Windows 10 has been proclaimed as Microsoft’s chance to stay alive in the ever-increasing competition of the tech world. The semi-failure of Windows 8 led many to believe that the giants of Google, Apple, and even Amazon were too far ahead of the race for Microsoft to stay relevant for much longer. Yet, critics and users alike have taken warmly to the new operating system. The consensus seems to be that it’s functional, streamlined, and unique enough to set Microsoft apart from the competition.
But like its contemporaries, Microsoft offers more than just one type of product, and it goes to great lengths to combine those products in an effort to sell more of everything. Just as iPhones have multiple Apple services by default, Microsoft pre-installs software and features like Bing Search in all their Windows 10 platforms. The question then becomes—will the presence of Bing on modern Microsoft devices lead more people to use it as their preferred search engine?
The Universal Search of Windows 10
First, I want to take a look at exactly how Bing appears in Windows 10. Ever present in the bottom corner of the screen, Bing exists as a search bar—but it’s not exclusively for fetching online results. In fact, you can type anything into the search bar, and Bing will probably find it for you, whether you’re looking for a document stored on your hard drive or a piece of information from Wikipedia. Further enhancing the search functionality of Windows 10 is Microsoft’s new personal digital assistant, Cortana. Driven by artificial intelligence and language recognition, Cortana can “listen” to audible requests for information and deliver ideal results from Cortana’s archive of information, the hard drive of the computer, or the Internet. So far, the consensus implies that this functionality is robust, advanced, and useful.
In this way, Bing has evolved past the conventional browser-based search algorithm. It exists as a universal search function, committed to organizing information no matter where it might be found. Apple and Google already offer similar solutions in the form of digital assistants, putting them slightly ahead in the race for ultimate user experience, but Bing and Microsoft are on their heels. There’s only one major challenge holding Bing back.
The Branding Challenge
Bing has a stigma attached to it. When it debuted, Google was the undisputed champion of online search (even more than it is today), and people laughed at the comparably terrible Bing results that showed up on the equally detested Internet Explorer browser. Bing was never able to fully recover from this user rejection, even though it has gradually and successfully updated its algorithms to the point where it’s arguably as good as anything else on the market.
Run a Google search next to a Bing search for a handful of identical phrases and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Bing offers results almost identical to those of Google, and sometimes they’re even more relevant. Google gets the edge with its Knowledge Graph, but for the most part, Bing can stand toe-to-toe with Google. So why does Google still have more than two-thirds of online search share? It’s all because of branding. People have grown to accept “Google” as the ultimate standard of search, and even though it’s being faced by more than one worthy competitor, the power of their name is, at this point, unconquerable. So how can Bing overcome these inherent brand associations, now that it’s already proven itself as a viable competitor?
How Bing Operates in the Shadows
Microsoft has the right idea. Rather than trying to push the Bing name and force users to adopt it, they’re going the sneakier route, putting Bing in places they wouldn’t expect to find it and subverting the search engine so it gets used—with users often none the wiser. Even if you’re a die-hard Google loyalist, chances are you’ve used Bing accidentally at least once in the past few months. Bing powers Yahoo search. It powers Apple’s Siri. It even powered Facebook’s search until recently. And now, on Windows 10, you’ll use the search engine—even when you don’t think about using it.
In a sense, Microsoft has put Bing on stealth mode, hoping that users will realize how great the search engine is once they forgo their preconceived notions of the brand. It’s not about being pre-loaded, the way Microsoft once tried to push Internet Explorer on the masses. It’s about being integrated, and Microsoft is doing a great job of integrating it with dozens of different major tech services.
The Landscape of Online Search
Even though Bing offers a respectable alternative to Google search, it still only gets about 10 percent of all search queries. It has a long way to go if it wants to dethrone Google, but Microsoft definitely has the right idea of how to do it. Search engines used to be like competing restaurants, where the “secret sauce” of one business couldn’t be rivaled by the other, no matter how they tried. Today, they’re more like ISPs. They offer the same service, almost indistinguishable, just under the guise of different brands.
Bing is just as good as Google. The stigma no longer makes sense, but it’s still holding Bing back. With more integrations, more subverted presences, and greater user access offered by Windows 10, I imagine we’ll see Bing’s search share rise over the next few years.
