Microsoft vs. Google – OR IS IT – Google vs. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter?
Today Microsoft officially launched their new search engine Bing which is supposed to compete with Google. If you’ve followed this in AdAge you know there will be an $80-$100 mm ad campaign accompanying the launch.
I checked out Bing earlier this week (it was unofficially available a few days before the official launch), and was quite under-impressed. Not at all sure what benefits this has over Google, if any.
Sadly, there seems to be market research behind Bing. Not sure why Microsoft posted this video on Bing, as I’m in market research and I don’t even find it interesting:
What’s more interesting on the other hand is Google’s response. They just launched iGoogle which seems to leverage all the little seeds they’ve been sowing (Gmail, Chat, Google Analytics, etc.). Much more than a personally customized search portal, it clearly has the marks of a social networking service. You can create group filters (co-workers, chat contacts, friends, family etc.) to share different levels of information with.
Google of course has already tried to get into social networks with Orkut which was a flop everywhere except India and Brazil. Obviously, Google would have some catching up to do to get to where Facebook et al are today. But at least they do have the infrastructure in place with Gmail, etc.
It’s too early to tell how successful iGoogle will be. It definitely needs some improvements. I set up a personal portal as well as the following profile http://www.google.com/profiles/andersonanalytics and noticed making even basic edits to background color is hard to do. Interestingly, profile functionality seems to be driven with text analytics, rather than hard-coded variables/fields (which holds promise for more intelligent and flexible uses of the data).
What Google does seem to understand quite a bit better than Microsoft though is marketing. While Microsoft failed to give me any reason to use Bing, Google is showcasing several fcelebrity iGoogle pages which you can copy items from if you like:
I enjoyed looking at Seth Godin’s page for instance.
Whatever happens, I’m glad to see there’s still competition in the search and social network areas 
Tom H. C. Anderson – Anderson Analytics
