Google's new search features put pressure on Bing

16.06.2011
With Google releasing new image and voice search tools this week, Microsoft needs to up Bing's game or risk falling behind the evolving search race.

That's how industry analysts see this week that appear to give the dominant search engine several features that rival Bing can't yet deliver. And that isn't going to help Bing, or its search partner Yahoo, make up any of the distant ground between them and Google.

Hadley Reynolds, an analyst with IDC, said Bing should be working furiously to because Google just changed the game on it.

"While Bing and Yahoo have been rightly focused on the 'decision engine' capabilities of search and delivering people more meat and fewer links, Google is changing the character of the search experience with Instant Page, image search, and their other new features," he said. "With the size of Google's audience, they get to condition what the market expects from the search experience, and that makes it hard for Bing and Yahoo not to counter with similar capabilities, even as they continue to try to differentiate themselves."

Google laid out its new search features at its Inside Search event on Tuesday, unveiling voice and image search, along with Instant Pages, which is designed to load the top search result on the user's computer before he or she even clicks on the link.

Reynolds pointed out that speed and imagery is addictive to search users-- and that's exactly what Google offered up this week. "Google is taking a big step toward expanding the repertoire of search by bringing voice and photos and images into the same interaction paradigm as text," he said.