Everyone knew today was the day that Microsoft was going to launch their new search engine. Everyone’s been talking about it for months, and the press and marketing efforts were carefully tailored to maximize the impact. Thursday, May 28, 2009 was supposed to be Microsoft Bing Day.
A little after 8 am this morning Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer himself took the stage at the exclusive All Things Digital conference near San Diego, California and announced to a few hundred elite executives that Microsoft would soon be releasing its new search engine, and that it would be called Bing.
One problem right off the bat: the Bing.com site wasn’t live. And since press didn’t know the name until Ballmer said it, it took a while for the news to spread.
Another problem: A team of Google engineers based in Sydney was simultaneously announcing a stealth project 4+ years in the making called Wave. And it wasn’t being announced to a select few top business executives. Instead, the team that created it was showing it to 4,000 developers at the Google IO conference in San Francisco, California.
You know that scene in the Lord Of The Rings movie where the huge eye of Sauron on top of that mountain swings its view from the alliance troops massed at the Black Gate of Mordor over to the real action, Frodo with the Ring at the Cracks of Doom?
That’s basically what happened today. The eyes of the world, and the press, swung from San Diego to San Francisco as they realized what was happening. And what was happening was this: Google stole Microsoft’s thunder with one of the most ambitious and exciting products the tech world has seen in a long while.
At the end of the Google Wave presentation, 4,000 developers stood up and cheered like nothing we’ve seen outside of a Steve Jobs keynote. That picture above isn’t the crowd of gray haired execs cheering Bing. It’s a mass of engineers going wild over a new open source communications platform from Google. And yes, that guy on the right was literally waving his laptop in the air in excitement.
The fact that everyone in attendance was still glowing from a free Android G2 phone that was handed out the day before didn’t hurt, either.
So what happened? Well, the company that will do no evil will certainly engage in a little stealth black ops mission when its required. Google knew full well exactly when Bing was going to launch. And they carefully planned the Wave launch to occur just minutes afterwards. They knew the crowd was ready for something cool. Not only did they have that free phone, but the day before Google VP Engineering Vic Gundotra told the crowd that there would be a big announcement the next day. People were ready and willing to be wowed.
And while Wave certainly deserves every bit of positive attention it got today, the fact that it’s an open source project didn’t hurt, either. San Francisco engineers love open source like east coast liberals love Obama.
Microsoft never stood a chance. As far as the San Francisco developer crowd is concerned, Bing stands for “But It’s Not Google.”
Photo credit: I have no idea. If you know, please tell me in the comments so I can ask forgiveness for using it without permission and give proper credit. Update: Chris Campbell took the photo, per the comments below. Thanks Chris!
Bing got blown away by the Wave.
Google timing has been a key to some of their strategic move this one included.
I still love why they named it Bing – so that people all over the world could pronounce it. (said Steve when talking to Walt)
wave vaporware anybody cares? will we get it in next 5 years??? goog fan boys in denial.
i tell u, name change from useless “live” is enough to gain market share, and to recover lost 3 years.
Vapourware? This stuff has been in production for the past two years. What you saw in that video is not some lousy prototype mockup built in a week. This is something real that actually works.
goog kept us in dark age in search. it is afraid even small change would affect their revenue though misguided ad clicks. Only difference in 10 years is searchwiki, a completely useless forced feature which nobody uses. And most controlled goog redirects on every link click, makes me feel like a slave.
Now, show me ajax in search.
It is vaporware. Do you understand how massive a server overhaul would be required to support this? I mean for every keypress it’s sending out a packet. And the demo showed just how cutting edge this tech is, they had to restart their browsers every 5 minutes. At best, Google will start sending out limited invites in 12-18 months. Meanwhile, Bing will come out Monday.
To me, the name is easy to remember as it syncs with ‘ping’ and Microsoft probably thought it would click because it was just 4 words while Google was 6. But Google, ever-smart, blew all of Microsoft’s plans with another four-worded storm – WAVE.
Great to see these tech giants fighting neck-to-neck. But most importantly, nice to see the smart one win!
Where is Bing now?
The name is memorable but I agree it doesn’t quite have the X factor.
However, having seen the product demo, if it delivers I think it looks like a great product. If Google were doing it you’d all be pining over it. Wave is just a Gmail update in all reality – at least that’s what the majority of users would see it as.
Microsoft may just have pulled a rabbit out of the hat here.
It’s rare that Google launches a lame duck product. When they do, they get criticized for it.
Even Orkut is a wild success. Not in the US where most of Google’s media presence is, but in enough places to make it a success.
Microsoft’s naming of its new search is based solely on this scene from Groundhog Day
http://www.yout...h?v=a0YLD_9lRGU
And they should have based their marketing campaign around saying it like that.
Need a good restaurant to eat in? Bing!!
They named it Bing so everyone could pronounce it? “Bing” in Chinese means sick, as in poor health. Oh the irony.
Goo….in some asian languages means shit…
sick definitely better than shit…
come one every word will have some different meaning ins some other language get some proper reason to bash MS
What the hell is Goo?
NeoTechnie said…
Bing got blown away by the Wave
I come to think that perhaps it is a quantum mechanic wave (from Dr. Quantum double-slit wave experiment) and that explains why it blew away Bing because this wave is everywhere at once.
I looks like a good product to me.
Sir, we live in a matrix so you are wrong.
Bing got swept away by the Wave
Bing is a Chinese man’s name, not a powerful search engine
I can’t wait to use Google Wave to collaborate live with future clients as I build their custom WordPress themes. It’s going to be AWESOME!
I just knew about Bing a couple of hours ago but was reading about Wave all day long and have already asked for sandbox access to start playing with the API.
The suits are no longer in command, it’s a developers world baby.
PWNED!
Ha ha Bing hit up well by the Wave!
Google always steals the show and did it again.. Its not how the Google product is, its just the Hype and Buzz created, which makes it large.
Which used to be Microsoft’s strategy. This must give them chills.
Blooper this time, Microsoft!
I call bullshit. The Wave vs bing announcements is cheap blogger fodder. If Arrington really understood these technologies he would not have written the post, but he needs the hype. By the way, wave is not “open source” as stated in the post, another misunderstanding caused by weak tech understanding.
It had to happen, Microsoft’s biggest flaw with introducing new stuff is badly affected by how and why it tries to push new stuff out. Google does that primarily for making the Web a better experience. Microsoft too does that, but it follows its move to ‘compete’. What big bummer
What dream world are you living in? I can’t believe people still are so delusional as to think that Google is so much better than every other global behemoth. It isn’t. It has shareholders and its aim is to make money. Wake up. Ergh…
Is it the better of two evils then. The reality is that we have to deal with global behemoths every day. All I know is that Microsoft generally make my day a living hell with the stuff I am forced to use of theirs, where on the other hand I constantly look to google to make my day easier and they usually come through with the goods.
Bing looks like the real deal, but we have heard that a thousand times. I would think Google has the better track record. Just wait to see if Microsoft try in some ridiculous way to attach a price tag to it.
Yeah, like your ‘forced’ to use it. I’m sure there are mac or open source alternatives to the MS products you’re ‘forced’ to use.
Bing was a snooze announcement anyway. Another search engine from Redmond, that we can’t use to determine if it’s any good.
And the idea behind Bing, in that it’s better at a few things (travel, health, etc.) isn’t enough to put a dent in Google’s marketshare.
No one will think “oh, I’m about to search for travel deals, I should use Bing.” – they’re going to go to their daily search engine, and it aint gonna be Bing. They would have had to improve search results across the board – and maybe they are, but how will we know.
Search engines aren’t something people use more than one of. Google is in my browser, it’s reliable and I’m used to it.
The only thing MS can hope for is that IE’s native use of Bing will dazzle people long enough to keep them from switching back to Google after install. But IE is dIEing.
MS needs to stick with what they’re good at – selling software to corporations, or come out with something radical, and a search engine just isn’t.
I won’t care what MS is doing until they put out something as game-changing as say…Wave.
Zune: Fail. Vista: Fail. Mobile OS: Fail IE: Fail
We don’t want your chicken anymore.
You wrapped it all up in a nice FAIL nutshell. Well done.
Fail? Almost everthing you mentioned has a dominant market share. You two are clowns. Get off thethreads and learn something productive. Your ability to reason inteligently = fail.
microsoft was not blown away by wave, noone outside of techcrunch or silicon valley is talking about wave. Noone cares about wave. Bing is the future of search.
Wave’s realtime features can be easily integrated into Windows Live Messenger, thereby destroying it.
the “anonymous” doesn’t work so well when you include your twitter handle.
LOL
I lolled hard at first but if you click on the twitter name it’s Anonymous with a capital A – the anti-scientology legion from 4chan
+1000
that was huge! anonymous+twitter is just huge.
I live in Canada at a French speaking university campus, and nobody talked about bing today. But about 5 students (some not in computer sciences) talk about wave asking what it could change, and when they will be able to use it…
I didn’t know that Canada was in the silicon valley
@anonymous “Noone cares about wave. Bing is the future of search.” Zune is the future of Bing. Noone is the future of search. Gibberish…I know.
No one outside of Crunch or the valley are talking about it? Buddy, overnight its become the top trending topic in Twitter… everyone is talking about it… without $80 Mill in marketing money.
Because we all know EVERYONE is on twitter.
Oh boy… here we go.
I see these two launches complimentary:
Bing takes search into new direction, while Wave takes email into the Facebook/Twitter era.
I’m willing to bet that Wave will be very successful, while MS aim to handle all by itself without referring to 3rd party websites with Bing, is a concept much more likely to fail.
“Bing” first appeared in English in the early 16th century meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “A heap or pile: formerly of stones, earth, trees, dead bodies, as well as of corn, potatoes, and the like.”
Do you really believe that Microsoft planned it to be a single day only of publicity? Dude, the more days of publicity cycles, the better for Microsoft. It’s not by chance that only next week the engine will be operational and Marketing will really pick up.
TechCrunch looks more and more like cheerleaders of anything that’s against Microsoft or Yahoo!.
In fact, everyone knows Tech Crunch is virtually Apple-Google territory, but this kind of article (”hey, G stole the thunder of ms this Thursday”) is just ridiculous.
Yeah, i really believe that Google totally crushed Microsoft today by stealing all this press and user attention.
Just a few months ago we were accused of giving MS too much love. Perhaps, just perhaps, we just say what we think.
Today Bing was on the cover of WSJ, NYT, HuffPost etc.. and Google News has Bing tracking a lot higher than Wave. Mainstream is likely talking more about Bing than wave.
I don’t think Wave stole as much attention as you’re implying.
Good point. But mainstream news doesn’t help much if the product isn’t live – mainstream consumers forget quickly, new organizations won’t give it many more front page stories (until a flashy obit notice), and both journalists and masses will rely on people like TC readers to make the product visible again.
It seems to me there was more curiosity about Wolfram Alpha than there was about Bing.
Google PR loves to play “steal the thunder”, but, of course, these tricks don’t mean much over the long haul (e.g., the non-existent penetration of enterprises by Google Docs – or whatever it’s called now). Let’s see how Wave tracks against Bing after MS spends $100MM on advertising…
What the hell!!! They are two completely different products. How do you expect you would even track that anyway. What a completely redundant comment.
The only way this makes sense is if you see a change in market share against Google search (up 4% to 61% last quarter). That is a tough ask. I think wave has a tough enough battle winning market share off its own Gmail and others such as Facebook, Twitter etc.
Although I agree Wave stole some user attention to BInG news day, I don’t think Google crushed the announcement, at list not if the information provided by Google Trends: http://www.goog...=mtd&sort=1 or Twist: http://twist.fl...ave&span=24 is accurate.
Anyway, good move from Google. Bing is the first real attempt to move commercial traffic (intent) from Google search and Google responds with a preview of what looks like will be a Live Mesh/Azure competitor.
The nature of bias is to see its opposite in the statements of others. I don’t care either way, so I think my opinion is a little clearer.
I’m not seeing this bias in TC so many people are complaining about.
Microsoft didn’t have a working site, neither did Google. But guess what. Google, and for that matter Apple, are always going to beat Microsoft in the hype that their products generate, especially in the eyes of Silicon Valley journalists. The best Microsoft can hope for is an arbitrary positive statement here or there, wrapped in some sort of disclaimer to not incur the wrath of Valley gods.
This is just another episode of that showing up. Google giving away mobile phones? Yayy! They’re so much like… Oprah. Microsoft is giving away laptops? Evil empire biasing journalists.
I’m just happy to see Microsoft get back on the right track. I’m not naive enough to believe that MS is evil and that Google and Apple are leading the good fight. They’re just businesses. Microsoft just cannot win the hearts of Silicon Valley gods. But they can come up with good products that make the market more competitive. And that’s the only thing I’m hoping for.
Well said.
Can’t agree with you more. Sick of this ‘Google and Apple can do no wrong’ bullshit. They’re all massive companies out to make massive profits. I just don’t get why people love to hate MS so much and then give Apple and Google virtually criticism-free coverage . Sure MS screws up from time to time, but so do Apple and Google. MobileMe anyone? Lively? Knol? Give me a freakin break
+10000000
see the difference and “try” to understand.
Google just had to announce about the wave and its done. But Bing is going to come. The marketing strategies are not just the demo that SteveB showed to some ‘gray hair’ execs but its much bigger that that. The idea is to start the wave of advertisements and to increase the curiosity in next few days.
See people started talking about Bing now. Bing is going to be released after sometime and you’ll see by that time lots of people have enough curiosity about ‘Bing’.
And please think for few times before you question any marketing plans done by hundreds of experienced people.
True that. Microsoft is going to do a TON of advertising…
…through AdWords.
Exactly.
But it is not Google. Minutes after the announcement, Google Wave was trending on twitter and Bing was at the bottom of the top 10 trending topics..
but I want to know how MS got “bing.com” domain so easily? Dint nobody have it? Or if they acquired it from someone then how much did they pay for it?
And google is evil, I must say. lol
guys, i hate to break it to you, but you (techcrunch) are the ONLY ones talking about Wave incessently. in fact, its getting annoying already. maybe it takes 45 posts for you all to get your points across because this thing is a confusing, complicated mess.
I hate it when people have to break bad news to me.
The truth is that products like Wave re-energize me. I love innovation and beauty in tech. It’s why this blog exists. You’re wrong that no one else cares about Wave. But even if you weren’t, I wouldn’t care.
The point is “energise me” as in YOU! You are not the general public or even remotely representative of the mass of consumers out here.
I couldn’t laughing at this story and your comments. They are the most self delusional comments I have yet seen on here.
If you want to make grand statements like ‘..wave stole bing’s thunder’ then back it up with facts and figures using some of the tools you so readily promote and write about.
Question: If you don’t think what he has to say is important, why on earth are you reading his blog?
If I felt a site wasn’t covering relevant stories, I would probably stop reading it. You not only read the story, but you commented on it too.
Real answer? M2CDO has a secret hard-on for Michael Arrington.
What the heck. I just don’t get it. Did Arrington beg you to come to ‘his’ blog and read what he has to say.
You are here on your own. You like what you see, you stay. You don’t, you leave. But what gives you the right to demand what kind of content should be put on a blog that you don’t own.
Let me guess…. Free speech?
After all, that’s what we are all doing, expressing our opinions. He can demand. You can reply. We can all read or leave.
I agree with your point though that *he* made the decision to read the blog.
I agree. Wave really excites me, and shows that Google is still a company that cares about innovation. It’s the kind of thing I go to TC to read about.
All I see from Bing is MS trying to bury Google, like Ballmer threatned all those years ago. It might be better than Google, it might encourage Google to make some really innovative changes to search, but it doesn’t excite me.
Yeah, innovation re-energizes you as long as it’s not an MS product. Bias anyone?
that’s just not true. There are a ton of microsoft products that I’ve covered that I’ve gotten excited about. We’ve repeatedly been accused of bias in favor of microsoft, in fact.
So answer this, why did Techcruch go so crazy and orgasmic over Wolfram Alpha which really doesn’t answer the questions I put in but then you have the nerve to diss something (BING) almost outright BEFORE it has been launched?
I have heard tons and tons of media coverage and orgasmic commentary and coverage of another so called fantastics Google product, Google doc’s but what has it done? ZERO, nothing, nada.
The hypocrisy of coverage is hilarious.
You diss products like Zune and say it is a failure even though it now has between 8-11% market share in the USA which I would call significant, but with Apple OSx sitting at around 4% market share and Google Doc’s sitting at around .5% (only in the USA) you say they are successes and not failures?
Which is it? You salivate over Wave and diss BING before it comes out!?
Even when you can’t come out and blatantly diss a Microsoft product, technology or service the writers on here resport to childish and petty digs like on the other post (which by the way is wrong) ‘The Bing Definition Microsoft Probably Doesn’t Want You To Get In Your Fortune Cookie’.
As I said there -
According to Dr. Qi Lu, who thought about going back to live in his native China before accepting Steve Ballmer’s offer to head up Microsoft’s search effort, Bing means something a little more positive in Chinese:
“Bing” also resonates with an audience Google is yet to dominate: China.
“The actual Chinese characters are two characters, ‘Bi’ and ‘Ing’ and combined these two characters mean ‘very certain to respond’ and ‘very certain to answer’,” Dr Lu said.
“That’s a terrific representation of what our brand stands for in the Chinese language.”
So where is a similar story on what Wave translates to in Chinese, Vietnames or Nepalese for that matter?
Such as? Face it – you don’t like MS & you’re biased against them. All I want is an unbiased approach or at least an acknowledgment that you dislike MS. Easy.
“We’ve repeatedly been accused of bias in favor of microsoft, in fact.”
Really? Byt whom? That genuinely suprises me cos I certainly don’t see it. I guess it decides which side of the fence you sit on.
I *loved* this post! Wave is exciting. The name is perfect for what it does, and it’s exactly where the web, and social networking, is headed. This is a brilliant stroke by Google.
I laughed out loud at “BING = But It’s Not Google”… that acronym is going to stick!!!
Poor Microsoft. If they ever had anything going for them, it was killed by a passion for money trumping a passion simply to innovate and improve people’s lives. I think the latter is Google’s key to success.
I have feeds from a bunch of tech commentary sites and blogs, and I can assure you that TC aren’t the only ones talking about Wave.
A quick look at Techmeme shows that it’s just not TechCrunch talking about Wave.
And certainly Bing (”But it’s not Google”) was upstaged.
Yet another search engine? Yawn. Um, okay.
A paradigm-shifting, curve-jumping, cutting edge new way of online communication? That’s worth talking about. And it has all of the good and meaningful buzzwords: open source, HTML5, real time, etc.
Once again, Microsoft has been out-maneuvered and out-thought by Google. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
The people who don’t think Wave will be big/important are the same ones that keep posting that Twitter is a fad.
Wave will make hundreds of applications obsolete. It’s also a platform that opens all sorts of new doors for developers.
Say what you will, but Wave will change things.
+1
+1
I’m as confident that Twitter is a fad as I am that Wave is the future of communication on the web. In fact, I won’t be surprised if Twitter fades roughly as Wave hits the mainstream.
/2¢
It will take time for Google Wave to become mainstream. In the meantime, many people (like Oprah fans) will continue using Twitter without any idea of the ripples created by Google Wave.
On the technical front, thanks to Google Wave infrastructure based on XMPP protocol (which is what Twitter is using for its fire hose of Tweets), it is imminent that the two platforms will integrate.
As always when competition builds up, everyone will be forced to innovate, incl. Twitter (groups, filters?)
Cheers!
Shonzilla
totally agree, Wave just crushed all those desktop client wannabe’s together with the friendfeed and inbox management tools
time to start throwing parties with their vc leftover dough
-1 I’m 100% sure Twitter is doomed, but I know Wave will be huge.
HaHa..well written. The big G took the wind out of Bing with it’s well-timed launch.
Why can’t they both be awesome? We haven’t even seen Bing yet – how do we know it isn’t revolutionary as well?
I’m just happy to see innovation on all fronts. Thursday was happenin’.
I am a bit surprised by all these negative comments on Bing. I heard the same thing before about Sharepoint and I hoped that future were to play out the way people predicted. Today Sharepoint is still around and MSFT is making bucks on this junk.
I also love tech and I sometimes really hope that we were to live in an all-rational, logic world where people would just recognize what’s right and good. Too bad we are humans and get taken away by good marketing and promotion.
(by the way last fiscal year MSFT made $60bn–not just >10 as someone else above mentioned. I checked that on Google Finance
$100 million marketing budget for Bing, so if anyone is getting taken in by marketing, it’s MS fanboys
Just kidding, I actually agree that we should evaluate products on their merits, not what we think of the corporation. I’m sure MS is full of skilled programmers and designers.
I too am very excited to login to wave.
I’m going to love turning this into a super IRC client/chatroom/wave for me and some of my friends.
Hi Michael,
The photo is mine, from here:
http://www.flic...lin/3574598412/
It was copyrighted, but I’ve just changed it to creative commons, and I’m fine with it being used in this article.
–Chris
Chris, thanks!
It is Bing for Microsoft but Bingo for Google. Google really make the wave of the future.
Mr. Balmer i seriously have a doubt… dont u know which side ur bread is buttered? Go ahead n sell windows, office, xbox etc… they r still doing pretty good… but y on earth u zuneeeeeee into search..? u thnk u ever gonn make it?
that is called business. you try to make money by investing and competing, not let others take a free ride. This is similar to google developing a chrome which they don’t need in the first place, but just trying to take share away from IE and Firefox.
Chrome is about “encouraging” MS and the rest of the industry to make better browsers, showing how it’s possible to do better with the tech.
It’s called leadership: Google leads, and MS follows. Google builds the leading search engine and MS follows, several years later in this case, with their own.
Chrome and the HTML5 push is solely because Google didn’t own a platform like MS, Apple and Adobe. Therefore they were reliant on 3rd parties to make platform choices that would benefit them.
Since that could be bad for business, the answer is to create or push you own platform in order to advance your agenda. They happen to be pushing the HTML5 open source route hard but its definitely a response rather than a lead. It is a good business decision and many devs will back them up (I’m happy to code for any of them), but they are doing less leading than they’ve convinced you of…
sadly all google products except their search, maps and news are in beta. Beta is not innovation…
Innovation does not occur in a vacuum. It usually is a response to what came before…even when it’s proprietary (which Wave isn’t).
That’s just dumb googlefanboidom.
It’s a vertical integration play on Google’s part. That, and if they can get Chrome to catch on (and by the way it hasn’t, the abandon rates on it are terrible), then it means that Google no longer needs to pay Mozilla $120-$200 million per year to keep Google as the default search engine choice. It’s not any more complicated than that.
Any talk of ‘leadership’ or ‘because Google is good’ is more about how you feel about the facts, not the facts.
it should more about adding value than any thing else… but ofcourse how will a thief spell V-A-L-U-E … Crome has added value… and now even IE is copying wat crome did (check out the way d latest IE browser shows history!)…. n wat value has live (evil spelled backwards) added.. or zuneeeeeee? i just cant resist wat jobs said in one of his interviews “they dont have any taste!”
have you ever used zune software or hardware? Zune software is superior to iTunes. I own both zune, iphone, ipod touch.
then y is ipod still leading in market share…. not only leading but leading like a monopoly?
and “beta is not innovation” ??? ROFL….woah!! google prods are in beta becoz google believes in the policy that nothing can be 100% and it always needs innovation and improvements….and evolution! It is a good way of telling the customers “hey it is not perfect, so help us make it!” and a very innovative way to avoid sorry after every fault becomes public! (even MS releases SP1, SP2…. to make corrections)
Gmail is still in beta and probably google wave will come in beta only… so does that mean these prods are not innovation!! this is hilarious….!
Seems to me that both announcements were similarly incremental innovations: Microsoft adding semantics and UI innovations to search (plus a better name); and Google announcing a vaporware SharePoint knockoff.
Neither one’s revolutionary. But from a business standpoint, Google (one-trick-pony from a revenue standpoint) has a lot more to lose, with every point of search share that Bing can grab. Whereas SharePoint is a freebie for most Microsoft customers – SharePoint is to Microsoft as, um, Knol is to Google?? (How’s that going?)
from a consumer point of view i saw equal coverage of both bing and wave across my various rss. your point does not ring true with what i read throughout yesterday
The odds: Microsoft Bing. Google Bang. Microsoft Bust. Google Wave.
Microsoft can always stand out and do something innovative while Google is busy stealing others ideas, they can only innovate things in stolen ideas. Anyways I am not against Google but they just steal ideas and make their product so fast that the owner of the original idea has no option but to stop enhancing his idea.
Bing is going to be launched on 3rd of June!
Can I just point out how ridiculous that statement is? Microsoft has done very well for themselves over the years, but calling them Creative is insane. They were rarely the first to market with a product, instead just being savvy enough to become the successful product. Microsoft’s genius is not innovation, but instead understanding business better than their competitors.
The original DOS was an OS largely developed by someone else that Microsoft sold to IBM before they even had the rights to it (which they still legally obtained – so I’m not criticizing them or anything). Windows was built as a rip-off of the Mac/Lisa OS (which Apple had actually copied from Xerox). Internet Explorer was built to compete with Netscape. Word was built as a competitor to WordPerfect, the Zune to compete with the iPod… do you see where I’m going here? Microsoft isn’t the innovator, they’re the guy who comes in second or third to a market and then spends more money on marketing (well, except the Zune… but you can’t win everything).
Google on the other hand DOES innovate themselves. They brought search back. They created one of the best Webmail solutions after the market had stagnated in ad laden crap for years. They revolutionized online maps.
Bing may turn out to be a great product, but saying that “Google only steals ideas and Microsoft is always the innovator” is like saying “Gee, this Apple Pie doesn’t taste enough like a Pretzel.” In other words: It hurts my brain.
Your full of shit too. AJAX, the dock that sits at the bottom of mac screens… need I go on? I think you’ll find they’re MS innovations.
Google maps (purchased), youtube (purchased), Wave (developed by guys who founded Where 2 i.e. also via a purchase)… need I go on?
Keep on living in your dream world buddy. One day you might pull your head out of your arse.
Sorry guy, but AJAX was created by someone at Adaptive Path. The XMLHTTP ActiveX control that eventually led to XMLHttpRequest that eventually enabled AJAX was made by MS, but having made a component of a technology doesn’t mean you created that technology.
Also, you’re stretching on your point with Wave. Yes, those guys were guys acquired during the purchase of Where2, but Wave is an entirely internal product that was created after they were FTE’s at Google. Common definition of a purchased technology is that development happened at a different company that was then purchased, but Wave, start to finish, was created in-house.
Even if that mattered. At the end of the day, Google is still get smart, creative people with all these company purchases.
Wow you just couldn’t be more wrong. Let’s clear a couple things up: Jesse James Garrett (AP co-founder) coined the phrase “AJAX.”
The history is that Microsoft invented it as a proprietary extension to IE (As part of IE4 or 5 to support Outlook Web Access). It became ’standard-ish’ when Mozilla added it to their browser in the ~2002 / 2003 timeframe. Google started playing with it with Gmail, and *then* Jesse wrote his article coining the phrase. Adaptive Path had nothing to do with the techology, only the mass marketing.
As an aside, the product that makes Google profitable, MeasureMap, was acquired from Adaptive Path (actually the team that worked on it was group hired).
“They brought search back” rofl! Google != JT (thankfully!)
@Trae Dorn I understand your point, but if you think Microsoft is not innovator then I should laugh. Who created Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 07?
Do you know about Microsoft Surface? That is what we call innovation.
Talking to Microsoft vs Google, Google also did many of acquisition. Feedburner, Double Click, Youtube, Picasa and many more.
I’m going to laugh if Bing integrates Wave.
Why laugh? I’d love to see MSFT and GOOG kiss and make up and start integrating their products together. Is that abad thing? I think not.
Ummm…okay. It would be the other way around. Since Google is making the source available, MS would develop their own wave service that integrates Bing.
Nice try, though.
On one hand, you have yet another attempt at a search engine. On the other hand, you have a completely new protocol seamlessly integrating many previously disparate forms of online communication and collaboration.
Microsoft didn’t stand a chance.
I don’t necessarily agree. Search is still relatively juvenile in general and search companies do two things that are annoying: 1) constantly changing algorithms to keep SEO/SEM ppl in business (which forces small companies to spend a lot of effort keeping up); 2) few big innovations in search over the past several years. Why are we still getting one list of results 10 years later? How about semantics, verticals, anything truly innovative? I still often have to tweak my searches 2-3 times to find what I”m after and wade thru a bunch of junk results.
Microsoft will be shelling out over 100 million bucks to market and advertise Bing over the next few months.
Of course there will be a huge amount of mainstream interest from average Users, as to whether or not Bing has what it takes to become a hot new Search Experience.
Google on the other hand will once again promote Wave through word of mouth and clever ‘eye-ball’ spots across all of their major brands.
The Google Search Homepage will of course lead the way – an instant audience of 100 million +, followed by spots on Google Chrome, YouTube, Google Maps and Google Docs.
Plus Google Wave will hit the Mobile Mainstream Marketplace even more, once a Wave App is introduced for both the iPhone and Android Stores.
Google will always beat Microsoft hands down when it comes to launching new Online Products or Services.
Microsoft urgently need to employ much more Web Savvy Executives, instead of only using dull droning Suits.
I wonder how many zune Microsoft should have given to get the android seekers in their room.
Should that have given them a Bing for a buck ?I
Even if bing is a great search engine (which I seriously doubt), they would have an uphill struggle trying to convince people to use it instead of Google.
Google just works, why use anything else?
Wave, on the other hand looks very cool, this is the kind thing that gets me excited, I know, I know, I need to get out more
I just don’t understand why Microsoft with all its resource to hire the best fail to develop a compelling search engine. Is there something culturally wrong with the company or is it ‘too evil’ ? Maybe Microsoft needs to learn from Google of how not to be evil first.
Ummm… they have delivered a good search engine. Just beating Google is darn hard. Google has some pretty smart people too. MS has the 2nd best search engine on the planet. But they’ll need to be a clear #1 to make up much ground on Google.
With that said MS seems hungrier. They’ve certainly closed the gap and have passed Google in some regards.
Sorry, Yahoo is the Second best. This isn’t an opinion, it is a true statistic.
I guess I saw about equal coverage of both. The fact that MS was able to keep an equal amount of attention as google is pretty impressive since everyone seems to love google like they do apple.
I think MS with Bing still has the upperhand as far as getting attention for Bing, people have been speculating for weeks/months about the new search engine, “What will the name be, how will the new engine work, when will it be released” etc. etc.
Yesterday they made official announcments, they got good media coverage, lots of traffic and posts about bing.com.
Now we have another week of speculation and waiting for Bing.com to go live. Once it does actually go live, millions of people are going to flock over to it to try it out. Thousands of articles will be written about it. Twitter will be all a buzz about it.
Wave will still be vaporware and will have it’s own day when it’s actually open to the public.
Not only was Bing talked about, so was the ZuneHD, so Microsoft got a two for one day and got good coverage on both with quite a few positive comments about both platforms.
I really don’t understand why you like to give MS such a hard time, they seem to never do right in your eyes, which is to bad for you cause they offer a lot, just as google, apple, etc do as well.
what does MS offer?
a failed OS named vista?
a failed ipod clone named Zune?
a slowly fading web browser?
a crappy search engine nobody uses?
at least Apple keeps innovating and making new groundbreaking products. MS stopped creating anything original years ago, they are a declining, desperate company getting killed slowly by open source software.
My response would be:
Win7 – looks to be really successful, installed more times than all Apple OS’s combined, and win7 isn’t even released for sale yet.
All companies have products that don’t do well, Google, Apple, etc. all do, besides vista really isn’t to bad after SP1 and it’s far more secure than previous windows releases.
Zune is second most popular HD mp3 player, has solid hardware, and software, desktop client is better than itunes. ZuneHD has gotten a lot of great press the last couple days and also looks to be successfull.
Ipods were not the first mp3 player so Ipod is a clone of others as well.
Still most dominant browser, by far, IE8 has much better web standards support and will only continue to get better than previous versions. And is more secure than all other browsers out there.
Numerous case studies show that by simply changing the name above the results in search leads people to choose google, even if the results are from Live.com or Yahoo.com. Yeah results are not always great but either are Google’s.
MS understands their Search Engine isn’t doing well, hence Bing.com. Which from the looks of it has a lot of potential and could increase their marketshare to at least get them in the game.
If MS search is insignificant simply because of marketshare then that means Apple is the same in browsers, OS’s, Media Centers, Severs, even Phones.
Didn’t Microsoft just have one of it’s most profitable years? They have some great new products on the way, innovation isn’t always visual, innovation can be done behind the scenes. Some visual ones would be MS Surface, Windows Azure, Live Mesh, Silverlight (yes it’s similar to flash, but yet significantly differnt and will be more powerful) remeber it’s only in it’s 3rd release. Flash is in it’s 9th or so?
Agree
That was well put.
Everyone always creates everything first, but the iPod has a name for itself. Everyone wants one. That is what makes it first and only right now.
“Everyone wants one. ”
I don’t.
I find it hilarious that every comment section of every post ever published always deteriorates into an Apple vs. Microsoft debate. Idiots.
Go Apple by the way.
Why would MS launch Bing, get all this attention and we can’t see the product? Nice way to waste valuable PR. It slows the launch if everyone has to remember to check it out in a week or two.
Bing.com domain just got blocked on our super restricted company intranet, wave.google.com going strong. Wave 1 Bing 0
Bing is too short of a word. It will not stick I think. Something about language. If it is going to be short it has to have certain letters.
MSN still exist? will it be powered by BS new product? How will this shape up in regards to possible Yahoo deal?
Improving quality of search is important, as long as it is relevant and useful to the end user. Thus I think that Search still has a way to go and MS is not doing enough to innovate.
BING – but it’s not google – this post was hilarious mike
Michael is kissing Google’s butt again? jeez mike why don’t you put some lip moisturizer on first.
Oh and Microsoft does have a developers conference coming up where they will reveal even more of their cloud initiative…to developers.
Objectivity isn’t your strong suite dude.
Bing Travel Search is pretty much an exact clone of Kayak. They even went so far as to copy the orange search button and grey shading around the compare section!
Screenshot comparison: http://anywhere...h-copies-kayak/
Sorry.. but google is not a friend of open source. It only uses opensource projects and probably donates but at the core, most of google’s technologies are proprietary just like microsoft, amazon, ibm… name it.
Such blatant biased coverage by techcrunch is the best argument why we need to protect professional journalism and for users not to rely on blogging sites for good coverage.
I was at the D7 and saw Bing demo and also spent an hour+ watching the Wave. Both are very creative and very cool products result of awesome engineering. we as users, developers and consumers will be better off because of both of them.
Bing as demoed looks like a significant upgrade over google search, just like wave is a significant upgrade to plain old email/comm apps. but to suggest that Google stole MSFT’s thunder and wave is sooo much better than Bing without looking at Bing shows the deep bias of techcrunch in favor of Google vs everyone else.
When MS owned 90% of browser share, we saw little innovation in Browser market. similarly, google has NOT innovated too much on the user experience of search in last 2 years because they have become a monopoly. Bing’s search results and display of information and interactivity on the search page itself looked WONDERFUL and everyone at D was blown away – even people who didnt like MS. Similarly, Wave team has done a remarkable job and the folks responded because these 2 apps+platforms allow us to build better apps.
Arrington has got his head so deep in google behind that he cant see any innovation coming from anywhere else. this is sad because so many people rely on techcrunch for good coverage. yeah it is a supposed to be a bloggin site but it is more than that now.
+1
“Everyone at D was blown away”
That’s going a liiiiiiiiiiitle too far. Applause is just respect.
However, a standing ovation by 4000 people capped by a developer holding his laptop over his head like he just won the WBC junior welter-weight championship of the world… now that’s blown away.
“Everyone at D…”. Fair enough. not everyone may have been blown away.
and this year went to D instead.
But.
you also need to keep in mind that D7 was a Very very different audience and it was NOT a MS event; the folks who were at Google I/O are volunteering and paying to be at Google conference (and just received a free phone) and are already favorable to Google (like Arrington). I was one of them last year
So you admit your mistake then?
This type of competition is good for both companies…
)
My guess is Google sponsored MS to come up with a ‘new’ search engine, to keep their own staff motivated to keep on innovating…
And perhaps the other way around on different subjects?
Not with a bing, but a whimper. http://jacampbe...ut-whimper.html
Microsoft never said it was really going to be a bing day. I think they are going very slow and in a planned way. Thats why they didnt even make it live.
And I am pretty sure they had thought about how the Google IO is on same day and how google likes to steal thunder.
I have a four letter word that goes with Bing…. YAWN
at least on twitter, wave is winning the PR war
http://twist.fl...ng&span=168
Comparing Microsoft & Google we see the same levels http://twist.fl...le&span=168
What you’re being run out of town, wave a baton and make it look like a parade. What I saw was Google finally realizing they better get good at something besides search.
GoogleTwitterApple Lovin Mo Fuckers at Techcrunch strike again with bias that can only be explained as a direct nod to steer their stock portfolio in a positive direction or possibly just unimaginative inept ignorance. +1 vote for the latter.
Ahahahhaa sucka slapped.
Hey Michael,
I respectfully disagree with your post, and I even think it sounds a little like “whshful thinking”.
Without trying to judge the merits of Bing OR Wave, consider the following:
***********Google News: 1,470 stories about Bing, 475 stories about Wave***************
I think Wave did steal some of the spotlight… in the tech world (brought to you by Techmeme and TC). But in the real world… I don’t think it worked so well.
You’re right though, Google planned it carefuly.
Even if all the attention has been going to Bing (because most old media is chomping at the bit for some of that $80 million stimulus, err, MSoft marketing budget) the revolutionary search announcement is Wave and the waves of search-compatible structured data that will flow from it. Remember when everyone was all a-Twitter about search as a Twitter and Facebook revenue model? Google wave just rocked their beach – and it’s been in development for 2 1/2 years.
Google Wave is the next gen disruptor. It represents a next level convergence of web apps (an infrastructure microsoft is just beginning to build out, much less seamlessly connect) crucial to the prosumer experience. In futurist terms it represents a meta-system transition (they happen in nature and in the technium) of web apps.
http://en.wikip...stem_transition
Dear Social Node,
Even if “old media” (like the NYT, WSJ, and 1400 more) are “chomping at the bit for some of that $80 million!”, thats beyond the point.
Mike’s post is about how Google stole the spotlight from Microsoft. I don’t judge Google for trying, ok? that’s not the point either. I’m just saying they tried, but didn’t succeed.
Also, you’re calling Googlw News “old media”.
“Google Wave is the next gen disruptor.”
I disagree. Live Mesh is the next gen disruptor.
Why be respectful? Mike is respectful of no one. You make a great point – even on google news there are twice as many “microsoft bing” vs “google wave” stories.
The funny thing is that Wave requires a new protocol rather than just relying on existing ones. (Relying on what they already know is actually what developers love.) If MS came out with the same thing you would be shitting all over it claiming they “still don’t get it!” because they want people to learn a new platform. Too funny.
Good point about the new Wave protocol, but that doesn’t counter the fact that all of these stable, functional google apps are about to work together. The existing core app infrastructure (with all the brains already attached – the hardest part) is the key (you know, the stuff Google built as everyone complained they had just one revenue model), not the dev code (HTML 5 or whatev) used to stitch them together.
I was just as psyched when Microsoft converted it’s Live/Hotmail community to a social media platform last Nov -
http://memebox....centric-future-
- but that too has now been overshadowed by the big scary WAAAVVVEEEEE.
It is important to note that the Wave protocol is *not* a new protocol – it is a set of extensions to the IETF-standardized XMPP protocol (what started out as the Jabber technology).
XMPP has been implemented by hundreds of companies to do all sorts of things, including systems management and even ’smart grid’ technologies. In fact, XMPP is used by Google Talk and they’ve been very good at submitting their ‘voice/call setup extensions to XMPP’ (known as ‘Jingle’) back to the XMPP standardization body.
Jabber Inc, the company that was formed around the Jabber technologies, was just bought by Cisco a number of months back and they’re making XMPP the heart of a bunch of their stuff.
- Bill
Danny,
OK I’ll come clean… I used the word “respectfully” ’cause I thought Michael would like it and I would get a better chance of him replying to my comment
But, he didn’t so I will get a little annoying and ask him directly:
Michael: If Google succeded stealing the spotlight from Bing, how do you explain Google News indexing 1,470 stories about Bing and only 475 stories about Google Wave?
I really look forward to your answer.
@ Luis – The answer is PR $$ and actual launch. Microsoft has flooded old media with Bing marketing dollars causing a popular ruckus and actually launched a product. Google simply opened up outside development for a forthcoming revolutionary app. Will google’s Wave deliver? Probably. If it does, it’s far more important. It’s a massive future maybe versus a so-so bird in the hand.
@ Bill – Thanks for the clarification. Useful info.
Social Node,
Thanks for the answer. But my point is… I think a big chunk of the tech world ***wants*** Bing to fail, to the point of judging stuff based on nothing. Why? because they are Google fans. Or Apple fans.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
I am excited by Wave, and I did sign up for it. I am also excited by the prospect of a new search engine which will get me better results, because lately searching on Google makes me feel as if something is missing.
Search has lost its excitement.
My work requires that I perform about 100 searches a day for detailed information on a huge array of topics. Ever since Google went live years ago, it has been a Godsend.
Search is not about “excitement” or being “interesting”, search is about finding exactly what you are looking for instantly, and Google has that problem aced. Every second that I waste searching for information costs me money. With Google I can nail it 99 percent of the time on the first shot. I seriously doubt anyone is going to beat that.
I also need to search many times a day as part of how I make my living. And I am not saying Google doesn’t do its job.
All I am saying is that sometimes you just don’t get the result you are looking for. There is no”Aha” left in searching on Google.