Is Bing the Next Big Thing?

I read a post today from Krista Pappas of Microsoft Bing Travel that said Bing will be using a lot more visual-style in their search. In other words they will be using pictures and images so you will have a better idea of whether you are interested or not.

I was curious so I clicked the sample link. It came up and said I had to install Microsoft Silverlight in order to use Visual Search. Not knowing what Silverlight was, I passed. Still curious I looked up Silverlight. Here's what Wikipedia had to say.

"Silverlight provides a retained mode graphics system similar to Windows Presentation Foundation, and integrates multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment."

Microsoft has gained some ground with Bing but have not quite gotten back to where MSN was back in 2006 when they had 10 percent of the search. They continuously lost ground from 2006 through 2008 when they only had a little over 4 percent of the search.

Since their debut of Bing and all the advertising they have been doing, Bing now boasts over 9% of the search traffic. They definitely have gained ground. The question at the end of their post asked "Is this a Game Changer"? Is it? Google gets over 70% of all search traffic, Yahoo 17%. I suppose it is possible they could continue to gain ground, but a game changer? I don't think so. Google is very progressive and will no doubt match whatever Microsoft is doing. What do you think?