Bing vs. Google

I switched my default search engine to Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, about a week ago. I'm used to finding pertinent results to most of my searches with google in the first page and usually the first few links. So my rule for Bing was, if it's not on the first page I'd go to Google and see how it worked there. I just wanted to give a quick report of my experience so far.

For the most part Bing seems to do just fine. I haven't really seen any advantage to it over Google but the rumor is it's supposed to be better for media and perhaps a few other things. I'd say 1 out of every 5 queries I do on Bing I'm not satisfied with the results and so I try Google. Out of those 1/5 I'd say Google gives me what I'm looking for about 2/3 of the time. These are very rough numbers of course, completely off the cuff, but for now it's the best I can do.

Here are a few samples from those 20% that Bing didn't do the job for me (They are pulled out of my twitter so keep that context in mind):

Google beats bing for map search of "rattlesnake creek, covelo, ca". Google nailed it. Bing didn't get close.

RT @pmdorn: @mmadink I crashed Bing! I searched for Google! LOL

Google wins Bing for "add twitter to blogger"

google beats bing for the query "What is a twibe"

And here's a few to give Bing a bit of a moral boost:

Bing did the job for "What is JEE"

Bing beat Google for "google app engine manager". Pretty funny that Bing did a better job then Google for Google's own product.

I've been playing around with Google's web development tools (very cool by the way) and I couldn't find the home page for their App manager. Google would NOT give it to me. Gave Bing a try and it got it on the first page. That's a good example of why competition is good. I love Google but everyone needs some good healthy competition to keep them honest.

So at this point I think it's actually up in the air as to which is actually better. Google obviously has a leg up but Bing is brand spanking new and with that in mind I'm pretty impressed with it. I haven't changed me default search engine back to Google yet either. I will as soon as Bing starts to slow me down.

User Interfaces

There is a blog here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=4467 that discuses users moving from Windows XP, the primary windows user base, to Windows 7. As with almost anything that discuses Windows where user comments are allowed a flame war started. Normally I just skip over these but I found the subject of this one very intriguing; Microsoft and it's constant changing of the user interfaces (UIs), good or bad?

Some very interesting points were actually made in between the insults being thrown back and forth and I'll try to present both sides of the argument.

Side A; Unless there is some ground-breaking change to a UI that will add significant advantages over the current one, it shouldn't be changed at all due to the cost and trouble of users having to relearn how to do things (like open a file). Most users are just trying to get their job done and using a computer is a means to that end, nothing more. Unless there is a better way to do their job they shouldn't have to relearn how to do it. Period.

Side B; Technology changes and interfaces change with them. Users should expect to have to familiarize themselves with a new UI for a piece of technology in the same way they would have to, and be expected to, familiarize themselves with new controls for a vehicle. Say going from a '70 Chevy to a '09 Prius. It's also likely that the UI hasn't changed much unless there really is new functionality that the old interface wouldn't support. It really probably just looks a bit different and once you look past the new colors and graphics you'll see it's mostly the same.

My Take; I'm not agreeing and disagreeing with either of them. I definitely think changing the UI for no good reason is really annoying and I myself get irritated every time I find something that I used to know right where it was has moved. On the other hand I'm a developer and I actually have to make the call to change the UI at times. I've experienced first hand the ridiculous lash-backs from users about having to learn a new interface that I know is better. I've also seen first hand that it's only a few users that really seem to have a problem. Out of my 2500 users of this small application that I drastically changed the interface on (because the old one wouldn't support new features) I had about ten users call and complain. Out of those ten, one called back repeatedly and accounted for about 98% of the complaints.

So what's the point of this post if I'm not going to take a side? It's just to ask people to be aware that UIs do have to change sometimes to move things along. This isn't always the case and users have a right to be annoyed when they get changes for PR purposes but before you flame your developers please take a few extra seconds to see if there really is some benefit to the annoying new UI.