Wha-at?
Okay, so Bing launched this morning from Microsoft. Their latest effort at a search engine. I’m initially confused because I thought they already had live.com. And msn.com. So why do we need a bing? And what’s with the name? It makes me want to say “bling,” some I’m looking for a bunch of guys wearing gold all over the place. Almost found them when I clicked on “tour bing.” Okay, so maybe those guys just want to blowdart me or something. Do I really want to travel there?
Verb Tense Problems.
Sing Sang Sung, Bring Brang Brung, Bing Bang Bung? –I don’t think so.
Anyhow, apart from the name being kind of weird … and I see their trying to use it as a verb, “When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing and Decide” … but that doesn’t work in the past tense as easily as something else I might have “googled.” What happened? “I binged it.” Yeah, that sounds professional.
There’s no place like home
And what’s with there being no “home” button once I click on “bing preview” — I have to hit the “back button.” Sure, most people do, but it’s also a best practice to have something there so they don’t have to. Fine, the “preview” site is a separate domain, but don’t you want to link back to the thing you’re talking about???
Layout Stolen From Live.com
As far as the layout — okay, that’s pretty nice. A big pretty picture with clickable points in it. Hmm…didn’t I already mention live.com? Well, I guess if it works on one of the search engines you own, I suppose it can work in others, too.
Okay, so when I just punched in live.com, I see why bing does the live thing with the images. Try punching in live.com and it redirects you to bing.com. So, I guess live has died and bing’s the thing.
Back on tour
And while we’re there on the discover bing tour, I must say that I’m kind of freaked out by the flickering eyeballs as I wave my mouse pointer around the various clickable links. And really, if you have an image that is used to denote a hover state, it should be clickable. Or not an eyeball. That’s just kind of gross. “Ah! I have an airplane in my eye — somebody pull it out!”
What works
What do I like? Well, I like the suggested search feature, it seems a lot smoother than Google’s. And I like the results. A little less boring than Google’s, but not quite as “different” as Cuil’s.
And it cracked me up to see a customer service phone number when I punched in “facebook” and later “amazon.” Bet amazon’s going to start getting some more calls to their 800 number. Funny that the only reason the number is even findable on their website is because of (if I remember correctly) a court order a few years back requiring it.
And the speed. Suggested results come up faster than most as you’re typing. And the SERPS page seems to come up much faster than others. Maybe because I’m not personally competing with a lot of other searchers today? Guess we’ll see how it stacks up over time.
Where’s that Bing guy?
And come on — I expected some guy to be on the homepage crooning something about a “white Christmas!”
Alright, so that’s some of my initial impressions. I’ll post some more later.