06-03-2019 , 09:28 AM
Happy Belated Birthday, Bing!
Microsoft’s Bing—a search engine that literally bribes people to use it and still (still!) can’t seem to grow its witheringly small 4 percent market share—has been around for an entire decade. As of yesterday. We forgot its birthday and seemingly so did virtually everyone else.
The relevance of Bing is such that all but two niche tech blogs had posts prepared to commemorate 10 years of the search engine owned and operated by one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. Why should it be otherwise: Bing was seen, not long after launching, as an imitator, and accused of being a copycat outright by market leader Google.
What I did not realize until mere moments ago, is how far Bing’s homepage drifts from Google’s nearly-all-white design. It’s splashy, screen-dominating “Image of the Day” and four boxes indicating historical events from this same day in history (the first ever summiting of Mount Everest! [1953]) all scream “WELCOME TO THE INTERNET. You’re here! Isn’t it exciting!” which hits a pitch of enthusiasm that felt appropriate for AOL 2.0, but not for the social media panopticon we endure now instead.
Read more
Microsoft’s Bing—a search engine that literally bribes people to use it and still (still!) can’t seem to grow its witheringly small 4 percent market share—has been around for an entire decade. As of yesterday. We forgot its birthday and seemingly so did virtually everyone else.
The relevance of Bing is such that all but two niche tech blogs had posts prepared to commemorate 10 years of the search engine owned and operated by one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. Why should it be otherwise: Bing was seen, not long after launching, as an imitator, and accused of being a copycat outright by market leader Google.
What I did not realize until mere moments ago, is how far Bing’s homepage drifts from Google’s nearly-all-white design. It’s splashy, screen-dominating “Image of the Day” and four boxes indicating historical events from this same day in history (the first ever summiting of Mount Everest! [1953]) all scream “WELCOME TO THE INTERNET. You’re here! Isn’t it exciting!” which hits a pitch of enthusiasm that felt appropriate for AOL 2.0, but not for the social media panopticon we endure now instead.
Read more