I just got a piece of unsolicited email from Microsoft, daring me to test Bing against Google. Since when did Microsoft start spamming? Do they think that sending HTMLy mass emails full of remote content is going to garner them lots of sympathy? What the hell is wrong with you people?
This is what it looked like:
Spam email from Microsoft daring me to take the Bing challenge. As if. Sure, sending mass emails full of remote content is going to make you real popular.
I feel kinda dirty for clicking on “show remote content” just so that I could take this screenshot.
Anyway: Really, Microsoft? Desperate much?
Everyone I know who tried it said Google won. I had 5/5 Google, and I was deliberately trying to come up with searches Microsoft couldn’t fail at, like “NT status error codes” Google got me to the correct MSDN page faster than Bing. So sad.
It’s an unfair and biased comparison — in Google’s favor. The Google results are better formatted and have video and images in the results, whereas the Bing results are just boring text. Even if they both got you the same information, you’d still choose Google because it just looks better at a glance.
I have never tried Bing, so I’m arguing from ignorance, but until Google disappoints me I see no reason to switch. I had to hunt down PDFs for old papers of mine yesterday, and I spent several hours entering paper titles into Google, and in every case, the PDF I needed was among the first results. Even for obscure papers. That’s what I’m talking about.
And I don’t think there’s a way to beat an empty white page with a single logo in terms of presentation.