Bing Visual Search pimps the Palm Pre
Last week Steve Ballmer made headlines by threatening to demolish an employee’s iPhone in the middle of the meeting. Imagine his reaction when he notices that Bing’s Visual Search feature shows a Palm Pre to represent cell phones.
Microsoft unveiled the new Visual Search feature for Bing yesterday at the Techcrunch50 contest. The company’s Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi believes, “The world of search will change. There will be a more graphic way people will search, and it will pivot how people search.”
When a user types their query into Bing’s Visual Search interface, the results are arranged as thumbnails representing different items or categories. In the home screen are topics such as famous actors, songs, presidents and, the real kicker, cell phones.
The thumbnail for the cell phone category on the landing page for Bing’s visual search is none other than a Palm Pre. While the Palm isn’t destroying the hopes and dreams of Microsoft’s mobile division nearly so well as the iPhone, it’s still free advertising for the competition.
Last week Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made headlines after threatening to stomp on an employee’s iPhone when he discovered it in a company meeting. While the gesture was largely for show to rally Microsoft employees against the competition, Ballmer’s point was quite clear.
Not even a week later Microsoft is releasing a new feature that prominently features another competitor. Maybe Bingers thought they could avoid the famous Ballmer wrath by focusing on a less threatening company than Apple.
The reality is that if you put a Windows Mobile smartphone as a symbol to represent cell phones, most people wouldn’t understand what you’re going for. Is that a PDA or a cell phone or some other kind of gadget?
However, that’s a problem that underscores the lack of design from Windows Mobile devices. Most especially when its competing against the likes of the Pre and iPhone.
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August 9th, 2011
Fantastic, excellent explanation, nice and simple! Cheers….