Let’s just get it out of the way: no, Bing is not a “Google Killer.” It’s also safe to say that Microsoft doesn’t see it that way either. My understanding of what Microsoft believes it has in Bing is a much more competitive product than Live Search. I entirely agree.

Over the course of the next two or three weeks there will be countless articles and blog posts discussing Bing and whether or not it can dethrone Google. Microsoft has told me that the company sees Bing as a start (or restart) and that improvements will continue to roll out over time. One can be skeptical of that position or not. Regardless, Bing is a big advancement for Microsoft’s search efforts.

I’ve been using Bing (Kumo) off and on over that past couple of weeks. I’ve used it side by side with Google and by itself. In some cases I’ve been self-consciously testing and comparing results. At other times, I’ve simply used it to find information or navigate to desired sites.

Let me say that this post is not intended to be a detailed discussion of Bing’s “anatomy” and features. Danny and others will delve into those areas and may express different opinions and conclusions than I do here. As an aside, there are range of features that I like quite a bit; among them the “table of contents” that often appears in the upper left column (see graphic below) and the easily accessible search history, which will likely be further developed in interesting ways. (A Silverlight-enhanced version of search history adds more utility and even makes it social.)

My overall assessment is very positive. Kumo, now Bing, has performed well and I’ve been satisfied with the results. There haven’t been any significant deficiencies or missing links (so to speak). While there have been a few occasions where I’ve found Google results to be better, the substantial gap that existed between Google and Live Search is largely gone with Bing.

Microsoft has integrated the Powerset technology to varying degrees and made numerous algorithmic improvements on the “back end” that are largely opaque to me. More obvious are the interface upgrades and changes. While many people are accustomed — even habituated — to the Google UI, I appreciated the often richer visual presentation and generally “cleaner” organization of Bing SERPs.

So now you’re probably thinking will I start using Bing instead of Google?

To be candid I don’t see myself giving up Google, especially given the default Firefox browser integration. But I can also honestly say that while I almost never used Live Search except to write about it, I will indeed use Bing. Unfortunately you won’t be able to try it for yourself until next week when it goes live.

I cannot predict how you or others will react or whether Microsoft’s reportedly massive ad campaign for Bing will drive adoption. Advertising can generate awareness or curiosity but that’s about it. The bottom line is whether people find the results and their presentation to be compelling enough to actually use Bing.

So to provide a more concrete sense of Bing in advance of the launch, I conducted a range of basic searches that one might do in a given week and captured screens from both Google and Bing to offer a visual side-by-side comparison. The following are the queries that I used:

• Bing (couldn’t resist)
• Sonia Sotomayor
• George Clooney
• Hotels, New York
• Playoffs (NBA)
• Prius
• Up (the movie)
• United Airlines
• Best sushi los angeles

And away we go . . .

QUERY: “BING”

Google results:

Bing results:

Bing’s main SERP has more information about Bing Crosby the actor-singer than the Microsoft search engine. And Google does a generally better job here of surfacing results tied to the new search engine. However, if I click on “news” in the Bing table of contents, I do get the results I was looking for:

By exposing the recently introduced left-column links and drill-downs Google can also get much more specific by date or type of content:

QUERY: “SONIA SOTOMAYOR”

Bing results:

Google results:

QUERY: “GEORGE CLOONEY”

Google results:

Bing results:

The images of Clooney make the Bing SERP in this case much more interesting. In addition, the table of contents in the upper left provides quick access to more specific information about the actor without having to click back and forth.

QUERY: “HOTELS, NEW YORK”

Google results:

Bing results:

In this case, Microsoft has more or less copied the Google “10 pack” and the pages look almost identical. Clicking “Local” in the table of contents takes a user to a map-centric page, while selecting “Deals” offers data from Microsoft’s Farecast travel engine:

The integration of Farecast data and results for travel-related queries yield some of the richest and most compelling results on Bing in my view.

QUERY: “PLAYOFFS” (seeking NBA results)

Bing results:

Refining by “Playoffs NBA” (left nav) offers quick scores and schedule information:

Clicking News in the left nav offers more in-depth information including video (which can be previewed in the SERP by mousing over the thumbnails):

On Google I can do similar things, clicking through to news results or getting video (without the thumbnail preview):

QUERY: “PRIUS”

Bing results:

Google results:

The Bing page is again more compelling with the image of the car and the basic data about price and mileage, as well as local dealer listings. In addition, the TOC allows users to quickly get to the category of information they’re seeking. Although you can get to much of the same information on Google, the Bing layout surfaces much of that information more quickly.

QUERY: “UP” (the movie)

Google results:

The ad on the right allows me to watch the movie trailer by clicking the “plus box.”

I can also open the “show options” link and get to more video results:

Bing results:

Bing does a better job here, using IP targeting to create a default location (and associated movie listings) that can then be changed or made more specific. Users can click Video to see trailers and related footage.

QUERY: “UNITED AIRLINES”

Bing results:

Google results:

QUERY: “BEST SUSHI, LOS ANGELES”

Google results:

Bing results:

Some may look at the screens above and shrug. Indeed, some people have argued to me that Bing “has to be at least 50 percent better” than Google to start peeling away users loyal to Google (or Yahoo). Bing isn’t 50 percent better than Google. However, Bing does offer results that are, across the searches I conducted, highly competitive with Google and in some cases it offers features that are more user-friendly.

Given the strength of Google’s brand and its “ownership” of search Bing may struggle to make market share gains. However I predict that it will gain share. Those potential gains may come not at Google’s expense but rather from Ask, AOL or even Yahoo.

See also the companion pieces to this article:

• Meet Bing, Microsoft’s New Search Engine
• State Of Search: Google Will Stay Strong Despite Bing & Yahoo

Last month, Microsoft researchers from around the world showed off some of their most unique creations at the company’s TechFest 2009 event in Redmond. This month, a smaller group of Microsoft researchers took part in the 5th “Demo Fest” event — a smaller event that’s designed for researchers from adCenter Labs to show off their latest ideas.

The company let reporters in on Wednesday to see four of the new Demo Fest technologies, and the Seattle Times’ writer was not impressed.

“The demos I saw were not jaw-dropping. The concepts seemed to echo things we’d seen elsewhere or things I would have thought were already table stakes for advanced online advertising.”

Indeed, one of the four demos that reporter saw was a tool that tries to predict local search intent using the query and IP address of the searcher. In the Microsoft example, someone searching for “Seattle pizza” from a Seattle IP is likely to be doing a local search. If the same person searches for “Las Vegas hotel,” it means they may be traveling soon.

No wonder the Times reporter wasn’t bowled over; that’s about as basic as local search intent gets, and if Microsoft is still figuring that out, they have more catching up to do than I thought.

The three other tools Microsoft showed to reporters are:

• Display Ad Tool — aims to make it easier and less expensive for small businesses to create online ads; this is already a pretty crowded space
• Microsoft Gaze — aims to place more contextual ads via a pop-up widget tied to certain keywords in web page content
• Gift Matching — a shopping search tool that uses Live Search query data to make gift recommendations; i.e., people who search for one product also search for other related products

According to the Times report, Microsoft says these are just ideas and may not become finished products.

Hundreds of Microsoft researchers from around the world gathered at company headquarters in Redmond this week for TechFest 2009, a chance to share ideas and show off their latest creations.

Although Microsoft emphasizes that there are no plans to bring any of this technology into Live Search, some of the interesting ideas were featured this week on the Live Search blog. Here are two that caught my eye:

Opinion Search

Microsoft’s existing Opinion Index in Live Search was built from this technology, but the version demoed at TechFest takes the collection, storage, and organization of user reviews to a new level, the company says.

Color-Structured Image Search

This technology adds the color element to the traditionally keyword-based world of image search. The technology can help you locate an image of a tiger under a sunny blue sky easier than by simply searching for “tiger sky.” As Microsoft explains it:

With Color-Structured Image Search, we’re able to re-rank search results for the query “tiger” to include tiger-related images with “blue” color at the top of the search results.

You can get more information about these technologies and many others by clicking the “Research Gallery” tab at the TechFest 2009 web site.

There are arguably two parallel tracks in the “what will succeed Google?” meme. An emerging one is “will the feds intervene to block Google?” The second is much older and involves the hypothetical “semantic web” or sometimes “deep web.” Essentially this asks, “who will do search better than Google?” (A third line of argument might surround “social search.”) Two pieces in two days in the NY Times reflect the two former strands.

The first article is Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big and picks up on the monopoly discussion. I responded over the weekend on my personal blog Screenwerk. The second and subject of this post is Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp.

From the “Deep Web” article:

Beyond those trillion pages [indexed by Google] lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.

The challenges that the major search engines face in penetrating this so-called Deep Web go a long way toward explaining why they still can’t provide satisfying answers to questions like “What’s the best fare from New York to London next Thursday?” The answers are readily available — if only the search engines knew how to find them.

Yes, an engine that can mine all that data and present “answers” to users would be quite exciting. However, as the article points out, Google is also investing in trying to mine more of that so-called “deep web” itself.

There have been many extravagant claims by and about semantic search engines (e.g., Powerset, bought by Microsoft) and deep web projects in the past (Chris Sherman has much more perspective on this than I). But so far, none of them have really borne fruit.

A quote from the “Everyone Loves Google” article is also relevant here and I believe correct about what changes might make a difference at least in the near term:

“Whether we’re slightly ahead or slightly behind Google in core relevance is not a game changer in search,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo’s chief search strategist.

Yahoo’s best opportunity, Mr. Raghavan said, is to offer radically new ways of presenting information that will help users finish whatever it is they started before the search, like finding a job or buying a plane ticket. “People don’t want to search; it’s a digression,” he said. “They want to complete a task.”

Search results pages right now are terribly cluttered (and flawed in my opinion). But doing something that truly delivers on the “complete a task” metaphor is challenging in myriad ways:

• Technology/algorithm
• Interface design
• Political: picking winners and losers from among similar sites to a much greater degree than today

Mobile is also an interesting lab for PC-based search. The limitations of the mobile “form factor” and the greater need/immediacy regarding the information will likely hold some eventual lessons for online search.

Microsoft and Yahoo (assuming it doesn’t sell search to Redmond) will continue to make improvements in their algorithms, indexes and interfaces. The more competition the better because search will only become more important as the “deep web” is unlocked.

Can a search engine accurately diagnose health problems? Can it someday replace your doctor? Questions like this aren’t new, but the discussion has gotten a bit louder in recent weeks.

Just a couple weeks ago, I reported on a Microsoft investigation of cyberchondria, when inaccurate medical information online makes actual health problems worse. On Friday, Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams shared a different point of view, telling blog readers how Google helped him find treatment for a speech defect known as Spasmodic Dysphonia.

More specifically, Adams was using Google Alerts to get information about the condition. Google notified him of an “obscure medical publication” that wrote about Spasmodic Dysphonia. He took the information to his own doctor, was referred from there to other doctors, and eventually had successful surgery to fix the voice defect.

“I never would have found that path without Google Alerts,” Adams writes.

But is his story representative of what typically happens when we use the Internet to search for medical information? The Microsoft paper released last month explained that using the Internet to diagnose health problems can make the problem worse than it really is:

“… the Web has the potential to increase the anxieties of people who have little or no medical training, especially when Web search is employed as a diagnostic procedure. We use the term cyberchondria to refer to the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web.”

About 30% of people in the Microsoft study experience “heightened anxiety” because of what they learn online after doing a web search about medical conditions. But Adams says he’s used the Internet — “Dr. Google” as he calls it — “dozens of times to diagnose various minor medical problems, or to find out what things are dangerous or not.” And he poses some interesting questions about how well the Internet could diagnose non-emergency medical problems, both common and uncommon:

“With the uncommon problems, such as my spasmodic dysphonia, I have to wonder if Google (or WebMD, etc.) can do a better job than a doctor, if not now then maybe in the near future. If you could call up videos of people with identical symptoms, couldn’t you diagnose most of your own problems?

For example, are you any worse than your doctor at looking at High Definition pictures of a skin problem and comparing it to your own skin problem?

My guess is that the Internet could equal your doctor in diagnosing uncommon problems. WebMD for example asks a bunch of diagnostic questions and narrows down your symptoms just as a doctor would. That system will only improve over time.

Adams goes on to wonder about using an online database to handle prescriptions, with pharmacist oversight built-in. Something like that may already be included in government discussions of a national health database; I don’t follow the details enough to know for sure if it is or not.

Ultimately, it’s an interesting discussion. Adams’ concept of “Dr. Google” doesn’t seem too outlandish, but — to borrow a common medical analogy — four out of five doctors would probably disagree.

Those muscle twitches you get probably aren’t a sign that you have ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”). But if you’re using search engines to diagnose what ails you, there’s a chance you’ll come to that conclusion.

In a new paper, Microsoft investigates cyberchondria: “… the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web.”

Microsoft researchers Ryen White and Eric Horvitz studied a 40-million page sample of search results (from Live Search) and surveyed 500 Microsoft employees about how they search for health information. They found that health search on the web sometimes makes our problems worse, in the form of heightened anxiety that can disrupt other aspects of normal, daily life. In other words, the information we learn from search engines often adds stress to whatever our current health problem might be.

“…the unreliability of Web sources and the content of Web search engine result pages contributed to the heightened anxiety of around three in ten survey respondents.

The responses show that search engine result pages, the contents of the pages visited directly from the result pages, and pages visited thereafter, may all contribute to health-related anxiety to different extents.”

One problem, according to the paper, is that web searches for common symptoms sometimes lead to information about serious, rare illnesses. A search for “headache” might lead to information about tension, but could also lead to information about brain tumors, which are extremely rare; a search for “chest pain” can lead to information about heartburn or heart attacks.

The paper puts the burden of responsibility for reducing this escalation of anxiety onto the search engines themselves:

“Search engine architects have a responsibility to ensure that searchers do not experience unnecessary concern generated by the ranking algorithms their engines use. They must be cognizant of the potential problems caused by cyberchondria, and focused on serving medical search results that are reliable, complete, and timely, as well as topically relevant.”

The 32-page research paper is available for download here. There’s also more discussion on Techmeme.

The Olympics are now officially under way. One of the unofficial competitions is among the search engines and companion sites to offer scores, updates and coverage of the games. Below is a roundup of where you can keep track of the medal count and watch your favorite action online.

Google:

Google has an Olympics homepage that showcases a range of services and tools to keep track of events, including an iGoogle gadget. Depending on what country you’re in, there are different YouTube channels. And there’s a mobile site.

Google is also offering special OneBox results for individual Olympic events. Yahoo:

Yahoo has a medal count shortcut, extensive coverage on Yahoo Sports and a dedicated mobile site.

Yahoo is also offering Olympics video clips.

Microsoft Live Search:

Microsoft is supplying Olympic updates and medal counts through a partnership with NBC. The links displayed in blended search results click through to the NBC Olympics site.

Truveo/AOL:

Truveo has extensive video coverage of the Olympics from multiple partners and sources across the internet.

Ask:

Ask offers special smart search results, pull-downs (by sport) and refinements.

In the non-search engine category, ESPN and NBC have extensive coverage on their sites. There’s also a fair amount of video on the NBC site. Reuters has some in-depth coverage as well.

Microsoft’s John Martin has shared a preview of the new Microsoft social bookmarking tool that will be demonstrated at the TechEd North America event in the upcoming week.

John provided a shortlist of features and two screen captures of the social bookmarking tool at his blog post. Based on the limited detail I can see, the tool is not all that innovative when compared to Delicious and other social bookmarking tools out there today. It seems that you can bookmark any URL across the web then apply tags to those URLs and also save the bookmarks in the “new My Bookmarks tool.”

The screen shots look very similar to other social bookmarking applications. In addition, Microsoft set up a support forum for this tool at Microsoft Forums.

Microsoft has launched (an appropriate metaphor this time) its Worldwide Telescope desktop application. You must download the software, but then you’re treated to a beautiful array of images and “guided tours” of the cosmos (see screenshots below). Intended for science education, “Worldwide Telescope stitches together terabytes of high-resolution images of celestial bodies, and displays them in a way that relates to their actual position in the sky.”

According to Microsoft, the mission of Worldwide Telescope is: –To aggregate scientific data from major telescopes, observatories and institutions and make temporal and multi-spectral studies available through a single cohesive Internet–based portal. –To re-awaken the interest for science in the younger generations through astronomy and new technologies through the virtual observatory of the WWT. This also provides a wonderful base for teaching astronomy, scientific discovery, and computational science.

Here are some images from the application:

Comparisons will inevitably be made with Google Sky, which, as a browser-based tool, is not as immersive. But forget about the competitive rivalry and comparisons for a moment; these are great educational tools — or just fun for those interested in astronomy.

Microsoft has acquired Danger, Inc., maker of the T-mobile “Sidekick” device and the Danger operating system and platform. Danger has been hailed as highly innovative and its platform and OS pre-dates the iPhone (the company was founded in 2000). There’s a bit of an irony here in that Danger was co-founded by Andy Rubin, who is the chief architect behind Google’s Android, which is competing with Windows Mobile as a platform.

Although innovative, Danger is a money losing enterprise at this point. But Microsoft believes that Danger and its OS can offer an improved mobile development platform and consumer experiences in the increasingly competitive mobile market. And Microsoft has the assets and relationships to bring Danger’s core capabilities to a broader audience.