Google’s statement reads in respect of the tie up between Microsoft and Yahoo that they are for healthy competition, which brings more benefits for users and would like to learn more about the deal.

Same views were expressed by Marissa Mayer of Google, saying the deal would likely to pose a negative impact for online competition and her company is studying the pact deeply.

It is noteworthy that during last year Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo as a whole – not the search engine part alone – when Google vehemently attacked the bid and made a contract with Yahoo regarding search engine operations.

But what happened was Google backed out of the deal, as US Department of Justice threatened to file a law suit, questioning the antitrust implications.

If their earlier deal with Yahoo had materialized, Google would have got a lion’s share of 90 percent in the Internet search market. Now Google questions about Bing’s competition, which commands barely 30 per cent of the market share.
However some people have expressed opinion that the Bing deal would only bolster competition to Google. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says in a blog post that competition equals innovation. In a field where one player is dominating the majority 70 percent share of search market, it is completely lopsided and Bing’s deal would mean a healthy competitor emerging on the scene, to keep everyone on their toes – Carol added.

Onlookers are of the view that Google still maintains its 65 to 73 percent share in the search market, although Microsoft Bing is increasing its search reach and advertisers may shift their loyalty from Google to Bing, if at all Bing shows a progress of 30 percent share, instead of 10 or 20 percent. But there is no alternative to Google for those who want maximum volume.

While writing on a company blog, Sean Suchter, general manager of Silicon Valley Search Technology Center of Microsoft quipped that for the time being Microsoft is indexing “few thousand people, primarily based on follower count they have and their volume of tweets”.

It appears that the company is not working directly with Twitter, towards delivering this capability. Suchter wrote that this is their first step in using Twitter’s public API, to bring up Tweets for the people while searching.

As it reflects popular public sentiment, there has been an increased interest in the content value of Twitter, from the search community worldwide. Wednesday’s launch of this new capability in Bing seems to be a coup, albeit limited, because the other major search engines are not indexing recent Twitter messages anyway.

The practice is most of the existing search engines, at best, turn up old Twitter messages and a link to a Twitter page of the concerned person is displayed. This has been changed by Bing of Microsoft, by listing recent individual messages along with other search results. However Suchter cautioned some users may not see the messages in Twitter now, as the new future is scheduled to roll out gradually.

Incidentally, the arrival of this new capability of Bing falls on the same day, when a new study showed Bing’s growth chart is steady upwards, at the expense of most popular Google search engine. According to Researchers at StateCounter, Bing has definitely increased the share of Microsoft in the search market, by 1 percent in June in the United States. This shows Bing is still behind Yahoo search engine and way back in the lead by Google though. StateCounter found Google still has a market share of 78.48 percent, although shedding some market share to Bing during the month.

Microsoft has recently unfurled a new and attractive alternative to Google search engine. And people want the two compared for performance appraisal.

Almost the usual thing happening is your web browser may contain Google’s Search box prominently on top. And yes of course Google is thorough in tendering search results in micro seconds with such a great speed.

To compare Bing, Microsoft’s new prop up just a month ago, although it is very impressive, with a Live Search Engine like Google would be – comparing two champions in two different leagues, unfairly.

On aesthetics, Bing seems best than Google. The Google Search button is prominent in otherwise clean and sparse Google Home page and links for videos, images, news, shopping, maps, Gmail and a lot more.

In contrast, the Homepage of Bing attracts with breathtaking travel related photographs being pasted daily. One day on this week, an amazing image of Mexico’s manta rays appeared at Bing homepage, with a beautiful description when your mouse crawled over the image “These curious creatures are gentle, sociable and playful”. And what fun these brief digressions make! Actually Bing offers facility to click on images to take you to shopping, videos, news, travel and maps.

Thinking of searches made in search engines like Google, there is more to it rather than a wild manta chase and you want comprehensive, relevant and also fast results. On this aspect, Microsoft holds its grounds more, particularly in the fields Bing is concentrating initially – health; travel; shopping and finding local businesses. What is more, you get on certain items a cash-back program when you buy through Bing.com.

For example if you type “New York Mets” on Bing, it shows on top of its results – most recent scores of the team and upcoming schedules – whereas Google will only display the score of their last game and when the next game will be played.

Similarly if you type a company name in Bing, what you get is the telephone number of the company’s customer service, which you can hardly get through Google.

Another charm of Bing search engine experience is, when you make a search you get the right snippets of only the information you want and not more leads. On moving the cursor to the right of the search result tendered by Bing, there appears a window containing excerpts derived from the site underlying it. This will enable you decide instantly whether or not to go into the full site.

Videos like YouTube, Hulu etc. start playing at once, when you crawl over a video thumb nail with your cursor and there is no need to click “play”. And you will watch the video in a larger window, when you click the thumbnail, not necessarily leaving Bing.com. Also hovering on an image will show the same to you in a larger window.

There is one more plus – on the down left side “the quick tabs” appear on the results pane and assist you in refining a search. Simply when you enter “Charleston, South Carolina”, category-wise results are shown – restaurants; hotels; real estate; local weather and so on. For the same thing on Google, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and see “related searches”, although you have the choice to a side panel “show options”.
In real-time searches also Bing excels. For instance, when you make a search for a celebrity such as “Al Gore Twitter” adding Twitter to your search – you are able to get a full list of their recent tweets.

Following is the illustration as how Google and Bing fared on some sample searches:

Cataracts: Bing search engine showed at the top of the search results, a full description of this eye condition, taken out of a Mayo Clinic article. It was an advertisement sponsored by a lens manufacturer Transition, showed at Google at its top result.  But both Bing and Google showed many relevant listings from same sources though. Google showed 3.3 million search results, whereas it was nearly 2.3 million in Bing.

Hilton, Paris: When searched with an intentionally vague query, Google results had a sponsored listing for Hilton.com as the starter and followed it with a news result for the socialite. For Bing it was hotelreservations.com at the top, followed by the site of The Hotels by Hilton and the “official” website of Paris Hilton.

Travel is Bing’s forte and if you click “Travel” you get a site resembling Expedia, where you can further search for hotels, flights, cars etc. Another help from Bing is its prediction about airfares and their fall or rise for certain cities, whereby you can decide whether to buy the ticket now or later.

Michael Jackson: For this search of the legendry Pop King, both Google and Bing tendered news stories about him first. Google linked first to Wikipedia entry for Michael Jackson and led to his official site – michaelackson.com over images and videos about him. All other related searches of jokes, songs, kids not his, came at the bottom.  On Bing search, similar sites were listed but putting images and videos higher up. The pane on the left of this Michael Jackson search enable me to narrow my search by songs, news, downloads, biography, merchandise and so on. It was only 85 million search results at Google, whereas it was 101 million at Bing.

Ford Fusion: When searched for this automobile, it was Bing that got relevant statistics at the top – user ratings, fuel economy, and price range. More help was available in the side panel for categories of reviews, dealers, manual, forum, recalls as also images. Google needs poking around a bit to get these details.

Accurate searches can be Google’s strength but Bing is for more elaborate and relevant searches readily.

Summing Up the Comparison:

Google = www.google.com – Gets two stars out of four.

Pros: Comprehensive and fast in searches that seldom go wrong.

Cons: Some search tools which are powerful are shadowed.

Microsoft Bing = www.bing.com – Gets two stars out of four.

Pros: Functioning is attractive to give voluminous information instantly, with no need to look elsewhere. Excels on resources of travels and plays videos within Bing.com site. Presentation of related searches is good and additional attraction is cash-back discount program for shopping through its links.

Cons: On some particular searches, not as exhaustive as Google and not strong on news items. Video glitches are experienced occasionally.

Via

Talking of hotspots – please understand they are the little squares you notice, when your mouse scrawls over the photographic image of the Homepage. They are there to tell you more particulars about the photographs you are watching.

And when you crawl over the photo in the bottom right corner, a quick caption appears to show these particulars, including the name and agency of the photographer. This does not end there – if you click the arrows – you can find the home page images for the last 7 days. For this all you need is to install Microsoft’s “Silverlight Version 2” open source facility.

If you see a nice photograph and want to share it with your friends? No problem – just go to Bing Photo sharing application on Facebook – and you are done. Want to see previous Bing Homepage images? – here is Long Zheng – a private site, which brings the Bing Image Archive. This site enables you to see all background images presented at Bing, on a calendar format of the day, when that image was displayed originally.

About the Photo Contest announced by Bing.com

While you indulge about images, please note that Bing.com team has announced their first ever photo submission Contest on Facebook. They have chosen the theme “Summer Travel” for this Contest and the winner selected out of this Contest will have his or her photo get displayed on Bing Homepage, on August 3rd, Monday.

For obtaining more details about the Contest and participation terms and conditions, you can go to Bingo photo contest on Facebook. Accordingly you can upload your photos and plunge head on in the contest….. who knows?

{Source}