Microsoft's predictable public response to Google Instant, which offers real-time results to users' typing search queries, is that innovation will ultimately benefit both Bing and Google.
Microsoft seemed magnanimous in its public response to Google Instant, which
offers real-time results as users type queries into the search bar. The
service, which launched Sept. 7, broadens the contrast between Google and Bing,
Microsoft's search engine.
"It's great to see continued innovation in search, in particular the
level of energy in this space over the last 12-15 months," Mike Nichols,
Bing's general manager, wrote in a Sept. 9 statement e-mailed to eWEEK. "From
improving accuracy of results to speeding up time to complete tasks, there are
a lot of opportunities to improve today's search engine and we're working hard
to do so. When Bing and Google compete to improve search, consumers win."
Google
executives have toted Instant as a time-saver for users, who spend an
average of 9 seconds entering a search query and another 15 seconds choosing a
hyperlink from the results page. By predicting what users want as they type,
Google Instant-at least in theory-reduces the time involved in that process.
Released close on the heels of
Google
Realtime Search, Google Instant seems destined to raise the competitive
gambit with Bing, which has been adding new features of its own. The two
companies have spent the past year locked in a pattern of mutual search-engine
escalation, with each adding new rounds of features and refinements in response
to the other. Even before Google launched a formal Realtime Search page, which
aggregates real-time information from Twitter and other sources, Microsoft had
launched Bing Twitter with similar functionality.
Microsoft will likely remain close-lipped about whether it plans to follow
Google's foray into instant results. That past history, however, indicates that
such a move is within the realm of possibility.
Microsoft
has also worked to tilt Bing more toward the look and feel of a Yahoo-like Web
portal, with a new Entertainment tab that leads to features about Music,
Movies, TV, Games and Video Games. Those features include streaming songs via
Microsoft's Zune service, full-length episodes from over 1,500 shows and casual
online games.
Although Google commands the lion's portion of the U.S.
search-engine market, Yahoo's recent integration of Bing for its back-end
search raises Microsoft's share to nearly 25 percent, according to recent data
from market researcher HitWise. Once broken out, Yahoo holds 14.3 percent and
Bing 9.9 percent, in contrast to Google's 71.6 percent. Under the terms of the
10-year agreement, Yahoo will also become the exclusive worldwide relationship
sales force for both companies' search advertisers.
Microsoft
executives have acknowledged Google's dominance of traditional keyword search,
and emphasized in interviews over the past few months that Bing will stay
focused on verticals such as commercial-based queries as a way to maintain and
grow its own market share.
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