At the same time, the way the world searches is changing. You want more than just information. You want knowledge that leads to action.
The truth is you've evolved. It's time search caught up.
So we had an idea. Start over. And we did.
We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster."
Did you feel that? Did you feel the earthquake?
Probably not--the tremors have been going on for about a decade.
Bing acknowledges what we already knew: "nearly half of all searches don't result in the answer that people are seeking." In other words, Google is a firehose of internet information, and we're trying to drink from it. Or the internet is a forest, and we're scavenging for food. We want "knowledge that leads to action." I want a drink, or edible roots and berries--not the poisonous ones. Bing has unearthed--again, for the first time--the great liability of the search engine: increased access to information (or choice) does not necessarily lead to better decisions.
So we need a "decision engine." We want "smarter, faster decisions." Genius. Pure genius. Bing has hit the nail on the head.
Bing will sift your search results into logical categories (like, in the case of searching for a restaurant to patronize tonight, the categories of parking, prices, rating, and others) and display results in rankings on each page of results. Want to know where will have the best prices in San Francisco? Bing will tell you just where to go. It will search, categorize, sort, and rank, so that your search becomes a decision. Just like that.
That move from search to decision-making is one that will make us all breathe a sigh of relief. After all, I cannot count the number of times I have searched on Google, only to find I have to modify and repeat my search in order to get what I really wanted to make a decision (about, say, where to buy treehouse lumber).
The thing about hitting the nail on the head, though, is that you have to ask, Who put the nail there?
We can be clear that a Google search will show us the most popular sites that contain our keywords. But how precisely will Bing determine its categories? Will I trust that Bing's "logical" categories fit the way I think about the search at hand? If I'm looking for a restaurant that's been in that neighborhood the longest, that's family-owned, and has the friendliest staff, how will I know Bing will address those categories? Or will it always be about parking, price, and critics' ratings?
The power of a "decision engine" is that it takes the chaos of the internet search and narrows it to make choice easier. This narrowing is necessary--without it, we would never be able to choose anything. But how we narrow our choices may be as important as how quickly we choose. And who chooses the categories by which we make choices has the real power in the process of choice. By using Google, I know that my choices will be narrowed only by number of hits on a site. I get to narrow it further by searching again. More work--but more freedom. With Bing, my choices will be narrowed for me--less work for me, but taking one step closer to having the choice made for me. Isn't the fastest and easiest decision the one that is made by someone else?
Bing. Finally, I won't have to work as hard or think as much as Google makes me do. Yes, I've evolved--or maybe Bing will help me evolve. But into what? You decide--and let Bing help you.
May our decisions be not just faster and easier, but better. Who's going to promise that?
~emrys
1 comment:
So will Bing now be the arbiter of values? Decisions are driving by value systems. Often time this is reduced to price--a commonly agreed upon value system. But other values often override price. The company that exploits children for cheap labor will offer a better price but at the expense of the value you may have for human rights, particularly those of children.
Bing could well be that man behind the curtain that we are encouraged to ignore while we are entranced with the image on the screen. Yet the decision you make triggers real impact in a real world.
It makes me wonder if the choice in the garden was not a problem of "good and evil", but rather the choice of "knowledge". In the midst of the torrents of data I believe most would gladly exchange the multitudinous volumes for knowledge and information for a pearl of wisdom now and then.
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