A recent New York Post headline proclaimed "Fear Grips Google." The article purported to show how the launch of Microsoft's Bing has instilled genuine fear in the heart of the Googleplex. While I think the headline may have been a tad overblown, it would be quite unGoogle-like to ignore any pending threat to its search franchise, and it will be highly interesting to watch Google's response to Bing over the next few weeks and months. Here are some responses which I consider likely in the next few months.
1. Rise of shopping/research categorizations
We all use search in different ways. Our usage patterns change constantly, and our intent may range from research-minded (for example, what are the vocalizations of the Quaker parrot?) to pragmatically commercial (where can I buy product A at the lowest cost, including shipping?), often within the same search session. To date, search engines have been able to handle both types of queries by providing a broad spectrum of results that users subsequently dig through.
One of Bing's more interesting advances is its ability to distinguish commercial queries from research queries and obediently serve up either a "shopping" tab or a "reference" tab with results gleaned from authoritative sources, including cached copies of Wikipedia and Encarta, Microsoft's online encyclopedia.
Currently, Google doesn't offer this kind of categorization (one curious consequence of this is that paid ads are often more relevant to commercial queries than organic links). But if it appears that Bing's solution is gaining traction with users, more intensive shopping/research categorization is something that Google certainly has the means to do.
2. Further exposure of Google's non-search products
Google is synonymous with search in the public mind, but it has a wide range of products, most of them free, which offer genuine utility, and whose widespread adoption is one of Google's strategic goals. Millions of people access Google's homepage each day, but it is often difficult to find these other offerings. Recently, Google has begun its "Explore Google Search" feature to promote other products, and has even announced this feature on its homepage.
Given that Bing has positioned itself as "a decision engine" which happens to use search as its main interaction mechanism, it's quite natural to expect that Google will respond by presenting itself more as an "information suite," perhaps even a "discovery engine," rather than as a mere search engine.
3. Moving to real-time search
Recently, Google began providing a "show options" link on its results pages, which, when clicked, presents a more categorized view of results according to content type (videos, forums, reviews), time exposure (recent results, past 24 hours, past week, past year), and presentation style (Standard Results, Results with Images, Results with More Text, with Related Searches, or per a Timeline or Wonder Wheel view).
Now that Twitter has proved that people genuinely like streaming, ticker-like results, it is practically inevitable that real-time results will become yet another option in the pantheon of Google's new search options. Google could make this happen through an outright acquisition of Twitter -- by buying Twitter, Google would thereby beat Bing at any hopes of future real-time search functionality. In other words, if anything gets Google to acquire that "poor man's email system" called Twitter, it will be Bing.
4. A mass media marketing war?
Google has always relied on viral growth, but Microsoft's aggressiveness in marketing Bing with a truly mass-market media campaign creates a challenge Google has never faced before. While Microsoft's messaging has been more than a touch over-the-top (especially in suggesting that Google-style searching somehow instills a zombie-like state of mindless query regurgitation), it does tap into legitimate shared concerns that search could be better. If Bing's market share continues to grow through mainstream advertising, then Google may be forced to respond in kind. Google's first TV spots may not be their last.
Bing has demonstrated that search can be improved, and there's still plenty of room for innovation in the search space. Whatever our roles are in the search ecosystem -- as advertisers, agency people, publishers, or as mere users -- we should applaud and support such competition because it's the best way to drive innovation.
Steve Baldwin is editor-in-chief at Didit.
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