Hannush Web Blog

Okay, if at first you don’t succeed…rebrand!  At least that seems to be Microsoft’s plan on how to conquer the search engine market.  Consistently number 3 behind Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft has decided to dump its short lived “Live” branding for the new “Bing.com”

What is so exciting about the new Bing.com you ask?

Well, for  you…probably not a whole lot.  Yes, it does use a slightly different indexing method and algorithm, but in reality, regular searches don’t seem to deliver anything very different than its “Live” predecessor.  For shopping, it does seem to be branching into reviews and pricing searches (like mysimon.com is).  For maps it actually has my business location (which Google hasn’t gotten to yet).  The Bird’s Eye shots are really clean and crisp…  But again, searches don’t seem very advanced and not any more advanced than Google from my initial views.  Time will tell.

For Microsoft, they are going to go on a brand blitz, with millions of dollars going into pushing Bing.com as the hot new competition to Google.com.

You see, Microsoft’s Live search was no unnoteworthy that less than 1% of people actually typed in Live.com to do searches on the site…the other 99% came from MSN.com.  Google has no master website feeding it searches…it uses a combination of toolbar searches and direct access searches, which keeps Google’s name in the forefront.  So it seems Microsoft thinks its way to beat Google is to get a new brand developed again and just heavily promote it.

But this strategy hasn’t done Vista any favors.  Even though it really is a decent and stable operating system, it still has a bad name…no matter how much Microsoft promotes it.  They have started promoting “Windows” now more than “Vista” because the next operating system will be called “Windows 7.”  And maybe that is the key for Microsoft…stop coming up with cute names and different brands…and just call their search Windows Search or Microsoft Search…and then just make a product that doesn’t change every 6 months.