Advertising Priorities

Call me old school but I always thought that advertising was a chance to highlight your product, or service, and sell it. The latest adverts from Bing, the search engine of Microsoft, have been nothing but whining about Google. They also have the 'Bing It On' challenge showing, supposedly, how great Bing is compared to Google, and most people will allegedly pick Bing over Google. Hell you can even bet your first born against a Xbox.


The question is this. If Bing is so great, as it is claimed, and is better than Google why not let the search results speak for themselves? Let people use Bing, and if it is so great people will use it and spread the word. After all the 'Bing It On' challenge website is littered with linked javascript which allegedly just strips logos and other identifying marks. Want to trust Microsoft with the Javascript being honest then go ahead. Me, I've seen how much code Microsoft stole in the early days (check into Norton and Microsoft) and wouldn't put anything past them.

It makes Microsoft Bing look in a pretty poor state that instead of highlighting their product on its own merits they have to take a shot at Google. It sort of reminds me of the recent political back and forth between Obama and Romney in the presidential race - instead of taking shots at each other just say how you are going to fix things. Because, personally, I couldn't care less what Bing thinks of Google and likewise what Romney thinks of Obama.

And as for what search engine to use - All of them. Different search engines are better at different things. Google Image Search does a better job than the Bing Image Search. Yahoo News and Google News for News. Bing and Google for maps. DuckDuckGo for quick searches where I just want an overview of something. These are just my choices I guarantee everyone will have their own preferences.

Let us get advertising back to what it should be - a company highlighting its product, or service, on its merits. Or we'll be stuck in the eighties and people arguing whether the SNES or Mega Drive (Genesis) is the best. Time to move on and all that.