Today, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a partnership designed to compete with google’s search engine. Whilst they won’t say that, that’s what they’re thinking and everyone BUT microsoft and yahoo know that won’t happen.
Last year Microsoft tabled a $45 BILLION offer for yahoo which yahoo foolishly rejected. Today is basically the day when Yahoo conceded defeat (as a search engine) to both google and microsoft.
photo credit: official_powerset
Microsoft’s bing has been hyped up to no end but have any of you switched to bing from google? I’d hazard a guess not one of you have. It has a few cool features but the main problem with bing is that it’s not google.
That’s harsh, very harsh, but it’s the truth. Google has become so huge, it’s a verb and it’s also the definition of a search engine to non tech people.
What can bing do to compete with google? Nothing. It’s too late… much like google is too late on to the scene with it’s operating system and to a lesser extent it’s chrome browser. All bing can do is keep chipping away and hope google shoot themselves in the foot at some stage.
Windows 7 will be a success – no doubt about it. But in europe, it won’t come with ie8 which means bing is, for want of a better word, screwed. Not many people will download ie8 over firefox in europe… not many people know what ie8 or firefox are….
So guess what… they’re gonna ask friends and work buddies ‘how do i get on to the internet?’ and guess what’s going to be recommended or given to them? Firefox. So microsoft won’t be able to promote bing the way they’d like to in europe.
The only way bing will triumph is if google do something stupid, and we all know that’s highly unlikely. Google do need to be challenged and competition is healthy for them and for us and for technology in general, but right now google are invincible when it comes to search.