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You’ve probably read the news that Bing is gaining market share lately, although these advances are only moderate and it appears they are at the expense of Yahoo! and not Google, Microsoft’s arch rival. Considering that Microsoft has invested a lot in Bing’s technology and marketing I have been wondering why progress is relatively slow.
I have a theory, meanwhile, but I’d better not reveal it now because it might influence the outcome of this poll. I am really curious to know if the share of Bing decision makers is different among 4sysops readers.
On the one hand this is a blog for Windows friendly people. Thus it could be possible that 4sysops readers have a certain inclination toward Microsoft’s search engine. On the other hand, Google has simplified the life of IT pros tremendously. There is no doubt that Google has been by far the most important tool for every Windows admin around the globe for many years now. I can imagine that it is not easy to give up such a helpful companion.
One thing is for sure, though. If the market share among IT pros is different compared to average search engine users, then this could tell us something about future developments. IT pros are early adopters and if Bing is really better than Google, IT pros would be the first to change their favorite search engine.
I’ve forced myself to use Live Search for a Week, and later forced myself to use Bing for a week.
Both of them sucked. I usually needed twice as long to get where i needed to go, and find the information i need.
The only thing bing is good for is all the cashback stuff, which doesn’t work in Switzerland.
Got to say I use google the most. I do like the front page of bing. It’s pretty. And I can see it catching on slowly. But right now google continues to own the search engine world.
Feel free to start laughing but I use Altavista.
I tried bing a few times… OMFG, this is such a joke….
“gaining market share” => I guess it means “default search engine” on new PC / IE installations.
Google = epic win
If needed I usually try clusty.com and ixquick.com, for different reasons. They are not so well known and worth a try.
Lukas, you can use all Bing features if you change the country (link in the upper left corner).
Hal,I guess Bing’s better design was the moist important reason for many who have switched.
Thrumus, thanks for your permission to laugh because this is what I just did.
Fred, considering Microsoft’s desktop monopoly it is amazing that Bing’s market share is not bigger.
Michael,
Many of the location-aware features don’t work outside the US, no matter which language you use. Yeah, i can see NewEgg cashbacks on the US sites, but i want this to work with shops i can actually order from.
Yeah I know what you mean. These “US-only-policies” in IT are getting more and more on my nerves.
Thurmus – Ha ha ha! we were reminiscing about AltaVista recently, but i thought it was dead as iam sure i tried the page? i must be wrong
My choice has been Google for a very long time and i have no reason to change – Quite simply, it finds the stuff i want in an instant AND THE KEEP THE PAGE CLUTTER FREE!! this is so important i feel, anyone know how/be bothered to check/compare the full download sizes of the different search pages?
There are still many people with slow machines/connections, Bing certainly is not aimed at them.
What few people know is that AltaVista uses Microsoft’s search engine. So AltaVista users are basically Bing users.
Nothing beats Google. Nothing. I appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do with Bing, but for business-specific searches, Google is the only engine that works.
Bing’s front door is pretty, but Google wins hands down IMHO. Still, I like that Bing exists to give Google a run for their money. When it comes to search engines the more choice the better.
Btw you might want to use the new Google logo.
Googler, the new logo and the new layout are only displayed in the US. Since 4sysops is an international blog I stick with the old design for the time being.
I use google but feel dirty every time I do so. So much for the whole “we’re not evil” thing.
I use Dogpile which aggregated the search results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. It’s the best of all worlds.
Funny that the next days blog headlines “Bing Slips” (2%)…so much for gaining market share
okay let me chime in. I forced myself to use Bing instead of google over the last week and my not science proof feeling was like that the quality of the search results were almost identical. However it sometimes took me twice as long with Bing to get the results I wanted. Bing is too much of a portal site compared to the lean google approach I guess. Despite this it I guess people are used way too much to the term “google it” nowadays.
Michael, keep in mind also that Bing also powers the Yahoo search engine so you can throw Yahoo and Bing into the same bucket.
Yes, I know Yahoo is powered by Bing. But Yahoo has a different user interface and that seems to be important.
Michael, i spent the last three weeks using Bing as my main search engine. Have it tied into my browser, but I have to say that overall I have found that Google continues to return better results. It’s interesting that Google now is giving people the option of background images for the page like Bing. I think that’s silly myself, but I’m a simple guy.
I use both – depends on what I am after; Bing has a much smarter preview feature and is often more selective. Google usually now returns way too much although the high value hits are good. The degree of distortion due to advertising is becoming a problem from my standpoint.