Whisper It But Microsoft May Have Nailed It With Bing.

Microsoft have again soft relaunched Bing, this time as Microsoft Bing.

But why could this soft relaunch work so well when, let’s be honest, Microsoft’s bigger past moves with Bing have been failures in terms of challenging Google?

Microsoft have tried all sorts of approaches with it’s search wars against Google. Originally launched in 2009 replacing MSN Live Search Bing originally stood out with well presented image search results, and has been known for its Bing daily images, making for a beautiful landing page.

They effectively consumed the one time king Yahoo, powering Yahoo search and Search ads on Yahoo. A reward programme, a heavily advertised Decision Engine, millions of dollars worth of advertising campaigns, and some pretty close imitation of Google.. They even ran the Bing It On challenge, where they de-branded search result pages and asked the public which search engine was better, with 57% of participants apparently preferring Bing results and only 30% preferring Google.

None of this has really shifted the dial, and Bing remains stuck on a UK market share of around 10%.

So why do I think the small changes rolled out in the last few weeks might make a difference? Well, it’s largely my personal view, but Bing is no longer ugly!

Take a look at Bing results page from 2018

And compare it to now:

Ok, the second one is not showing ads, but you get the idea, it’s been dragged in to this decade!

They have also relaunched their Microsoft Ads Dashboard, and it’s a far more pleasant experience - advertisers may be keener to engage. Good quality ads from large advertisers can actually benefit the search experience.

Though a nicer results page alone will not change peoples behaviour, you need to get them there first and Bing is not an appealing brand. Microsoft Bing just might be.

Microsoft feel resurgent in the consumer game. Microsoft’s Surface is a mark of quality and professional chic. In mobile they have a fantastic launcher for Android, very well regarded mobile apps and ever increasing ties with Samsung, possibly driving more mobile traffic to Bing.

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S range is launching shortly and has managed to avoid the serious missteps so far that plagued the launch of the Xbox One (and there is a new Microsoft Bing app for Xbox, which alone will not shift any significant traffic to Bing from Google but the association of Bing with Microsoft’s strong Xbox brand may help to bring much needed glamour). Xbox Games Pass is making serious head way as a real gaming subscription solution.

This all coincides with Microsoft launching a fantastic new Edge browser, based on the Chromium engine. Bing of course is the default search engine, but with a finally robust Chrome competitor there is less need for your average user to switch browsers to Chrome.

None of this is a coincidence.

It seems Microsoft is back in the consumer game and the halo effect on the new Microsoft Bing brand from an increasingly strong Microsoft Brand could well feed in to the wider public’s behaviour. Microsoft remains the world’s 4th valuable global brand and while it is behind Google in value it does appear to be ahead in that harder to define. but more and more crucial factor. trust

Then, of course, there is the looming Google Antitrust lawsuit and continued media interest in privacy, especially around Google. Are people going to be even more aware of what they are doing online, and could many prefer giving their search data anyone but Google with Microsoft (a more trusted brand) well placed to profit?