To add a little context as to who Bing is, here is the interview I did with Stefan Weitz, a Director in the Bing Group at Microsoft.

As I normally do, I was conducting research for work when I came to brick wall; I had a question about Bing. It is ironic really, I performed a Google search with the query of “Why does Microsoft Call Bing a “Decision Engine”?” The results were very revealing.

According to Google’s returned searches, the internet had yet to really find it out yet either. I then turned to Bing itself for a response with the same question and found, in the top 3 results, Press Releases submitted by Microsoft on the subject; propaganda. So, I decided to crowdsource the question on LinkedIn, the results have been revealing. To help shed a little light on this subject I would like to invite the various LinkedIn respondents to speak for themselves.

Frank Feather:

“As usual, with Microsoft, Bing is a convoluted service and it describes it in a convoluted way. In trying to be different it goes through all kinds of contortions and as a result the product won’t catch on. They don’t understand the “K.I.S.S.” modality.”

Jessica Gray:

It is an attempt to make themselves different from other search engines through marketing that highlights how they are *more* than just a search engine.

The strengths of bing are not in general search, but a handful of verticals. Travel is the best known one with airfare search (a “homage” to kayak) and farecast integration.

Personally I think the “decision engine” marketing was creepy and am glad they’ve moved on to the more direct and entertaining “los links” marketing.

Jason Flores:

Search engines are fairly tough to differentiate. The term “Decision Engine” seems like a low-risk tactic to differentiate itself, but it will take more than that to convert google users.

Dave Maskin:

Because you must consciously make a “decision” to use it, as we just use Google without thinking about it…

Dan DeMaggio:

Because everyone knows Google is the best search engine. But if you’re going to make a “decision” (whatever that means), then it’s an excuse to try Binging.

Matt Dunlap:

The same reason Apply calls the iPad “Magical”

buzzzzzzzz wooooorrrdsss

Thomas Andrews:

As you note, this is not a web development question, but a marketing question.

Presumably, their marketers wanted to know how they could differentiate Bing from Google and other existing search engines. So they did some surveys and found what dissatisfied people who use search engines.

Again, presumably, they realized that ultimately people use “search engines” to help them make decisions. Searching for products, for restaurants, etc. with the intent of making a decision.

Also, I’m sure, what people hate about “search engines” is that they have to “search” the results, so Microsoft decided to remove the word “search” from the name.

Cliff Rogers:

It’s just marketing gobbledegook – exactly the same as Avis using “We try harder”…

Irune Itoiz:

Their developers probably call it Search Engine. However, marketing probably though Decision Engine sounded more user friendly (we help you take decisions instead of having to do it yourself) and cool.

A decision engine would be one answering questions such as “chocolate or vanilla icecream?” by reading my mind

It is clear that, what ever your relationship to Bing, that people are confused about what need a “Decision Engine” creates and/or solvces. Bing is, ultimately, an attempt by Microsoft to earn a share of the revenue from intelligent online advertisement placement. The Yahoo! merger is a completely separate matter.

No related posts.

According to Stefan Weitz’s presentation half of the time spent in search is spent on a few longer sessions, this being the majority of search behavior. Another interesting set of statistics are that 42% of search sessions need refinement and 25% of searches led to hitting the back button, the single most common behavior in searchland. With this in mind, he began to dive into the concepts surrounding Bing.

Stefan described four the four elements of Bing. Bing is known as a Decision Engine, not a Search Engine. This is the case as Bing is intended to guide the user through the complex array of search results by adding context and relevant perspective to the intention of the actual search. Bing is also known for the basics, still a focus of Microsoft, having never been forgot. This is impressive if you think about it as it is intended to be the next step in Search itself. Bing is designed around the navigation and sorting of the complex network of results, similar to the first element. Finally, is the element of decision making and allowing the user to make a more intelligent choice rather than havign to use guesswork as a foundation for finding relevant results.

Following the introduction to the philosophy of Bing came a prediction of where Microsoft believes the internet is headed. The first revolution in the internet is the notion that the web is becoming a place of objects instead of text and hyper links. With an increase in multimedia, such as video and images, there is a need to collect, categorize and create context for these objects. From this comes the second prediction for the future of the internet, Spatial Search. Spatial Search refers to the ability to create the context and perspective that is needed to relate these objects from the internet to the outer-world. The third prediction that Microsoft is making for the future of the internet is the ability to finally realize a Semantic Web.

The example given was Siri, the iPhone App (ironically enough an Apple product) that allows you to seamlessly link your queries in real-time through voice and location-based context. Here is the video that was used to demonstrate the power of Siri.

From Semantic Modeling came the fourth and final prediction about the internet’s future, Mobile and Augmented Reality. For this specific prediction, Stefan used a TED Talk that was given recently about the use of real-time image input onto Bing’s Mapping System. Here is that video

As time was beginning to run short, Stefan hurried to make his final statements about both Bing and the Internet. He stated that Bing was the next step forward in Search Engines and was designed around helping users make decisions, thus referring to it as a Decision Engine and not a Search Engine. All in all, I was very impressed by Stefan’s presentation and was actually able to interview him quickly before the batteries in my recorder died. To hear the recording simply go to www.getinsyght.com and stream or download the episode. The conference was off to a great start.

Related posts:

1. SearchFest 2010 – Pre Game
2. Why Does Microsoft Call Bing A “Decision Engine”?
3. SearchFest 2010 – End of the Show