The Google search engine is famed for the ruthless efficiency of its algorithms; they seem to fish out the meaning you have in mind in ways that seem almost human; and then they can bring out search results that seem uncannily relevant. Google found out last year though, that people can be swayed by emotion even in a business as fiercely logical as Internet search. There are untold millions of people who have switched allegiance to Bing merely for the wonderful and imaginative photography you get to see behind the search box every time you log on. And then Bing announced that they were going local; each time you searched, they would show cataloged results they had for local businesses, local addresses and directions - even in small towns and villages. For most Internet tasks like general search or maps or books, Google could be hard to beat; and yet, Bing is trying to lock down everything else.
Bing has barely more than a tenth of the search market in the US. But with its innovative approach of attacking Google in the fringes and the niches, it really is growing - and it is eating into Google's market share to achieve this growth. Can a percentage point here and there really threaten the stranglehold that Google has over the search space? Not immediately of course, but there are areas where Google feels the heat. For instance, Bing has attracted quite a following with its colorful search page photography. It just gets people feeling better about Microsoft as a whole. Google has imitated this move with a colorful image on the search page (but no picture for you if you won't sign in). To overtake Bing and it's success in travel search, Google has bought out the very company that Bing gets its travel information from - ITA Software. And more recently, Google has completely revamped its image search (and no one would deny that it looks suspiciously like Bing's, with better layout and image search tools.
If you are looking for more complex answers to complex questions, this kind of competition certainly is taking search off in new and more human directions. These two companies are just throwing their enormous resources behind putting feature after feature into their search technology. It has taken the industry aback to see that Bing has indeed succeeded in putting the Google search engine juggernaut on the defensive. Google of course claims that while it has trailed Bing in some of these innovations, that these are not to be thought of as an aping of Bing - they say they've been thinking of these features for years.
Bing has found a way forward buying up lots of startup innovators with little niches of expertise; and they have offered tempting cashback programs to advertising buyers. Their deal with Apple for instance promotes Bing over Google as the default search engine on Safari. Instead of aiming for overall expertise as the Google search engine does, Bing tries to grab the travel market, or the health research market. Google has everything else, Bing has the fringes. For now.
Google has often criticized Microsoft for over-tweaking its software to death with too manyfeatures and too much complication. What do they say though about the way they added hundreds of tweaks to the Google search algorithm last year alone?