Bing have definitely done a good job of getting everybody talking about them. But from where I’m sitting I’m not going to changing my homepage from Google anytime soon. They claim Bing is a ‘decision engine’ and all that jazz, but ultimately it is just another search engine. And there are still a handful of things that Google can do which Bing can’t.
Current Time
Enter into google the word “time” and your location (or just “current time”) and it comes up with the time, no such feature at Bing (click images to enlarge).
Sports Scores
Type the name of a major team, EG “Manchester United”, into Google and it tells you the current score of a match they are in, or if they aren’t playing right now their next scheduled match is shown. Bing has no such feature at all.
Films Times + Reviews
Google has a very nifty feature where all you do is type in “films” and your location. It comes up with the titles of what is currently showing and when the film begins, you can then click through for a trailer, reviews or more info on the film. Once again Bing has no such feature at all.
Maps
If you want to quickly find a map of a town or city you can simply enter the word “map” followed by the place name into Google. Do this in Bing and it trys to locate businesses going by the name of “map” in the place you specified, or sometimes just no map at all it just shows traditional results.
Fill In The Blank
Sometimes you can’t remember a specific detail, only part of it. Google has a feature so you can put a little asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence you want filling in. Bing has no such feature. I tried a search for Bob Marley died on *. Google then highlights the answer in bold font in the results descriptions so it is easy to pick out. You can still find the answer via Bing (it isn’t in bold font) but with more niche info, less specific, I expect you would struggle somewhat in comparison.
Functions Both Providers Can Do
There are some things Bing can do on a level with the Big G. They can; calculate maths equation, perform conversions, weather forecast, flight status & tell you regional hotels. But even when Bing can do the same the Google services still work better. And another thing, certain features are only available to certain regions on Bing, yet another negative point for them.
Conclusion
I think the conclusion bit is pretty obvious! When it comes to depth and quality of functions Google is clearly way ahead. Bing claim to be a ‘decision engine’, based on the features above Google can help me make decisions a whole lot quicker and more easily.
Considering Bing has only just being released this is very poor by Microsoft, but unfortunately not surprising. I want a genuine challenger to Google, but for me from everything I’ve seen, read and used on Bing this is not it.
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This is old stuff.. Check Bing again and you’ll see they have added some new features. They have scores, movie review etc…
This article is factually incorrect.
Lets look at each of the ‘feature gaps’ raised here-
Current time: Entering ‘current time’ in Bing does give current time. In fact i entered ‘current time london’ too and it gave me the time in London.
Look at your watch, or the clock on your computer or phone…jeez!. 
. Both equally good
BTW (on a lighter note), Chris if you are actually going online and seaching for ‘current time’ to figure out the current time, you’ve got serious issues dude.
Sports scores: Enter ‘Baseball’ on Bing and Google.
Bing gives you RESULTs and UPCOMING games!! Google gives you a wikipedia article on baseball. lol.
Enter ‘cricket’ – both engines return scores. Both equally good.
Film times and reviews: I entered ‘Star Trek movie’ in Bing and it gave me all shows in movie theaters *near* my location! It also shows me an overview and reviews. Google prompted me to enter a city to get the results (guess the 2nd time experience will be as good as Bing). Bing better?
Maps:
Enter ‘Map san francisco’ in Bing and what do you get? Oh my god! its a map. Who would have guessed it??
Let’s take it a step further. Go to Bing and enter ‘cheesecake factory’ (Assuming you have your profile is set to san francisco). You automatically get a map and nearby locations of cheesecake factory, with ratings, phone numbers and addresses. Typing ‘cheesecake factory’ in google just gives you the cheesecake factory web site.
Bing expects that someone looking for Cheesecake factory wants to actually go there! you dont even have to enter ‘map’ to indicate that!! I’m willing to bet that a large % of people searching for Cheesecake factory actually wants to go there. Bing better.
Fill in the blanks:
Not sure why this is a deal breaker for you – both engines seem to give the same response. Both equally good
Searching for ‘Bob Marley died on’ in both Search engines returns Wikipedia somewhere at the top. and you see,
‘He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami on the morning of May 11, 1981′
Both engines show the response. with Bing you can additionally preview the links to get to the right one before clicking on the article. Why didnt this appeal to you?
Looking at this article objectively, it seems like one of the following occured,
)
1) The author did not do his homework before putting this piece together
2) The author made up his mind that Google was better and just tried to look for reasons to support his claims. (some people call this bias
That said, I think the world agrees that Google is definitely a great search engine – its the most preferred one today and one reason for that is that it gets the job done well. Microsoft has done a great job with Bing, and as this article shows (though it was not the author’s original intent
), Microsoft Bing meets/beats Google on quite a few features.
But users arent picking Bing yet and the reason for that is not the feature set. It is the familiarity and comfort factor. Chris obviously is more familiar with Google and tried to identify a feature set that wouldnt work on Bing (or work the way he knew it to work!). Familiarity is going to be a big hurdle for Microsoft Bing to overcome, but they’ve made a wonderful start…and I hope from a consumer’s perspective that Google gets a real run for their money.
Seems like comments are being moderated.
I posted a comment with analysis on why the above article was flawed and the comments are now deleted. Wonder how that happened.
Oh well, if you want to be closed to the fact that Bing does indeed offer the features above (in some cases does a better job than Google), suit yourself.
Ideally blogs should trigger open discussions and debates. If your article was factually correct, why would you be afraid to do that?
Good luck!
I think if you used the United States version of Bing (you can change locale by clicking on the country in the top right corner), you will notice that many of the use-cases you listed above can actually be done in Bing too.
How about also doing a comparison of five things that Bing can do that Google can’t?
@Jonathon Wong, I have my version set to ‘United Kingdom’ but yet the features still don’t work for me. I’m already working on a post as you suggested but am actually struggling to be honest to find 5 good things Bing can do Google cant
@Mike, I took the screenshots yesterday, they are proof of what I am seeing and that the features don’t exist when I use it. So it’s not old stuff.
@Vijay (I presume you are also VS), Thanks for your points. We are a UK run blog, hence comments don’t get moderated at night so there is a delay in them appearing on the website. I understand what you are saying but even some of the things you have said EG ‘enter star trek movie’ simply do not work for me. As for when you said “looking at this article objectively” I can assure you I did do my homework (all the screenshots speak for themselves as to what I experience on Bing). I do think Google is better, but based on my experience above and the fact I think their search results are better I’m going to of course. But I didn’t make up my mind and then go looking, in fact I want to do a post with 5 reasons Bing is better but am actually struggling – the only reasons I can see are the background image being pretty (wow!), and the fact every SERP doesn’t contain a wikipedia page in it.
I’ll be doing a follow-up post in the coming days anyway so watch out for that
Google is still the best! And Yahoo second.
google is the best thing that has ever graced the internet. its features are flawless with no cost to the public.
I’m just not comfortable with bing.
Google is awsome! Bing is GAY!!!