Cape Town – Google and Bing seemed fully focused on adding as many
social features to their search engines but it seems as if their
strategies have changed.
Bing, in its early days started out as a
'do engine', as Microsoft liked to call it. Thanks to its acquisition
of Powerset and in-house expertise, Microsoft had all the requisite
knowledge to actually answer people's questions on Bing beyond just
showing them the usual 10 blue links.
Google's focus these days,
it seems, is squarely on its Knowledge Graph, a project that feels more
like the realization of Bing's early promises than Google’s recent
obsession with social search. The Knowledge Graph, which is featured
prominently on Google's search results pages, is now taking precedence
over social search, which has been slowly demoted over time.
Bing,
on the other hand, uses this space to focus on social search and what
your friends and other experts say about a given topic. When you search
for a band or musician on Google, you'll get a biograpy, links to
upcoming concerts and YouTube videos and other info in the sidebar. Bing
often shows some of the same information, but it's randomly distributed
in between the regular search results.
It definitely looks as if
Bing is moving more toward social search and Google is more interested
in semantic search, though both, of course, continue to offer a mix of
both.
- News24