It's News to Me, Microsoft Employees Like bing
2011-4-12
I had dinner with a couple Microsoft employees last night. There was no official business, just a couple of mix attendees relaxing after our flight. I was surprised to hear two things from them, the first was that they were excited about their company's leadership and direction, and the second was that they actually thought bing was a good search engine.
I don't disagree with either assertion, but various former MSFTs seem to paint a different picture about internal politics and backbiting. The revelation about bing was the more surprising of the two, and their explanation of the situation pretty much summed up my feelings: "It's a great search engine, but if I hadn't been asked to switch, I wouldn't have." They went on to say that bing's daily image was the biggest draw for getting their parents to switch to bing. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft pursues the search space at MIX this year.