It’s becoming clearer by the day that Google sees Bing’s presence as a threat to their service.
Because of Microsoft’s investment in improving Bing’s search algorithm and speed, the technology gap that once separated Google from its largest competitor has been narrowed significantly. Whereas years ago improvements to scalability, client-side usability, and relevancy of contextual search results helped push Google to the front of the pack, this noticeable technological disparity has slowly evaporated over time. Given Bing’s relative success when it comes to shopping and travel searches, as well as its recent deal with Twitter and Facebook to improve search results for these services (Google struck a similar deal just two hours later), it looks as if both companies are attempting to aggressively expand their feature-sets and the scope of content being queried.
The most recent development is Google’s partnership with streaming audio service Lala and the MySpace-owned iLike. The deal promises to bring streaming music to the Google page, allowing users to listen to a song once-thru for free or to pay for repeated listens (10 cents for an online-only version, and $1 for a downloadable mp3). The technical details are still a bit sketchy, but if Google manages to integrate this into their search in a substantial way (audio search, store search, improved MySpace search and caching, etc.), then they’ll have managed to set the bar higher for content search and potentially make up for any shortcomings in other areas like their previous attempts at integrating their search with online merchants.
Google clearly recognizes the level of competition that Microsoft brings to the table with Bing, and as time goes on it will be interesting to see where these two tech industry giants focus their efforts.
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