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The Search War:
Bing AI Chat vs. Google

Episode 2

Story Duration: 6 min

Should a "revolutionary" product like this be hidden behind gates?

So... It looks like the new Bing "only" works with Microsoft Edge...

PS. Here's episode 1 if you missed it.

Product-led growth

The term Product-Led Growth has been thrown around lately, but the main idea behind it is pretty simple: create a product that's so good it’ll attract, convert, and retain people.¹

Since Microsoft wants to take on Google for search market shares², they should start by making Bing easy and accessible to use, regardless of your browser.

¹OpenView, Product-Led Growth (2023)
²Statcounter, Search Engine Market Share Worldwide (2023)

Anyways... Let's give it a shot! {click}

That’s a lot of friction for a company that wants to gain market share...

Ok... We need the Dev version... {click}

Then came the long process of setting up a new browser until—

"Welcome to the Dev Channel"

Huh?

I'm just a regular guy, looking to try the new AI chat... Where do I go now?

Bridge the gap

A lot can go wrong when trying a new product: missing steps, distractions, unclear instructions, etc.

That's why we must think about each step carefully. Ask yourself: "What happens in between?"¹

By doing so, you can find the gaps that people need to fill themselves (you can also check our product psychology course to help you achieve this.)

¹Samuel Hulick, Product People, Mind the Gap! (2017)

So I went back to bing.com, and thought about my first search—

Uh... Where's the chat?

I guess this is it? A bit hard to find... {click}

Finally, here we are! But—

—is it me or this big chunk of text... makes the answer hard to scan, and—

—the hidden URLs and the short paths aren't convincing either...

...Other than uxdesign.cc, I have no idea if the other links are reliable sources—

—But when doing a Google search, these links look much more relevant with more context.

And if the links are identical to what you'd get with Google...

What's the gain of having them in a chat?

Instead, what if we built an engine with—

—familiar patterns (similar to search results) combined with—

—the power of AI, with summaries and aggregations!

Reducing the number of steps between a question and its answer—

The Holy Grail

The only purpose of a product is to help someone go from A to B.¹

The fewer steps, the better the journey and the more successful your product will be.

Search is complex. You need to: type the right keywords, scan a list of links, find a credible one, navigate to different pages, scan the information, etc.

And the AI chat has the power to shorten this significantly!

¹Intercom, Designing paths, not products. (2021)

My old car is barely holding up... So let's see if Bing can help...

Later that night...

Hmm... Again, where's the chat?

Did they hide it completely?

Maybe the "chat" tab*? {click}

* I honestly just saw it...

Anyways, ads aside, this experience still falls short for 2 main reasons:

When entering the chat... That's when I understood...

That first page was almost all ads:

Ahhh... The chat is still ad-free... So they remove it for high-paid searches (like cars) so they don’t lose revenues!

1. It misses visuals. For online shopping, text just doesn't cut it.

2. It doesn't offer much information about the vehicles.

In the end, they could do a lot more... It could be super interactive and give a much better experience than just a regular search/chat...

So what if—

—we created a complete personal assistant like this!

In-chat rich answers, with the possibility of digging deeper with advanced refining!

Plus, they could easily implement highly visible and targeted ads...

...without compromising the whole experience as we've seen in the search results.

After some back and forth with the chat to learn more about the best SUVs...

As long as they understand the second-order effect of these decisions and deliberately consider the people behind their screen... It'll be exciting to see the future of AI.

The quality of the answers does improve as you refine your prompts! But—

The "Answer" Engine Dilemma

The premise of new AI engines is that they condense and summarize the information, so you don't have to explore or read more.¹

Just like I did here, you refine your search until you get complete solutions/answers.

So if people stop exploring, how do businesses get traffic? And how much power does that give these engines?²

¹The Verge, 7 problems facing Bing, Bard, and the future of AI search (2023)
²Forbes, The Future Of SEO Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) (2023)

Psych Level

Customer Journey

A recap of episode 2...

Chat onboarding & experience score

and the Edge browser onboarding quickly turns into a tedious task...

Unfortunately, Microsoft's desire to make you switch to their ecosystem prevents us from using Bing where we want...

They even hide the AI chat entirely to keep making ad revenues...

And the chat experience is flat... it's almost a step back from the current search experience. There's a clear opportunity to do much more with it.

The good news is... It does get better with better prompts!

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