Has Bing Caught Up to Rival Google?
March 15, 2012
Radical idea, right?
A Bing insider claims that Microsoft’s search engine has finally caught up to Google, technology-wise at least. Wired Enterprise reports, “Microsoft Says Decaffeinated Bing Tastes as Good as Google.” The Caffeine alluded to in the title refers to Google’s 2010 platform of that name, the purpose of which is to produce fresher search results. Microsoft’s Harry Shum, in charge of Bing’s research and development, says his team’s product is at least as good. Writer Cade Metz reports:
Harry Shum joined the Bing team in 2007, after eleven years with Microsoft’s research arm. The task at hand was enormous: catch up to Google. Five years on, Google is still the world’s dominant search engine — some estimates put its market share as high as 85 or 90 percent — but Shum believes that Bing has finally reached a point where it can compete with Google on a technical level.
The difference between Caffeine and its predecessor MapRequest are significant: the new platform allows sections of the search index to be updated continuously, rather than indexing the entire thing is huge batches. Shum hints that the current Bing approach is similar, but is guarded with the details. That’s understandable.
If Shum is right, this is a surprising development. We still believe that Blekko and Yandex are better than other Web search systems, however. Google has bet on social. We think Google should have put more money on search. Hedging bets is often a good idea.
Cynthia Murrell, March 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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