Happy first birthday, Bing. You have come a long way since June 3, 2009!
“You’ve successfully gained significant market share in a year – from 8 percent in May 2009 to 11.8 percent in April 2010, according to comScore. And you’ve introduced cool features like Bing Travel, Bing Shopping and the Silverlight-powered version of Bing Maps. People love your big home-page photos. So, for your first birthday, Google is giving you the best kind of present : Imitation.”
This is interesting, considering how proud Google is of its simple, white, plain home page. Remember, just six months ago Google introduced an even simpler home page, the extra buttons and options fading in.
Now, Google has gone in the other direction. It is rolling out the new feature to all users over the next few days
Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, asked Google’s Marissa Mayer whether her company was copying Bing.
“The real motivation for this had to do with iGoogle,” said Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience. “Some users really prefer the classic look but want a small amount of personalization, so this is a happy medium in between.”
