Project BG - Day 2 Robin Hood

Today we search for the latest movie "robin hood". Here's the screenshot.

Google displays related news as topmost results, while Bing puts up theater showtimes near your location.

Project BG - Day 1

Project BG is a special 365-day project in which I compare search results for a query using Bing and Google in a split screen format.

Observe the differences side by side and judge the search quality yourself. Starting today, I'd like to put up a daily comparison screenshot for the next 1 yr or so. This can help you analyse the strengths and weaknesses of both the search engines.

I plan to compare results for a variety mix of queries. For instance - movies, musicians, recipes, locations, reviews, products, books, math, word lookups, games, science and obscure topics etc... Hope you guys like it.

Lets start the Day 1 with a location query - "new york city". God! am in love with this city :))

 

Get 25GB Storage FREE!

There's a way to get 25GB storage space - Free, Absolutely Free! With the launch of Microsoft's SkyDrive™ Explorer, you can store your files on their servers. Download SkyDrive Explorer here. After installation, you can see a new icon in My Computer. Login to the SkyDrive™ using your Windows Live ID.

• Change share mode and content type of the folders
• Copy folders and files into SkyDrive™
• Files greater than 50MB support
• Open files directly from SkyDrive™
• Move files and folders within storage

Microsoft-Murdoch-Google Analysis

Presenting the "Big Fight" between Microsoft and Google. Rupert Murdoch was in news recently when he decided that the News Corp websites would not allowed to be indexed by Google. Apparently the move was pushed and secretly backed by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Lets analyse this step.

• With this move, News Corp and its websites limit the exposure to internet users, by not being indexed by Google and rather showing up on Bing.

•  News Corp would earn some quick short term cash from Microsoft as per the deal. This allows the media giant to quickly compensate for lagging internet ads+subscription revenue.

• On the other hand, Microsoft will improve its PR with media firms. This deal is very much an implicit signal to publishers, media firms etc.
  

• According to Google, the news items account for a very small percentage of the total searches all around the world.

• It is perceived that Google doesn't like copyrights much. This deal may have some impact in Google's ambitions to scan all books and information to be made available to people.

• All in all, the winner of this deal seems to be Rupert Murdoch.
  

Bing market share increases

Within five months of official launch, Microsoft's Bing search service has reported an increase in market share to 9.9-10%. The official Comscore figures highlight the steady upward graph in Bing's overall market share. Bing has a very neat and good representation of search results. With new features like Visual Search introduced with a limited sets, a new photograph everyday on its homepage, Cashback feature, it continues to attract new and returning users both. Bing has aggressively eaten Yahoo's market share which fell 0.8% to 18.0 and is also keeping the pressure on Google.


U.S. Core Search Share, September 2009 (Source: comScore qSearch)

Google	65.4%	+0.5% m/m	+2.4% ytd
Yahoo	18.0%	-0.8% m/m	-3.0% ytd
Microsoft	9.9%	+0.5% m/m	+1.4% ytd
Ask	3.9%	0.0% m/m	+0.2% ytd
AOL	2.9%	-0.1% m/m	-1.0% ytd

Windows 7 Upgrade Deal - Big Discount

Windows 7 is the new rechristened Vista coupled with the simplicity and endurance of XP.
The new notable features as you know are

• Superbar - the new taskbar featuring jumplists.
• Window snapping - nice feature for product comparison on internet.
• New updated Paint program.
• No sidebar - that means you can place the gadgets anywhere on the desktop.
• Enhanced calculator - whole new features included in it.
• Great multi-touch support.
  
• Faster than Vista - including fast bootup, eats less memory.

Ok... so here's the upgrade deal part... Microsoft is offering a huge discount for students. You can buy an upgrade copy of Windows 7 for just $29.99 here - a promotional offer till Jan 3, 2010. That's a flat 110 bucks off retail price. Big deal. Hurry up guys, you just have to enter your college/school email ID. I've already done it. For guys having any confusion regarding which version you should choose, the following chart will help.