Update: just 3 days after this story was written Bing was alive and available with few hiccups. The analysis and reviews on Bing have been fairly complimentary:
Bing takes nearly 3% market share from Google
One of many positive reviews from diverse quarters
But perhaps most important of all, Microsoft has Google’s attention now that market share is hit.
During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the most derogatory term one could assign to an application was Vaporware. It simply did not exist for real trial and testing except in press releases and maybe a demo disk of images. In the new, more frugal(?) or conscientious Web 2 era the IT community has been able to avoid the Foggy bottoms because anybody selling short true Web apps did not last long(unlike standards adherence where some notable vendors still lie outside their promises in a quagmire probably near LakeWashington). However we may have seen the return of Vaporware to the Web World:
Bing is the new soon to be released Search Engine from Microsoft that will replace Live Search.
However getting the detail and being able to try out some real code leaves users looking at a video of whats to be coming. Is this the return of the Pre-Announcement-Well-Before-Deliverable phenomenon? Stay tuned….Even Ballmer is being cautious.
Next we have Google Wave:
Even the video did not work here … too close to the Google Developers Conference still going on? I was reduced to looking over on the Google Code pages for more info … and there was actually quite a lot. But you have to get Sandbox Access even to see the demos. Hmmm Pacific fogs seem to be infiltrating GoogleDom. So now the race is on to see who can deliver a workable API and a working/stable/performant Web presence. I suspect Microsoft will win the Debut race but Google will have the first working API.