paidContent.org has pointed to a couple recent interviews where the CEOs of Google and Yahoo both felt the need to attack Microsoft's new Search Engine Bing. Today was from Google CEO Eric Schmidt...
—“It’s not the first entry for Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). They do this about once a year.”
—“We think search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size for what we do. It’s difficult for them to copy that.”
—“You earn (share). You don’t buy it with ads, you earn it and you earn it customer by customer, search by search, answer by answer.”
This echoes yesterday's quote from Yahoo's recently appointed CEO Carol Bartz...
During the interview, Bartz also said she was not concerned that Microsoft’s new search engine—Bing—may have surpassed Yahoo in market share for one day last week, according to a report by StatCounter. “One day is one day,” she said. “They didn’t beat us by much. It was one day. I think it’s gosh maybe it was in Omaha some place; It was some small area.” (For the record, the StatCounter statistics were global).
(On a side note: Way to tell people in Middle America you couldn't care less about them Ms. Bartz, that's a brilliant customer acquisition strategy)
The irony of these quotes is they have the exact opposite effect. To me, the highest ranking executives of Google and Yahoo feeling the need to disparage Bing makes it look all the more viable. I mean, yes, they were responding to a question that was asked. But we've all seen the response when someone's just being polite.
The "we think competition in the industry is good" response that translates to "we think so little of this product that we'll be patronizing and praise the piece of junk"
That's how people respond when they don't see a threat. Going on the offensive means you think there's some risk which in turn means you think highly of the product. By attacking a competitors product you are inadvertently giving it an endorsement.
I'll admit I don't know how many people this reaction will fool. For myself I don't think I've ever thought of it this way but I have found myself instinctively drawn to products when I see a competitor bash them. So I have to assume there's always been a subconscious acknowledgement of this trend and that it's human nature to think that way.
Maybe I'll head over to Bing to do some more research on the topic ;)