I don’t normally post stuff at the weekend but this is worth a read – Steve Lohr’s piece in the New York Times this weekend asking Can Microsoft Make You ‘Bing’? I stumbled across it while lounging on my sofa yesterday and flicking through the NY Times on my Windows Phone. I tweeted it from there and have seen other retweet over the weekend.
One interesting irony that struck me afterwards is the assertion from Qi Lu that the future of search is verbs. Google has become a verb of course, despite having an engine that largely focuses on nouns. Search engines have historically focused on finding names, cities, products etc. but the reason Bing positions itself as a decision engine is because of the relentless focus on verbs. The future of search is about helping you get stuff done – like buy a product, book a flight or a restaurant. Often you want to do that with friends (like you do in the offline world), hence the focus Bing has on the social nature of the web and the partnership with Facebook. And although not covered in the article, doing this across a range of devices – from PC to mobile to devices like Xbox – increasingly by using your voice, is also a big focus. More on that tomorrow.
Anyhoo…it’s well worth a read. As an employee I’m encouraged by the unique point of view that Bing is taking.
Once you’re done with that, have a gander at www.psfk.com/need-to-know – a weekly curated series of posts top 10 posts from PSFK in association with Bing that started up this week.
