Not likely – or at least not yet anyway!

Today Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they have (finally) completed a 10-year search deal which will help them be more competitive against the giant that is Google. However, they haven’t combined their advertising businesses.

Yahoo! currently has about 20 percent of the global search market, with Microsoft hanging behind with just under 10 percent which leaves Google with the lion’s share of the remaining 70 percent. Many have estimated that Google will begin to lose market share to Microsoft’s Bing as it gains popularity through its visual superiority over Google, however other have argued that if this becomes the case then Google will just match Bing’s template ideas. They have still yet to prove if they do what they do better than Google, all they have shown us so far is that they do it prettier.

The question that now needs answering is what will happen to the search as a result of this partnership? Well, according to Reuters, under the deal announced on Wednesday, Microsoft’s Bing search engine will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search technology for Yahoo’s sites, while Yahoo will be responsible for selling premium search ads for both companies.”

So how long has this engagement taken to come to its happy ending?

• 01/02/2008 – Microsoft makes an offer out of the blue to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion or $31 a share, after two years of rumours of a merger
• 03/02/2008 – Google lawyers announce the buyout will hurt Web innovation
• 04/02/2008 – Yahoo’s Jerry Yang lets the employees know that selling to Microsoft is a possibility
• 11/02/2008 – Yahoo! tells Microsoft ‘where to go’ saying their offer “substantially undervalues” Yahoo!
• 19/02/2008 – Bill Gates announces that they’re not interested in raising the offer for the buyout. Yahoo! releases severance plan details that would take effect after the deal and make it more expensive for Microsoft
• 05/03/2008 – Yahoo! announce and extend deadline for nominating candidates to its board, effectively buying time to come up with an alternative proposal. Rumours emerge that Yahoo are in talks with Google, MySpace and AOL
• 18/03/2008 – Yahoo! release a very healthy revenue forecast for the following two years – basically telling Microsoft “you see, that’s why you’ve undervalued us!”
• 05/04/2008 – Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer gets aggressive and gives Yahoo! a deadline of three weeks to accept the deal on the table or expect Microsoft to start hostile tactics and lower the offer price
• 09/04/2008 – Yahoo! announces it’ll have a trial run of using Google’s ad platform in place of its own for a bit – Microsoft raise antitrust concerns
• 26/04/2008 – Microsoft’s three week deadline expires
• 01/05/2008 – Ballmer announces to its employees that he “won’t go a dime above” what he thinks Yahoo! is worth and is willing to walk away from the deal
• 03/05/2008 – Microsoft increases its offer to $33 a share, Yang retorts by saying they want $37, Microsoft walks away
• 15/05/2008 – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn says he’ll try to oust Yahoo’s board at its annual shareholder meeting if it doesn’t reopen talks with Microsoft and ditch plans to team up with Google.
• 18/05/2008 – The pair get together to have a chat about a more limited deal, however after a month Yahoo announce the talks have stopped
• 12/06/2008 – Google and Yahoo! officially announce a deal to run Google’s ads alongside Yahoo’s search results and some of its partner sites
• 21/07/2008 – Icahn takes back his threat in exchange for three seats on Yahoo! board
• 09/09/2009 – The U.S. Justice Department hires an antitrust litigator to review the pending Yahoo-Google search-advertising partnership.
• 05/11/2008 – Google gets worried and cancels the partnership to avoid a Justice Department lawsuit. Yang can still see a Microsoft acquisition in the future
• 17/11/2008 – Yang steps down as CEO for Yahoo!
• 19/11/2008 – Ballmer washes his hands of the talks and says Microsoft is “done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo!”
• 05/12/2008 – Microsoft hires ex Yahoo! search executive Qi Li to lead its own online division
• 13/01/2009 – Yahoo! hires Carol Bartz to replace Yang
• 10/04/2009 – New reports emerge that Bartz and Ballmer have met about possible deals, including one in which Microsoft would sell advertising on Yahoo’s search pages and Yahoo would manage Microsoft’s display ads.
• 03/06/2009 – Microsoft dumps Live Search and replaces it with Bing
• 29/07/2009 – Microsoft, Yahoo! partnership announced

Now we wonder, is this going to be a marriage made in heaven – or can we expect to see the divorce papers come through shortly?

So Microsoft are trying to change the world again with their new search platform Bing. Apparently it isn’t a search engine anymore it is a ‘decision engine’ so is this offering anything new or are they just trying to reinvent the wheel.

Over the years search is not something that Microsoft have done well and I wonder who is more worried – Microsoft on hearing the news that Google will soon be releasing an operating system Chrome OS or Google when they saw Bing.

At first sight bing has a nice clean interface and I’m sure the use of images will have people setting it to their homepage to see what image they are displaying today, but what is under the hood. Ultimately the success of a search engine is down to the search algorithm and the results it produces which is why Google has such a huge market share (81.22%). Where others put monetisation above results, Google put results above monetisation and stole the market. More recently google have become more and more of a corporate machine and I would suggest that the quality of the search results have suffered leaving the way for other companies to reclaim some of the market share.

I have only just started to use bling and only when I remember to use it, but most of the time I will still type my search into the google toolbar I have installed. Google will be a hard habit to break but the proof is in the eating as they say so why not use this comparison site for a bit, which brings up the results side by side and decide for yourself.

One thing you can be sure of is that anything that keeps Google ‘on their toes’ can only be good for the end user and Microsoft with their huge advertising budget will do that. Microsoft have extensive knowledge in usability and Google have extensive knowledge in search algorithms but the difference between these two is that the first is transparent and the second a closely guarded secret, so whilst microsoft continue to try and make Bing peoples default search engine by its interface and good usability Google will continue to improve their algorithm and then as Microsoft launch new functionality Google will just pick the bits they want and apply them to their search engine.

We also have to ask the question – why Bing? A quick look at the dictionary reveals:

Bing – a heap or pile
Bling – flashy; ostentatious; glitzy

So you decide is Bing just a bing of s***e or just a bit of bling or is it something that can truely challenge Google.

One more dictionary definition for you comes from the urban dictionary.

Enough said I think.

This is one of the key phrases when it comes to user experience and usability testing on the web. Steve Krug even wrote a book on the subject using the same title.

So what is usability?

The ISO 9241-11 definition of usability states…

‘The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.’

So basically in a nutshell this means you want your visitors to come to your site, find what they’re after (and potentially purchase) quickly and easily and leave your site feeling happy about the whole process. Happy customers means returning customers!

In a study undertaken by Jakob Nielson in 2003, following a thorough usability evaluation and a redesign based on the results, websites average increase in usability was 135%

Metric	Average Improvement
Sales / Conversion rate	100%
Number of visitors	150%
Time taken to complete task	161%
Use of target features	202%

What do I need to do?

You’ve got a couple of options; you can either pay out a few thousand pounds to a company to run a usability test for you, or you can actually talk to your users!

It is critical to do two things: Identify and profile your users, and identify and profile their tasks.

Without identifying these two variables, how can you hope to have a website that’s usable to them and supports their needs? In effect, you would have ‘designed in the dark’ for them.

This all comes down to user-centred design and usability concepts, both of which we’ll be covering the basics of in our usability training courses that we’re currently developing.