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Battle of the Engines of Search and Decision

Microsoft have challenged Google’s reign over the multi-million dollar industry of searching for things, or “Googling” as it’s known, by releasing a new online game called Bing! Like all good games, it’s very simple – you type words into a little box and then it Googles them for you and you have to decide which one to click on. Seems like you could just do that with Google, but it’d be a shame not to get a fight going about which one is the best.

By the way, I added the exclamation mark to the word ‘Bing!’ add a certain gravitas to the onomatopoeia. Microsoft have foolishly omitted it from their own press.

To find out more about Bing, I googled it. Bing calls itself a Decision Engine. It doesn’t just search for things, it actually decides which of them you should click on. According to this online video ad, it will offer a RICHER EXPERIENCE through a range of innovative features. The first of these is ‘infinite image scrolling’. You hear that Google? None of this looking-at-a-few-images-and-then-clicking-to-the-next-page nonsense. Bing gives you infinity images all at once. That’s the second highest number, so until Google can come up with a way to put infinity plus one (no returnsies) images on the page, it’s game over.

The other innovative features of Bing include refining image searches (just like Google), playing videos directly from the search page (just like Google) and ’searching from where you are’, meaning you can Bing from your Hotmail account, (just like Gmail). So far, so similar, so underwhelming.

On the subject of ’searching from where I am’, I had a quick look at the French Bing and it has not forgiven me for peeking. I’m now back on the UK version, and it still returns an awful lot of French results, Binging on about Paris and Michel Guérard while twirling its virtual moustache and trying to sell me a string of e-garlic. This is not going to help its test results.

Let’s see how Google and Bing fare in a fight for my affections, in what we shall call: The Battle of the Engines of Search and Decision (I’ve divided it into rounds to make it tense).

GOOGLEFIGHT!

Round 1. The physical contest

In a Googlefight, the winner is the one who yields the most search results. There is no Bingfight, so it will have to be a tricky away game for Bing. I held their jackets while they battled it out in the car park, Engine à Engine. The results were bloody, brutal, and unsurprising:

At the time of writing, Google shows 343 billion hits to Bing’s measly 10 billion. A sound beating, even with Bing stalwarts like Chandler and Crosby bolstering the results. 1-0 to Google.

Round 2. Self esteem

I asked each Engine of Search and Decision to tell me a little about themselves. I know that putting Google into Google is extremely dangerous but, much like the brave test pilots who flew the first Harriers, I took the risk for humankind.

Google boasts about winning libel law suits, and inventing the telephone, before telling me that Google is Google and giving me a link to Google, presumably so I can go Google something else.

Asking Bing to go Bing itself brings up news items about Detroit mayor David Bing and dead movie star Bing Crosby (breaking news – still dead!). For being slightly less self obsessed, we’ll give the points to Bing. 1-1

Round 3. How they make me feel about myself

Everyone Googles themselves from time to time. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We don’t talk about it but we all do it… But I’ve never self-Binged, until now.

Google’s first result claims that Jimi Odell is “easily one of the finest guitarists working today… his playing and singing are nothing short of pure poetry”. The video is of an older man than myself talking about the Philadelphia jazz scene under my name, but I’ll take the compliment. Maybe I really am one of Philly’s best kept secrets.

Bing actually finds the real me and drags up my underwhelming IMDB profile which leaves out a lot of the good work I’ve done and paints me as some kind of dogsbody. I feel like it’s pointing out my flaws and run home crying.

Still, even though my feelings are hurt in the short term, I appreciate Bing’s honesty. At least it bothered to mention me. 1-2 in favour of Bing.

Round 4. Cleverosity

An Engine of Search and Decision has to be cleverer than me, or there’s no way it will find what I have so far failed to acquire through old fashioned searching methods (such as rifling through old post-it notes and asking people at the bus stop).

I tried misspelling a few words to see if the wily engines can figure out what I’m trying to say. Both deal comfortably with a variety of errors in and around the word ‘kumquat’ but Bing stumbles over ‘kmuqat’ where Google succeeds. 2-2. It’s a close one.

Round 5. Looks

Google became a verb because it stripped off and bared its plain white innards, its dignity covered by nothing more than a blank search window. Bing has undone all this good work and taken up residence at Tower Bridge. Out of curiosity, I went to www.bing.ru to see which Russian landmark clothes Bing’s naked villainy. St Basil’s Cathedral perhaps? Gorky Park? No. Turns out it’s Sydney Opera House. 3-2 to Google.

Round 6. Excitement

As a human, it’s important to me that everything should be as convenient as possible and that nothing should require any effort at all. Google is at the end of my Home button, where it’s been for years. I hate moving house. Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, it breeds comfort and warmth. However, Bing deserves some acknowledgement for inventing the phrase Decision Engine, and causing this fight. Maybe it’s time to embrace change and/or violence. This round goes to Bing. 3-3.

Round 7. Sense of humour

All Engines of Search and Decision should have what’s known online as a GSOH. Google used to translate ‘isn’t’ into ‘is’ which was funny for a while. It doesn’t any more, so I offered it something that’s already funny – the naked mole rat. Both Google and Bing lead to the same zoological journal that compares the naked mole rat to ‘a hot dog with teeth’. Sadly, that’s not the correct answer. I want you to look at this image now:

OK. Now mentally subtract the teeth, wrap it in a warm bun, add mustard, and tell me whether you still want to eat it.

No points this round. Neither of these Engines is funny. We remain at 3-3.

Round 8. Searching and Deciding

OK, this is the real clincher. The deciding round. I need help SEARCHING for and DECIDING where to go for dinner. Refining local restaurant searches is supposed to be Bing’s forte so it could be the nail in the coffin for Google.

I asked Google about restaurants in Camden, my local ‘hood. It provided me with a long list of places, reviews, contact details, menus – this is hopeful. I asked Bing the same question, expecting an even more tailored response, based on what the marketing chaps told me in the aforementioned video.

Here’s where Bing stumbles and fails. It led me to Yahoo! local. At the first sign of having to make a decision, the world’s first Decision Engine decided to defer to an old fashioned Search Engine, one that used to be powered by Google and actually has an exclamation mark. Yes, Bing uses Yahoo! to decide; Google uses Google to search.

4-3 to Google. In fact, 7-0. I’m taking Bing’s points away and giving them back to Google. I should never have doubted it. I can rest now, in the familiar arms of the monopoly, like a lizard in a hammock. The memories of my foray into Binging will soon fade, just as the sounds of the Sydney Philharmonic dwindle to silence on a chilly Moscow evening.

I think I’ll use my own thoughts and memories to decide what to have for dinner tonight. Maybe kumquats and hot dogs.

Tags: bing, google, jimi odell, kumquat, naked mole rat, self-indulgence

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 11:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.