Henry Blodget, a long time analyst of Internet companies, posted a story on the Silicon Valley Insider, entitled “Bing Will Bomb“.
Why?
First, he said there “isn’t a search war between Google and Microsoft. Google won what little skirmish about 5 years ago”
Second, he attributes any gain that Bing.com has made to curiosity in reaction to that enormous ad budget Microsoft has for the product.
Third, Mr. Blodget says: “yes, Bing has added some cool innovations, but nothing that Google can’t and won’t copy immediately.”
“And that gets to the heart of Microsoft’s problem here: Search isn’t broken. The reason almost 70% of folks use Google is that most folks like Google and most folks are used to Google.”
“”Sure, people will try a new search engine. Why not? Everyone’s curious. But when they see that it’s not obviously better, and/or when Google immediately copies anything that is actually better about it, most people will head right back to Google again.”””
Mr. Blodget also points to a survey that Imran Khan of JP Morgan, did which concluded that “Consumers are happy with Google. They don’t see a need to switch.”
Moreover the survey found that 62.5% of people are satisfied with their current search engine and see no reason to switch.
The survey also found only 9.4% of users plan on using Bing as there main search engine, only slight better than the 7.1% that already use Microsoft search.
All and all another interesting post full of survey results and if the survey proves correct, Bing.com going to have a problem.
I know this might sound stupid, but I’ve always thought that part of the reason why google was so successfull is the simplicity of its home page. Previously going to msn.com, or live.com took a long time to load. Who has time for this? If you make google your home page in your browser (which alot of people do because you are usually going to your browser to search for something anyway) your browser will open up super fast, not much work to do. It would only open faster if you set a blank page (or no page) to your home page. Bing loads smokin fast so I imagine some people have already changed their homepage to Bing. Finally microsoft figured this out. Yahoo has the worst home page, if your goal is to search for something. It tripples the time it takes for your browser to come up if it is set to your home page too. I’ve always thought yahoo should buy a 2nd domain for search only, without all the twinkling lights and pretty pictures and just have a search box, and market that.
Anyway, my point is, Bing may not crush google, but I think at the end of their ad campaign (lets say 1 year later) their market share for search will probably be at a minimum a little higher than it was before. 5% more market share = alot of dollars too. If they get lucky they will gain alot of market share. Load time is of course only 1 factor of many. How important is it? Well its important to me, but who knows for the masses.
Does anyone have anything negative to say about Bing as far as the change from live/msn goes? Does anyone think they are actually losing customers that were previously users of live/msn before the switch to Bing?
1 percent of the search market is worth 1billion dollars…bing up 2.3 is 2.3 billion per year more…roughly Donald Trumps net worth every year.
I wish I were that much of a failure:)
JP and Tim right on agree 100 %, Blodget has made so many bad calls over the last few years, I quote what someone asked on a stock picking forum “Why is anyone still reading this man ?”
Microsoft knows Bing is not going to supplant Google for #1, but as Tim said if they pick up 5 to 10 % points its a win. Check out the post on Tech Crunch whether Google should be regulated? More people over time will become disenfranchised with the lack of transparency,closing publisher accounts without giving a reason, and how much info Google knows about them, that more people will want some alternative or at least more choices when searching for something. Again IMO.
Blodget certainly has some baggage:
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr18115.htm
I’m glad you pointed that out, I think saying he has “some” baggage is akin to saying that the US Fed Gov’t has accumulated “some” debt lately
Blodget is 100% right. Google is baked into the browsers and surfing habits of users- hence iPhone. Or Firefox who is paid for traffic.
All Bing does is appease the shareholders and give lift to the stock price. It would have to give users real extra value before people switch. But you will get all the MSN traffic and those people who use start pages that come from the windows op system.
“But (as a domainer) you will get all the MSN traffic and those people who use start pages that come from the windows op system.”
And you already had that with LIVE just not all the extra curiosity eyeballs due to the ads which will die off.
When everybody is satisfied with you and see no reason to switch you are loosing it big time… The consumers (especially young ones) are not stupid, and if Google will start copying Bing they will notice.
And one more thing – Google is starting to become “evil Empire” in the eyes of many…
The problem with Google is that they cant change too much. what are they going to do – buy every good idea that is out there?
There is no doubt Google will loose market share in the coming years. the only question is how much and to whom.