Bing Watch . . . Just Bing It!

D’oh-cision engine to sponsor The Simpsons

As part of multi-million pound sterling (GBP) ad campaign in Europe, especially to target UK searchers that already started on Wed (March 10), Bing begins a new TV campaign to sponsor The Simpsons show.

According to UK local business news, marketingweek.co.uk, "Bing and decide" commercial will appear during sponsorship credits before and after each episode for duration of three months.  Bing TV ads will also appear during commercial breaks. 

The Simpsons is the longest run animated TV show and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

Note: The word and sound of "D'oh" is a trademark of 20th Century Fox.

Pre-loaded Bing on Motorola devices in China

Bing adds a new friend in mobile devices company with a global alliance with Motorola.  Motorola was famous for its Razr phones during the mid-2000s.  Bing’s partnership with Motorola will allow the decision engine to be pre-installed on any Motorola devices, but now only for China market.  Bing will provide search function and maps function on Motorola devices starting in Q1 2010.  In the first stage of the partnership, pre-loaded Bing is only available on Motorola devices powered by Google Android OS.

The timing of Bing to collaborate with Motorola is very important for the decision engine while Google is slowly pulling out of China search market.  Search market in the most populous internet users in the planet is currently dominated by baidu.com.  On the other hand, Motorola will enter a very competitive mobile market where China also has many local mobile device makers. 

Bing and decide in UK

Bing ad is finally on air for UK TV watchers on Wednesday (March 10).  The TV commercial was developed by ad agency JWT. 

The first of many ads for the decision engine targeting UK users suggests that Bing can help to decrease information overload.  Bing will help users to decide quickly.

Click here to watch the first Bing commercial in UK.

Bing-it-on . . . capturing 11.5% search market share in America in February 2010

 
Bing is on fire again in February 2010.  Bing captured 11.5% of search market share in America, compared to January which was at 11.3% (an increase of 0.2%), as per data from comScore obtained from JP Morgan's Imran Khan, reported by businessinsider.com and barrons.com.

Google’s search market share increased slightly to 65.5% in February, compared to 65.4% in January (an increase of 0.1%).

 
Since Bing launch over nine months ago, Bing has gained a total of 3.5% of search market share.  While for a same period, Google only increased 0.5%.  Bing outperformed Google with a ratio of 7:1.

Bing homepage photo contest for kids in America, starts on March 29 and will end on April 11

Bing is building search market share momentum with attracting younger users including school kids to continue use the decision engine and to decide materials for their homework and other needs.  Also, to ease budget crisis in many schools in America, Bing is trying to help some of those schools by offering a homepage photo contest which is now only available to America’s schools. The contest will start on March 29 and will due on April 11.  The winning photo will be show on Bing homepage on Earth Day (April 22).

Like Google’s Doodle contest which also targeting school kids, Bing offers prizes for a total of over $70,000.  Photo contest for kids are divided into four age groups (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17, and 18 plus), as reported by Bing team blog.

Aside offering top-prizes, Bing will hand out $100,000 per day for duration of 7 days, from April 13 to April 19.  The $100 grand will be given to the first 20,000 people who vote during the voting period where each voter will receive $5.00 GivingCard for DonorsChoose.org and the fund will be delivered to the kids’ schools.

Click here to find out more about the Bing homepage photo contest for kids.

Bing begins with a series of TV ads in Great Britain with a popular tagline "Bing and decide"

After a very successful TV ads run in America since launch, it’s about time to move into a new territory with a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign in Great Britain.  However, the move of Bing into Google’s Great Britain territory would be still far away, as per the latest traffic data, Bing controls only about 3% of search market share in Britain, while Google remains at above 90% of search market share in Britain. 

According to guardian.co.uk, there are three TV ads produced by the international media agency JWT.  The three TV ads will run about three months.  The first TV ad starts on this Wednesday (March 10) and uses a popular Bing’s tagline "Bing and decide."

Bing’s winning strategy through modern farmers

Peasant farmers only had known Bing thru cherry varieties, including sweet, sours, color, and size.  Modern farmers start to know Bing thru virtual crops, as the decision engine began a pilot project with Zynga, also known as the provider of Farmville online gaming. 

While playing Farmville games, Bing offered “free farm cash” to attract Farmville fans.  The free farm cash is some kind of virtual currency where fans can buy properties, build lands, and retain a farm.

According to Bing team blog, Farmville has about 31 million active players on a daily basis.  The winning strategy for Bing is that within the first 24-hour of the pilot project with Farmville, Bing has attracted over 400,000 modern farmers to join Bing Facebook fans club.

(Picture: Bing community)

Decision Engine + Real-time Engine, why are you so scared to say “I Love You Man”

In yesterday’s interview with Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan at SMX, Bing’s boss Mr. Ballmer told the conference audiences with high optimistic about his decision engine to capture larger search market share.  And, also Mr. Ballmer believes that one day Bing will be the number one search engine in the planet. 

When Sullivan asked whether Mr. Ballmer’s company should buy Twitter, he replied “Not clear to me.”  This means that Mr. Ballmer didn’t deny the possibility to catch his match in real-time engine.

So, now, with plenty of cash on hand, it’s about time for the decision engineer to say “I Love You” to the real-time engineer.  A large number of analysts and bloggers (incl. the Microsoft insider reporter) have suggested that Bing parent should consider buying the real-time engine Twitter at any cost. 

While the two had jointly announced the partnership during Web 2.0 Summit last year in San Francisco, however, Bing is still sharing the bed with its rival Google. #SMX

Bing + SMX West (March 2-4) at Santa Clara Convention Center, California

 
Bing will bring its troops in full force to SMX West at Santa Clara Convention Center, California, starting today Tuesday (March 2) to Thursday (March 4). 

Bing’s boss, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, will be on stage as a Keynote Conversation with Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and co-chair of SMX.  According to Bing team blog, Mr. Ballmer will discuss “Microsoft’s commitment to search and how Bing is working to evolve the search experience.”  Also, Bing's 10-year partnership with Yahoo will be one of the topic of discussion.

Here is a list of "do not miss" events:

March 2 (Tuesday)

• 9:00AM to 9:45AM -- Keynote Conversation with Steve Ballmer
• 1:15AM to 2:30PM -- Bing: What’s Happening? with Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Bing; Q&A - Eric Gilmore, Group Product Manager, Bing
• 9:00PM to Dawn -- SMX After Dark in the Santa Clara Hyatt pool side

March 3 (Wednesday)

• 10:45AM to Noon -- Bring In The Bling Via Bing Cashback with Meagan Rochelle, Search Solutions Specialist

Full coverage of SMX West and keynote is available thru searchengineland.com

 
(photo of Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Sullivan: searchengineland.com)

Bing Autosuggest + Query History

Bing Autosuggest implements additional support for query history.  To reduce time to re-type the previously query, the new feature allows users to look into the pull-down menu by typing at least the first two characters of the query word or subject (for example, type "ol" will show "olympic").  According to Bing team blog, 44% users usually maintain their queries history for over one week, so the new feature will help people to find decision faster.  For privacy purpose, the new feature also allows users to turn ‘on’ or to turn ‘off’ the query history.  The Autosuggest feature also distinguishes the history query in purple color.

 

Bing redesigned its favicon, a lowercase “b” in orange color background

A new orange color favicon (favorite icon) was spotted early Friday morning.  The previous favicon was a combination of blue and orange with an orange eye (dot) in the center of a lowercase “b” while the new Bing favicon is a plain orange square and the lowercase “b” is printed in white color.

The new redesigned favicon bears some resemblance of Bing toolbox logo and Bing search bar logo (see a sample logo on the right side). 

For Bing new users, the redesigned Bing favicon may also have some identical form as Google’s Blogger site.

Bing Fast and Furious

During a Q&A session at the Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco, CEO of IAC (ask.com) Barry Diller praised the fast grow of Bing decision engine since its launch.  According to an interview conducted by Sharon Chan, a Seattle Times technology reporter, Diller believed Bing team has done superb jobs and Bing has gone fast capturing search market share. 

In her note, Chan quoted Diller said “I think they are going to be very competitive. They haven't been frivolous up until now, but now they have so much potency of purpose."  Diller also thinks that the partnership with Yahoo will help Bing to gain larger search market share.

Mr. Diller’s ask.com (question-search engine) captures about 3% search market share in America today.  In order to gain search market share, many tech analysts think ask.com could become Bing’s partner soon.

Not so big Bing China

While Bing.com is growing very fast in America since its launch about 9 months ago, Bing China captured a very tiny fraction of search market share in the mainland China during 2009.  According to a note written by IDG News Service and published by pcworld.com, as per data provided by a research company based in China, iResearch, Bing captured only 0.4% of searches in China in 2009. 

Using the same dataset, Google started to lose its hold in China to rival Baidu.com where the giant search engine captured about 18.9%, compared to year 2008, Google dropped about 1.8%. 

And now…America’s Department of Justice has approved Bing + Yahoo deal

A joint press release by Yahoo and Bing announced that America’s Department of Justice has approved the 10 year global deal, as the press release wrote “…have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions…”  In the same day, an early morning statement from EU headquarter in Brussels also has approved the deal. 

As part of the deal, about 400 Yahoo engineers have already been prepared to moving into Bing’s campus as reported in early December 2009.  The implementation of the deal will begin as soon as today.  According to the press release, the implementation of the deal “is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally.”

European Union approved Bing + Yahoo deal

The 27-nation in European Union has approved the ten year Bing and Yahoo global deal as the European Commission approaching the deadline on February 19.  A statement to approve the deal was published today from the EU headquarter in Brussels, as reported by businessweek.com.  The deal will help Bing to increase its search market share and ready to compete with giant Google.

Bing will gain search market share with Windows Phone 7

Majority tech analysts and bloggers (incl. gizmodo.com, techcrunch.com, etc.) gave high marks to the new Windows Phone 7 Series OS, as it was launch during Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. 

Windows Phone 7 Series OS is fully integrated with Bing decision engine.  As Bing will be the default decision engine on the new Windows Phone 7, mobile users will have little choices to change to another search engines (for examples, Google, Yahoo, or Ask).  While the ratio of Bing search market share versus Google’s share is still at 1:6, however, Bing continues to gain search market share in America. 

As more users will access Internet thru mobile devices, a strong start for Windows Phone 7 will definitely help Bing to capture search market share in a long run.  In the meantime, the two year old Google’s Android OS continues to gain mobile market share around the world, as more devices will run on Android OS.  Of course, Android OS run only Google’s search engine.  Another close competitor in mobile market share is Apple’s iPhone, but the recent talks between Bing’s parent and Apple’s executives may have signaled a new beginning for Bing as the default search engine in iPhone hardwares and we will soon seeing the end of Google in iPhone.

(Photo: Microsoft)

Happy Chinese New Year and Bing’s boss is a Tiger

Bing China homepage shows a picture of a lion dance to celebrate the Chinese New Year, while America’s homepage shows an activity during the Winter Olympic games.  Feb 14 (Sunday) marks the beginning of a new lunar calendar year for over 2 billion Chinese people around the world.  Majority Chinese people live in the mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, America, and Canada. 

Ancient astronomers dedicated year 2010 as the year of tiger.  Chinese people believe tiger brings a strong and powerful leadership to business world.  Tiger is one of the most successful and the luckiest of the twelve animal zodiacs.  Famous Chinese fortune tellers predict a prosperous year for people who were born in the year of Tiger (1962, 1974, 1986, 1998), Horse (1966, 1978, 1990, 2002), and Dog (1970, 1982, 1994, 2006).

As per Wikipedia, Qi Lu, the Decision Engine Master and the highest ranking executive of Bing, was born in 1962.  He is a tiger.  According to the latest comScore data, Bing has captured about 11.3% of the search of market share in January 2010.  While the year of tiger just started today (Feb 14), the Decision Engine Master will definitely help Bing to conquer a larger portion of search market share during 2010 and beyond. 

(Qi Lu photo: Wikipedia)

Bing Maps Spatial Search

Using several combined technology from Microsoft software, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Bing Maps architect, demoed mashup of a new version of Bing Maps at TED conference in Long Beach California. 

The new version of Bing Maps is all about the idea of Spatial Search.  As the team blog wrote “The idea behind Spatial Search came from looking at human psychology and trying to understand how we as humans make decisions. We use all our senses: sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste.”

 
Click here to view Bing Maps Spatial Search video.

Bing + BlackBerry, a romantic Valentine’s Day date idea

Several tech companies and analysts are predicting a mobile apocalypse by year 2014, as majority of users will access Internet thru mobile web, including using smartphones.  It’s so embarrassed at the moment that Bing’s parent (Microsoft) has failed to capture the mobile OS market share as its boss (Mr. Ballmer) is heading to Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona early next week (Feb 15 to 18).  Apple iPhone and Google Android continue to innovate and continue to gain mobile OS market share during the past two years.

With a lot of cash on hand (about $40 billion), many tech bloggers, such as Kara Swisher, has suggested Bing’s parent just need to find a romantic Valentine’s Day date.  The best fit so far is with the maker of BlackBerry smartphones (Research in Motion).  A prenuptial cost would be very high for BlackBerry, as the company is currently valued at about $38 billion, plus a ton of "love" on Blackberry website.  For signing ceremony, the couple could adopt a new family name as BingBerry.