The world’s “sexiest” Search Engine- Bing seems to have added fresh vigour to Microsoft’s stand in the “Search Wars”, spicing up the competition between Microsoft and Google, as both companies have since been battling it out, trying to out-pace the other with every given opportunity.

First it was Google (in response to Bing’s “search market share stealing escapades” no doubt) who decided to enter the OS business with the announcement of plans to release Google Chrome- an open source, light-weight Operating System supposed to “re-think what operating systems should be”.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them…..

…. Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

… as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.

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It’s quite obvious what Google was saying to Microsoft- Steal my market share will You?

I dare say Google’s Chrome ultimately aims to challenge Windows 7 (a.k.a. Cloud), taking advantage of the vulnerabilities in Microsoft OSs over the years. Truthfully so, the bane of many a Windows user over the last decade has been having to deal with viruses, malware, and the “incessant” need for security updates-especially with Internet Explorer (my personal non-favourite)

Earlier today, Microsoft hit back at Google as they announced “lightweight” versions of Microsoft Office products. According to the official Press release, the web-based suite Office 2010 is “the premier productivity solution across PCs, mobile phones* and browsers”. It gets better; the new Microsoft web-apps will be completely free — a direct competitor to Google Apps, most especially Google Docs.

Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for all Office volume licensing customers including more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.

• Work anywhere with Office Web applications—the lightweight, Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote-that provide access to documents from anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of device.

• Better Collaborate with co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, and advanced email management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook, including the option to “ignore” unwanted threads.

• Bring ideas to life with video and picture editing, broadcast capability in PowerPoint, easy document preparation through the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, and new Sparklines in Excel to visualize data and spot trends more quickly;

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It’s probably safe to say Google’s “greatest” leverage over Microsoft has been the free availability of Google web-based apps, an advantage Microsoft might just have blown away with Office 2010. At this rate God only knows what will happen next. The competition can only get more exciting.

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Microsoft unleashes Bing… it starts a chain reaction… everyone’s talking… they roll out millions in advertising /marketing funds… embark on mass media campaigns… now everyone’s hearing about Bing… more (and more) people actually begin “checking it out”. Okay, that’s basically where we are now.

As with all other thing that hugely affects our lives, there have been diverse views on Bing, especially amongst the tech/search savvy crowd, and webmasters in general. Sounds like your regular revolution doesn’t it?

Microsoft’s Bing release has however proved to be more than the average revolution, drawing widespread discourse from literally every corner of the globe, with many scrutinizing Bing, and offering (mostly negative) comments about the Search Engine, almost always in comparison to Google.

Only two days after the official release announcement, Bing had already come under intense fire from “search experts”, with many doubting its ability to compete with, much less “steal” market share from Google- often citing the quality of the Search Engine’s results and speed as the two major reasons.

Two weeks down the road, Bing surprised many including the experts, recording an 11.4% rise in searcher penetration. Bing had already attained a 16.7% searcher penetration and a 12.1% share of search results pages among all US workday searches, according to stats from comscore.com.

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Microsoft Sites’ average daily penetration among U.S. searchers reached 16.7 percent during the work week of June 8-12, up 3 percentage points from the May 25-29 work week prior to Bing’s introduction

These results have however not changed the minds of some who still insist the only way Bing can cause a major upset is if it provides much better search results than Google, the basis of the argument being ;

.. the same or “good enough” probably isn’t enough for Bing to convince too many people to switch from using Google

I for one disagree, and I made it clear in an earlier post on this site that I thought Bing would effectively “terminate” Google’s search dominance, and it definitely wasn’t because of the quality of search results (where Google surpasses Bing I must add).  A comment on that post literally really summarizes my entire view of the competition;

…. Bottom line: more comprehensive results does not mean more usage, at least for me.

Let’s face it, the search results generated by both Google and Bing aren’t that far apart, as such several other factors will be key in the determining the future of the competition between them.

Whilst many experts have focused on search results in trying to determine Bing’s fate, most have ignored a very important factor in market development- BUZZ. It’s quite simple really- the more people talk about a product, the more attention is drawn to that product, and more (and more) people are forced to check it out, if for nothing else to see what all the fuss is about.

Microsoft obviously hasn’t forgotten though- and they have clearly shown that with a series of marketing campaigns which have included a “live Bingathon and fast-forwarding commercials on The Daily Show“- Bing has literally been in everyone’s faces, attracting a huge number of “trial searchers”, which according to compete.com “haven’t produced significant enough volume to impact the established market share of the top engines, which account for more than 12 billion queries”.

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The Buzz and the Competition

Instead of trying to take on Google where they are obviously stronger, Microsoft have rather focused on making Bing more robust- offering users a richer experience- thus making the search engine Exciting »» Interactive »» Engaging !!

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The Strategy

Microsoft has put in a lot of effort in ensuring that they present Bing as a “Decision Engine”- which organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions. As shown below, Bing displays search results, not by order of popularity, but rather organizes them into categories such as best matches, similar results, and related searches.
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Bing essentially appeals to the senses of searchers by providing features which aid the searcher in making a decision, paying particular attention to the areas of key interest to most people- Travel, Health, and Shopping.

Shopping

No doubt one of Bing’s strong points- searching for a product on Bing generates price comparisons, images, and actual user reviews, sorted and grouped to display popular features, and even cash back for that particular product from “hundreds of online retailers”.

Health

Bing does really well with regards to this touchy subject. Bing’s health results pull together information from “top medical sources health sources from all over the world” to provide concise, and accurate results. A search for Malaria for instance, generates the following useful information alongside the actual search results;

• Articles
• Treatment
• Medication
• Causes
• Pregnancy
• Test
• Images

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Travel

Apart from the useful content displayed on the Bing home page, Bing also features a special travel page which searches travel sites to find the best ticket options, offers tools to refine search results, and an impressive price predictor tool which tells you when fares will be cheapest.

Local Search

Bing provides tools that make it easier and quicker to find relevant local content, such as user reviews from local content sites, hours of operation for local businesses, one-click directions, maps and traffic reports. Each local listing in Bing provides a snapshot of information to help you make decisions, along with tools that help you refine local search results based on a number of factors, including rating, distance, type of cuisine, price, etc.

Additionally, Bing Maps lets you easily find, discover and share location information, providing useful tools such as maps and directions and view high-resolution aerial imagery.

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Google Running Scared?

It is quite clear what Microsoft intended to achieve with Bing, and they may well have succeeded. From all indications, Bing’s unexpectedly rapid growth has Google “threatened”.

Last week, the New York post reported that co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft’s rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service.

Brin, according to sources inside the tech behemoth, is himself leading the team of search-engine specialists in an effort to determine how Bing’s crucial search algorithm differs from that used by the company he founded in 1998 with Stanford University classmate Larry Page.

New search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey,” said one insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity

The move by Brin is unusual, as it is rare these days for the Google founders to have such hands-on involvement in day-to-day operations at the company

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What Really Matters?

Maybe comprehensive search results really don’t translate into usage after all. Microsoft’s strategy has been pretty simple-

1. Create a feature-rich product that makes search a bit more exciting by offering greater usability and interaction.
2. Spend a fortune marketing that product, with the aim of getting people to check it out and experience those rich features
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I guess it’s fair to say the strategy has worked. Bing has since had everyone “lining up” to check it out, including the skeptics, many of whom believed “this Bing thing would be a giant failure”. To be quite honest, after experiencing the features on offer at Bing, you could easily forget about some of the noticeable flaws on the Search Engine.

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Microsoft’s Live Search has just gone BING!! The Bing search engine, now publicly available at bing.com, is the latest roll out from Microsoft, and was unveiled by CEO Steve Ballmer at the
D Conference on the 28th of May.

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So what’s with the name Bing anyhow?

Well, it’s all in the branding really.  Microsoft says;

We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product — optimized for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world.

Apparently, Bing is supposed to be “a new kind of search that goes beyond traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions”.

“It will do this by combining a great search engine (with powerful new features to improve your results for any query), more organized results, and unique tools to help you make important decisions. We think of Bing as a Decision Engine.”

Okay, so can Bing really take on Google in its own backyard? (which is exactly what the world of search has become really). Even Ballmer concedes;

Search and advertising, we are a small share….It’s all about Google. They have share, we don’t have share.

Hmm… Microsoft is however expected to spend $80 million to $100 million on Bing marketing, and many believe Bing will most likely take market share from Yahoo!

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So what exactly does Bing bring to the “search game” ?

Bing is not dramatically different from Google, but some people have found its results stronger. There are some visible changes:

• Bing shows a preview of the web pages in the search results when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of the search results.
• Bing displays fewer results if it is certain that it has understood your intent. The search for “Facebook”, for example, brings up just one result linking to the site itself.
• Some search results are divided into categories. For example, if you search for the popular musician “Justin Timberlake”, you’ll get results in the categories news, songs, movies, biography, wallpaper and downloads. In addition, the search results show images, videos and the popularity of the musician.
• Wikipedia searches can be displayed inline in the search results without leaving the Bing site by clicking the “Enhanced view” link.
• Bing features a different background image every day. The image contains special hidden hotspots that lead you to more information (soon advertising?) about the image.
• Despite the background image, Bing’s homepage loads very quickly in your web browser because the search box and logo load first. You can turn off the background image.
• Bing’s video search lets you watch videos without leaving the search engine.
• Bing offers specific health, shopping and travel search engines, as well as instant answers to travel searches. For instance, the search “Vegas hotels” displays a selection of hotels in Las Vegas, including hotel stars and prices.
• Bing’s search history lets you return to your most recent searches of the last two days. This feature can be turned off to protect your privacy.

An obvious difference however, is Google’s ability to recognize misspellings and offer suggestions,which Bing has a visible lack of. For example, Bing doesn’t seem to recognize misspellings and returns no results in these cases

There have already been suggestions that Bing will be a success for Microsoft, and I must say I agree.

…. Microsoft has plenty of room to grow if they can only offer something that has some minimal value-add beyond what Google offers. Bing already does that. As soon as some search consumers see and experience the contextual sidebar searches in a Bing search, they will see how some searches can save them time on Bing, they will start using it for some of their searches, then defect back over to Google whenever a search fails on Bing.

True! Microsoft’s best bet would be to maximize the additional value Bing offers searchers.

Beyond all that, there’s just something about that name that makes me feel it surely will, even though Steve Ballmer jokes “We should have named it ‘BOOM!’”

Surely would have had a different meaning down here (if you know what I mean).

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It’s relatively easy to setup a business: as a matter of fact, just about anyone can setup a business. Just how well that business venture would do is however a completely different matter altogether. This usually depends on, and is affected by a whole lot of things which I can’t even possibly begin to cover in just one article.

You most often hear people complain about how “business isn’t doing too well”, and how they “just aren’t making enough profit”, and how “things seem to be taking a turn for the worse”…… I’m sure we’ve all been there at one point or the other.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to be given an invitation to attend a Licensing Training and Business Productivity seminar organized by Protech Distribution Ghana, together with Microsoft, which was held today at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Kumasi.

During the seminar, I had the opportunity of meeting Victor Diali- Distribution Account Manager for Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, managing Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

Apart from being Distribution account manager for Microsoft, Mr. Diali is also a Business consultant and “Motivational Trainer”. My 3 hour interaction with arguably the most inspirational person I have met this year got me thinking about a whole lot of things relating to business and business productivity.

The major (or principal if you will) reason why anyone even ventures into business in the first place is to “make more money”, and acheive financial indepence.

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What is Money Anyway?

If you were asked, you would (like me) no doubt answer by stating one of the commonly known, “orthodox” definitions of money which go like;

• a medium of exchange issued by a government or other public authority in the form of coins of gold, silver, or other metal, or paper bills, used as the measure of the value of goods and service
• Assets and property considered in terms of monetary value; wealth
• An amount of cash or credit

BLA BLA BLA ………….

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Yeah, almost everyone would, but after those 3 hours with Victor, my entire perception of money changed. According to him;

“Money is the reward you receive for solving a problem”

In other words, people pay you to solve a problem.

I mean, let’s face it: no one actually pays you just because they like your face, your well pressed suit and matching tie, or anything else for that matter. People pay you simply because they feel you can help (or have helped) them do something they ordinarily couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have been able to do themselves- literally “solve a problem”.

That said, I assume it is therefore correct to say;,

“if you can solve complex problems, you have the opportunity of making more money”

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Let’s consider a Passenger Jet Pilot for example shall we.

With mordern crafts, the job of a pilot has has been simplified to; Take-Off and Landing. All the pilot has to do is;

1. Take Off
2. Put the Plane on Auto-Pilot once it reaches the right altitude
3. Land the plane

So you see. They don’t really do “much”, yet they are amongst the highest paid professionals in the world.

Why?

Simple. Their training enables them solve the complex problem of traversing long distances in a relatively short period.

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What Problem Does Your Business Help Solve?

In order to fully acheive your original business motive, you would need to “connect your products and services to the customer’s problem(s). This usually begins by first getting to know what your customer’s problem (need) is, and there is no better way to do this than to

Listen!!

Another interesting thing I learnt from my interaction with Victor Diali today is that contrary to popular believe, a good sales person is not one who knows how to talk, but one who “knows how to listen”

How would you feel, if you went to see a Doctor for instance, and as soon as you walked into his office, he immediately gives you a diagnosis without any form of examination? The next logical step would no doubt be to turn around, flee, and never return.You may even report the Doctor to the relevant authorities.

Same goes for your business.  Just as you would go to the Doctor, looking to solve a health problem, your customers come to you looking to solve a problem. Your customers need to know that your business can actually solve that problem, and the only way to know what your customers need is to actually listen to them.

After pondering over this all day I came to the understanding that listening in itself is more of a process than an action. That is to say that listening is continuous, and goes on for the entire length of your relationship with the customer.

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The Listening Process

In order to get the most out of your business, you have to effectively manage your listening process. To do this, you would however need to effectively manage your business contacts.

• Keep A Record- you would no doubt need to know who your customers are in order to “listen” to them

• Develop  A Relationship- Get to know your customer-base. Create and maintain good rapport with them. Simple tasks such as sending out a gift/greeting on a known anniversary could do a lot to help

• Management- you would need to manage every aspect of your customer’s relationship with you. You need to know as much as possible, how your products/services are helping the client in terms of business growth. If you do not have a “Client Account Manager”, you may need to consider recruiting one

• Support- arguably the most important. The customer is the customer, and should “be the customer”. You must as a matter of necessity provide as much support as required by the customer.Additionally, Most businesses and business owners take offense when a client complains about poor service. This definitely shouldn’t be the case. Allowing the customer to have a voice is one of  the most powerful marketing techniques, and is vital to the listening process.You should know how to effectively handle customer complaints

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A lot more actually goes into this process, but that would have to be in a future article (actually I’ve run out of things to say). Anyway, if you want your business to really succeed (and I assume you do), then it would make a lot of sense for you to “clearly” define what problem(s) your business really solves

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There has been a lot of talk about “Cloud Computing” lately, leaving one to wonder what all the fuss is about. Microsoft and Google seem to be leading the race to the clouds- so to speak.

But what exactly is cloud computing anyway?

“The Cloud” is simply a metaphor for the Internet (based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams) and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals. Cloud computing is Internet-based (“cloud”) development and use of computer technology (“computing”).

It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet (“in the cloud”) without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

Cloud computing incorporates the Software As A Service (Saa s) technology which allows users access software modules directly from a server. That is to say-as Wikipedia puts it- that the application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the internet.

By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Conversely, customers relinquish control over software versions or changing requirements; moreover, costs to use the service become a continuous expense, rather than a single expense at time of purchase.

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Another thing which has been in the news lately is Microsoft’s Software Plus Service (S + S) which is also built around the whole cloud concept. Google and Microsoft have a slightly different approach to cloud computing. According to Pam Baker;

“On the one hand, Google’s approach to cloud computing is to put all software and services in the cloud, which is then merely retrieved by a dumb client via browser (think Google Docs, Google Apps). Microsoft, on the other hand, has a hybrid approach to the all-or-nothing scenario in that it retains computing power and software on the device itself, with data rumbling around in the cloud. The Microsoft approach is to seamlessly balance the roles of both to fit any given job at hand. Hence, the Software Plus Service (S+S) name as opposed to Software as a Service (SaaS), where software resides in the cloud.”

Microsoft’s approach seems to make more sense because if “everything” were to reside in the cloud, one would be forced to work with a limited version of the software. Just as Lewis Shepherd, CTO of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments puts it-

“The problem is that if everything is solely on the device it’s hard to share in real-time on the Web, but if everything is in the cloud, you are forced to work with lightweight versions of the software.”

For this reason no doubt, Microsoft plans to provide two seperate software versions- a high-powered loadable software coupled with lighter browser versions to provide maximum computing power whilst still maintaining flexibility.

So basically, while MS surface uses tremendous computing power, it is drawing data from the web. Sort of like a physical front-end and web back-end kind of thing. It is believed that this would provide richer options for the user.

Windows 7, a.k.a “Windows Cloud” should be unvieled in a couple of weeks.

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