Just the other day I was running a search query on a computer I don’t normally use. I pressed Enter, and to my horror, I was presented with search results from Bing. It turns out the browser search bar had been set to run Bing searches.

A number of reflexive thoughts rushed through my head: Who uses Bing? Why was this set as the default search engine? Who would do such a thing?  My questions weren’t without some justification; after all, the result I was looking for didn’t appear anywhere near the top. Google, on the other hand, quickly identified precisely what I was looking for.

But wait. Bing must be good for something, right? I spent some time fiddling it around with it, and I think I have an answer. Use Google when you know what you want; use Bing when you’re not quite sure. While Google is adamant about maintaining a clean and clear interface, Bing does an excellent job of letting you browse through content you might be looking for.

Let’s say a friend of mine told me about a really cool time-lapse video that I should check out, but I don’t remember exactly what it’s called or where I would find it. One of Bing’s strengths is a sort of “click and nav” style of search where you can browse and filter within categories of interest. For example, from the homepage I can click Videos > Viral > Time-Lapse and find a large collection of, well, viral time-lapse videos. Chances are good that the one I’m looking for is somewhere in there.

Of course viral time-lapse video is a pretty narrow category, but the same process can be taken for “weird news” stories, desktop wallpaper, gift ideas for upcoming birthdays (via Facebook Connect), top image searches, etc. Even if I’m not looking for something specific, Bing can offer a lot of content that I didn’t know I wanted.

Bing also offers its own improvements on tools pioneered by Google. For instance, Bing Maps has a taxi fare calculator and a bird’s eye view perspective (different and cooler than the standard top-down view).

The bottom line:

Bing is no Google, and it’s not much of a substitute when you’re looking for speed and raw utility. That said, it’s much more than meets the eye, and has a lot of features Google doesn’t. Bing deserves a chance. Come on….click me.

What must be realized is that this is becoming bigger than ‘search’ and bigger than revenue drivers.  This is not about Bing and Google Search.   This seems like a long-term competition between two giants battling for position as the preferred technology brand for consumers.  Both will use their core business to expand into other areas and it is important to analyze events and success outside of the ‘revenue’ lens.

This is now truly resembling beginnings of a technological Cold War.  Much like in any long-term conflict, it is important view events with the big picture in mind.  This is now a conflict of pre-emptive moves, territorial encroachments, tricky alliances, posturing, and battles for the ‘hearts and minds’ of consumers.

Let’s analyze the situation through the 3 ‘Cold War’ points mentioned above:

Encroachment
Google: Just announced its own browser based operating system, its office suite has been around for a while now, as well as its own browser.   All areas that have been very important to Microsoft.

Microsoft: Bing is its major search initiative and encroachment into Google’s core area of expertise

Alliances
The potential news content (News Corp., and perhaps AP, Reuters) being available through Bing only is an interesting, yet tricky proposition.  What is a definite outcome of such a deal is a huge loss of traffic for any property that excludes Google.  According to Compete, Google holds 73% of the search market share.  Excluding that traffic would obviously lead to lower page views and that is still the main monetization model of news sites.  It would be interesting to see how much Microsoft is willing to offer news publishers to offset that.

This ‘blockade’ of Google can backfire quite easily because many news providers use AP and Reuters content such as The New York Times.  So it seems that the content would still be accessible, just from a different destination.

Time will better judge this potential alliance/blockade but the initial thinking about its financial success is skeptical in terms of revenue, yet it may not be about that.  This may be a step to deny Google their stated goal of indexing all of the world’s information.

Similarly, speculation of who will acquire Twitter in 2010 is something to watch (no matter what is currently said) and again this will not be about revenue generation much like Google’s purchase of YouTube. Twitter and YouTube’s monetization is far from proven as has been seen.  So these are all big picture, defensive in nature moves and are not necessarily about revenue generation.

It seems that these are just skirmishes for what is ahead, and that is the battle for the ‘Hearts and Minds’ of consumers to become their preferred technology brand.

Although it seems that Google has an advantage because its product development model lets it release a multitude of diverse products that live in the ‘cloud’ (Gmail, Wave, Voice, Maps, Profile, Docs, Calendar, Reader, etc…), the flaw may be precisely in the way how these products are developed – by individual teams that seem to have difficulties integrating their products together.  Few of the products come together in any meaningful away and Google will have to overcome that challenge.

Microsoft’s has the track record in creating integrated user experiences across various services, yet its challenge will remain in moving and monetizing their services and products in the ‘cloud.’

Much like during the Cold War when U.S. and U.S.S.R. battled over distant developing countries, achievements in space, and weapons races, similarly this technology conflict will take both companies into new places. Both will venture far and wide across many aspects of technology,  so watch out mobile, music, GPS, telecoms, display ads, video, RFID, etc… This will be interesting, drawn out, high stakes, difficult to analyze, yet interesting.

Interesting article in our company’s MOVE Magazine about Health 2.0. Apologies for the shameless self promotion.