Published 2011: “Let’s Bing It” - When will that become a household phrase?

Originally posted on WordPress on August 16, 2011

Searching for the hero

With the rise of the online search space, there has been one major player. One brand that has superseded marketing and competition, and elevated itself into that velvet-roped area of brand nirvana. Google is, like Visa, synonymous with what it does as a company. Everyone aims for that prestige, but only a few reach it. And yet we forget that the very business Google practically own now actually began a few years before Sergei Brin and Larry Page got anywhere near their first algorithmic lightbulb-moment. In 1994, sites like Excite and Lycos were already in existence, and Yahoo had pioneered what was to be seen as the first directory and index of websites. A big moment for the Internet, you sense. So fast forward two years and those mathematical wizards Brin and Page produced what was genuinely and fundamentally better than the rest of the search products out there. There were no gimmicks with Google Search (and there were none to hide behind in this brand new industry) – the algorithm brought you your results faster, and gave you what you were looking for.

It did what it said on the tin. And well.

A Q&A session with your computer

Search in itself has evolved as the web has; once upon a time there were a handful of sites which were filled with textual information which you would be able to look for by matching a keyword against the content. Very much a “Ctrl-F” find kind of service. All the user wanted to do, and could do, was find what was already there. Search has now become so adept at giving people the answer to a question they have, giving the user information that they have requested, that this is now a saturated market. We don’t need to wonder what a search engine gives us from a search query any more – it’s plain as day. A search result.

So what comes next?

Within the last 15 years, search has evolved from the spotty puberty-ridden teenager who gave you a one word answer to everything into a descriptive and intelligent adult. As web services and technology evolve exponentially, what was once a functional relationship between the user and the information has now become a transaction – and so what we are seeing with increasing pace, is Search expanding its raison d’être into two new areas:

1. Allowing the user to make a decision based on the information

2. Exploration/education.

We as humans want logical progression – this is one of the fundamental selling points of a human, if you were to sell someone a human. Humans evolve, and they require their environment to evolve. As our environment is now largely technology, we need that technology to get to the next step and allow us to accomplish more. This theory may begin to sound a little bit ‘Terminator’, however it is absolutely undeniable that this is the direction and purpose of all technology – to enable. This is indeed then the point of Search – if you ask something, you expect a better answer than you already have.

So what?

Having covered what’s happened so far, and what looks to be happening (in a nutshell of course, I could write a thesis on the last few paragraphs!), let us get to the point. If we take a look at the competitive landscape, one would assume that anyone coming up against the beast that is Google and looking to overtake them is doomed. A pretty solid hypothesis to be fair; they have 86% global market share, and that’s after you realise that China has banned Google entirely. Some feat! So when Microsoft decided to take their sellotaped-together product known as Live Search (formerly MSN Search, formerly formerly Windows Live Search – you get my point) and relaunch it, there was much fuss about the “new Google killer”, most dubbing it a waste of time and money in a marketplace dominated by Google. Would renaming it help again? Would it ever stand a chance of competing with the Mighty G? Would people ever really say “let’s Bing it” in normal conversation?

The question is, do they really need to?

Bing is not simply a search engine. It is a lever. The digital space has grown so vast since the turn of the century that it is no longer a product. It is no longer even an industry with connected sub-industries. It is an ecosystem – everything is beginning to rely on everything else to work, from search to social, and from video to mobile – they’re all oozing into each other’s territory. We will reach a point in 5 to 10 years whereby standalone digital products will be of little to no use. There will be no point in using one product to search, another to call people and another to watch videos – not when you can recycle the data you are inputting and in doing so enrich it and open up a huge amount of combined possibilities.

Imagine searching for an object and looking at it with a friend online in real time.

Imagine that your computer knows what you’re looking for in your wardrobe by what you’ve searched for and which celebrities you watch videos of online.

Like cogs in a big machine

If we move away from that dreamland for one moment and examine the industrial aspect of all of this, it’s not only going to happen – it’s begun. Just as Microsoft purchased Hotmail, Google purchased YouTube and most recently Microsoft bought Skype and have formed an alliance with Yahoo, we have all of these acquisitions and partnerships occurring, where global companies are identifying strengths from others and utilising them.

And so we can see these large digital ecosystems forming quite quickly around us. We have absolutely no hesitance in saying that Facebook is doing it by introducing a chat and mail function, nor Google with Buzz, Maps, YouTube and various other sections to their arsenal. In fact, Google are expanding almost completely inversely to Microsoft, in that they are building their empire around their search product, and releasing operating systems and office softwares to sit around it in a much more search integrated space. And that’s because you need to have a core product and centre your business around it – that principle has been clear since we became hunter-gatherers.

But the way the digital industry is shaping up, it will be increasingly necessary to have a foothold in every single part of the ecosystem around your core product. And more so with digital than was required in the early stages of any other industry, because the very core of digital is the concept connectivity – if the user can connect the dots easily, companies are expected to do that by default. And so we have it – Bing doesn’t need to overtake Google – its purpose isn’t even to opaquely compete with Google (though obviously it has to compete for the same market share) – the point of the product is much more holistic than that. Search is the user’s input into that entire digital ecosystem, and as such will play an absolutely crucial role in leveraging every other product within it. If we are to have a successful experience using MSN, Skype or Kinect, we will invariably need to input some of ourselves into that experience, whether it be a question, an opinion or a thought.

All of the tools to mine that sort of user input, understand it and translate it into a phenomenal user experience lie with Bing.

So “bing it” probably won’t ever become a household phrase, but to be honest, it doesn’t need to.

For my next two pieces on this topic, I will delve further into the topic to discuss merger and acquisition strategy in the digital space, and take a look into what has already been discussed with this prologue: the evolution of the search product into a social context.

Posted in Technology FuturesTagged bing, digital, digital strategy, google, online advertising, product, search, search engines, user experience, yahooLeave a comment