Google imitating Bing?

I was surprised today morning when I browsed to google.com and saw a background image.



The first thought that cams to my mind was "Is Google trying to imitate Bing?". Bing changes the background image of their page daily and puts up very pleasant background images. It also adds some hot spots on their images that tell you about the image and link to more informative pages using their search. I was not sure that Google would try to imitate Microsoft for such a minuscule thing. I tried searching on why Google is trying to do that, but could not find any useful information. Then I looked up on how users find Bing's background image idea. I found that a lot of people found it useful and loved to see images of vastly varied spectrum daily. Many had commented that they found it very useful and was kind of their daily dose of general knowledge.
The only difference I found on the google home page was that you could upload an image to set as a background. The link is easy to miss, its on the bottom left of the page. That idea is also not new, I was able to do the same and much more on iGoogle.com using themes.
I love the Google Doodles, they are informative and innovative and eagerly wait for the next one. But as far as this background image, I am kind of disappointed and miss the plain simple google home page.

The upcoming threat to Google - iAd

Few days back I wrote about the iAd program from Apple. I truly believe that it will redefine the concept of online advertising. According to a survey in 2009, there are around 4.4 billion mobile phone users as compared to around 1.5 billion Internet users. Of the 4.4 billion, 1.8 billion are smart phone users. The rate at which smart phone users are growing is alarming and much faster than Internet users. More are more people are today browsing the Internet over mobile phones and more and more companies are developing custom mobile apps. This will automatically lead to a shift from desktop based online advertising to mobile based advertising. What Google did with online advertising, Apple plans to do in the mobile world. They have the biggest share in smart phone market and it will continue to grow as they launch the iPad.
Almost all of Google's revenues come from selling online ads. To maintain their dominant position, Google needs to quickly devise a totally new program for the mobile platform and counter the threat from iAd. I tried their current mobile advertising solution, but its falls quite short of expectations if You have used their desktop based advertising solutions. Google has a good mobile platform of their own - Android, and that's growing slowly but steadily and they can use that to leverage their mobile advertising. The stakes in this field are very high and although I am a big fan of Google products, I have a feeling that Apple might dislodge their dominance in online advertising in the years to come.

Cool features of Bing Search

After using Bing alongside Google for more than a month now, I have had a liking for few of Bing's feature and would like to see something similar in Google.

Bing textual Search:
Summary - I like to be able to see a concise view of a search result page that helps me to decide whether or not that particular search result is useful or not.
Additional Information on the left column - I like the way Bing picks up the search term and gets helpful links that include reference articles, related terms, additional insights into searches and so on. These help to narrow down searches and get better results.

Bing images search:
Although most of the options to filter and narrow down the results are similar to Google, I love the way it pulls up a list of "Related People" if you search for a person or a list of attractions, tourism info, maps, weather, etc, if you search for a place, or a list of reviews, prices, deals, etc. when you search for a product. I also like to be able to just pull the vertical scroller for more images and not having to click page numbers to go to the next set of results.

Bing video search:
The short preview feature when you hover your mouse over the video seems to be helpful, but the result quality is not as good as Google's video search, which is what is the most important factor when I search.

Bing Shopping:
Although I find the shopping results page a little too cluttered in Bing as compared to Google, I feel that the Category feature on the left column is slightly better in Bing that Google.

These are a few features I think really make Bing sleeker that Google in terms of user interaction, however when it comes down to the search results quality, Bing needs to catch up. Google's search algorithms seems to be better in a few areas. However, Bing engineers, just to underscore, it does not matter how many search results are pulled up(I notice that Google almost everytime pulls up 20 to 30 times the number Bing gets), its Google's results' quality that beats Bing's seldom.

Should I Bing or continue Googling

It has been quite a while since Bing(Live), the search engine from Microsoft has been launched and many of you reading this would be wondering as to why am I comparing Bing to Google after such a long time. I wanted to use Bing extensively before even trying to compare it with Google. Google for me, has been THE search engine from the start. I did try Alta Vista, Ask, Yahoo Search but after a couple of searches then, I knew that I had to go to Google for all my web related searches.

After the huge hype sorrounding the launch of Bing, I decided to try it out. I made Google as my benchmark since I was comparing Bing against Google. I started off going with Bings punchline - "The Decision Engine". I couldnt figure out as to why MS calls Bing a decision engine. All of my searches just gave me search results. I typed in specific questions, but still search results. Maybe, I just dont get the whole concept of the decision engine!

My searches for specific terms like "Liz Hurley", "vancouver 2010", "super bowl", "nikon d90", etc. returned excellent results. As compared to Google, Bing returned more refined search reults on the search page directly rather than having to click on the results and figuring out myself. Moving on to my more generic searhes that included "best blogging sites", "mta schedule", "health care summit", etc. I found that Bing performed just about OK. Some of my searches returned almost similar results to what Google did. Others were not as good. Also when I searched for current news or events, I realized Google had a much broader base and that Google crawlers were made to work much harder. Google also seems to have an upper hand when it comes to searching within Blogs.

Now comes the part that impressed me the most. Type in terms like "risotto recipes", "flight tracker", "flight to sfo from nyc", "movie listing" or "weather 07306" . These queries returned answers that were relevant to what I was looking for. I did not have to look among the search results to locate my answer. Bing is hands down much more superior to Google in these kind of searches. A couple of other neat features that I liked about Bing were the "summary" feature that lets you get more information about a specific result and the "related searches" that come up on the left margin.

Overall, there are few areas where Bing does impress and beats Google, however overall I am a little disappointed that with all the engineering prowess of Microsoft, they have failed to raise the bar on web based textual searches. It seems that I will stick with Google and conintue Googling, ofcourse Bing once in a while!

Apple proposing Microsoft

News came out a couple of weeks back about Apple and Microsoft possibly entering into a wedlock. Wow, that will be something to watch and watching most closely will be Google.
Three big technological competing companies, all entering into different arrangements to be the bigger one by taking the help of each other. Apple wanted Google as the default search engine, maps application and video content for its revolutionary iPhone. Google needed that alliance to push for more advertising revenues from search. Microsoft was sitting in a corner and wondering what to do. They came out with Bing, although it did not get a lot of traction. Meanwhile Google decided to enter the hugely popular mobile market. Not only did they come out with an open-source operating system(Android) for mobile devices, they launched their own mobile phone - Nexus One. Apple sees it as a big threat to their iPhone market. Seriously its Nexus One that can really disrupt iPhone's success. Apple has also realized that it has been making Google richer by continuing with them for the iPhone's search tool. They plan to put a stop on this revenue channel by dumping Google and shaking hands with their traditional rival Microsoft and use Bing as their default search engine. Good news for Microsoft. However, it still needs to be seen whether Bing will be popular among users. Till date, it has only been able to capture 6%-7% of web search market. This alliance might be a good test to judge Microsoft's search capabilities.
Among all this dynamics, one thing that should not be forgotten by these companies is that their rivalry should not affect their users, any wrong move and we, the users would migrate.

"Mis"Using Search Engines

Have we become too much dependent on web search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo or Ask? The reason I ask this question is to think about all the different kind of queries we type in the search boxes of these search engines.
I am a big user of search engines, and had it been not for the search engines, read Google, I would not have been hooked to the Internet. I use search engines, read Google, for almost all kinds of queries I have. Be it product comparison or upcoming movies, weather updates or web development related questions, traffic directions to news updates, word meanings or even how to make money on Internet, I dig into the Internet using search engines. How else? There is so much "free for all" wealth on the Internet and the only way to grab it is via the search engines. I wonder should we, all Internet users, not honor the Larry Page's and Sergey Brin's of the world for giving the common man access to this wealth and the ability to fully utilize the power of the Internet.
However, off late, I have started to realize that we are in some way misusing these search engines too. Do i need to type in Yahoo in the search box to reach yahoo.com when I know the web address of yahoo? Or for that matter, can i not just type gmail.com on the browsers address bar rather than typing gmail in the search box, its just a question of 4 more characters (.com). I think its the mental attitude that forces me to go via the search engine to any website I want to go to. Should I not relieve the search engines for these "unnecessary" searches.
As the first step to get rid of the "search-engine" obsession, I decided to remove Google as my default web page. Next was to use the browsers built in Favorites or Bookmarks feature. I tagged my most frequently visited websites for emails, news, weather, sports updates, dictionary sites and other utility websites. I have also started to use the search bar embedded in my browsers to perform searches rather than visiting the search engines home page. I still use the search engines a lot but now i restrict myself to using them only when required. I also phrase my search query better before I just type in the box and click "Search".
The reason I decided to better utilize the search engines was to reduce unnecessary search look-ups, optimize Internet bandwidth usage, reduce hardware wastage and more importantly to conserve energy. I know,its petty, but I know in the long run, it will add up and with lots of Internet users deciding to use search engines optimally, I am pretty sure it will help.
I know you have reached this blog via a search engine and I cant help but congratulate you on using the search engine optimally this time :)