You have to hand it to the tabloid headline writers at the New York Post: They know nothing if not how to turn the tiniest spark into a five-alarm conflagration.
"Fear grips Google," the Post blared on Saturday.
Why? Well, the introduction of Microsoft's much-ballyhooed search engine, Bing, has Google so gobsmacked as to shake company co-founder Sergey Brin from his slumber to lead an internal effort aimed at assessing and countering the threat, according to an anonymous Google "insider."
By Sunday -- and based on little more than the Post's say-so -- a CNET headline asks: "Does Microsoft's Bing have Google running scared?"
See? "Fear grips Google."
And this morning we have a merry band of copycats (mostly) numbering nearly 100.
Did you hear me? "FEAR GRIPS GOOGLE!"
But what did the Post's unnamed source actually say? Here's the heart of it:
"New search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey," said one insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The move by Brin is unusual, as it is rare these days for the Google founders to have such hands-on involvement in day-to-day operations at the company, the source added.
So a frontal assault on Google's primary business by the world's largest and most successful software company is "of particular interest to Sergey?"
Get out.
And he's not just interested but has rolled up his sleeves?
That's not even news, never mind "Fear grips Google."
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Bing
You know Bing actually works fairly well. I use it frequently in parallel with Google and as often as not it returns better results.
I think Google is watching Bing very closely but I doubt seriously if they are quaking in fear. It would not surprise me to see them come out with a surprise counterstrike in the near future.
Search engine wars! This could be better than the browser wars!
if they want to go
if they want to go counterstrike... they should go play "counter strike source" instead :3
Bing
Bing is so much better than Msoft's previous search engine and Google has been giving us fits. Keeps losing our page some how. Happy to see bing come along.
You should see IDG's headlines
While your point is certainly valid, are you aware that Networkworld/Computerworld/PCWorld etc ad nauseam do the same thing all the time, and reinforce the sensationalistic headlines by republishing them under IDG's various brands to make it sound like there are multiple sources for the "reports"? CNET/ZDNet and Wired etc all do the same across their properties.
And the bloggers who are supposed to be "keeping paid writers honest" primarily just copy and paste these same headlines.
You might also have pointed out that Google's executives said that Microsoft poops out its "latest" Google imitation about every year.
Bing->Bong
With the useless crap that Microsoft has been spitting out, I wouldn't use this service even they paid me!
Try it it is good, they are
Try it it is good, they are not the best software comapny in the world for nothing.
No, its really not. It's
No, its really not. It's search algorithm is far inferior to Google's. If Microsoft was smart it would not waste money on something that already existed and find something new to work on.
Then there would never have
Then there would never have been a Google, you idiot.
oh and care to seem the
oh and care to seem the Algorithm behind Bing ? You seem to know it .. perhaps the only person not in the Bing team. Bow to thy !
Bing / Google
I'm sorry, you have no idea what you are talking about.
The search engine business is only tangentially related to giving people good search results. This is the 'secret' that google discovered and MS has been trying to capitalise on.
The whole purpose of the search engine business is to drive targetted advertisements. You may not remember the days before every page had text-only 'adsense' ads, but there was a time like that, and inventing the 'adsense' idea was the single thing that made google into the behemoth they are today. The use the search algorithms to decide which ads to put on which pages.
They don't make any money from the public 'search' function that we all use. Use your loaf for god's sake.
A MS executive was even quoted a few days ago saying 'we needed a competitive search engine to power our plans for competing with google in the advertising space'. That's what it's all about.
Before Bing, their search was terrible and as such they couldn't deliver ads that wer as effective as google ads. Google always did a much better job of putting the right ads in front of the right eyeballs.
Now, with bing, they are on a par. To a user like me, the search results are sometimes better, sometimes worse, but in the huge volume of the advertising business, it's pretty much as good as google now. This means that finally google will have some competition - there's a huge number of adsense customers who would *love* to move away from the goog, because the customer service in lots of cases is terrible. if you've never been an adsense customer, you wouldn't know, and if you have been one, you will be nodding your head because they are notorious for not giving a crap about thier customers.
So, even if the Bing results aren't better, it's great for everyone to have a serious competitor to adsense, and we can finally move away from the adsense monopoly. Google will actually have to start thinking about its projects and costs for a change.
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