JP Morgan: Consumers Unlikely to Drop Google for Bing
Andrew LaVallee, reporting for the WSJ:
J.P. Morgan surveyed 763 adult U.S. Internet users earlier this month and
found that the majority of them (59%) were aware of Bing, thanks in part to Microsoft’s $80 million advertising campaign.
A quarter of the respondents (and 42% of those who had heard of Bing) had tried the site, though analyst Imran Khan noted that many of those users were likely testing a new product rather than making a switch. “Of the respondents who had tried Bing, only 38.9% used it more than five times last month,” he wrote in the report.
You’re always going to get the novelty bounce: I tried Bing a few times after its debut, and aside from marveling at the excellent daily photos (and their embedded comments), I went right back to Google for all of my searches. It’s like when I go to Best Buy and mess around with their behemoth 17” mongo chrome-plated laptops for a while, but then go right back home to my MacBook Pro. It’s about workflow and what you’re invested in.
But I think the Google vs. Bing argument is more than just search.
For me, being a web worker, Google not only has a very effective search engine, but I am also shamelessly embedded into its web app ecosystem in an more or less inextricable way. My workflow – which involves Google search, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Analytics, Google Reader, Google Maps, AdWords, Feedburner and Google Docs – has no real room for Bing. Bing would need to provide an order of magnitude better results for me to actually change my ways, which it doesn’t.
(Although it did help me find an excellent Mediterranean restaurant a bit better than Google.)
So, I tinkered with Bing, bought it a coffee or two, and then went back to what I’m invested in long-term from a web technology/workflow perspective. Is it just me? I’m guessing not.
If Bing wants to catch on beyond curiosity and incidental searches – and let’s be clear, it is good and pretty competitive with Google search on many fronts – MS needs to entice users to become part of its web app platform as a whole. Microsoft’s Live branding push never caught on (I didn’t like its voice or approach), and the resultant opportunity cost helped Google amass more users of not only its search, but its entire app/service ecosystem.
