name for MS search but we are supposed to believe they jumped Yahoo by changing the name? That would mean not only would have all the previous MS search lemmings basically stayed put and people jumped from Google and/or Yahoo. That's just dumb and I have no doubt this is just another Microsoft marketing gimmick so more lemmings might get a warm and fuzzy feeling thinking there weren't the only ones using MS Bing. But, knowing Microsoft, maybe they did an OS patch which "fixed" the default search field for everyone using Windows and now they all use Bing. Or they only did that to the ones naive enough to still be using MS Vista. IMO.
What made me laugh when I tried MS Bing was when the search returned something like 6 pages but from page 3 onward all it did was reshowed the same last page of search results.
LoB
I Was There (Score:1, Insightful)
It's more like this:
A mechanic and an IT guy are yelling to each other. "What do you mean you don't care what engine it is? You're a fucking idiot!"
Re:Uh, evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that is some evidence. I combined that with my own observations. Your observations may be different than mine.
Yes, Groklaw is biased - towards those in favour of upholding the rule of law whether it's against convicted monopolies or scam artists trying to destroy Linux. However, they do supply a link to just about every little detail backing up whatever is the subject of the day. This permits the reader to follow the evidence and come to their own conclusions, as you have just done.
Re:Does "IT Pro" run paid ads as articles? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good, Bad, Ugly (Score:4, Insightful)
Good - Easy to use, decent results, refreshing look.
Bad - Poor related links.
Ugly - Can't try out everything because I don't have silverlight on my laptop and cell phone.
I'm wondering if bing is more about Silverlight than it is about being better than MSN Search or Live.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, because my related searches for "the dark knight" are:
* The Joker
* Heath Ledger And The Joker
* The Batman
* The Dark Knight 2008
* Superman The Man Of Steel
* The Punisher
* The Incredible Hulk
Seems pretty relevant to me.
You also get this nice little sidebar which assumes you're looking for a movie:
* Images
* Trailer
* Review
* Quotes
* Soundtrack
* Cast
Re:Uh, evidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Who says? Courts convict on circumstancial evidence all the time. When formulating my own opinions, I frequently find I need draw conclusions based on imprecise or sparse data. I think we all do, at some point or another. I don't think one can navigate through life if they are unable to make a decision without hard evidence. As indicated, I believe I have seen enough to come to my own conclusion on this issue. When we are dealing with a convicted monopolist, we need to be more critical and more sceptical of expiating evidence - it's just common sense. You seem to have a contrary point of view. Thank you for sharing that. Different points of view make this world a more interesting place to be. May you live long and prosper :-)
bing sucks: (Score:3, Insightful)
I tried it out a couple of times, and it insists on offering me Finland-related search results. This made it completely useless for me. I guess it does the same for users from other countries - gives search results specific to the searcher's geographic location. Well, that's bullshit.
Re:Unlearn (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if we're just getting older.
You see, back in the day, we had to learn assembler to write programs. Then they made C and other higher-level languages. And then interpreted languages. but even when writing VB.NET or C#, in my head I'm doing the equivalent of the original C++ to C translator, adding C to ASM on one side and OOP to C++ on the other side.
I sometimes wonder that, back when search sucked (right around the time of Northern lights / AltaVista) I could find anything. It wasn't persistence - it was putting the right terms in. Think of what you want to see on the page, and let it do a simple look-up.
google is not processing data that way any more. We have to re-learn how to do our specific searches. I don't have an answer for you tho, still figuring it out. Meantime, try just asking a question like the idiot users do. It works more often than I expect.
Re:Not really (Score:2, Insightful)
The misinformation you're trying to pass off as sound findings is a bit more egregious than what's typical here.
First, your overall conclusion is based on a single query and observation.
Second, your observation is completely wrong. You state that you think the Bing result for "The Dark Knight" is horrible because it doesn't show accurate breadth. You say that Yahoo's result is better because its "more" feature lets you explore things not directly related to the movie but are closely tied. You further say that you don't particularly like the "more" UI.
Now, look at Bing's result. http://www.bing.com/search?q=dark+knight&go=&form=QBLH [bing.com]
The breadth results are built right into the main results page. They have already categorised all the results for you. The Dark Knight Trailer. The Dark Knight Review. The Dark Knight cast. The Dark Knight poster. The Dark Knight soundtrack. Videos related Dark Knight. These are subjectively even better than Yahoo's "more" results, plus Yahoo does not show video results, plus you don't have to press a "more" link.
Please, I'm just asking you to pay attention next time.
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
There's merit to what you're saying but you're failing to take into account the scale of the difference.
Internet penetration in the altavista/lycos (remember them lol) days was far less than now. The internet and google are intertwined in people's heads. Was altavista ever a verb?
Now the first thing people do when they want to find something online is google. That's ordinary people, the kind who keep clicking on the blue E icon because it stands for interweb and that's how they've been wired. Google are forunate in that they've achieved overwhelming dominance at the 'critical mass' point of internet usage.
I agree that if something is better then it may displace google. However the odds are now magnitudes larger than back in 1999.
On a side note, I cannot believe how much money they make off advertising.... does anyone actually click on internet ads? (answer is obviously yes but personally I can't even recall more than half a dozen times in the last 10 years lol).