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Ballmer cautious about Bing

Robert Hallock June 19, 2009 11:56 AM ET in Tech

bing_logoStances taken in several recent interviews suggest that Microsoft chief exec Steve Ballmer is remaining soft on his firm’s revamped search engine called “Bing.”

Despite intentions to shovel billions into the search furnace over the next five years, Ballmer has been wary to appear excited, much less exuberant as usual. In an interview conducted by Reuters, the exec demonstrated that he was even a little bearish about Bing’s hype.

“I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time,” he said.

“We may be successful, we may not, but we can’t be successful without being committed to changing things, changing the approach, changing the business model and you can’t give up in six months, or a year or two years,” he continued in an AFP interview.

While Bing briefly overtook Yahoo! for the number two spot in search shortly after its launch, Live’s replacement has once again fallen to its regular third place position. During the same period, arch rival Google picked up nearly one percent additional share of the search market.

Where’s that good ol’ Ballmer Rage we’ve come to love?

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2 Comments:

  1. Cliff_Forster
    Keepin it real
    19 Jun '09, 12:16 pm

    I know I say this all the time, but what bing and any other business that wants to compete with an existing market Goliath has to do is differentiate.

    Its all about finding a different way to offer a familiar experience. Its search, its not a new product by any stretch, google has been doing it better than anyone, and its not rocket science. Google has a whole host of compelling services to keep you with them, Gmail, Maps, Earth, Picassa, Apps, Youtube, now Talk.

    What can Microsoft offer, for one, they have Live, they could integrate that even more, and market it better as a feature. They have a music service with Zune, they could integrate some of that functionality into the bing experience. They have the still de-facto office standard, they could integrate that into their service package to make using bing as a home page more compelling.

    They just need to get their hands dirty and start doing it. Trouble is, the longer I am with google, the more entrenched I get into their services, the harder it is going to be to pull me out, even if they do offer something compelling, so much of my web identity is going to be invested in Google services. So, if bing is going to make a play, they had better get to it, but they can't straight try to beat Google at their own game, they have to differentiate, bing has to offer something new and compelling, or else it will die a slow painful death.

  2. chrisWhite
    Polygons
    19 Jun '09, 5:28 pm

    I think you nailed it Cliff, very well put.

    So I've been testing Bing and so far I really like it most of the time. I also spent some time on Blind Search and found that I picked Bing almost as much as I did Google, something I never would have said about pre-Bing MS search.

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