[jordan_litko]

If Bing were to overtake Google and become the preferred search engine, would anything really be much different?

I'm no search engine expert but I'm pretty comfortable assuming that Bing would have(and does have)had the same issues with rap genius as Google did. The only real difference is that as the market leader Google had to publicly react to rap genius 'gaming' of their system.

I think what this shows is that yes, this is precisely a product problem because if Bing were at the top we would be having this exact same discussion only with reversed roles.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Google vs Bing is not a lot different than Coke vs Pepsi.

Until we have someone come along with a search engine which is actually a better product, market share will only really be a function of effective marketing.

That said, I think your article does a good job outlining some of the barriers that any potential competitor in this arena should be aware of.

[azakai]

> If Bing were to overtake Google and become the preferred search engine, would anything really be much different?

No one wants that (except Microsoft).

What we want is for Bing or something else to bring more balance to the search market. Today Google is so dominant that people SEO specifically for it, and Google decides what is and isn't ok to do, and can then decimate site's traffic based on that (as we saw with Rockstar in a recent example).

But if there were several successful search engines with no single dominant winner, things would be better. SEO would matter less because you would need to optimize for multiple targets, so you would get away with less tricks (or you need to work much harder to trick everyone, again with the result of less trickery). And no single company could decide the fate of every other company that needs to get traffic through web searches, which is what we have now.

[username223]

"If Bing were to overtake Google and become the preferred search engine, would anything really be much different?"

Maybe. Google sells site ads; Microsoft sells Windows and Office licenses; DuckDuckGo sells search ads; Apple sells hardware. Following the money, you realize that Google's goal is to produce search results just good enough to maintain its brand, while driving as much traffic as possible to sites that display its ads. Always ask yourself how your interests differ from your search engine's.

[antics]

The common "problem" that Bing and Google could both potentially be upset with RapGenius is the there is no accountability to the site owners. The search engine's job is to serve results that people want to see. In general, you can absolutely count on them to make decisions that they think will benefit their total relevance in aggregate, even if it hurts a particular subset of queries.

But that's not really so much of a product problem as a problem with the problem itself. In other words, it's not really clear that a better product will fix that, because the incentives will probably always point to doing this rather than not.

[smoyer]

"Coke vs Pepsi"

I want to be "A Pepper" but DDG doesn't always give me results ... Any ideas?

[JetSpiegel]

DDG is mineral water. Better for your health.