Yahoo! brass scoffs at Bing – “Won’t save Microsoft search”

Yesterday thebusinessinsider.com reported that the CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz gave bing the rough side of her tongue, claiming it wouldn’t create that long term shift in the search market share that microsoft so desperately want.

Prediciting the new search engines inevitable (as she see’s it) fade into obscurity, following on from the initial period of interest  that Bing will currently be enjoying, Bartz said “It’s interesting but not over-the-top interesting, People will keep the same habits.”

So Bing has failed to impress everyone then, but on the other hand – what else could one expect the CEO of Yahoo! to say about microsofts new baby ? She was hardly likely to shower it in praise if you ask me, what with the whole Yahoo!/Microsoft deal debacle still ongoing, and the fact that they are direct competitors, fighting over market share.

The comments are to be taken with a pinch of salt then, but perhaps there is something to take away from this. Bing is Live with a lick of paint, a very good lick of paint to be fair … but underneath its still the same old search we know and use every day. The search that google still does perfectly well .

This creates a bit of a problem, because lets face it – people are lazy and habitual. It takes quite a shock to knock your average internet user out of a rut. Google is comfortable, familiar and still gets the job done – so the vast majority of people aren’t likely to shift for more of the same. If you want some of that terrifying Mountain View market share then Microsoft, you need to do it different, not just better!

Part of the reason people get so excited about twitter, or wolfram alpha , is they offer a service that is totally new. Twitter stumbled upon real-time search, and now even Sergey Brin himself wants a piece of it. Wolfram alpha has caused less of a buzz, but in my opinion they have managed to avoid the likely fatal label of ‘Google Killer’ by doing something so differently, that any such comparison doesn’t hold much water.

Microsoft was closer to the mark then, with their Ms. Dewey campaign back in 2006. (Ok … I’m pretty sure that bombed as a project, but it is doing something so differently as to create a sustained buzz … and that is what Bing desperately needs)

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, and microsoft will snatch a large market share. That would be good for competition, so I hope I am wrong (to an extent, my ego is pretty fragile ). What are any of your thoughts on the new engines chances, will it be the revitalisation that microsoft intended, or will it end up a bit of a wet attempt ?