At the end of last month, Microsoft opened up a new shop in the online search market. Bing went live at the end of May and has made some pretty good first impressions over the past few weeks. They’ve already picked up about 17% market share which equates to about $17 billion estimated value.
Personally, I think this is the only thing I would actually say Microsoft has done really well in the past 5 years (but I’m not a gamer, so Xbox doesn’t factor into my thinking). I like the fresh layout concept using full coverage of nice photography. I like that they have broken from typical Microsoft-ish complication of the interface and made it very clean.
One thing that is very impressive is the video search results with the live preview on mouse-over. It’s pretty quick to respond and includes audio. Very convenient and useful. There will no doubt be lots of legal battles to ensue over fair use issues, but that’s just the cost of doing business for giants like Google or Microsoft.
Probably the best thing of all is the competition for Google. As much as I love them (ala, my last post) I think it’s dangerous for one company to have such an influence on the economics of online business. Competition will keep innovation coming and keep players from becoming complacent (which has been a slippery slope for Microsoft in the past). Much to be commended here.
-J
