Two Weeks With Bing: Final Thoughts

More than two weeks ago, I wrote that I was going to switch to using Bing fulltime for at least two weeks, to see how it truly compares to Google. Rather than just searching for one or two things, as many do, I chose to use Bing and only Bing for at least two weeks. I wanted to give it a proper test. And you know what? There isn't anything about it that makes me want to switch back to Google.

It's surprising, because, I've used Google for as long as I can remember, and when I first looked at Bing when it launched I (like many others) dismissed it as another attempt by Microsoft to win in the search market. But it's not just "another attempt", it's a damn good attempt that I'm confident will result in Bing being the #2 search engine with a third or more of the market within the next year. Of course, that will be a direct result of their recent deal with Yahoo!, which is currently #2, but it will end up resulting in there being a very strong competitor to Google.

Competition has been one of my reasons for wanting to try, and now use, Bing. When there's no one attacking your business, because, let's face it Yahoo! is horrible competition to the likes of Google in search, you tend to stop innovating and there is no change. In Google's case, it's not so much that they had started to ignore search, but rather nothing new was coming (at least that the public saw), until Bing was launched. Since Bing has launched Google's image search has been drastically improved as a direct result of Bing's own image search, and Google's "caffeine" project has been announced. As the two continue to try and improve and beat the other, there will only be new things for users to experience in search, and it will only become better and easier.

Some of the things that Bing has, or still does, better than Google include both its video and image search. With image search, there are a number of options, including size, aspect ratio (layout), color, type (style), and people. Prior to Bing's launch, Google lacked color or type search as it exists now. While Bing's color-based image search only allows for color or black/white, Google's offers searching with 12 colors, so you can narrow down results even more. Bing's size option in image search only offers 4 basic choices, while Google offers over 15 including some aimed specifically at photographs (with MP count). Neither of those two additional specifics in image search were available on Google before Bing.

Bing's video search is quite simply, better than Google's. The relevancy of results is generally better, mouseover previews are extremely useful, and the options for search here are just as helpful as in image search. That said, Google's video search has more options (specifically useful are closed captioned, and date search), and usually returns some good results, but overall Bing is a better experience, mostly due to instant previews, rather than loading the full video and scrubbing to find something other than an intro.

Bing Maps is almost as good as Google Maps, although it is highly annoying that Firefox is not a supported browser to view the 3D view (which I'm told is the equivalent to street view in Google Maps). Bird's Eye view is one of those things that you don't think is useful, until you actually look at it. Rather than having a view from directly above, it's more at an angle, and it just feels more natural to view locations through this. Google should definitely get on adding some similar functionality to Google Maps, if they're not already working on it.

Although I only used it for a little while, Bing's mobile search is just as good as Google's for providing location-relevant information. Except for the fact that you have to manually enter your zip code (whereas Google can estimate, or ask for your exact location) I didn't have any problem finding relevant, accurate results. However, they'll have a hard time gaining mobile users unless they are added as an option for the default search engine on phones (currently the iPhone only offers Google and Yahoo!), and if they launch native apps for the various phones.

Now the most important aspect of search: text/web searching. It's the part that we all use the most, and that we have come to expect to work nearly-perfectly. With Bing, it's more or less the same viewing structure as Google. There are some new interesting ideas, such as when you leave your mouse over a result, more information appears in a in-page popup to the right of the regular results, and for generic terms like "cell phones", Bing offers other relevant searches such as "cell phone accessories". Bing includes results from video, images, or maps/local just as Google does, which is one of those things we expect to have.

So how are the results? Overall, they are just as good as Google's. Not better, but just as good. For some more specific searches (specifically error messages) Bing has less relevant search results unless you make use of quotation marks, which the average user isn't going to do. Otherwise, I had no problems finding what I was looking for quickly using Bing. In comparing some searches with the blind search tool I even found that Bing's results are better than Google's, at least for what I was looking for.

I'm going to keep Bing as my default search engine, and use Google when necessary, but I don't really think I'll have to that often. I hope we'll see Bing and Google continue to improve and innovate in the search market, because quite frankly there are still many things that they could both do better. I'm still waiting on Bing to launch an iPhone app, so that I can compare it to Google's (which is absolutely stellar), but until then Google Mobile wins. Voice search is just too useful, and usually perfect, for me to waste time typing in bing.com, waiting for it to load, and then to type in my search.

So, what about you? Are you using Google or Bing? What can be improved?