Online coverage of the so called ‘Google V’s Bing’ war of the search engine’s has been incessant to say the very least. The Gadget show recently featured a compelling battle between Microsoft’s ‘new kid on the block’ and Google’s ‘Old Faithful’. Suzi Perry favored Google’s multiple applications while fellow presenter Ortis Deley chose Bing and then was able to use any application other than Google in the second and third rounds.

Suzi states that ‘even her Mum and Cat are able to use Google’ while Ortis comes back with the fact that ‘people only use Google because they are unaware of smaller yet potentially better websites’.

Round 1 – Masterfind

The first round starts with a ‘Mastermind’ style quiz, using the search engines to find the answers as quickly as possible.

With Jon Bentley firing the questions, Suzi steps up armed with a laptop and Google’s mammoth index, before being followed by Ortis using Bing;

Q1. What’s the weather in London today?

Suzi: Google confirms the weather instantly with its own Weather application.

Ortis: Bing also returns an instant correct forecast with results from FORECA

Q2. What is the population of Rome?

Suzi: Again Suzi is presented with an instant and accurate figure of 2,656,000

Ortis: Bing drops points here with an outdated 2005 consensus figure of 2,553,873

Q3. Does the popular character Hello Kitty have any siblings?

Suzi: Google’s deep links instantly reveal that the character has a twin sister Mimmy.

Ortis: Like Google, Bing showed the ‘Hello Kitty’ site with deep links but not as the first result, the results were confused by images and sponsored links which slowed Ortis down, though he eventually found the right answer.

Q4. What’s the weather forecast for London tomorrow?

Both Bing and Google presented instant result showing the correct forecast again.

Q5. Which country won the women’s world cup championship in 1999?

Suzi: Google’s handy timeline option took Suzi directly to the information showing the winners to be the U.S.A.

Ortis: Unfortunately, due to being held up on question 3, Ortis ran out of time and therefore could not answer the last question.

The first round leaves Google one nil up, however having carried out these searches myself using both Google and Bing alongside each other at the following website www.bing-vs-google.com, the results I found where very similar. Give it a go yourselves and let me know your results.

Round 2 – The Gadget Maze

This is where things started to get a lot more interesting for me with Google taking on the rest of the net in a two part thriller, Suzi claims that Google’s mammoth collection of software and applications can solve every task you can think of whilst Ortis asks the question ‘Is Google a jack of all trades and master of none?

In this part of round 2 Suzi and Ortis are locked into a Crystal Maze style cell and handed a list of items to find. The objective of this was to purchase the items at the cheapest price including delivery in the quickest time possible.

Suzi uses Google Products but finds that many of the items are out of stock and only presented in Dollars. This increases the time needed to find each item and work out the price and means that Suzi only manages to find three products out of five in the allotted time.

Ortis comes up trumps this time; spoilt, for choice between Kelkoo and Foundem before settling with Pricerunner. Pricerunner uses real people to research products and displays prices that include delivery which definitely gave Ortis the edge. Ortis manages to purchase all five items with all but one being cheaper than Suzy’s.

Ortis pulls one back for the rest of the net, could Ortis be right in stating that Google may be a jack of all trades but master of none, I think Google has a one or two things mastered to be fair.

The next part of round 2 is about photo editing and sharing; both presenters are given a photograph that is less than perfect with things like blur and red eye ruining the shot. This part of the battle puts Google’s Picassa up against the increasingly popular Flickr.

The most obvious difference between these two is the fact that Picassa is PC based so you have to download the software on to your computer before using it while Flickr is a web based application. These differences meant that Suzi was able to get straight to business by simply opening her image in Picassa and starting the edits.

Ortis however had to upload his image to Flickr, which took a couple of minutes, before he could start the editing process. With Picassa the red eye removal was effective enough and easy to achieve however although the usability was simple, the resulting contrast and sharpness wasn’t great with improvements barely noticeable.

Flickr’s editing ability shone through with simple easy to use controls and outstanding performance that made drastic improvements to the image. All they had left to do was to share the image online, due to Flickr being web based this was a really quick process and publishing was nearly instantaneous while Suzi had to wait for a nervous few minutes before being able to upload the image and complete the task.

Ortis’s image edited by Flickr was a far greater improvement but Picassa just didn’t have anywhere near the same effect showing Flickr to be the master in this department. Round 2 showed that specialist software such as Flickr and Pricerunner clearly has the edge over Google in the image and shopping markets.

Round 3 – Treasure Hunt

This round was based on a Treasure Hunt style search through Birmingham’s City Centre with Suzi again relying on Google and Ortis using the rest of the webs software. The idea was that Suzi and Ortis had to guide a runner through the streets of Birmingham from a static position via a mobile phone connection. Suzi drops on with none other than Treasure Hunt’s Anneka Rice as her runner while Ortis isn’t too displeased with presenter and marathon runner Angelika Bell on his team.

Various clues where placed at locations throughout Birmingham and early indications showed Suzi to have the upper hand.

For this navigational challenge Ortis chose Multi Map to guide Angelica with Suzi opting to use Google Maps combined with Google Latitude to guide Anneka. Google Latitude gave Suzi a great advantage as this software allows users to track friends, with their permission, using a smart phone. This allowed Suzi to see exactly where Anneka was in relation to the target location, she then paired this with Google Streets so that she could see exactly what Anneka could see.

Using Multi Map Ortis was able to guide Angelika to each clue but the communication was difficult without viewing her exact location or seeing buildings and landmarks as Angelica saw them. One of the clues was in French which Suzi easily and accurately translated using Google’s quick translation tool, on the other hand Ortis got a slightly confused translation from Yahoo’s Babel Fish service which slowed Angelica down.

When it came down to navigation and maps Google seems way ahead of the competition and Suzi easily guided Anneka to the finish line ahead of Angelica.

I thought this would be a great article to share with you; I really enjoyed the show and writing this article whilst carrying out a few of the tests myself.

I’ve tried a few different search terms and in all honesty couldn’t pick between the two when it came to results and speed of results in the first round. With all these challenges the user’s ability to use the correct terminology to search paired with the amount of knowledge and experience they have using the software does have a big part to play in the outcome.

I felt that the second round was far more conclusive and gave a far better indication of how good some of the available software and applications are. In the third and final test Google really stood out with some excellent navigational tools which I too have played about with, I’m sure there are some great business and personal uses for all of these applications.

I’d be really interested to hear about your results when comparing the two and will keep you informed as and when the comments come back, thanks for reading.