Bing.com on D-Day: A Difficult Landing
June 7, 2009 by Craig Stoltz
Bing, the new search engine–er, “decision engine”–from our very good friends in Redmond, Washington, performed well on the 65th anniversary on D-Day. Alas, the landing was not without casualties.
Every day Bing surrounds it search box with a different gorgeous photo that fills the screen. These are not seen-’em stock photos. I visit Bing daily now just to see them.
Each photo embeds invisible interactive cliclets in various spots. Mouse over them and they Flash bits of information; click and you’ll be led to a curated search page that shows Bing in action.
On D-Day, the photo was an aerial shot of the D-Day beaches at Normandy as they appear today.
On D-Day, Microsoft's Bing search engine presented a lush photo of Normandy's beaches today.
I’m a D-Day geek but was still struck by the power and beauty of the image.
I found and clicked on the prompt “It’s hard to look at this beautiful beach today and imagine the violence of the D-Day invasion: See where it all happened >>“.
Here’s what I saw.
Bing's search results after clicking on a D-Day history prompt.
Great interactive map, based of course on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform. The blue markers point to results at left.
But these search results are a mad hash of content, an inexplicable mix of items related to D-Day history, vacation rentals in Normandy, and a few things that my merdre-y college French couldn’t penetrate. But it looks like one of them was a fund raising thing where 550 of an 850-euro goal had been pledged for something or other.
And thus the strength and weakness of Bing: An eclectic, visually appealing search engine of unique design and potential utility–but insistent on making commercial offers a big part of its value proposition, almost without regard to the nature of the search.
It feels like if I don’t want to buy something, or contribute something, or make a travel plan, that Bing isn’t for me. Which, often, it therefore will not be. Except to visit those gorgeous daily photos.
So: For Bing, a valiant landing on a perilous beach. The real fight is ahead.
Bing is nice and its homepage background image is nicer. Well, it might be distracting sometimes but it doesn’t hurt to know a little trivia every day, right? So far what I like about Bing is its ability to display results in panes so you don’t clutter your screen with windows. But I’m not a fan of its name. It should be something one can easily associate with search like Find.com.
Mr. Stoltz,
Wasn’t Sverdlov a Jew? You don’t mention this. So you are u Jewish? You don’t look it. You don’t have a Jewish name. Please discuss.
bill topolsky
washington
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the note. Ah, a man who knows his Bolshevik history!
Yes, my great-great-great uncle Yakov Sverdlov was a Jew, as were many of the Old Bolsheviks. [Lenin himself was part Jewish--one grandparent, if I recall. There are anti-Semite anti-Communists who have used this to condemn Lenin and the Revolution. Unfortunately, you can find references to that all over the web. Sigh.]
As for my own religious upbringing and beliefs, I usually contain those discussions to my closest friends and family, and not in a public forum. I hope you understand.
Thanks again for the note, Bill. BTW, I enjoy your comments around the web about the war and other topics. Sharp stuff.
Best,
Craig
p.s. For those not following the action, Bill’s note refers not to this blog entry but to a story I wrote for the Washington Post that appeared in yesterday’s bona-fide ink-and-paper edition of the Travel section. It’s about my and my son’s recent trip to Russia to explore the life of our remote relative, Yakov Sverdlov, one of the original Bolshevik leaders.
You can find it here. http://xrl.us/bewttg