Is Microsoft Bing a Better Search Engine for Chemists?
Harry E. Pence, SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY, 13820, pencehe@oneonta.edu William M. Davidson, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, wdavidso@uvm.edu One of the disadvantages of writing this column only once a year is that it is difficult to predict what is going to happen in search engines during the next month, let alone a year from now. As Yogi Berra is reputed to have said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” For the past several years this column has predicted a battle royal as Microsoft and Google fought it out to become the search engine of the future. In each case, the predicted battle never happened; Microsoft’s share of the search market stayed below ten percent, and Google’s market share slowly but steadily edged higher as Microsoft’s new initiative was a flash in the pan. This year, finally, there seems to be a real competition heating up. Microsoft has not only come out with a new search engine, called Bing, but also committed millions of doll
