Bring Bing to Europe!
The Search Cowboys, Bas Van Den Beld and Roy Huiskes, recently did their first radio show on webmasterradio.fm. They touched on many hot topics throughout the search industry, from the European Commission’s passing of the Microsoft Yahoo search deal to the drastic transfer of traffic from transaction sites to content driven sites. But one thing that stood out was their commentary on Bing’s UK and European release, or lack thereof.
It’s been noted time after time: when it comes to new media products and services from the US, Europe gets sloppy seconds. From movies and TV shows to social networks and search engines, Europeans generally have to wait some time before new products from the US reach their market. This is generally the result of the fact that these things need time to grow and be perfected before global release. But in an age of open information sharing, where the internet is globalizing the world and supposed to be breaking down these barriers, the notion of making a huge base of tech savvy professionals and consumers wait, in some cases years, to gain access to new innovations seems downright silly.
A prime example of this is Bing, which is available in limited format throughout Europe and the UK. While the full version of Bing is live in the US and contains many great search functions, the model on this side of the pond is basically Live Search with a facelift. The excuse is that they are gathering necessary data and making essential tweaks to Bing in the US before they fully release it. Why not do that globally? It would speed things up if anything.
Furthermore, the whole point of Bing is to gain share from Google in the search market. How better to do that then by winning over the hearts of Europeans by merely putting them on the same level as the US market and giving them access to Bing right away. Holland, for example, doesn’t get access to things like Hulu and Apple TV, let alone the fact that they wait up to three years before they get TV shows from the US. In turn, the effort required to make Bing fully available in places like Holland would be a huge gesture and go a long way winning over the loyalty of European users. They’re tired of waiting…Bring it on Bing!
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