I have been trying out Bing last week, as has Fred, and the team at Clickable (and probably a lot of other folks).  Generally, the verdict seems to be that it’s not terrible but has some obvious shortcomings, especially when it comes to integrating blog and very recent content.  Despite these shortcomings, I do believe that Bing represents a real challenge for Google because of its design.  This is not just a question of Bing adding some “bling” (could not resist) in the form of a picture on the home page, but exposing a bunch of things in ways that appear easier for novices to find.

As Danny Sullivan points out, Google has done many of the same things for a long time but they were much harder to find, prompting Google to add a prominent “Explore Google Search” link.  Clearly, the secret here is that Google took a very incremental approach to introducing new features into search, whereas Bing represents a more radical redesign of the experience (not that radical mind you, but still pretty significnat – e.g. search stemming is right in the main results).  Now it is interesting to put this in the context of Doug Bowman’s departure from google.  Here is a somewhat lengthy quote from Doug’s blogpost about his reasons for leaving google:

Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

So the real challenge that Bing represents is a willingness to make more daring design decisions.  I believe in several areas that has already resulted in significant usability improvements over google for the average user.  Of course, Google has many brilliant people and will address this challenge with more than an extra link on the home page.  For instance, Peter Norvig is already quoted as having picked up on this challenge.