‘Bing alternative to a search box’

After launching its much-hyped search service Bing in June this year, Microsoft is gearing up to take it to the next level by improving and localising it for markets like India. While the full launch of Bing in India would happen sometime next year, Satya Nadella, senior vice-president, online services division, R&D, Microsoft, tells K V Ramana how Microsoft’s arrangement with Yahoo will help maximise the marketplace and let the duo take on Google. Excerpts:

How is your search business doing?
Our competitor Google is in a dominant position. If I think about my job or what we have to do, we have to come up with some super-innovative solution to attract the customers.

It is a tough challenge. We launched Bing in June 2009. Since the launch, we have grown our share in the US, which is a lead indicator, by two points. Just to put it in a perspective, since the launch of Google, no one has grown by even a single point other than Google itself. So, the progress we have made is very, very good. We have also launched in the UK and Canada and we want to take that progress to countries like India.

What’s contributing to growth in US?
There are two things. When we look at the profile of the Bing users, it is the young population — in the age groups 18-24 and 24-28. Bing is definitely more attractive visually. People connect with our visual content. But foundationally, the vision behind Bing is about the state of search technology.

More than 50% time spent on search engines is spent on sessions that are greater than 30 minutes. This means people are trying to do a lot on search engines. People are trying to find a house, buy a car, find a school for their kids and do more to make decision. So, Bing is being positioned as a decision engine than just a search engine. One of the most used buttons on a browser while searching is the ‘back’ button, and each time people tend to reformulate their query. All our efforts are based on these data points.

[But] this paradigm of going into a search box does not scale. It’s like a command line with some limitations. So to come out of that, we have also introduced something called visual search. Usage of pictures for search is more intuitive. Our effort is to offer several alternatives to a search box.

What is the status of Bing in India?
We are offering pilots of some of our innovative features. One of them is to offer landmark-based routing. In India, people travel or locate addresses by using landmarks.

That is one feature we have developed here and we are now taking it to other parts of the world. But overall, our emphasis is to bring all those features that are already being offered in the world market. In India, we also have to offer linguistic features to support multiple languages. We are still in beta in India and will probably continue to be in beta for the next six to 12 months.

What’s brewing on spatial search?
We are excited about spatial search. Just like a video browsing, geospatial reference is a significant point. Using this model, we will actually take a user to the location he is searching for. Virtually, he will be at the location and we will also offer a walk through of the location. For instance, if the user is trying to locate a museum, instead of just giving him the address, we will take him to the museum virtually and also take him into the museum for a walk through. Instead of just putting a map in search, we are using videos and photographs of the location the user wants to locate. Using our Photosynth technology, we are taking the user straight into a building or the location that is being searched.

How long will it take to incorporate all this in the Indian version?
None of these features is inaccessible to the Indian user. But the content for the Indian market will have to be developed. At some level, it has begun. But some of the language-specific features are still being worked out. It is not that Bing is not usable today. We are working on that. That is the reason we still have a beta tag. One day, we will remove that tag, may be sometime next year. We are actively trying to get users to use the service in India.

Any mobile platform plans with it?
One of the interesting features is our launch of Bing on the iPhone. We are now Number 4 on application downloads. We are bringing maps, search news and MSN all into one experience. Some of the features available on a PC search become more acute in mobile. We are taking a different approach for mobile users.

What’s the revenue model here?
Overall, our business model is in some sense the same as that of Google. When it comes to search, it is the search advertisement. For every query, there is an advertisement.

Google definitely has a lead, but the Yahoo deal is significant for both Microsoft and Yahoo. The deal provides one market place. An advertiser gets 30% reach between Yahoo and us in the US market. This is a very significant number. It will bring more advertisement and more revenue per search for us. We are looking at closing the deal and getting regulatory approvals.

When will the deal with Yahoo close?
It is likely to happen in the first quarter of the next calendar year between the department of justice in the US and the European Union and other government agencies. So, once the deal closes, we will start getting that market place converged and it will have a good impact on both Yahoo and us. But, there will still be some gap. Our approach will be to stay put and persist with it.

What is the deal with them?
As part of this deal, Yahoo will use us as their search provider and ad platform for the paid search; it is more like a migration from their current system. They will still maintain their front-end experience. But all that is available on Bing will be available to Yahoo users too.

How is it applicable in India?
In India, Yahoo has an ad-business for search. It will in turn become a part of the Microsoft platform. Every advertiser in India will have two options — Google and Microsoft-Yahoo.

After all this, do you still believe Microsoft can compete with Google?
At the end of the day I have to recognise Google as a leader in the search category. I don’t want to dismiss that. But, I can’t take them on in the current paradigm. The world is being well served in the current metaphor. I have to look at adding value to what we do to compete with them. User experience, ranking, trends and other such features are important for us and it need not necessarily about competing in the current metaphor. We are doing what Google is doing and recognising that it is not sufficient. If I offer what Google is offering, you will say ‘Thank you very much’. I have to match Google on the core of search and still differentiate.