bit-tech.net | Blog

I can quit the Internet anytime I want – just not today

Posted at 10:10 by Harry Butler with 12 comments

Those of you who listen to the bit-tech and CPC podcast (and if not, why not?!? You can even win games, you know) may know that I got married recently.

Along with taking the plunge and enjoying the perks involved therein I elected to take the opportunity of a honeymoon in Canada to see if I could go a full two weeks without hitting the internet. Working for bit-tech and CPC I practically live online (in fact, barring the two hours a day I spend commuting I’m online pretty much 24/7) and was relishing a little time 'off the grid'.

What I discovered, hardly surprisingly, is that I am a hopeless internet addict.

Bing will beat Google

Posted at 11:47 by Clive Webster with 29 comments

Alex wrote an interesting blog post about Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, last week. The gist of it was that Google is so successful that competing against it with a similar product isn't going to work - and as a result, his idea was that searching social sites such as Facebook and Twitter is probably the biggest threat to Google.

I feel that’s slightly missing the point. Bing, after all, is the default search engine for Internet Explorer, which is the default browser of the interweb, therefore as long as Bing just works and is good enough (in the same way that Google is now) no-one will see a need to switch. Far from Microsoft needing to up its game to beat the services of Google, it’s Google that needs to provide a compelling reason to switch the search engine of IE’s search bar from Bing to Google.

If it isn’t Google, it isn’t search

Posted at 12:19 by Alex Watson with 24 comments

So there’s a new search engine called Bing. It’s made by Microsoft, and before it was Bing, it was Live Search, and before that Windows Live Search and MSN Search and... basically it’s been going since the Magna Carta, and since it’s not Google, 90% of people don’t care. But Microsoft does, and it wants you to. It’s really serious this time about taking on Google so it’s spending billions of dollars to make sure people stop Googling and start Binging. Steve Ballmer said Microsoft was “willing to spend five to ten percent of operating income for up to five years”. That’s serious cash.

A small slice of this moolah has fallen to us at bit-tech (we already spent it on Taiwanese beef jerky), but unlike a lot of ad campaigns, this one is interesting as Microsoft has been quite keen to know what we think, and what you, the readers think about search – specifically, the problems with it. If you do want to give your thoughts on search, we’re running a survey and you can win an Xbox 360 Elite.

It’s a difficult question, because, to be honest, my first answer was that I didn’t really have any problems with search. Google just works. There’s a reason that this is the answer given in many a forum thread.

Archive for the ‘facebook’ tag

I can quit the Internet anytime I want – just not today

Bing will beat Google

If it isn’t Google, it isn’t search

Authors

Archives

Links

Archive for the ‘facebook’ tag

I can quit the Internet anytime I want – just not today

Bing will beat Google

If it isn’t Google, it isn’t search

Authors

Tag Cloud

Archives

Links