Google vs. Bing — a Quasi-Empirical Study

eko3 writes "SearchEngineLand.com is featuring an article that compares Google's result query relevance performance to Microsoft's Bing. Through the author's methodology and very small sampling, he argues Bing returns slightly more relevant results than Google. The article suggests that Google is riding its current market success based on its legacy namesake when internet search used to be a lot more painful than it is today."

Comments

O No

[ae1294]

Through the author's methodology and very small sampling,

Science Fault Detected! Engaging TL;DR.

The market will decide

[KublaiKhan]

Google's primary business function is 'search', though they've attempted to diversify with documents and the like.

Microsoft's primary business function is documents and the like, though they've attempted to diversify with search.

There's a very low barrier to individual users to choose between them for either (given that MS has put its document processing online for free, last I heard) so, in the end, it's likely that the superior product (whether marketed better or actually better) will triumph in marketshare.

Bring this back up in 18 months, and we'll likely see some clear differential if there really is an actual difference in the applicability of either one's functions.

Re:The market will decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's primary business function is 'search', though they've attempted to diversify with documents and the like.
Microsoft's primary business function is documents and the like, though they've attempted to diversify with search.

Google's primary business function is 'global hegemony'.
Microsoft's primary business function is 'global hegemony'.

FTFY.

Re:The market will decide

[erroneus]

Less motivation? On the surface, I agree with you. But the US government and Microsoft have something of a strange yet cooperative relationship. I get a feeling that Microsoft does a bit more data collection than we know. But speculation aside, Microsoft has far more potential to collect information than Google. And if requested, I have little doubt that Microsoft would comply with anything the government "or its partners" asks.

I've reluctantly moved to Bing

[GodfatherofSoul]

Google just returns too many garbage marketing links. Bing isn't vastly better, just slightly. And, I imagine that if people start to migrate, they'll take on the same ad ratios as Google.

Re:Small sample is right

[jayme0227]

To be fair, he's not trying to get this published in a journal, just point out that Google is no longer streets ahead of everyone else. I think that is a fair assessment.

It doesn't matter, google won.

[ewhenn]

It doesn't matter, google won.

Generally speaking, to dethrone the entrenched standard (in any industry, not just search engines) you have to be substantially better to get people to switch to something they aren't used to. Marginally better just won't cut it. Cost is a moot point, because outside of MS paying me a check every month to use bing, you can't beat the price of free.

Humans are generally animals of habit, and unless you give them a good reason to, they won't change.

Re:Small sample is right

[mcgrew]

Indeed. The study's methodology was, to put it mildly, badly flawed. A far better methodology would have had twenty other people do the searching, and have THEM rank the results. That would still have been flawed, too, but less subjective than just having one guy decide how relevant the searches were.

Google is still #1 because people tried Bing and found it wanting. I did, the first day it was out.

One is Evil; the other says they are not

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is just downright "evil" in the terms used by, well lots of people. They are anti-competitive, non-free, anti-open-source, and every other kind of non-good they can get away with.

Google says they are not evil, so that must be true. They do help authoritarian regimes repress their people and they are collecting vast treasure troves of data on us with fantastic cross-correlations (i.e., they can match your searches to your group memberships to your map use to your e-mails to your documents to your photos and so on and so on). But again, they say they are not evil, so they are downright friggin' saints.

Wondering if this will get modded flamebait, troll, or insightful. All wrong. Try again. :P

Google isn't paying attention to searching

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been my experience that as Google has gotten bigger they seem to return at the top of their results pages that are nothing more than aggregating websites (most contain LOTS of google adverts too, which piques my thoughts on why they do show up at the very top of Googles searches). This is VERY annoying. As a result, I, previously a great supporter and user of Google, have been looking for a search engine that doesn't return websites that do nothing but hand me links to other websites. If i find one, that loads quickly, I will dump Google.

If Google is listening, it should be very easy to stop the aggrigation websites (sites that have NO CONTENT but just contain links to other sites) from reaching the top of your results.

Google is playing a dangerous game

[MikeRT]

Microsoft is notorious for working hard until they get it right and then steadily eating into their competition. They've practically torn Sony limb-from-limb in the video game market, something which would have been unthinkable in the early millennium when Sony was an unstoppable juggernaut that was able to destroy Sega just on "sheer perceived awesomeness" alone. From the initial reports about Windows 8, it sounds like they've fully grasped the OS X/iOS lesson and are moving toward a similar unified Windows product base.

It's really amusing to me whenever I see people dismiss Microsoft as a dinosaur that is thrashing in a tar pit. They act like its collapse is "inevitable" like Microsoft is some sort of corporate Soviet Union. In the late 90s/early millennium, everyone was saying that Linux or this or that would kill them. Guess what? Windows 7 probably put the nail in the coffin for desktop Linux among mainstream users in the US and much of Europe.

People mistake the fact that the market is competitive with Microsoft dying. It's more realistic to say that Microsoft is being forced to adapt and compete. If Windows 7 is their first real volley in that respect, I'd be cautious if I were one of their main competitors because it's obvious that Microsoft is taking these threats very seriously now.

Re:What about AltaVista?

[bberens]

It would be easy to determine which is which. Bing would provide page summaries that are totally useless, while half the results from Google would be zero-content ad landing pages.

Questions not Skills

[necro351]

I think the author's assumption that people would search for "When are the Patriots playing next year?" rather than "patriots game schedule" is flat out wrong. People know they are using computers, and not talking to a person, and they compensate accordingly. Google therefore, also compensates accordingly, by finding every page on the internet with "patriots", "game", and "schedule" in some close proximity. They may (and probably do) do more, but Google's approach has always been index everything you possibly can, and NLP has always taken a back seat. The Bing folks on the other hand have explicitly tried to optimize for NLP cases. However which engine is better isn't a matter of can you ask it questions in English, but can someone find what they are looking for. Given that most people know that "Googling" is not the same as asking a question, it is not fair to only test NLP queries.