mrluc

Cha-Ching: Microsoft Pays Users to Search with Bing

I disagree -- heartily -- that this will have lasting impact other than perhaps enticing google into doing something similar -- ie, giving the customer the cash back.

From a usability point of view ... look, I just tried using bing.com, and it's beyond awful. No sort by price button in the Shopping area?

What?

That's just the first thing that jumped out at me; there are others. Like if you're searching in "cash-back" mode, and there's nothing, it'll say there are no results that match that query ... but it won't add "... in cash back mode; click here to perform a regular shopping search". Or, better still, just show regular shopping results and put a notice at the top that says 'no cashback items found'.

You know what they do instead?

You search twice, on the same term, and once it gives you no results and the next time, results, with no explanation.

(the explanation: you've mysteriously left cash-back mode, which you didn't know you were "in" to begin with because it's hidden over on a column on the left, instead of up by the search box where I expect to see the options for the actions I'm taking, namely, searching).

These things are ... are ...

Well, they're things that google and amazon and even ... well... not ebay, so much ... understand about the user experience. Oh, Apple, too.

I know these businesses seem to share some kind of snobby, latte-sipping quality that probably turns off Business Types, but the things that geeks and makers like about these companies are reflections of abilities, built deeply into the companies, to understand the user experience -- which is everything in software.

Bing is:

1. hilariously worse than Amazon as a store
2. tragically worse than Google as a search engine, and
( even paying out of its own pocket ),
3. miserably worse than FatWallet.com at saving me money.

That's an entrepreneur-coder's take on why MS will continue to be dominated in the new software.