Bing tops Google in search innovation

Jay Yarrow in Business Insider seems to think Microsoft’s Bing is out innovating Google’s search engine.

Bing is a surprisingly fast-moving, innovative product—and it’s forcing Google to play catch-up time and time again.

The innovation? Bing has colorful photographs in the home page background. Google only has a colorful logo. Bing had Twitter integration hours before Google. Bing’s search results are categorized. Google followed suit a year later.

That’s innovation?

What has all this so-called innovation wrought?

For all of Bing’s new ideas, it hasn’t translated into big gains in users. The latest numbers from comScore show that 63 percent of searches in the U.S. are performed on Google, but just 13 percent are done on Bing.

Apple’s Mac has a similar market share compared to Microsoft’s Windows, yet the Mac is highly profitable. What does Bing’s innovation do for Microsoft’s bottom line?

Thanks to that huge share of search, Google has built a wildly profitable business. Meanwhile, Microsoft is losing billions online, dumping money into Bing and other properties.

So, while Microsoft gets credit for innovating and forcing Google’s hand, it’s not paying off.

How about innovating search results which are relevant? That would be different and useful and might pay off in more usage which would mean more revenue for Microsoft and less for Google.

I’m just saying…