For the first 6,000 years of human history (or so it seemed), the online world was dominated by one power: Google. Search, video, mail, blogs, news—Google made it all possible with almost no effort. Google was the online giant. It was indestructible.
And then it happened.
Another computer giant arose from the dust to challenge the ruler. Challenges were nothing new for Google—it was accustomed to meeting and conquering opposition with little more than a flick of its mouse. But this was different. This threat was real. We're talking, of course, about Bing.
Before you roll your eyes and click through to Gmail, YouTube, and Blogger just to prove me wrong, please read the following disclaimer:
No, Google is not going under anytime soon.
No, Bing is not the new online superpower.
Yes, that intro was mainly an exaggerated attempt to get you to keep reading. And it looks like it worked, so you might as well finish this off.
The point is this: Bing is here to stay. This is not an “upgrade” from the doomed Windows Live. It is a completely new and improved search experience.
Which is why Microsoft isn't calling it a search engine at all, but rather a “decision engine.” In a nutshell, Bing is actually quite different from Google. Instead of retrieving useful sites that contain the information you are searching for (after which you must click through to the site and locate the information), it takes it a step further by retrieving the actual information itself. This means fewer people will be clicking through to sites that “may” contain the information they are looking for.
Thus, the natural question to be posed in this blog is this: how will Bing affect online marketing? If Bing is never fortunate enough to catch on, marketers have little to worry about. But judging from initial reviews and reactions (which have been much more positive than we expected), Bing does have potential to steal away at least a modest portion of the search engine market. This means less searching and hassle for consumers, but also fewer impressions and lower CTR for marketers.
Bing is not likely to drastically change the online world. At the end of the day, saving users one mouseclick during a search doesn't sound incredibly groundbreaking. But in our opinion, Bing has finally succeeded where other online search startups have failed: it simplifies and streamlines searches, giving users access to more organized useful information with less exposure.
As always, if online marketers aren't prepared to adapt to online trends, they may find themselves on the hunt for a new day job.
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