Will Microsoft’s Bing be able to beat Google?

Microsoft claims that its new search engine Bing offers users a far more refined search experience than any rival search engine. It is quite capable of answering queries more quickly and more efficiently, the company asserts.

The service currently has a strong American tilt, with a UK version ‘soft-launching’ taking place as a Beta test version. A London-based team is working towards improving the localization of specific search results for the UK. A full launch should happen in around six months. Microsoft's UK Consumer Vice President, Ashley Highfield, is in charge of the UK project.

"There’s a huge opportunity existing in the search market," he quipped, "given that it is dominated by one player, and also that research shows a rather high level of dissatisfaction evident among a high level of the user base.” He claims that just around a quarter of people actually get what they are really looking for on the first search. The success of Bing will depend on how many of them decide to do away with the Google habit – something Microsoft is well aware of: its US launch is going to be accompanied by a big-bang $100m advertising campaign.

Google is the brand very much in their sights. The world's leading search engine had net income of $4.34bn in the last financial year, on revenue of $22.12bn. This was largely from paid ads associated with search keywords. The challenge that Microsoft faces is to making a demonstrably superior search engine that breaks users' Google habit.

"We’ve what we think are a series of ‘Google-beating’ features," Mr Highfield asserts. "The world has moved on, but search absolutely hasn’t. Google is essentially the same as it was a decade ago." The key features in Microsoft's new search engine include its ability to ‘guess’ what the respective user is looking for, and then give suggestions based on that guess.