Microsoft’s new Bing search engine got a jolt when a long-expected search deal with Yahoo was inked Wednesday.
The 10-year deal will give Bing extended reach. Yahoo and Microsoft combined still rank well behind Google in Internet searches.
Here’s some inside scoop on the “Microhoo” deal: Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz came from Autodesk, which has a tight relationship with Microsoft product-wise, as well as with its execs.
Her appointment was instrumental in sealing the long sought-after deal, and the board knew that. Someone else, and definitely not co-founder Jerry Yang, could not pull this off so quickly and efficiently.
As a consumer, I’ve been using both Bing and Google. (I’d largely stopped using Yahoo).
Unlike Google’s blank page, Bing has some cool photos, such as a group of climbers on a high wire this morning.
Some of the results are more meaningful too. Bing had an 8 percent rise in users in June; expect that to continue, since Yahoo will be promoting it.
I’m more Apple and Google centric than Microsoft centric, but change is good, so I’m using Bing more often. Google is getting a little stale, as a product and as a company. Check out Bing.
I think it will give MSFT a long-needed jolt from its deep “beauty sleep.”
I’ll throw up a poll soon, once people get more familiar with Bing and try it.
(Disclosure: We own a little stock in GOOG and MSFT but got out of YHOO before it collapsed more than a year ago.)
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I checked out Bing and went back to Google. I’m still open to change and really like choice.
Remember Altavista? Or Webcrawler? At one time those were my search engines of choice. In 1998 I switched to Google and that’s been my primary search engine ever since. To me Yahoo is a portal and I don’t even think of using it for search. I didn’t find Bing’s results as useful as Google, but to each their own. When Google doesn’t meet my needs I’ll be happy to try Bing again.