Bada Bing, Bada Boom: Culture inside Bing
<i>unless Google, like most of Microsoft’s previous competitors, summarily shoots itself via a series of disastrous decisions</i><p>It's possible.  Corporations change.  The difference in quality is slight, but google has been making some ludicrous mistakes lately (IMHO, obviously):<p>1. Google instant.  This is such shit I can hardly believe it.  Yeah, I can turn it off, but the average person is going to be charmed by the gimmick of it without realizing how awful it is.  On unfamiliar computers, I go to bing automatically.<p>2. The disinclusion of search terms.  This happened all the time pre-google, and now it's happening at google with every query.  You have to affix a plus sign on every term if you want it actually searched.  Again, normal people are unaware.<p>3. The debasement of the brand.  I'm talking about the non-stop cutesy-pie logos.  What if Coke did this?<p>4. Very public flops outside their area of expertise.  Google+, etc.<p>...these four things aren't going to hurt google too much, but they tell me that the lunatics are now in charge.