IN A FIGHT to compete with the global search engine market Microsoft announced their new replacement for Windows Live Search this week.
Launching locally next Wednesday, and previewed by nineMSN on Friday, partnered companies Microsoft and nineMSN (PBL media) unveiled their new search engine Bing.com.au.
The product, of which the companies say has been two years in the making, is consider a brand change by many and more of an upgrade to what Windows Live Search currently offers.
Launching in beta to begin with it will see the launch of a bunch of new features that won’t be available locally straight away.
Hot Spots, Categorised Search and Vertical Search Categories covering local travel, health and shopping are some of the features we won’t be seeing on Wednesday.
However, Instant answers, Best match, Hover preview, Rich image search and Video thumbnail preview are some of the new innovative features we will see on launch.
When asked how long it would take for nineMSN to get its localisation team into gear, they said they’d announce something in the next month, suggesting one had not been formed.
Once such a team is initiated on its task to make the search engine more localised, the team would then take “six to 12 to 18 months” to roll out the localised features.
The two localised features that stood out from the rest, Bing cash back and a flight information tool, are features Google will no doubt look at implementing.
Driving Traffic
The companies hope to use mainstream television programs on the nine network to drive traffic to their online portal, such as using end credits and “editorial cues” that will suggest to viewers to head on over to Bing with a certain search term.
According to nineMSN director of MSN products, Alex Parsons, the Australian search engine market is worth around $800 million, and is set to become “the new rivers of gold” online. Whether it be 1 percentage point at a time, the two companies hope to grab a piece of that $800 million dollar pie.
NineMSN said that Google currently owns 90 percent of the global market, but locally nineMSN has a strong hold of it, with about 70 percent of Australian active internet users touching the nineMSN portal at least once a month.
A missed opportunity?
Initial impressions of the search engine indicate nineMSN are after more page views than anything.
By adding features that will keep users within their portal such as Bing cash back, a price comparison tool, and a flight information tool that can predict and show previous pricing of flights to certain destinations, there are quite a good number of features that could lead for a switch from Google if they don’t adopt some of the features Bing has.
One advantage nineMSN has over any other search engine is the fact they’re the default home page for Windows Internet Explorer users ‘out of the box’.
Embracing new features like a background picture that changes daily is something I think a lot of tech-savvy users are not going to be interested in. The brilliance behind Google is its ability for it to be simple, fast and relevant to use. On the other hand you have users like my mother and grandmother who don’t care about Google and love the fact nineMSN has news inbuilt into its portal as well as search.
The name
Bing… to bing…do you bing? These are some of the questions the marketing team would’ve been asked to try out on the public. A name is important. If the product is good then it really should not matter… or should it? Can you imagine nine network presenters telling you to Bing a certain product or telling us to “head on over to bing” to search for the latest video of karl stefanovic drunk? I just can’t imagine it. Only time will tell.
Tech Wired writer Ben Grubb was flown to Sydney for the launch of Bing.com.au
