Bing: off to a great start but still a long road to travel to get consumers to change search behaviors
06/03/09 06:37 AM Filed in: Internet
Trends
Not only does
a product today need to be better to win over consumers it also has
to be easier to use than competitors products. Changing consumer
behavior, from using a search engine in which they are comfortable
using, is going to be very difficult for Microsoft especially when
the competitors product has become a verb.
"Live search is evolving" is the tagline for Microsoft's new search engine Bing. The problem is that many consumers may not be ready to evolve yet and to them Google is a well know friend who they can depend on. Getting then to change is going to be a very long process that is going to require resources on the marketing as well as the product side. Bing does offer a better user experience than Google right now but that alone is often not a reason for people to switch. Microsoft has to drive traffic to Bing and get the work out why Bing is better so that the learning curve won't be all uphill for consumer wary of having to learn something new on the Internet.
Search does need to evolve that much is sure. Looking for specific information on the Internet can be frustrating and time consuming as there is just way too much information available at our fingertips. The real challenge in the evolution of the Internet is how to get relevant information to people and discard the trash. Web 3.0, or the semantic Web, was thought to be the answer to this but again models need to be developed and tested and privacy concerns need to addressed for a skeptical public that keeps reading about data breaches all the time.
Bing is a great first step in a challenge to Google who wants to rule the Web world. I especially like its health search functions which returns information from the Mayo Clinic on top and the roll-over feature that gives you a preview of sites so you don't have to click through only to find it's not what you're looking for. Will Bing become a verb? Who knows but over time if it continues to provide a better user experience and a better way to sort through the maze of information on the Web it just could have the folks at Google looking over their shoulders.