Posts tagged Bing
Google makes its first acquisition in the UK
Apr 12th
Google has made its first acquisition in the UK, and it’s not the kind of heavy -hitter you might expect the giant to snap up.
Visual search company, Plink, is just a two-man start-up, based out of Oxford. It’s founders Mark Cummins and James Philbin are now both joining Google to work on Google Goggles.
Publically launched just four months ago, the site shot past 50,000 users in just four short weeks.
The company’s first product, PlinkArt, enables users to identify paintings and artworks with just a snap from their phone’s camera. Once recognised, users can read information on the artwork and artist, share their favourite pieces with friends, or even order a print to hang on their wall.
“We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we’re delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today,” said Cummins and Philbin in a posting on Plink’s company blog.
“Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up.” Read the rest of this entry »
Will this ad make you switch to Bing?
Mar 11th
This new ad for Microsoft’s Bing search engine is excellent. It goes right to the heart of the problem that many internet searches often have – finding what they really want, the first time.
As I’ve said before, Microsoft underwent extensive studies into how people used search engines, and what would make them switch before it even started to design Bing. It’s answer: the decision engine.
This ad, which is brilliant, funny and really speaks to consumers about what the offering is as well as its unique sell, will get me to try out Bing for sure.
I’ve loved Google, and I loved its Parisian Love ad, but I too, am sick of the information overload.
Bing is rising in the ranks but will it convince marketers?
Mar 8th
Earlier this month, Microsoft was launching an attack on Google saying its rival is anti-competitive. Today, Bing is launching an advertising assault on Google, but will all this child’s play convince marketers to come on board to this new, super-dooper decision engine?
Microsoft’s search engine may trail Google in searches, but when it comes to Fans on Facebook, the tech giant ranks number one!
To cement its position, Microsoft is set to launch a major advertising campaign that will encourage UK users to start using its Bing search engine.
The campaign will run across major TV stations – something Google only started doing last year after 10 years in the game – and will urge internet users to ‘Bing and decide’.
Microsoft wants to help searchers make more informed decisions. Of course, actually persuading people to move away from a search engine that, for many, has become synonymous with the internet is going to be a tough ask.
Bing is new, fresh and not another ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ project, according to Microsoft. Its attack on Google has been described as “trench warfare” and it won’t be over in days and months but years, warns the giant.
However, a study by Catalyst Group shows that although users like the new search engine, they are unlikely to switch.
A usability focus group, after using both engines, said they preferred Google, with only one third saying they liked Bing. That being despite the fact that 82% preferred Bing’s design, 64% preferred Bing’s organisation of features and another 64% preferred Bing’s refinement and filtering options.
With regards to relevance of results, the majority of users thought both engines preformed equally well. This goes to show how entrenched Google has become in our thinking when it comes to search.
When it came to paid ads it seems that again Bing came out top with users spending 150% more time looking at the ad space at the top of the page, possibly due to the refinement options available at the top of the page.
What makes Bing unique is its organization of results. Microsoft conducted extensive studies into how people used search engines, and what would make them switch before it even started to design Bing.
The challenge now for Microsoft is – as its own research revealed – that when choosing which search engine to use, the decision is subconscious. So even though studies show people might prefer Bing, most would stay with what they’re used to – Google.
Is that going to be the same chain of thought for advertisers and marketers?
The good news for Bing is its growing faster than Google did.
The bad news? It puts ads at bottom of the search page. Users of Bing don’t scroll through the search results as much as they would on Google because they don’t have to – by the very nature of Bing, the most relevant results are at the top. That’s the decision part…
This has consequences for ad placement. As users are less likely to scroll down, ads that are in the bottom half of the page will be seen less often hence placing a higher premium on getting a top PPC listing. This will encourage bidding wars, so it is likely that PPC rates in Bing will be higher than in Google.
But Bing is pushing hard to extend its advertising affiliate network. If advertisers are bidding more for Bing ads than Google ads, it will make Bing a more attractive proposition for affiliates than Google because an affiliate will earn more from Bing’s higher-priced ads.
In the long term, this could lead to Bing having a more extensive affiliate network than Google.
As anyone who is familiar with Microsoft knows, the company doesn’t release mature products. It instead launches to the marketplace as soon as possible and then relies on user feedback to fine-tune performance. So expect Bing to evolve, and quickly. Before you know it, we’ll be saying: “I Binged it”.
Microsoft vs Google in a case of the pot calling the kettle black
Mar 1st
Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success, according to vice president and deputy general counsel of Microsoft Dave Heiner. So why is Microsoft verbally bashing Google out there in the media over antitrust and competition concerns?
It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black – and I will now share a Simpson episode to tell you why.
In season nine of the Simpsons (screened in 1998), an episode called ‘Das Bas’ saw Homer attracts the attention of Bill Gates when he starts his own internet company – Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net.
Here is some of the script that should illustrate Microsoft’s blatantly childish jealousy issues and the way the company is currently doing business:
GATES: Your internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can’t figure out what, if anything, CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I’ve decided simply to buy you out.
HOMER: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
GATES: Well everyone always does. Buy ‘em out, boys!
(Bill Gates companions begin to trash the “office”.)
HOMER: Hey, what the hell’s going on!
GATES: Oh, I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks!
Gates isn’t buying Homer’s company, he’s ‘trashing’ it – much the way, one could argue, that he is verbally trashing Google currently in the press.
Government competition agencies are increasingly focused on Google’s growing power in search and online advertising, according to Microsoft.
But don’t forget, government competition agencies have spent the past seven months investigating a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft that is thought to be ‘antitrust’ and ‘anticompetitive’ too.
Google is dominant in certain markets, including search advertising. Last year the DOJ told a federal court that Google’s book search plan is anticompetitive in several respects. (One big problem is that Google would help itself to essentially exclusive rights to tens of millions of books—effectively locking out everyone else.)
Last week, the European Commission said it was investigating various aspects of Google’s conduct, including claims of retaliation, exclusivity and manipulation of search results to disadvantage rivals. Google was reported by Ciao, a subsidiary of Microsoft.
On Microsoft’s blog today, it said, “Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere—at Microsoft.”
It says that Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.
It’s worth asking whether Google’s response really addresses the concerns that have been raised. I’ve asked Google and I waiting to hear back…but will the search giant even dignify such allegations and join this childish fight?
When the Yahoo and Microsoft partnership was approved last month, many were singing the praises of the pair. Others, myself included, said that while it is good for competition, the pair have quite the task ahead of them if they are going to get consumers and advertisers to migrate away from Google (a brand they have stuck by for over ten years). How will they do it? I pondered.
Bashing, it seems. But Microsoft maintains that it is not alone in trying this business tactic:
Heiner says: “Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors. (I’ve seen plenty of competitor complaints. Novell, when current Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the helm, was never hesitant about complaining to regulators about Microsoft. Google hasn’t been shy about raising antitrust concerns about Microsoft in the last few years, either.)
“This is the way that competition law agencies function: They look to competitors in the first instance to understand how particular markets operate, the practices of dominant firms and the competitive significance of those practices.
“Of course, as we have always said, it is vitally important that competition law authorities also listen to and assess the views of customers, business partners and everyone else affected by a dominant player’s business practices. Ultimately what’s important is not who is complaining, but whether or not the challenged practices are anticompetitive.”
Is Google anticompetitive? Or just too big to touch?
Publishers, advertisers, advertising agencies and others want to see real competition in search and online advertising, says Microsoft.
But if that is provided, what guarantees that people will switch?
Can Microsoft and Yahoo knock Google off its throne?
Feb 19th
Steve Ballmer has described the approved partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo as a “milestone”, while Carol Bartz claims it to be a “breakthrough”. But why is this ‘alliance’ so significant?
The decision has been resting on the shoulders of the US Department of Justice and the European Commission for the past seven months. Japan, Korea and Taiwan are still yet to approve what will surely be a threat to Google’s ten year reign over the search market.
Google, which has a 85.78% share of the global search market, has sat on its throne quite comfortably this past decade as every competitor that has entered the market has still failed to even make a dent in Google’s audience. However, with a combined market share of almost 10%, Yahoo and Bing are proving serious in their bid for leadership of the search world.
Both CEO’s Bartz and Ballmer suggest the ‘alliance’ is a bid to boost innovation. More simply, it’s about creating more competition and boosting revenues.
The global search market is estimated to be worth around $33 billion. In the US alone it is said to be $4 billion and in the UK, marketers spent £1.75 billion in 2009 alone.
Yahoo is hoping to see some of that spend on its bottom line next year – it will be taking 88% of all search revenue generated from its partnership with Microsoft.
The question on everyone lips now is just how long will it take the pair to increase their share.
The deal will not be implemented straight away. In fact, it will take almost until the end of this year to know whether or not the alliance has been a success.
One thing we can be sure of though, is that it will certainly force Google to rethink its strategy (namely its Adwords platform which has in the past gathered criticism) and also keep it on its toes to innovate and offer bespoke offerings (not like Buzz!).
Poor Google. If you come in at the top there is only one place to go.
But Warren Cowan, CEO of Greenlight, writing for UTalkMarketing.com, is not convinced that Google’s grip on the search market will be strained.
He says that the idea that a Yahoo/Bing merger will create a search player with close to 30% market share (as quoted in AdAge) might be accurate for the US, but not in the UK – or western Europe for that matter.
Google is simply too big. But then again, isn’t what they said about all those banks that went bust (too big to fail)?
The big challenge now, however, is tempting away loyal Google users who have, for the past ten years, used little else when it comes to search.
Is Microsoft cool enough to have its own mobile phone?
Feb 15th
It’s Mobile World Congress this week and the perfect time for new players to enter the market. But can tech giant Microsoft pull it off?
Do you remember the days when software and technology companies would only really offer one product, but that product would actually be really good? Everyone would have it and it just became the norm. Microsoft loved those days, the days before it had so many competitors, days when it didn’t have to ‘cool’, it was just geeky.
Now, brand is more important than ever, and even more important for companies is that they now need to be seen with their fingers in many pies - that they’re down with the kids.
Microsoft will this week unveil the Microsoft Windows 7 for Mobile operating system, but what’s even more interesting is it will also be unveiling Windows 7 Mobile handsets.
Microsoft has been pretty busy these past couple of years - busy competing that is.
You have to remember that Microsoft could once do no wrong. It’s products weren’t very sexy but they certainly made our lives easier. But the company perhaps become a little complacent, it took its eyes off the ball and started building Xbox.
Then it had to play catch-up, that’s what Zune was all about. Bing is more about looking for other revenue streams while it watches Apple steal away customers (although Microsoft still has a ninety-something share of the OS market, people are switching because Apple is cooler).
So now it is building a mobile phone. This is perhaps Microsoft’s last chance to really hit the market place big time and offer something unique that will finally set it aside from it’s competitors such as Google and Apple.
The phone, which looks similar to a Blackberry, will have to be a ‘must have’ item. But will it be hot and sexy enough to attract consumers to camp out at mobile phone retailers to be first to have one?
Microsoft’s decision to enter the mobile phone market reflects a broader push inside the company to bring a bigger element of ‘cool’ to its brand - which is usually known as ‘functional’ (I am here reminded of those Window 7 ads…there was no one cool in those, just people functioning, often stupidly).
But it’ll have to go some way to convince consumers.
Microsoft’s early lead in smartphone software was built on its strong practical appeal to corporate IT departments, which wanted to move applications they had developed for other Windows operating systems on to mobile handsets.
It’s popular with the geeks - but even they are losing interest. The company’s share of the smartphone business has withered as consumers have turned to cooler handsets and often kept these for work as well.
According to comScore, Microsoft’s share of smartphone software had slipped to 18% in the US in the final quarter of last year, while Apple’s iPhone claimed 25% of the market.
There certainly is a lot of ground to catch up on for Microsoft. The handset won’t just have to ‘wow’ consumers, it’ll have to shock them. And the ad campaign will have to be a hell of a lot better than those Windows 7 ads.
Google is determined to make the web social, but will advertisers benefit?
Feb 10th
Google has launched yet another social feature to its brand – Google Buzz. The search giant is determined to make the web social, but how will it benefit its search business?
Many of the headlines around today announcing Google Buzz focus on ‘Google taking on Facebook’, even ours does on the UTalkMarketing homepage. And while the search engine might look to be competing with Facebook, it is in fact just taking a lead from the pioneering social media site.
As I explained last week on Facebook’s sixth birthday, Facebook isn’t so phenomenal and newsworthy just because it has more than 350 million global users; it is credited with creating what we now know popularly as social media.
It has also forced other digital media companies to change. Just a couple of years ago Google was the king of the internet which had a seemingly endless reign. Now it is being challenged in every corner including new competition from Microsoft and Yahoo! in the form of Bing.
Google said on its official blog: “We’ve recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
“Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience.”
That’s right, sharing is caring. And with this new feature Google is making sure that users share on Google – links from Google search, video’s from Google’s YouTube, photos from Google’s image search.
It’s locking its users down and making damn sure they stay on Google. An interesting way to beat off competition…and not just the competition from Facebook!
Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. It already has the potential to reach more than 150 million monthly users (its existing Gmail user base).
It’s all good news for Google’s search revenues as advertisers will be fighting even harder to get to the top of those search results if it means they may feature in someone’s inbox too!
Remember, Google is everywhere.
Why web filters could be bad news for internet marketers
Jan 25th
We always hear of talk that web filters are hindering some businesses. SEO key words aren’t always so simple, or so innocent as one magazine in Canada has just found out.
The news that Google was to pull out of China over mounting frustrations over censorship laws last week shocked the search industry.
Just one week earlier, Yahoo and Bing had announced it was to succumb to internet censorship pleas from the Indian government, banning searches for terms such as ‘sex’.
Such searches would return this message: “Your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content. To learn more about SafeSearch requirements in your country or region, see How Bing delivers search results.”
While we may have been confused (because sometimes ‘sex’ is within context…for example ‘sex discrimination’) by the actions of the Chinese and Indian governments, now we can be a little worried about the impact these censorship rules given that the internet is more global than ever.
Canadian magazine ‘The Beaver’ has recently had to rename the almost 40 year-old title as it has been deemed as ‘vulgar’ in internet search terms.
An alternative meaning to ‘The Beaver’ is something crass that has no relation to the Canadian semi-aquatic rodent, actually.
And that alternative meaning causes web filters at schools and junk mail filters in e-mail programs to block access to material containing the magazine’s name.
Needless to say, has internet filters become more common place not just in certain countries and governments but also in the workplace, the past two years have posed a problem for the magazine.
A few years before Internet use became common, the magazine, which now has a circulation of about 44,000, sought its readers’ opinions and decided to stick with the name.
The last issue as The Beaver, which announces the name change to Canada’s History, was mailed to subscribers last week.
Filtering ISP’s is bad news for some businesses, and makes the marketer’s job a little tricky when it comes to key words and what classification their brands and websites might come under.
Some of possible repercussions of this censorship are:
1. This will result in significantly lower connection speeds (in the order of 80%).
2. As the filters will rely on a ‘black list’ provided by a government body, it opens the door to potential misuse or political interference.
3. Perhaps a veiled attempt to ‘Control the Conversation’ emanating from a growing and more vocal constituency via blogs and social media.
Do you think internet censorship will eventually affect you?
Mobile apps could threaten Google, Yahoo and Bing’s search future
Jan 7th
As the internet goes mobile, apps could be replacing the need for search
Applications that take users directly to e-commerce sites and other web service destinations threaten search providers such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing, according to BroadPoint AmTech.
Some retailers including Amazon and eBay are making it even easier for consumers to visit their site and make purchases by offering mobile apps that enable full browsing and purchasing functionality.
Consumers who download these mobile apps directly to their iPhones and other smartphones and can then go straight to the source website and buy what they need. So will the search box be a redundant feature of the internet in the future?
There are several opportunities to make money from pairing ads with search engines on smartphones and other mobile computing gadgets, but applications that take users directly to e-commerce sites and other web service destinations threaten search providers, says BroadPoint AmTech.
Mobile web search and queries are on the rise and will continue to soar once consumers begin to leverage more location-based mobile services. It’s no wonder Google swore its allegiance for the space by bidding $750 million for mobile ad maker AdMob.
BroadPoint AmTech said 10 to 30% of the mobile searches consumers trigger for Amazon.com, eBay and the like go through the Google, Yahoo or Bing search box on their iPhones, Google Android devices and other smartphones. Ads served with these navigational queries cultivate decent click-through rates.
But many vendors are making it even easier for consumers to visit their sites and make purchases and it isn’t just the big companies that are creating mobile apps to drive e-commerce to their websites.
This presents Google, Yahoo, Bing and other mobile search engine providers with an interesting quandary, or intriguing options, depending on how they choose to approach this new turf war.
These providers can secure search toolbar distribution deals with phone makers such as Apple and wireless carriers, grabbing the scraps from the tables of mobile app providers.
Or these internet companies can build their own mobile apps for prominent placement on smartphone decks. For example, Google has recently released two powerful apps, the Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS program and the Google Goggles visual search app.
Both are currently available only on Android. Google hasn’t discussed how it might make money from these free apps, but serving local ads with its GPS app and its visual search app seems to be such an intuitive task that it would be surprising if Google did not undertake it.
In any case, Google is headed in the right direction with the impending Nexus One smartphone, a fast-performing HTC device. The search giant seems to be focused on making sure it can guide the development of the mobile web while protecting and expanding its own business model.
Could other search companies follow suit to protect their online futures?
The right tools to help you monetise your tweets
Jan 5th
It’s finally 2010 – the year that will be Twitter’s “revenue year” as promised by co-founder Biz Stone.
And it’s encouraging to note that according to a new OneNewsPage.com poll published on UTalkMarketing half of respondents are also making money from their Twitter activities.
We heavily covered ‘All things Twitter’ last year including how marketers and brands can monetize their tweets and how to incorporate tweets into their everyday marketing activities as a way of keeping in touch with consumers.
Twitter has more than 40 million monthly users, with London being the international hub of activity. Last year, Microsoft began to integrate Twitter messages into Bing, its new search engine, and Google announced a deal to do the same meaning that this year, tweets will be more visible and possibly more lucrative than ever before.
So here’s a list of tools to help you get the most from your 140-character status this year:
1. TwitterCounter
TwitterCounter analyses your account or that of any person using Twitter and provides information on the number of followers over time plotted on a graph.
It uses this information to extrapolate your likely follower growth in the future. You can also find statistics such as your current ranking on Twitter according to follower numbers, and you can then compare this to the most popular users on the service.
2. Twitalyzer
Find out how much influence you have on Twitter. Twitalyzer analyses your activity in five areas: influence, signal, generosity, velocity and clout.
Signal indicates the proportion of tweets that contain information, generosity measures how willing the user is to re-tweet, velocity watches how regularly tweets are made and clout refers to how often the user is referenced by others. Influence is a combination of all of these scores.
3. TwitVid
Share video clips via Twitter. You can upload videos and add a tweet to go with it. TwitVid links to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
4. The Twitter Tag Project
Follow Friday is a weekly event on Twitter where users recommend new people to follow. You do this by sending a tweet including the username or names of the people who you want to recommend marked with the hash tag ‘#followfriday’.
The Twitter Tag Project provides a tool to help you work out who to recommend. Enter your username, and it’ll suggest a bunch of people based on your last 200 tweets, ready formatted into #followfriday tweets.
5. TweetGrid
TweetGrid offers a similar service to Monitter, but integrates elements of a full Twitter client. You can log in and use it to send tweets and make re-tweets as well as monitoring searches in real time.
You can also opt for different page layouts, including three columns, or grids of three-by-three searches, giving you nine searches on one page.
6. Twitterholic
Find out how addicted you are to Twitter by entering your username at this site. You’ll get an overall ranking and a ranking by your location. You can also see what tags have been applied to your account. Twitterholic also shows the top 100 Twitter users for context
7. Friend or Follow
Worried about who’s following you back, or who’s dropped you shortly after following you? Friend or Follow helps you find these answers. Go to the site and enter your username.
Friend or Follow then analyses your account and presents you with three lists: people you’re following but aren’t following you back; people who follow you who you aren’t following back and people you’re following who are also following you.
8. TwitterFeed
Automatically notify your Twitter followers whenever you post to your blog. It does this, simply enough, by linking your blog’s RSS feed to your Twitter account.
You can sign in using an open ID and then link your Twitter account. TwitterFeed also enables you to check for updates at hourly or daily intervals and include your blog post title in the automatic tweet.
9. Dabr
Dabr is a lightweight web-based front-end for Twitter that’s optimised for mobile use. It offers many of the functions that other Twitter clients provide, and increasing numbers of desktop PC users have switched to Dabr because of its speed and ease of use.
Icons next to each tweet enable you to reply, re-tweet, mark as a favourite or direct-message the user. Pictures appear as thumbnails in the timeline
10. Mr Tweet
Mr Tweet helps you to find new followers based on people you already follow by looking at their followers and people that they recommend. If you recommend people to Mr Tweet, your followers will see your recommendations and Mr Tweet will use them to help improve his recommendations, which you’ll see when you visit.
11. Twittervision
Watch a selection of tweets as they are posted in realtime set against their locations on a world map. Twittervision is fascinating to watch, although of course you only see a small fraction of the tweets currently being made around the planet. It does gives you a feel for where the global Twitter hotspots are, though
12. Monitter
Monitter supplies real-time search updates from Twitter presented in multiple columns. Search by username, hash tag or keyword. You can enter a different search in each column, and they constantly update.
There’s no need to log in or even have a Twitter account. This makes Monitter a useful place to go if you’ve been working with a client application and have used up the limited number of API calls per hour Twitter permits you to make.
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