My day job is in the marketing/public relations industry. It therefore never ceases to amaze me when half-baked products get launched into the market place. And so it is with Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.

In the last week, Bing has received publicity in the media that I consume. Like many others, I was tempted to take a look. For sure, the front page of Bing signals that it is a beta version. But who in the wider non-geek community understands that beta means, put bluntly, not finished.

The obvious thing was to search for a few common subjects, like my name and this web site. Sure enough, my real name comes up with numerous matches, just like on Google – but many of those pages have been around for years. A search for this blog, which is much more current, only brings up the front page. It is no wonder that Bing has only sent one visit to this web site in the last month, whereas Google sent nearly 1,000 visits.

And so it is, that like many people whose interest in Bing was piqued by the recent publicity, went for one visit, were disappointed, and have returned to their old searching ways. Microsoft will need to work harder than that to break the search monopoly on the internet, particularly because it is going to be much more difficult to get me (and many others) to take a second look.