A few quick thoughts on Bing:
- Visuals create comfort - I love the way that the interface takes a geographic visual and adds it to the background of the browser everyday. It brings a comfort to search and strips away the analytical side that we're used too from Google and Yahoo. Unlike Google which is boring (but straightforward), I want to have Bing as my landing page
- Omnipresent Navigation - it's the little things that make a big difference. I think one of the most common search behaviors is clicking the back button in a browser after you've clicked on a link that doesn't give you the information you want. Bing gets past this by keeping a log of past histories with you as you search through links
- Adjustable Settings (Images) - When I'm creating a presentation, I used to use Google Images to find the perfect shot to help make my point. The problem with that was that half of the images are tiny, poor quality and unusable. With Bing, I can sort images by size and quality. Now, when I find an image I like, I know it can be used.
- Quality of Search - I've done a few comparison searches on Bing and Google and found the quality to be similar in terms of results. That being said, Bing limits the amount of links whereas Google gives the user all 10 billion of them. I like the more limited approach because it seems less daunting to sort through a few pages vs. a million.
Even though it seems to talk to Google pretty directly, I like the tone of the spot and think that it will drive initial trial of the service. The key to search though, as Google knows, it to make your service the doorway to the internet in the individuals browser. Could Bing do this? Potentially.
