Bing Claims 'Traditional' Search is 'Failing', Pretends it is Not Identical to Google

Much has been made of the "reality-distortion field" within the Apple Corporation. But I'm beginning to suspect a very similar phenomenon is at work within Microsoft's Redmond HQ. Or at least inside the offices of Bing director Stefan Weitz. He recently gave an interview to the Huffington Post where he claimed that "traditional search" (IE: Google) was failing.

“Traditional search is failing. The standard notion of search ... looking at the texts in the page, the backlinks, all that stuff doesn’t work."

The message we're all supposed to come away with is that Google Search is a dinosaur, and Bing is the young hip hotshot search engine that really knows how we want to search. Hey- let's test that theory, shall we?

I typed an identical phrase into both search engines. Here's what Google came up with:

And here's what Bing showed me:

They aren't 100% identical, but both pages give me virtually the same results in virtually identical ways. This makes sense, as Bing has been stealing Google's search results for some time now. Not only are both engines nearly identical, but one is literally copying from the other. If Google is 'failing' then, by any metric I can conceive of, so is Bing.

Which brings us to the big question: Is search failing right now? Users traditionally award Google fairly high marks for satisfaction. But the present model and style of search results is getting a bit long in the tooth. Search engines like Blekko seem to be the real 'break' from tradition. They have strong editorial control (all of Demand's E-How sites are blocked) and allow you to filter your search by slashtags. Blekko still has yet to really take off. Which may be evidence that consumer's aren't 'fed up' with traditional search quite yet.

Updates

Disgruntled gentleman honestly thinks he can strip Google of its trademark

Source: VentureBeat

Over in the land of slightly crazy lawsuits, a man from Arizona filed a lawsuit Friday to make “Google” a generic word, Paid Content reports. David Elliott, a “third-party beneficiary” of Chris Gillespie, filed the complaint in the United States District ...
Full article at: VentureBeat  More like this  14 minutes ago, 6:52pm CDT

Microsoft: Yes, We Do Send Takedown Requests To Bing, Too

Source: Search Engine Land

Microsoft sends takedown notices to search engines, including Bing, only after it verifies that content has been indexed. At the time of the takedown notice in question, the link to the particular piece of ...
Full article at: Search Engine Land  More like this  49 minutes ago, 6:17pm CDT

Man sues to have ‘Google’ declared a generic word

Source: paidContent.org

Arizona man David Elliott wants a court to declare that “google” is a word that means “search on the internet” and to cancel Google’s trademarks for the term. Elliott filed the complaint after Google won a ruling this month that forced hi ...
Full article at: paidContent.org  More like this  1 hour ago, 5:13pm CDT

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