Microsoft’s Bing is still far behind Google. Can a new logo help?
Microsoft hopes so, and they’ve just rolled a new logo and design for their search brand, part of a “new, more modern era for Bing.”
In addition to the new logo, Bing also is rolling out what it calls a more “modern” experience, one that “is faster, cleaner and more visually appealing.”
“We believe that search can be beautiful as well as functional and efficient. With that as our goal, we evaluated fonts, spacing, color, visual scan patterns, the search box and even the underlying code,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the changes. One of the big changes is the introduction of a new feature called Page Zero which helps people get information before search results appear on the page.
“We do this by showing key tasks associated with the query while they’re typing. This not only provides important information and services to them quickly, but enables them to see what kinds of things they can explore on Bing and across the Web,” writes Lawrence Ripsher, General Manager of User Experiences, Bing. “For example, if you type Katy Perry, we understand what you’re looking for before you’ve even searched and give you a quick glance of who she is and suggest other popular search tasks associated with the singer.”
At the end of the June, Microsoft’s U.S. search share stood at 17.9 percent, compared to 66.7 percent for Google.
In remarks last monh, search expert and former University of Washington computer scientist Oren Etzioni (who co-founded Farecast, which was sold to Microsoft) expressed his disappointment with Bing.
“It’s fair to say that I would have expected more [from Bing] during the past few years,” said Etzioni. “I am disappointed with, given how many smart people are there, how little has come out and I’m hoping that [with]the new re-org [it] will make a difference.”
So, what do you think of the new Bing logo?
