Sorry Bing
I typically like promoting what the company I work for does. As a shareholder and employee, its obviously in my best interest. (why should I lie?)
However, I must say the new Bing Windows Mobile app (no, I won’t even link to it) is terrible. I feel it ruins the brand and not only that but has actually completely removed any desire I had of having a windows mobile phone as well. So it has also ruined the Windows Mobile brand for me as well. Why you might ask? Well here is why…
I have had a Smartphone since 2005. (One word, capital S, as in the trademark Microsoft Smartphone.) Honestly things haven’t changed much in windows mobile since then. However then more than now, the appeal of functions in a Smartphone were limited. I could check and send email, access stored contacts in my exchange account, access my calendar, sort of use IM, and then came along Live Search for Windows Mobile. I immediately installed it on my Smartphone and it just about doubled the reason to have a Smartphone with mapping support, location, directions, movie times, and even more. Not only that, but I thought it was pretty well written as well and easy to use.
Even when I would travel to conferences and talk with others that had pocket pc phones or Smartphones, I would make sure that they had the app installed, and each time they would comment how much having that functionality changed the use of their phone! This was in 2006 at this point mind you, but that is still now 4 years ago. (Note: 4 years later, windows phone OS STILL does not have any of that functionality in it.) So what does this tell me? It tells me two things. 1. The brand value of windows on mobile phones is immensely helped by having features such as mapping, directions, movie times, gas prices, etc. Live Search initially brought these to the brand, so without these features it cuts the value almost in half. 2. Being such a valuable tool (and free) this also improves the brand value for Live Search as well. It probably didn’t matter that these features had nothing to do with search, however, it was a very positive addition to the platform so was helping the name. Many colleagues I talked to with windows mobile OS felt the same as well and often wondered why we didn’t try to make sure that this app (which has always been somewhat of a hidden download even for the last 4 years) wasn’t just about required on all windows mobile phones.
Even after all this, they even improved upon it and in 2009 released a better version of the tool as well. Here is a review on CNET. Note that a few quotes from the article match my same sentiments:
“Back when Windows Live originally released Windows Live Search for Mobile, I absolutely loved it. Windows Live Mobile Search is a killer app … This is an absolute must-download application if you have a Windows Mobile phone. Also, the best part...it's free!”
Well fast forward 4 years later and Live Search is now Bing. (Nope, sorry, still wont link.) I wasn’t surprised to also see a new version of the mobile app released (though even though I am running the VERY latest public version of the mobile OS on my phone, it STILL doesn’t have the functionality built in). But I had only assumed that they would at the least only change the branding and at most fix more bugs / improve on functionality.
… It’s Terrible.
Sure, I can tell you for certain that it focuses probably 300% more on actually searching than the previous tool ever did, but the functionality is all gone. Gone are the huge buttons that allow me to find the local movie times, get local gas prices, check traffic, get the weather, and so on. What?? These were half the reasons I have a windows mobile phone in the first place. Really you went and removed these critical functions from the only place available on windows mobile phones? Was this to try and force people to go BUY apps in the marketplace? Forget it, I would sooner throw this phone off a bridge actually.
Now, here are the new menu items in the updated app: Maps & Traffic (Though I claim I can’t actually use this to get the latest traffic easily for two reasons. 1. Gone are the large icons that were easy to press and now all they have are a list of text links with no pictures, so I can hardly click on it without getting out the stylus, and 2. The time it now takes to render the map images is about 3 times longer than the maps would load in the previous version (and you have to load the maps to see the traffic). That’s pretty terrible. The ability to get the weather, movie times, and gas prices are actually entirely removed and not replaced. What were they replaced with?? “Business Directory” (what?), “Top News” (Ok, probably something cool, but not at the expense of all else), and “Recent & Favorites” (Again, cool, but really at the expense of the others?). As I mentioned, there are no icons, all menu choices are links like you are looking at a web page. The whole app is designed to make you think you are at the Bing.com page and you are encouraged to just type or speak something you would like to find and the new decision engine would find it for you.
Well, I tried speaking “Gas Prices,” which is exactly what the icon in the old software says. Utter failure. It asks me back in the results “Did you mean ‘Prices’ near Gas,KS?” Um, no, no, I didn’t. None of the other results are even related either, so that pretty much fails at that. So yeah, did you want to take the experience of the app on the phone to being more like what its like at the website? Well that’s pretty much what happened, but you see, the experience of the mobile app previously was improving the brand I feel (meaning it was WAY better than the site experience). Now bringing the crappy experience of a search engine to what WAS one of the central hubs on my mobile phone is basically both a total failure for both my phone as well as the Bing brand as well.
Thank goodness I have the Google windows mobile app on my phone. Honestly its primarily what I have running on my phone all the time now just from a functionality aspect. I used to think we really had them beat with our app, but we actually did something strange and replaced something that was actually better than their offering with something that is a complete regression and much worse. Very sad indeed.
So again, I am Sorry Bing, but I think your decisions just solidified me using Google on my phone from now on and came close to me deciding not to get a windows mobile phone again since (as I mentioned) you can’t get this stuff elsewhere on windows. If there was only an app for that.
J.P.
