From Friday, Microsoft will go head to head with Google in the UK, when it launches a fully localised version of its Bing search engine, taking the UK site out of the Beta testing stage it has been in since launch in June.
With the launch, the UK will become the third country after the United States and Canada to receive a tailor-made version of Bing.
“We have had a dedicated team of 50 people working hard since June to make our results work better for people in the UK,” Ashley Highfield, Microsoft’s managing director of consumer and online products told The Times. “In particular, we want to excel in e-commerce because British people outweigh the US in terms of online shopping, and we wanted to make sure it could help you find a TV or camera in time for Christmas.”
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In the United States, where the full version of Bing has been available since June, the search engine has been steadily building market share, though it still trails the market leader Google by some distance. The latest figures from Hitwise, for October, show Bing’s share of search climbing to 9.57 per cent, up from 8.96 per cent in September. In the same period, Google’s share fell to 70 per cent from 71 per cent.
In the UK, Bing’s share of search currently stands at around 3 per cent, roughly the same amount as its predecessor, Windows Live Search.
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“We have held our market share since June,” Mr Highfield said, “without any marketing or promotion. We know that at present 50 per cent of people searching the internet spend 30 minutes doing so, which perhaps explains why 33 per cent are unhappy with current search results. The important thing to realise is that we are not trying to build a ‘me too’ product here. We have put a tremendous amount of research and development into pooling available information into one place for our users.”
Bing’s approach to search is based on a more visual approach than that offered by its rivals. Searches for a major company will return not only a direct link to the site in question, but a precis of useful information from that site, including telephone numbers and even search boxes. Maps are also integrated into the search results, as is the ability to search Twitter feeds.
“We want to bring an end to the current ‘in out’ nature of search,” Mr Highfield said. “Where you click through to a result, find it’s not what you are looking for and then go back and search again. Our unique selling point is to give you the answers that you want in one page.”
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Microsoft has so far spent $2 billion on rebuilding and rebranding its search effort, but it is unlikely ever to dominate the market in the same way as Google, one search expert told The Times. “The difference is that Google began as a search engine, producing results that people liked, whereas for Microsoft, it’s just another weapon in their armoury.”
The biggest challenge for Bing is breaking the Google habit. Nowhere outside Microsoft HQ does anyone talk of “Binging”, rather than “Googling” something online.
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“We know it’s a slow process,” said Mr Highfield. “But Bing is landing extremely well as a cool brand with early adopters. And in this situation, we are the cool underdog. We are the Apple brand. We have a similar market share in search as Apple does in PCs. We are the alternative choice at the moment, and that will help us build a following. I believe that the popular conception of Google is shifting, the idea that Google equals cool and Microsoft equals nerdy is on the way out, a process that is being helped by our other well received products, such as Windows 7.
“We’re not really in this for clever marketing. We want to build a relationship with people who use this tool for research. Once you treat it like that, Google starts to look really old-fashioned and clunky. If people use Bing to aggregate decisions about what to buy, that’s when we start to build relationships. We expect numbers to climb gradually over the next 12 months.”
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