9 ms·

Eric Schmidt: “Our competitor is Bing”

60 points by thomas 16y ago

simonsarris 16y ago
On my first day of giving Bing a go (I used it for about two weeks to try to fairly assess) I ran into a problem: It can spellcheck words, but it cant get it right contextually. Let me give you an example: http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer I meant to type "how I won the war" and only Google picks up on this. "waer" alone into google instant will bring up water (country), but with the context of my search phrase it gives me something far more accurate.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ianbishop 16y ago
  Sounds like Bing uses just spell checking rather than n-grams on search queries as Google does.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    That's a pretty big whole for Bing to miss. Probably doesn't track as well since it requires a mistyped query -- most people doing comparisons of relevance compare correctly typed queries. But a big hole for real world usage... at least I'd think so.
    - Qz 16y ago
      I can't tell if that whole is intentional.
      - brianpan 16y ago
        You're query is irrelevant.
    - jrockway 16y ago
      I agree. The first thing I would do, if writing a search engine, would be to do Google-style phrase corrections. (Although lately, I find it too aggressive. When googling obscure error messages, it usually "do you mean"-s it into a less obscure error message that I already understand. Sigh.)
      - InclinedPlane 16y ago
        Indeed. I think google might be falling into the trap of believing that the better search is the one with more results when in many, most?, cases the exact opposite is the case.
      - chc 16y ago
        I really think Google is getting to be too clever for its own good. When I try to search for some Mac API, it will give me a blog post about an iPhone app, no matter how much I beg and plead. Bing returns precisely what I wanted for those "Where the heck did Google get that SERP from?" kind of queries.
- wozer 16y ago
  Interesting. If you use Bing from Germany (with German UI), it works correctly, i.e. suggests "How I won the war". Which makes sense, as "water" is not a German word...
- imurray 16y ago
  I tried a bunch of search engines the other day when I couldn't find something specific. Bing was the least useful: it generalized "dice" to "die" and then gave me lots of hits about death. It should have been fairly obvious that the articles returned had nothing to do with dice.
fleitz 16y ago
It makes a lot of sense, android and phones are a complement to their business. Android is simply a way of reducing the cost for producing more phones. Facebook while large doesn't pose a serious threat to "organizing the worlds information" once Facebook sells their social graph information Google will simply purchase it and use it to further optimize search results. Neither Facebook, nor Apple are real competitors to Google's core operations. Google is a much more serious threat to Apple with Android than Apple is to Google with iPhone. Facebook and Apple ARE threats to mind share, but that pales in comparison to a threat to the bottom line. Bing IS a threat also because Microsoft has a large stake in Facebook and could ostensibly find itself with preferential rights to Facebook's social graph. If Bing could integrate the graph into results first it could give them huge search advantages. Traffic from Bing also costs about half of what it does from Google.
TrevorJ 16y ago
Seems pretty logical to me. As much diversity as Google has, they are still a search company. A lot of the tech they leverage in other areas seems to come from competencies they acquired while improving search. I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems.
- inerte 16y ago
  > I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems They don't, but they share one common goal: Get money from advertisers, who are targeting people looking for some thing. This "some thing" is obvious on Google, its users are in buying mode even before entering the query term. Now, if (and that's a big if), FB can connect advertisers and buyers, it'll slow down Google, because people will have spent their money with FB advertisers. Google and FB customers are their advertisers. They might do completely different things but their revenue source is similar. I personally don't believe in this. Facebook doesn't share the same easiness of monetization as Google, and it has some huge issues of making its visitors enter buying mode. But there you go... even if I disagree, that's why some people think of a FB vs. Google fight. Follow the money :)
  - TrevorJ 16y ago
    Ah, this is a very good point you bring up here. Had not thought in those terms, but you are very right. Advertisement, however tends to be very pan-platform if you will. Even more so these days, integrated, vertical marketing seems to be the name of the game. The big money will continue to make ad buys on all platforms that deliver eyeballs, not just one or the other.
    - inerte 16y ago
      Yes, because the more venues you broadcast your ad, the more chances you have to find a customer. But not quite, because of one thing: ROI. On the web, you can easily measure the return of your investment. Match your spent money with the server visitor logs, and you know instantly if your campaign is profitable. With "brand" advertisements, the game is different, you can't see immediately that 1 dollar spent on ad generated 2 in sales. But it's a tried and proven method of advertisement, basically all we had until the internet. Enter the web, you can reach a precisely targeted audience, and easily measure the return. If you know Google delivers more ROI than Facebook, you're going to spend your money on AdWords. This is specially true for the long tail of ad money, businesses with smaller budget for ads. Google has this market locked tight, anyone can start an AdWords campaign, and the truth is that everybody does. Don't get me wrong, Facebook makes money from advertisement, but they will never (in its current incarnation) match Google's offers: AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Optimizer, etc. What Facebook has to do to connect advertisers and consumers is so much more complicated than Google. Build a "social graph", find their preferences, match with their friends, plus putting their users into buying mode. BUT, if delivered, it's way more powerful, because the product has been proven with your circle of friends and with stuff that you have actually said you like (Facebook knows a lot about everyone).
awakeasleep 16y ago
I felt really annoyed by the interviewer. It seemed like along with information gathering, he was equally interested in creating controversy. Did you notice how, instead of asking Schmidt questions, he posed contentious statements? "CERTAINLY Google must be scared of Facebook!" He did that with everything. Look how Mr Schmidt scrunches his face at about 2:00 when the interviewer tells him how he must be feeling.
jeromec 16y ago
Very good interview. I think it's smart that he is not underestimating Bing. Mr. Schmidt also has great comments clarifying Google's position on the net neutrality announcement with Verizon (about 12:00 mark).
- lukevdp 16y ago
  Agreed. I also found it a very informative video
Qz 16y ago
It's funny, in my mind I always think Eric Schmidt looks like Egon from the Ghostbusters, and whenever I see his picture I always think to myself, 'Who is this guy?!'
dbrannan 16y ago
To me Bing sounds too much like "bling". Does anyone else have that silly word association stuck in their head?
- 1010011010 16y ago
  I always think of Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ
emwa 16y ago
can somebody explain how being on facebook stops people from searching on google?
- dchest 16y ago
  I guess, the more time they spend on Facebook, the less time they spend googling?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Two different activities. If I want a map from 123 Fake St. to 742 Evergreen Terrace, I am going to use Google Maps, not Facebook. If I want to know how many degrees Fahrenheit 100 Celcius is, I'm not going to ask Facebook, I'm going to ask Google. If I want to look at drunken pictures of my friends, though, then I will definitely use Facebook. I use each tool for what it's good for, and I think most other people do the same because it comes naturally. (I hate structured socialization, though, so I don't use Facebook. But I can accept that I'm abnormal in that respect.)
- dotBen 16y ago
  In MBA world there is this somewhat confused notion that if Facebook's search engine is powered by Bing then people who use Facebook a lot will naturally/organically start using their search (ie Bing) more. The halo effect. I don't think it really plays out because who searches in Facebook, and your browser search box is always present.
antpicnic 16y ago
Google needs Bing to be moderately successful to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit. Bing is a win for Microsoft either way. If it gets about 30% market share, then Bing makes Microsoft money and forces Google to invest more in search. If even the largest software company after investing billions can't stop Google's growth in search, then Microsoft and others will claim that that Google is a monopoly. So it should be subject to anti-trust laws. In the old days, when General Motors completely dominated the car industry, they made sure to keep their market share under 25%. They believed, probably correctly, that a higher share would bring anti-trust sanctions.
- jrockway 16y ago
  Isn't anti-trust designed to prevent people from abusing their monopoly position? For example, Microsoft was the top OS vendor. They wanted to dominate the highly-lucrative Web Browser Vendor business. So, they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser. The government thought this was an abuse of the monopoly, but the charges didn't stick. What Google's doing is nothing close to that, though. Nobody uses other search engines because they suck. The results are irrelevant and the ads are irrelevant. That's not anti-competitive action, that's competitive action -- they make a good product that people like. Seems legal to me.
  - ahi 16y ago
    Google 'email'. Now gmail might have the top position organically, but if Google is a clear monopoly the DoJ might come a-knocking just to make sure.
  - walkon 16y ago
    I agree with your main point, but not the Microsoft example of abuse: they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser They didn't force anybody. One of the first things I would do with a fresh install of Windows back in latter 90s was open IE to download Netscape. Having IE on there made it enabled me to easily learn about and get different browsers. I don't understand how that is so bad. Where was the antitrust on Winsock? What? Forced to use their TCP/IP stack?! Consumer-based OSes should have certain software by default. Wasn't this more a bit of prescience on Microsoft's part? I mean, now we have Google developing a "browser" OS. Can't get much more coupled then that. What if that becomes the monopoly OS in 5-10 years?
eogas 16y ago
Facebook and Apple? Where'd they come up with that one?
aufreak3 16y ago
Isn't it likely that FB is making google more ad money without google having to lift a finger? On FB, a good chunk of links to "outside world" stuff pass around. Websites do fbconnect 'cos FB&twitter drive traffic to them. Google places contextual ads on these sites and in youtube videos without anybody needing to search for anything. Even youtube has "share on FB" button. I don't think FB can keep their soc graph to themselves for much longer .. if as ES says people will just give the data to google ... just as they probably do for FB now. (You can tell FB to crawl your gmail contacts and link up.) So by that argument I can buy ES's "FB is not our prime competitor" statement. Apple is somewhat obviously not a competitor since google can also push ads to iOS devices and pull data like location. That leaves Bing .. which makes me scratch my head. The only reason I can think of for google considering Bing to be their main competitor is to avoid antitrust suits by not looking like a search monopoly. Side note: FB's ads are pretty funny actually. I keep getting "Download Chrome, a fast browser" ads on my FB page despite the fact that I'm viewing the page in Chrome.
- aufreak3 16y ago
  To put it another way, when I hear "google is a search company", I take it to mean "google's business depends on searching the internet" instead of "people use google to search the internet" - the former being much wider in scope than the latter.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Arun2009 16y ago
I like how his cool confidence stands in contrast to Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer's aggression. Notice how generous he is with compliments for Google's competitors.
- rodh257 16y ago
  Probably easier to do when you're on top. If he seemed anything but confident it would raise a fair few flags (media would be all over it too).

60 points by thomas 16y ago

On my first day of giving Bing a go (I used it for about two weeks to try to fairly assess) I ran into a problem: It can spellcheck words, but it cant get it right contextually. Let me give you an example: http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer http://www.google.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+I+won+the+waer I meant to type "how I won the war" and only Google picks up on this. "waer" alone into google instant will bring up water (country), but with the context of my search phrase it gives me something far more accurate.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ianbishop 16y ago
Sounds like Bing uses just spell checking rather than n-grams on search queries as Google does.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  That's a pretty big whole for Bing to miss. Probably doesn't track as well since it requires a mistyped query -- most people doing comparisons of relevance compare correctly typed queries. But a big hole for real world usage... at least I'd think so.
  - Qz 16y ago
    I can't tell if that whole is intentional.
    - brianpan 16y ago
      You're query is irrelevant.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I agree. The first thing I would do, if writing a search engine, would be to do Google-style phrase corrections. (Although lately, I find it too aggressive. When googling obscure error messages, it usually "do you mean"-s it into a less obscure error message that I already understand. Sigh.)
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      Indeed. I think google might be falling into the trap of believing that the better search is the one with more results when in many, most?, cases the exact opposite is the case.
    - chc 16y ago
      I really think Google is getting to be too clever for its own good. When I try to search for some Mac API, it will give me a blog post about an iPhone app, no matter how much I beg and plead. Bing returns precisely what I wanted for those "Where the heck did Google get that SERP from?" kind of queries.
wozer 16y ago
Interesting. If you use Bing from Germany (with German UI), it works correctly, i.e. suggests "How I won the war". Which makes sense, as "water" is not a German word...
imurray 16y ago
I tried a bunch of search engines the other day when I couldn't find something specific. Bing was the least useful: it generalized "dice" to "die" and then gave me lots of hits about death. It should have been fairly obvious that the articles returned had nothing to do with dice.

fleitz 16y ago

It makes a lot of sense, android and phones are a complement to their business. Android is simply a way of reducing the cost for producing more phones. Facebook while large doesn't pose a serious threat to "organizing the worlds information" once Facebook sells their social graph information Google will simply purchase it and use it to further optimize search results. Neither Facebook, nor Apple are real competitors to Google's core operations. Google is a much more serious threat to Apple with Android than Apple is to Google with iPhone. Facebook and Apple ARE threats to mind share, but that pales in comparison to a threat to the bottom line. Bing IS a threat also because Microsoft has a large stake in Facebook and could ostensibly find itself with preferential rights to Facebook's social graph. If Bing could integrate the graph into results first it could give them huge search advantages. Traffic from Bing also costs about half of what it does from Google.

TrevorJ 16y ago

Seems pretty logical to me. As much diversity as Google has, they are still a search company. A lot of the tech they leverage in other areas seems to come from competencies they acquired while improving search. I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems.

inerte 16y ago
> I never understood why people think they are positioned against FB.. Google and FB don't solve very many of the same problems They don't, but they share one common goal: Get money from advertisers, who are targeting people looking for some thing. This "some thing" is obvious on Google, its users are in buying mode even before entering the query term. Now, if (and that's a big if), FB can connect advertisers and buyers, it'll slow down Google, because people will have spent their money with FB advertisers. Google and FB customers are their advertisers. They might do completely different things but their revenue source is similar. I personally don't believe in this. Facebook doesn't share the same easiness of monetization as Google, and it has some huge issues of making its visitors enter buying mode. But there you go... even if I disagree, that's why some people think of a FB vs. Google fight. Follow the money :)
- TrevorJ 16y ago
  Ah, this is a very good point you bring up here. Had not thought in those terms, but you are very right. Advertisement, however tends to be very pan-platform if you will. Even more so these days, integrated, vertical marketing seems to be the name of the game. The big money will continue to make ad buys on all platforms that deliver eyeballs, not just one or the other.
  - inerte 16y ago
    Yes, because the more venues you broadcast your ad, the more chances you have to find a customer. But not quite, because of one thing: ROI. On the web, you can easily measure the return of your investment. Match your spent money with the server visitor logs, and you know instantly if your campaign is profitable. With "brand" advertisements, the game is different, you can't see immediately that 1 dollar spent on ad generated 2 in sales. But it's a tried and proven method of advertisement, basically all we had until the internet. Enter the web, you can reach a precisely targeted audience, and easily measure the return. If you know Google delivers more ROI than Facebook, you're going to spend your money on AdWords. This is specially true for the long tail of ad money, businesses with smaller budget for ads. Google has this market locked tight, anyone can start an AdWords campaign, and the truth is that everybody does. Don't get me wrong, Facebook makes money from advertisement, but they will never (in its current incarnation) match Google's offers: AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Optimizer, etc. What Facebook has to do to connect advertisers and consumers is so much more complicated than Google. Build a "social graph", find their preferences, match with their friends, plus putting their users into buying mode. BUT, if delivered, it's way more powerful, because the product has been proven with your circle of friends and with stuff that you have actually said you like (Facebook knows a lot about everyone).

awakeasleep 16y ago

I felt really annoyed by the interviewer. It seemed like along with information gathering, he was equally interested in creating controversy. Did you notice how, instead of asking Schmidt questions, he posed contentious statements? "CERTAINLY Google must be scared of Facebook!" He did that with everything. Look how Mr Schmidt scrunches his face at about 2:00 when the interviewer tells him how he must be feeling.

jeromec 16y ago

Very good interview. I think it's smart that he is not underestimating Bing. Mr. Schmidt also has great comments clarifying Google's position on the net neutrality announcement with Verizon (about 12:00 mark).

lukevdp 16y ago
Agreed. I also found it a very informative video

Qz 16y ago

It's funny, in my mind I always think Eric Schmidt looks like Egon from the Ghostbusters, and whenever I see his picture I always think to myself, 'Who is this guy?!'

dbrannan 16y ago

To me Bing sounds too much like "bling". Does anyone else have that silly word association stuck in their head?

1010011010 16y ago
I always think of Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ

emwa 16y ago

can somebody explain how being on facebook stops people from searching on google?

dchest 16y ago
I guess, the more time they spend on Facebook, the less time they spend googling?
- jrockway 16y ago
  Two different activities. If I want a map from 123 Fake St. to 742 Evergreen Terrace, I am going to use Google Maps, not Facebook. If I want to know how many degrees Fahrenheit 100 Celcius is, I'm not going to ask Facebook, I'm going to ask Google. If I want to look at drunken pictures of my friends, though, then I will definitely use Facebook. I use each tool for what it's good for, and I think most other people do the same because it comes naturally. (I hate structured socialization, though, so I don't use Facebook. But I can accept that I'm abnormal in that respect.)
dotBen 16y ago
In MBA world there is this somewhat confused notion that if Facebook's search engine is powered by Bing then people who use Facebook a lot will naturally/organically start using their search (ie Bing) more. The halo effect. I don't think it really plays out because who searches in Facebook, and your browser search box is always present.

antpicnic 16y ago

Google needs Bing to be moderately successful to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit. Bing is a win for Microsoft either way. If it gets about 30% market share, then Bing makes Microsoft money and forces Google to invest more in search. If even the largest software company after investing billions can't stop Google's growth in search, then Microsoft and others will claim that that Google is a monopoly. So it should be subject to anti-trust laws. In the old days, when General Motors completely dominated the car industry, they made sure to keep their market share under 25%. They believed, probably correctly, that a higher share would bring anti-trust sanctions.

jrockway 16y ago
Isn't anti-trust designed to prevent people from abusing their monopoly position? For example, Microsoft was the top OS vendor. They wanted to dominate the highly-lucrative Web Browser Vendor business. So, they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser. The government thought this was an abuse of the monopoly, but the charges didn't stick. What Google's doing is nothing close to that, though. Nobody uses other search engines because they suck. The results are irrelevant and the ads are irrelevant. That's not anti-competitive action, that's competitive action -- they make a good product that people like. Seems legal to me.
- ahi 16y ago
  Google 'email'. Now gmail might have the top position organically, but if Google is a clear monopoly the DoJ might come a-knocking just to make sure.
- walkon 16y ago
  I agree with your main point, but not the Microsoft example of abuse: they forced everyone using their popular OS to use their web browser They didn't force anybody. One of the first things I would do with a fresh install of Windows back in latter 90s was open IE to download Netscape. Having IE on there made it enabled me to easily learn about and get different browsers. I don't understand how that is so bad. Where was the antitrust on Winsock? What? Forced to use their TCP/IP stack?! Consumer-based OSes should have certain software by default. Wasn't this more a bit of prescience on Microsoft's part? I mean, now we have Google developing a "browser" OS. Can't get much more coupled then that. What if that becomes the monopoly OS in 5-10 years?

eogas 16y ago

Facebook and Apple? Where'd they come up with that one?

aufreak3 16y ago

Isn't it likely that FB is making google more ad money without google having to lift a finger? On FB, a good chunk of links to "outside world" stuff pass around. Websites do fbconnect 'cos FB&twitter drive traffic to them. Google places contextual ads on these sites and in youtube videos without anybody needing to search for anything. Even youtube has "share on FB" button. I don't think FB can keep their soc graph to themselves for much longer .. if as ES says people will just give the data to google ... just as they probably do for FB now. (You can tell FB to crawl your gmail contacts and link up.) So by that argument I can buy ES's "FB is not our prime competitor" statement. Apple is somewhat obviously not a competitor since google can also push ads to iOS devices and pull data like location. That leaves Bing .. which makes me scratch my head. The only reason I can think of for google considering Bing to be their main competitor is to avoid antitrust suits by not looking like a search monopoly. Side note: FB's ads are pretty funny actually. I keep getting "Download Chrome, a fast browser" ads on my FB page despite the fact that I'm viewing the page in Chrome.

aufreak3 16y ago
To put it another way, when I hear "google is a search company", I take it to mean "google's business depends on searching the internet" instead of "people use google to search the internet" - the former being much wider in scope than the latter.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Arun2009 16y ago

I like how his cool confidence stands in contrast to Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer's aggression. Notice how generous he is with compliments for Google's competitors.

rodh257 16y ago
Probably easier to do when you're on top. If he seemed anything but confident it would raise a fair few flags (media would be all over it too).