Bada BING, Bada Boom: Microsoft’s New Search Engine Emerges

Its about time that Microsoft Corporation offered up a new web search engine, having failed miserably in its previous attempts to do so. Blaming Google’s success for long term failures is easy to do, but when you even trail Yahoo Search badly, then there is much room for improvement.

Bing Goes Live

Whispers of a new Microsoft search engine have been heard for some time with a full scale announcement and preview offered late last week. Today is the date that Bing officially goes live, but if you’re like most of the other curious folks who have a passion for search, then you’ve already checked it out in preview. Often too.

Until now, we’ve had to endure Live Search, the most recent version of the Microsoft search engine prior to Bing. Admittedly, I use Google Search almost exclusively, heading over to Yahoo Search only when I need to check Yahoo Site Explorer out to see how my websites are performing. MSN is usually a non-thought, never getting a chance to prove itself simply because it has failed to prove itself so often in the past.

Giving Other Search Engines A Chance

Hey, don’t blame me — I gave Cuil a chance but quickly abandoned it when it turned out to be a miserable failure. On the other hand, I’ll continue to play around with Wolfram Alpha if and when I want to be entertained. Heck, Twitter Search is probably the funnest one of them all, offering up real time returns on what other people are tweeting about which sometimes can come in handy.

But, when it comes to searching for what you want to find on the internet, Google still rules, controlling about two-thirds of the market and not about to cede its place to a young upstart especially one operated by its bitter rival, Microsoft.

Relevant? Not Quite.

Naturally, when I go to a search engine I enter in my name to see how often it is returned and what sort of returns are served. By taking my full legal name in quotes — “Matthew C. Keegan” — I come up with more than one million results, at least ten times the number I typically find on Google Search. Hmmm….

Okay, I know that I am famous, but I doubt that every single one of those results is accurate. Perhaps more telling is that when I click on the Image tab associated with my name, I find three actual pictures of me with several others being of unrelated photos I’ve used on my many different sites and a handful of other pictures of various objects I’ve never seen before. I may write about car engines, but I resent being associated with a diesel engine!

Playing Around With Bing

I’m not very scientific when it comes to trying out a new search engine, rather I use many of the same tactics I employ on Google Search to give Bing a whirl. Usually, I know almost immediately if a search engine holds promise based on what it does versus what I already know what Google can do.

Bing, even with some results for certain search terms not being all that relevant, still offered up some accurate and informative results for other terms I like to use. In fact, I managed to find some Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) parallels with Google. I do like Bing’s clean interface and the preview information about each result that appears when you hover over it is certainly handy.

Not yet cluttered with a bunch of ads, the Bing “surface” is easy on the eyes, simple to navigate and doesn’t have that “thrown together” feel of Cuil. I like clicking on the Maps tab to find a location which shows how to get there from here while also revealing an aerial view, bird’s eye look and more. I will happily toss Mapquest for the chance to use Bing Maps, what may end up being an important pull to get me binging the ‘net.

Binging The ‘Net

All that said, I liked previewing Bing and plan to spend more quality time with the web’s newest search engine in the days and weeks ahead. Cuil failed out of the box, but Bing appears to have enough going for it to make a serious run as a search engine.

Will Bing challenge Google? It may, especially given Microsoft’s plan to throw $80-100 million dollars in advertising at it. Of course, Google won’t roll over without a fight which means that the winner of this battle will ultimately prove to be you, the web user.

See Also – Wolfram Alpha, The Only Search Engine You Need?

Ebay Plans To Rid Itself of Skype

Ebay, Inc. has been in the news a lot lately, most recently for its sale of StumbleUpon (SU) — the online recommendation site — back to its original owners for an undisclosed sum. Ebay acquired SU in 2007, a move that was widely panned by SU devotees. Now, Ebay is looking to unload another acquisition, this time its internet-calling unit, Skype. By 2010 Ebay plans to hold an IPO or Initial Public Offering, which will separate Skype from its parent.

The Many Brands of Ebay

Ebay, Inc., which is best known for its online auction site bearing the same name, has ventured well beyond its base since being founded in 1995. Like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other big internet names, Ebay has acquired quite a few companies over the years including Half.com, Paypal, a portion of Craiglist, StubHub, Shopping.com and others. Some of the acquisitions have been a very good fit, such as Paypal, while others have been nothing but trouble. Skype falls into the latter category.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Ebay is selling Skype in response to investor demands to rid itself of the unprofitable business. Ebay purchased Skype for $2.6 billion in cash in stock in 2005, but took a $1.4 billion write off in 2007 to reflect the unit’s diminished value. When John Donahue took over Ebay in 2008, he announced that Skype seemed to be a poor fit with the rest of the company’s business, signaling that its sale was forthcoming.

Goldman Sachs to Oversee IPO

Ebay has hired the prestigious Goldman Sachs Group to handle the public offering which is expected to be held in early 2010. Skye’s founders – Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis – have attempted to buy Skype back from Ebay, but their price was well below what Ebay wanted for the unit. When the IPO is held next year, Ebay says that it will remain a shareholder in the new company.

The WSJ says that waiting until next year to hold an IPO for Skype may work to Ebay’s advantage, especially given the current state of the economy where the IPO market has largely been dormant since last summer. But, the newspaper also says that investors may be leery about investing in Skype given the bad experience many had when Clearwire Corp. had their own IPO in 2007. Back then, Clearwire fetched $25 a share, but was later merged with a Sprint unit.  Clearwire investors were clearly burned in the transaction as their stock values dropped to about $20 per share when all was said and done.

As for Skype, the unit continues to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars annually in revenue, charging just 2.1 cents per minute for users to call landlines while offering free calls to other Skype users in most instances. Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of Skype is that the service now claims more than 400 million users worldwide.

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