Microsoft's Bing searches for an edge

Bing's screen looks impressively rich in graphics and information. Photo / Supplied

Has Google achieved so much dominance in internet search that it can rebuff all challengers, even rival technology giant Microsoft?

Alex Parsons doesn't think so, but he admits that for Bing, the search engine Microsoft began last week, winning over users will be a slow process.

Parsons is the Sydney-based director of MSN products at NineMSN, the Australian online media company jointly owned by Microsoft and PBL Media. NineMSN in turn owns NSN New Zealand which runs the msn.co.nz web portal.

Microsoft has spent two years building Bing, and plans to spend a reported US$100 million ($152.9 million) marketing the site.

Parsons says that although Google may dominate online search with a market share of about 90 per cent, "that's going to change".

"We're going to start to compete both on product, on brand, and also on the business model, we're going to increase our market share one percentage point at a time."

On launch day Parsons ran a range of search queries through Google and Bing, with the results projected side-by-side on to screens.

The Bing screen certainly looked impressively rich in graphics and information, especially alongside the old faithful Google page most of us have become so familiar with. But is Bing's flashy appearance a case of form winning out over substance?

Bing replaces Microsoft's previous search engine, Windows Live Search, which has failed to fire as an effective competitor to Google and its other smaller rivals such as Yahoo.

Parsons says the investment that has gone into Bing aims to provide a web search experience that has features which deliver more relevant results to users, and is better at anticipating what they are trying to find out.

Effective search is about efficiently "refining" a search query in order to deliver relevant information. For example a web user searching the term "holiday" could really be looking for a summer holiday, and specifically a getaway on say, Australia's Gold Coast.

Parsons says despite huge advances in computing power over the past decade, search engines have still not been good at anticipating users' real intent.

"We know the most common 'refine' is going to be for multiple common queries, yet today search engines don't actually provide that information to help the user."

He says another major issue is that searching often doesn't work the first time; three-quarters of search queries do not generate a web link to the information the user was after, meaning they need to return to the search engine home page to try again.

Whether Bing has the ability to win over users - and in the process generate the substantial online advertising revenue Microsoft is hoping for - remains to be seen.

But Parsons says Microsoft is the only company capable of taking on Google effectively.

"Competing in search costs a lot of money. There's no doubt about it, it's a scale game. There are really only two companies in the world with both the resources and the revenues to afford to compete in this particular space and Microsoft has a very successful history in this type of competition."

Many technology observers will disagree with Parson's assertion about Microsoft's ability to compete through innovation, given its failure to effectively cash in on many technology trends and a tendency to arrive late to several innovation parties.

The new search engine, although still labelled as a "beta" or test version, is already running in New Zealand. A Bing search query box now sits on the top of MSN NZ's homepage (www.msn.co.nz) and its own country-specific web address, www.bing.co.nz, is also live.

Parsons says promoting the service and the Bing brand in New Zealand will mirror campaigns in Australia.

"MSN.co.nz has good reach into the New Zealand market and also has great partnerships in the New Zealand market."

* WEB GROWTH

The number of websites has grown from an estimated 100,000 in 1997 to 160 million today.

In 1997 it is estimated there were 26 million URLs (web page addresses), today there are more than 1 trillion.

An estimated 4.5 websites are created every second.

* ONLINE SEARCH

Search is the world's fastest growing online activity, and the second most popular activity on the internet behind email.

Nearly 50 per cent of people say they search online at least once a day.

* SEARCH RESULTS

It takes people on average six search queries to arrive at their intended destination.

25 per cent of searches remain unanswered.

25 per cent of results clicked on are irrelevant, leading to "destination disappointment" and an immediate return to the search results page.

Consumers expect to be dissatisfied more than 50 per cent of the time with their query result.

* Try Bing on the web: www.bing.co.nz

* Simon Hendery travelled to Sydney as a guest of NineMSN.