This honestly made me laugh. Microsoft has started a rewards program to entice search users to use Bing. 3215 credits gets you a $25 Sephora gift card, 1100 credits gets you a 1GB Bing USB drive, the list goes on. Users also have the option to use their points to donate money to a charity of their choice; 100 credits are equal to $1. According to the article that I read, “Bill Gates seemed particularly interested in” offering users tangible incentives to use a particular engine.
While usage of Bing has been slowly and steadily growing, Google still enjoys about an 85% global market share. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Microsoft is looking for some kind of edge. Personally, I would like to see Bing compete less with gimmicks and more with actual value. I know Bing is trying a lot of newer algorithms to attempt to offer better search results but the emphasis on shiny new objects is somewhat offensive to me. Quit trying to get users with toys, try some substance Microsoft!
I agree that Microsoft's Bing is trying to use "flashy" tactics to try to gain market share and I believe that this is the wrong business strategy. The reason I and many other users use Google is that it is easy and simple to use. It does not try to go beyond by looking "pretty" and it does not try to do more than it is supposed to do like Bing's Decision Engine. If Microsoft can focus on the core substance, which is better searching, then maybe it can hope to gain some market share from Google.
ReplyDeleteI hate Bing. I also hate the way that Microsoft went about trying to get people to use it. For most web browsers, for a long time, the default search engine in the tool bar was "Google". Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Microsoft changed the default search engine on "Internet Explorer" to Bing. Their "Decision Engine" ad campaign really annoyed me because the site depicted in those commercials seemed to bear little resemblance to the site on the internet. In terms of usefulness, the site seemed to be little more than a subpar version of Google. And then they started Bing maps to try to complete with Google Maps. That was the biggest mistake that Microsoft made. It was a horrible idea to try to compete with something as versatile and intricate as Google maps. I did use their plane ticket tracker which was pretty good. But in order to get people to use Bing, Microsoft needs to actually improve the service that it provides and not try to strong arm people into using it.
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