Why Bing™ Sucks

By Tim Carey | Posted on 2009-10-25

So I see Microsoft is attempting to re-brand the old Windows Live Search as bing.com. The commercials on TV are advertising it as a different type of search engine -- a "decision engine." Yeah, when I heard that, I, too, wondered exactly what a "decision engine" was. But the commercials are clever and somewhat funny to anyone who has ever spent time searching through hundreds of results for a single missing piece. But where's the meat?

A colleague of mine, a few weeks ago, provided a great example of how this claim of being a "decision engine" is kind of a joke. And it can be summed up in a single sentence: "How big is the sun?"

Maybe now you're confused about what I'm talking about. What does the sun have to do with search engines? Well, try plugging that sentence, word for word, into your favorite search engine. Our of curiosity, I ran this search on a number of top and up-and-coming engines to see what they returned.

• Google is obviously the 900-pound gorilla in this space, so they're a logical place to start. When you ask Google "How big is the Sun?" Big Brother Google replies, right at the top "Mass: 1.9891 x 1030 KG 332 946 Earths," with most of the results relevant to the question at hand. In fact, all but two of the results were directly relevant to the question asked.

• Yahoo didn't return a nice little piece of math like Google did, but all but one of the search results is directly relevant to the question asked. The only result that wasn't relevant was that VH1 has some videos by a band called Big Sun, but that was towards the bottom of the SERP.

• The newcomer Wolfram Alpha, which bills itself as a "knowledge engine" gives you a simple result, 432,200 miles, along with a handy formula for conversion. Not a traditional search engine, but closer to a "decision engine" than Bing™ ...

• And finally, the "decision engine" Bing™. So how does the vaunted "decision engine" handle knowing how big the sun is?
It doesn't.

The first result is a garden furniture store in Austin, Texas. The second result is an Equine Product Store in Florida. The third was pictures of the sun from the Boston Globe -- okay, that one was close. The next results are a realty company in Florida and an athletic conference. Only then, six results down, do we get into the meat of the question.

Look, it's easy to hate on Microsoft. It's no challenge anymore. I, personally, am not exactly a fan of Microsoft, but I'm hardly an enemy either. At worst, I'm indifferent.

Anyways, the point is, there are some things that Microsoft has done well. Office? Great productivity suite. Windows 7? From what I've seen, it looks pretty good. The XBOX and gaming units at Microsoft do gangbusters. But it just seems like they're irrationally pursuing this search thing, out of spite, at this point to the detriment of the rest of their business.

Considering that Bing™ doesn't appear, at the surface, to be any different from Windows Live Search in terms of its usefulness (that is to say, not), Microsoft is throwing tons of money in the form of development and marketing to something that just isn't very good when they could be focusing on the core parts of their business.

But, then again, I'm not Ballmer.

Author's note: Well, it looks like Bing™ has made some adjustments, or re-indexed, or something. You can actually find out "How big is the sun?" now without being told about furniture stores in Austin. Oh well, it was fun ragging on them for a while.