June 15, 2009 by Jenny Sanderson
Recent press reports – notably the New York Post’s ‘Fear Grips Google’ story – have suggested that the powers that be at castle Google are a little worried about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. But can it really be true? Are the most powerful company the internet has ever seen really worried?For Google to be at all perturbed by Bing, the search engine would have to be something special indeed. Let’s remember, Microsoft’s brand has been taking a hammering for the last several years and the company are currently hovering around ten percent of Google’s share of the search market. To overcome that kind of disparity Bing is not only going to have to be good, but better than Google, better enough to convince people to trash years and years of brand loyalty and switch.
Sounds unlikely doesn’t it – this is why Sergey Brin may just have handed Microsoft the biggest PR win they’ve had in many years, by appearing so worried about the new offering from the company. According to the Post and others, Brin is leading a special group of technicians to find out how the Bing algorithm differs from Google’s and figure out a way to undermine it.
It’s apparently quite rare for the Google founders to get so involved in day to day operations, leading many to believe that Bing either poses some threat or offers some kind of significant advantage over Google. The Post has an unnamed source stating, “New search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey.”
Perhaps what has Brin worried is nothing to do with the search engine itself, rather the $80 – $100 million dollars that Microsoft is planning to spend on advertising Bing in the coming months. Google’s budget is dwarfed in comparison at a relatively anaemic $25 million for the whole company. The Google founder could simply be looking for a way to figure out what claims their rivals are going to make and prepare a response.
The arrival of Bing has already given Microsoft a bump in numbers from 9.1 to 11.1 on the week of launch though this was to be expected. As the politicians like to say, even a dead cat bounces. The trick will be keeping these new novelty-inspired users.
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