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Search engines are notorious for their inability to update quickly, the idea of the search engine spiders being able to crawl the entire web for new pages at a moments notice was simply unfathomable. The power involved in searching the entire internet and keeping the search engines as close to real time as we know them is incredibly vast and that is nothing in comparison to what updating the internet in real time would take.
But, now Microsoft’s Bing has decided to latch on to what is by far the best opportunity to do this and get one over on its competitors. And that opportunity is the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, they’ve been providing updates about, well just about anything you could imagine for a few years now in the form of tweets and status updates and ok organising the entire web in this manner is a far more monumental task which is yet to be achieved, but what Bing is beginning is a step towards this by amalgamating its services with the social networks to add their updates to its search.
The fear of course is that the search engine will be flooded with more useless information and dribble which is about as useful as the average user as a chocolate tea pot (this is a British colloquialism if you’re American and don’t quite get it). So the idea was to separate the two for now into Twitter Bing and the original Bing. This may be a permanent set up or the conflation of the two services could be coming soon if Microsoft can get this right.
This clearly is something that had to come soon, the fact is that search has to keep up with the booming markets online and the social network is the internets fastest growing niche. And this search engine will let you search twitter feeds as if they were websites, a weird concept but one that for many has been a long time coming. Google however are in talks with Twitter and Facebook to produce the same service so while Microsoft haven’t quite had enough time to corner this late branch of search, but they have got the edge. So will it catch on? Or will the search engine bosses look like a bunch of twits? Only time will tell, but if you fancy giving this service a try you can test Bing’s American beta already.
Share With Microsoft desperately trying to move forward in its ever loosing battle to provide the number one search engine it has signed non exclusive deals with both Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to integrate there live feed update services to Bing. Is this a sign of desperation on Microsoft’s part? Trying to cash in on the traffic of social networking sites, or a stroke of genius? Only time will tell. But I doubt that this latest investment in the flailing, floundering search engine Bing will have the guys at Google quivering for too long, not only is the deal not exclusive there is no sign as of yet that it will be lucrative.
So why have Microsoft done this?
Well, to put it simply, Microsoft are failing to keep up with Google and even the lesser used Yahoo, while they may have had the dominance in the internet browser market which more than gently nudges you towards using Bing I might add they haven’t actually managed to convert this into any sort of useful marketing leap.
The other main reason is that they have to get involved in this. Google are in talks with Facebook and Twitter and of course Microsoft cannot afford to fall behind again especially now Google looks set to get another jump on them by indexing AJAX based sites. Google’s index is already staggeringly greater than Microsoft’s and more accurate, thus it works better for users so more people use it, simple really.
The corporate jugernaught that is Microsoft seeks to dominate all things in the computer world and is slipping on many fronts. With apple nipping at Microsoft’s heals and Google trouncing it in the online market they really need to pull something out of the bag and soon lord knows they have the money. So the real question is what the hell is it exactly that Microsoft are playing at? We all saw what happened to Netscape when they took Microsoft on; they were crushed completely and utterly. Though this move will undoubtedly be a bonus to Bing users the real question is, is it a bonus to social network users and is it enough of a bonus to convince people to use Bing. Well I would suggest it is quite unlikely even if they do manage to get it all integrated before Google.
Although social networks do absorb a great detail of our lives has it got to the point where they can be the tipping point in corporate competitions? I doubt it. Let’s just hope that the arrival of windows 7 is well received or the giants may be seeing some dark days in the near future.
