One of my favorite quotes is “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Perhaps Microsoft should heed this truism.

There’s a lot of talk about the imminent release of Bing.com – Microsoft’s new search engine. I’ve read a bit about it at MSN and watched the intro video…

Microsoft is doing the same thing again, and expects a different result.

Re-branding has absolutely NO EFFECT on the Web. Seriously. Research it. None.

Internet denizens are keenly tuned into FUNCTION. That’s what the web is all about. It doesn’t matter if the stupid website is named “jinxies.com”; if it does what the users want and expect it to do, they’ll continue to use it and recommend it to their friends! After all, Google was a stupid name… a misspelling of Googol (a number- 1 and 100 zeroes). But it’s so popular it’s in danger of losing its trademark, as it is now used as a verb in the English language. (I dunno, let me Google it.)

So here we have Microsoft YET AGAIN renaming their search engine in an attempt to gain more marketshare. Is it MSN Search? Live.com? Bing? Who cares what the name is, the functionality plain sucks. The engine is littered with spam and their own properties. Finding what you want is difficult; and that’s bad news when the whole purpose of the thing is to FIND, not SEARCH. (anyone want to invent a Find Engine?)

After watching the video promo for Bing, my only thought is “this is going to make it easier for Microsoft to hide more monetization in their search”.

That’s my prediction.

The extra doodads that make it easy to find a local restaurant, a cheaper airline ticket, a better travel itinerary… They’re all monetization opportunities for MSN. That is quite obviously their only goal. They have a long and detailed history displaying such. My own statistical analysis of their search engine nearly proves it as well – showing that their search results are unfairly stacked with their own sites.

I’m obviously going to reserve final judgement for the launch and performance of Bing.com; but I don’t hold much hope at this point. Time will tell.

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1. Carl Davison says:

   Google>MS Bing

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0YLD_9lRGU

   Bing!

   Bing again!

   Biiiing!

   lol… does MS have life insurance?

   May 30^th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

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