I mentioned Bing yesterday. It seems like every time I fire up Google Reader, there’s a new search engine: last week it was Wolfram|Alpha, this week it is Hunch. I’ve played with the last two a little, but not that much.
Apropos Bing, frankly, I don’t see what all the “Google must fear!” is about. Bing results look like Google’s, down to the colors and formats of the links. Yeah, the site has a sexier front page and mouseover previews (which don’t work when you point to the link text, at least not in Firefox). I suppose Microsoft might as well try to compete with Google in search, though quite frankly I doubt they’ll make much headway. But with no ads and no apparent way to generate revenue (unless they are invisibly gaming search results), what will Bing do for Microsoft besides take programmers and resources away from other projects? Is it a giant publicity project? If Microsoft really wants to compete with Google, they should be creating an online version of Office which will take on Google Docs. Even better, Ms should try to extend the desktop Office so it collaborates as well as Docs. Hell, half as well would be good enough to keep the Office juggernaut rolling.
And more to the point: when Madelyn was watching cat videos on YouTube (a Google property), I saw this advertisement:
Show me a company whose competitors are also its customers, and I’ll show you a company with very, very little to fear.