Microsoft reportedly is deciding how to rebrand its Bing “decision engine” as the search engine gains US share at Yahoo’s expense, but hasn’t shaken Google’s search grip.
Its initial “Decision Engine” advertisements have evolved into “Bing and Decide,” and Microsoft is performing a “deep-dive” to consider how to reposition the Bing brand, Ad Age says.
Speaking of decisions, in the more than three years since Microsoft acquired Farecast to create it, Bing Travel has pretty much lost its identity and gotten swallowed up in the whole Bing thing.
When Microsoft launched Bing in 2009, Travel was a featured link on the Bing homepage.
Bing’s homepage today has a Travel link at the very top of the page, although it was much more prominent when Bing launched.
These days Bing Travel doesn’t show up in Experian Hitwise Top 10 lists of US travel sites.
Bing Travel — or should one say Bing — handed over flight search duties to Kayak  in March and it wouldn’t surprising to see Kayak handling Bing’s hotel search sometime soon.
In its day, Farecast was known for its data-mining innovation in the form of its “Know When to Buy” flight and hotel price predictions.
They still exist, but the emphasis on new features and functionality starts with the broader Bing.
Today at Microsoft, any online innovations, such as autosuggest flight prices  or visual search for destinations, trickles down from Bing to Bing Travel, with the latter seeming to be almost an after-thought.
If you want to contact the leader of Bing Travel, then good luck in finding him or her because the duties are likely split up among several Microsoft executives.
Bing Travel’s absorption into Bing/Microsoft isn’t an uncommon tale — lots of brands have their issues when swallowed up by big companies.
It wasn’t too long ago when you could hear people saying that Google would want to buy ITA Software or a big online travel agency because Google was concerned about Microsoft’s travel inroads with Farecast.
You don’t see that sentiment being expressed too often these days.
When I visit bing.com I see a link to Travel in the top menu from the main page, although it does disappear under “More” after a web search.
As an ex-Bing engineer myself, I’d say the farming out of flight search to Kayak seems like a reasonable move. Bing’s engineering effort is pretty stretched across so many different search verticals and features and there’s no need to rebuild what Kayak already provides. Bing can still layer its farecast technology on top and provide a differentiator.
But it is a bit unfortunate to see flight search not playing as prominent a role in Bing lately. I wonder if Google’s emphasis on travel search will change the equation.
Of course my favourite thing about Bing remains the visual candy of the daily homepage images. A concept we’re planning on borrowing for rome2rio very soon
Michael: You are correct. The Travel link is there at the very top of the Bing homepage. It may be a sensible move in some ways for Bing to outsource its flight search to Kayak, but it shows Bing’s lack of focus on the travel vertical and besides this means that Kayak will be taking a revenue share.
Dennis: I question the long term strategic value of outsourcing flight search to Kayak. Kayak does not own the underlying technology, ITA does, which in now owned by google. So MS is now writing checks to Kayak that in turn is paying google for licensing the technology. While their agreements are protected in the short term, long term neither Kayak or MS will have the upper hand against google in term of speed or breadth of functionality.
The problem is, nobody is shaking up the online travel space, you have some cool new products in the game like Hipmunk, Google’s Hotel Finder and the much older Yapta. Just seems like everyone is trying to copy what someone else is already doing or make it faster and stronger. Change the behavior of the way people think about the travel process and there might be a winner out there.
Granted that car rentals are like the red-headed stepchild of the travel industry, but I would counter your comment that AutoSlash.com is shaking up the online travel space in this segment. Automatic application of coupons and discount codes, and automatic re-booking when the price drops is pretty much a game changer.
Jonathan: No one mentioned AutoSlash or car rentals, red-headed stepchild or not. Besides, some of my best stepchilds are red-headed:)