Yahoo, Google or Bing: who delivers?

Prashanth Kumar, Director, Digital Strategies, Wunderman
How does Bing -- the new kid on the search block -- compare with old timers Yahoo and Google? And my vote goes to... - Prashanth Kumar

A colleague sparked off an interesting thought the other day when she asked for my ‘professional’ opinion on the hype surrounding Bing. Come to think of it, my initial reaction to the news of Microsoft’s search engine was probably the same as that of any other digital/search marketer -- healthy scepticism. But when asked to evaluate the search engine from a user-centric perspective, I discovered some surprising nuggets of useful information.

I have been using Google to search and implement search marketing campaigns since the very beginning. As such, I am automatically (and with good reason) heavily biased towards the engine. Thus far, Google has given me no cause for complaint. Be it Larry and Sergey’s (Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google) meteoric rise from broke students to corporate moguls (the stuff of legend), the radical new spin to online advertising (AdWords), the inclusive monetization network concept (AdSense), a fantastic analytics solution (Google Analytics), their innovative beta products (Google Labs) right down to their quirky mission statement (Don’t be evil!). Everything about Google screams ‘interesting deviant’ and what makes all these acceptable is the excellence and reliability of their core service – search.

They got the basic premise right and followed it up with excellence in delivery. They developed an excellent analytics platform and gave it away for free. They also brought a certain degree of transparency to the often murky world of affiliates and publishers. Users worldwide clicked their approval giving the search giant a near monopoly of most markets. The comScore figures for the month of June 2009 reveal that Google’s position remains unchanged at 65 per cent (of the US internet market). Even in India, Google.co.in and Google.com occupy the top two slots in the list of top 100 sites. Searching on the web has become Googling and the near-global acceptance of the term speaks volumes about how Google continues to lead the industry.

But Bing is proving to be a resilient engine. (No doubt, the upwards of 100 million dollar cross-media advertising budget is helping move the needle!)The same comScore data reveals that Bing, which went live on 3rd June 2009, is slowly but steadily grabbing the market share, at least in US. But since market share is a zero sum game, whose share they are eating into is the big question. Google remains fixed at No.1 and doesn’t seem to be moving downwards. That leaves Yahoo in 2nd place with a distant 20 per cent market share. If all the money and muscle of Microsoft is targeted at beating and/or replacing Yahoo, then their earlier attempt to acquire the company seems more strategic.

Be that as it may, Bing is resonating with user needs. No doubt, people are impressed with additional features like the left hand navigational quick tabs to facilitate assistive search, video previews while hovering over screen capture, the inclusion of Farecast Technology for airline and hotel search and the up-front nature of the search refining tools, called Explorer Pane. Sure, these are all great features and contribute tremendously to usability. And packaged as it all is, in a slick, appealing interface, it is surely bound to succeed.

In this battle of the search engines, it seems to me that Yahoo is going to be the big loser. Bing is new and offers users the novelty factor. And search-wise, it does a fairly decent job although the usual Microsoft tendency to fully load it up with bells and whistles rather than basic functionality does manifest itself. And Google isn’t quaking either. Even as the software company, better known for its operating system, got into the search engine arena, Google, a search engine company, has upped the ante by launching its own operating system -- Google Chrome OS -- slated for release in the second half of 2010. Google already offers a suite of free, web-based word processing and spreadsheet software, all of which are open source. And Microsoft is on the verge of unleashing its Windows 7.

Err... is it just me or did you too notice how all the latest news and information pertains to Google, Microsoft and scores of other companies, without as much as a whisper about Yahoo? I could be wrong, but in the fight between David and Goliath, everyone else remains a mere spectator. With its cluttered homepage, myriad services, not-yet-there search and wars with the affiliate/syndication networks, Yahoo is trying too much, too quickly and too hard. Needless to mention, Bing is eating into Yahoo’s market share while Google is busy basking in the limelight.

My personal preference is for a search engine that gets its main job – searching – done as fast as possible and with minimal fuss or distraction. On this count, Google continues to remain my staunch favourite. Sure, Bing looks good, but when you really want for critical information and especially if you happen to be on a slow connection, I would bet those cool graphics and images won’t look so good after all!

The other thing is that if the only way a search engine can offer a comprehensive solution is to become an aggregator of smaller vertical search engines -- shopping, travel, health etc. -- wouldn’t you rather access those niche engines for specific queries? Since they are focused, they obviously would do a better job. Kayak has already sent Bing a legal letter asking it to stop copying them. And a Wolfram Alpha hangs around ominously, threatening to change the dynamics of search engines by offering ‘definitive answers to factual queries’.

Anyways, that is a development both Bing and Google (and Yahoo, if they intend to stay in the game) will have to watch with interest. Bing has only been around for a month now and the initial data can hardly be called a trend. While users continue to experiment with the health, shopping, travel and hotel search add-ons (yes, that is what I believe they are; still aeons from being an integrated part of the search functionality) once the buzz is gone, they will get back to familiar Google.

For those of you still unconvinced (after all, this is solely my perspective) maybe, just maybe you can have the best of both worlds! With Yagoohoogle you can search both Yahoo and Google while Bingle and Stringy mash-up Google and Bing. If that still proves insufficient, maybe you want to visit Azokan. Although, based on the Google engine, this site allows you to search through Wikipedia, Ask, SourceForge and half-a-dozen other sites from a single interface.

If that doesn’t satisfy you, I sure don’t know what will! One final loophole (in my estimation) is that nearly all these search majors cater predominantly to the Western Hemisphere. The world’s largest internet population – China – has its own quixotic search engine: Baidu. Over 298 million users swear by it and it is possibly one of the few countries where Google has an insignificant market share. But then that is a topic that deserves its own write-up!


Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and are neither endorsed nor subscribed to by his current employer.