The world is abuzz with the news that Microsoft is about to launch a serious Google competitor somewhere in the next days. Unfortunately Microsoft has gotten such a bad rep when it comes to launching, and growing, web services that it is hard to find an optimistic blogger out there.

Is there anyone in the world who thinks that Microsoft’s new Search Engine, named Bing, will seriously compete with Google?

Of course they have a 100 million dollar ad budgets to inject their new service into our brains but that only sets expectations higher. Because no matter what their ad budget is, no one will ever consider leaving Google unless Bing’s results are substantially better than Google’s.

Peter Drucker famously said that “For new technology to replace old, it has to have at least ten
times the benefit.”

That means that Bing doesn’t have to be twice as good as Google but more than 10 times as good before people will switch. Somehow I just don’t see that happening.

It does make me very anxious to try out Bing. Somehow I can’t imagine Microsoft going through all this trouble for a mediocre product. The must have SOMETHING that makes them this optimistic.

If they don’t, all Bing will be known for in a few months will be it’s acronym: “But It’s Not Google”