CRI听力: Bing breaks silence in the search engine market

Microsoft has just signed a ten year contract with Yahoo, securing its core technology to run a new online search engine called "Bing". But entering the Chinese search engine market, can "Bing" make its mark?

Liu Min takes a closer look.

Reporter:

In the global market, "Bing" is set to challenge Google and Yahoo, and when it comes to China, rivals such as Baidu are waiting to see how it performs. "Bing", translated into Chinese is Bi Ying, which means 'Respond to whatever is requested'. But can Bing be as cool as its Chinese translation? Fang Liyong, an IT industry analyst, tells us about Bing's merits.(www.hXen.com)

"I think the emergence of Bing breaks the silence in the search engine market and brings a breath of fresh air into the field. For example, customers can preview the searched video clip results before opening the web links and the pictures are all laid out onto one webpage without having to turn pages. Especially in the era of web 2.0, Bing is definitely pushing the search engine industry develope."

This may seem quite attractive attributes to those who consider such technical matters but for most Chinese netizens, Bing doesn't yet ring a bell.

"If I search for Chinese content then I choose baidu and for anything related to English, I use Google. Bing? I've never heard of it."

Fang Liyong believes that Google and Baidu will eventually learn from Bing to be more user-friendly. However at the moment Bing is far from competitive.

"I think search engines like Baidu are not only a tool, but also a cultural necessity in China. It is also a huge search club, which includes Zhidao and other forums. It takes up more than 70% of the online search engine market in China. The dominant position in the Chinese market is unshakable. So localization is the biggest challenge for Bing in China."

Bing will need some time to fit into the Chinese market. But for more mature search engines such as Google and Baidu, finding ways to provide more user-friendly information is still a major challenge.