Imitation: the sincerest form of flattery
Awhile back, I’d tweeted about the image search on Microsoft’s Bing search engine and how it’s pretty awesome. Apparently, Google agrees with my assessment: Bing’s image search functionality is the tops. So Google’s bogarted it. Yes, I’m in my 20s and I just used the word “bogart.” See the screen cap below.
What do you think? Should Google have ignored Bing entirely, or were they right to co-opt this functionality to stay competitive?
While it is most likely that Google ‘adopted’ some visual style elements from Bing, a simple look at the top bar would indicate that Bing did it’s fair share of ‘adopting’ from Google.
It’s all fair in love and war they say. I just can’t tell if Google is getting hugged, or sucker punched.
There’s no question a great deal of Bing’s basic interface was a direct rip from Google. But I also think (at least in terms of my rudimentary remarks on image search) the door has swung both ways.
And honestly, I highly doubt Google’s going to take a massive hit from Bing’s presence, at least in the medium term. SEO professionals, web designers, and marketers still look to Google for how to improve their search marketing. I don’t see Bing suddenly edging them out.