Bing Watch . . . Just Bing It!

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.

Bing + Victoria's Secret Bombshells

Two Victoria's Secret supermodels, Candice Swanepoel and Erin Heatherton, promote Bing Valentine's Day tips Q&A in New York City this week.   This 8:36 minutes length video is currently hosted by MSN Videos (spotted a new MSN Video logo).  The video is also available thru Bing Videos search homepage.  

One of the supermodels (Candice) chats with fans in European accent.   The models sit in a loveseat while looking into a laptop to answer fans questions which previously were submitted to Victoria's Secret Facebook page. The laptop has a black color Bing logo on the front.  While chatting throughout the video, the two models also mentioned “Bing dotcom” several times. 

 
Click here to check out the supermodels video

Bing jumps to 11.3% of search market share in January 2010

 
Bing continues to outperforming its rival Google during the month of January.   Based on the latest data from JP Morgan's Imran Khan, quoted comScore data, and reported at businessinsider.com, Bing gains additional 0.6% of search market share to hit at 11.3% in America. 

Google’s search market share dropped to 65.4% in January, compared to 65.7% in December (a drop of 0.3%).

Since the launch of Bing in late May, Bing has gained a total of 3.3% of search market share in America, while for the same period, Google only increased 0.4%.  The ratio of Bing's gain versus Google's is 8:1.

 

Small but mighty Bing

While Bing’s December search market share was at around 11% compared to Google’s market share at 66%, or ratio for Bing to Google was at 1:6.  However, a new report published by comScore show the number of searches on the “small but mighty” Bing decision engine performing much better than Google from 2008 to 2009.  Bing searches grew 49% within the past one year, compared to giant Google searches increased only 21%.

Meanwhile, according to the same report, searches per user for Bing decision engine jumped 30%, compared to Google’s searches per user increased only 10%.

The number of unique searchers for Bing increased 15%, compared to Google’s unique searchers increased only 9%.

In term of America’s core search trend, comScore reported that Bing has the most stable growth since its launch in late May, while Google, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL experienced flat growth during the past one year.

To download a full report whitepaper (pdf format), please click here (it requires your company, phone, and email info)

(charts: comScore)

Bing + Winter Olympics

Bing’s parent has joined NBC to telecast and stream "exclusive videos" of the 2010 Winter Games to MSN homepage.  The deal will also allow Bing Videos to index all games on the decision engine (not on Google huh!).  As per the press release noted, "...And Bing is the only search engine that can index the exclusive online Winter Games videos."  Bing also provides schedule of sporting events and Olympians details, including bio, videos, and photos.

Users around the world could enjoy the exclusive videos of the 2010 Winter Games as long their machine is installed with Bing’s parent tools, Silverlight, a competitor to Adobe Flash. 

Just one week before the games started, in order to spread out words of the powers of Microsoft tools and the increasingly popular of Silverlight to non-Windows users, a technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell announced the release of Moonlight 3.0, a Silverlight software for users who have their desktops running with the Linux OS. 

Bing gives Facebook a Big Birthday Kiss

Bing has deepened its relationship with Facebook with a lot of kisses this week, as the popular social networking celebrates its 6th birthday.  Also, according to Mark Zuckerberg blog, Facebook founder, Facebook has registered over 400 million users worldwide. 

As for the birthday's present, Bing team just announced that the decision engine will add more features into Facebook interface, as the team blog wrote “provide Facebook users with a more complete search experience by providing full access to great Bing features beyond a set of links, including richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions.”

Aside by adding a better search experience, Bing will also open up its International expansion thru Facebook’s 400 million users.  This will help to increase the decision engine market share worldwide.  According to the latest estimates, Bing controls only 3.1% of world search market share as of December 2009. 

As per the blog post written by Jon Tinter, Bing's General Manager, in order to increase revenue for both companies, Bing will continue to handle pay-per-click search advertisements to Facebook, while Facebook will take over the maintenance and selling of display advertisements on their site.

Qi Lu, the Decision Engine Master

Like many shaolin kung-fu movies during the 1970s, top kung-fu masters such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, have to go thru a lot of hard trainings in order to become the Master.   Bing has its own Master in decision engine, Qi Lu.  As reported by economist.com, Master Qi Lu “…live in a village where he grew up in poverty.”  Master Qi Lu earns his ways up as the top executive in Microsoft thru his hard work in school (with a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University) and as search engine master at Yahoo, plus extra juices in his brain. 

Since Bing launch in May last year, Master Qi Lu has guided the decision engine into a new era to compete with its top rival Google.  As previously reported, Bing has captured about 11% of market share in America during the month of December.  Moreover, economist.com wrote “Catching up with Google will take years, and a lot of stamina, but Mr Lu has plenty.”  Later Master Qi Lu added “Eating a lot of fruit and vegetables also keeps me fresh.”

(photo: economist.com)

Bing will make money online with fewer resources than Google

In the latest interview with reuters.com, Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of Microsoft Online Business said that Bing will make money online soon.  As BingWatch team has been followed Bing prior to the birth on May 28, 2009, based on several months of traffic data and search engine market indicators, we strongly believe Mehdi’s team will finally hit Bing jackpot. 

After the successful launch, Bing has captured close to 11% of search market share in America during the month of December 2009.  Bing will soon reach number two search engine in America, as Bing and Yahoo will enter into a 10-years global partnership which make Bing + Yahoo at around 30% of search market share in America. 

As reported by reuters.com quoted Mehdi “Ultimately we want to be a major player at scale, so we're going to have to grow against Google at some point."  Later Mehdi added “we're still outmanned and outgunned by Google, they still have way more engineers than we do."

Bing Travel: airfare will increase about 9% and still many affordable places to go for spring break

In order to save cost of travelling this incoming spring break which will start on February 28 to March 31, Bing Travel advised users to reserve travel dates and hotels that have dropped in rates.  According to Bing press release, overall this year’s cost of airfares will increase about 9% from year 2009.  Based on a ton of historical data, Bing Travel Fareologist believes that several top choice for spring travel have dropped in rates, including  Las Vegas, Hawaii, and Orlando.  In order to cut down airline ticket cost, Bing Travel also advices users to fly only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Bing Maps new satellite imagery release, mostly for cities in Australia

Bing team just announced a list of new satellite imagery release, including many cities in Australia.  In this new release, the luckiest Australia's cities are Brisbane, Gold Coast, and Murarrie-Raby Bay.  Additional maps for other countries include New Zealand, Switzerland, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, and Romania.  As per the Bing team blog, additional details regarding the latest maps updates are available thru Bing cloud powered by Azure.