Comments on: Is Microsoft’s Bing a raving success in Australia?

By: Isobel Shaw

Isobel Shaw — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:02:24 +0000

it is only a matter of time before Bing Microsoft acquires Yahoo search engine:`’

By: Kymm

Kymm — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:29:09 +0000

i think that Bing is not as good as Google. Google would still index new websites faster than Bing. Microsoft would still need a lot of catching to do with GoogleBot.

By: Heather May

Heather May — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:25:13 +0000

my default search engine is Yahoo but now i am using BING because it is much better than Yahoo. i heard that Bing search engine would power Yahoo search also.

By: Hadley

Hadley — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:52:50 +0000

Aussies are generally a slower bread, I suggest that Bing is easier to remember than google as its less letters.

Also in Australian, Bing is pronounced Beeeng, not sure how this helps.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:41:23 +0000

I wonder if it is folks trying to win this Microsoft Australia treasure hunt. It requires the use of Internet Explorer 8 but perhaps Bing is also encouraged.

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/default.aspx

Or maybe Bing is a rude word in Australia, just like, ah, superuser.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:56:35 +0000

We’re all looking for Lara BINGle

By: eccles

eccles — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:19:48 +0000

Why so popular in Asia?
Perhaps we need to look at what Bing means in Chinese?

As far as webmail programs are concerned, I sympathize with your wife: people get used to one thing for email and tend to stick it. I still use Yahoo mail and I love it. I had a Hotmail account at first but got so much spam that I abandoned it. Gmail? Never liked it.
But this same mindset is also true for search engines. People don’t just use Google because it provides relevant results, they ALSO use it out of habit. Habits, as your wife shows, are hard to break; so it will be hard for Bing to take market share from Google. But I think it may modestly succeed. I switched to Bing just to check it out, and like it so much that it has become my default search engine. For me, the searches are a bit better, but others have reported weaker results than Google. I guess it depends on what you are searching for.

By: GaGaTak

GaGaTak — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:46:30 +0000

I guess its popularity in India and China is mostly because of the huge Population and growing number of Internet Users… Australia i don’t know… Doesn’t make any sense why Australia is more… US and Canada should be at the Top!

By: Pingdom

Pingdom — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:11:32 +0000

@Duncan: Thanks for sharing your insights. You make a good point. A relatively high popularity of MSN/Hotmail would certainly have an effect, especially if they are pushing Bing hard.

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:13:51 +0000

The Bing Lee theory is so bizarre as to be laughable. Bing Lee is a chain that only has a presence in NSW, and then nearly exclusively in Sydney. While Sydney might be our largest city, it’s not by a huge margin (around 500-600k last time I looked). You also need to consider that Google has a search market share here of around 90-92% depending on the figures quoted.

My bet is two fold. NineMSN (the local version of MSN) is still fairly popular here, primarily due to it being default in IE. NineMSN are pushing Bing hard.

But the bigger factor is with Hotmail. Hotmail/ Live Mail has always remained fairly popular in Australia (Yahoo was never as big here), and guess what happens when you log out of Hotmail…. you get taken to Bing.

My wife turned around to me the other evening after logging out of her Live email account (she doesn’t like Gmail…I’ve never understood why), and said to me “what’s Bing?” In front of her was the front page of Bing….and she hadn’t asked to go there, she was taken there after logging out.

Australia’s popularity in regards to Bing reflects the popularity of Hotmail/ Live mail and has little to nothing to do with Bing Lee.