That is utterly ridiculous.

BING has been disruptive enough that it’s gotten Google defenders to come out of the wood work.

I don’t think Google needs defending — just fixing. I’d love to see Google serve up relevant search results again, rather than its Made-For-Adsense “brand” partner sites.

Bing has no simple principle and has nothing new;
It can lure people by playing on the appearances:displaying product descriptions or flight information in the result page instead of in another page.

Seriously, Bing’s more meta approach is reat: it integrates at a higher level with business then through raw traffic, therefore it comes closer to Google’s plan to have a Cost-Per-Action. This is a step Google had issues to have on-line business accept, and the competition will only encourage it.

I don’t thing it’s harder to sell train tickets if you have a better integrated solution on the contrary: more money for Google all the way then. Actually, Google could out-smart Microsoft and easily let third parties offer that kind of feature, and show their results like ads, in a second column, based on how well designed they are (measured by clicks).

The difference between bing and Google is iterative more than fundamental. Right now, on this very blog post, there’s an ad for bing suggesting that I search on “LPGA Corning Classic” — it will give me the leaderboard for that tournament. Google does something similar and has for a long while now. Type in “mets schedule” into Google and you’ll get yesterday’s score, the Mets record, and today’s opponent.

You may be right — bing may be aiming to do something fundamentally different — but right now, it’s an iteration on the same idea.

Stephanie