The Bing Experiment: A Search Startup Story

Back in my Microsoft days a decade ago, we were in a full-on race to catch up with Google in the search game. Now, with the rise of LLMs, I wanted to see if I could replicate a similar search experience, but with a focus on economics.

The idea was simple: build a search page and sell ads on it. We started by mimicking Google's front page – stripping out the copyrighted stuff, of course – and creating a basic search box. Think DuckDuckGo, but even simpler.

Then we plugged in a lean LLM, making smart choices about which features to cut. The goal was affordability. By ditching the compute-heavy extras, we could invest more in marketing. We went for a streamlined, "lite" version of search.

We launched our site, Crowsays, and started marketing. The name comes from a fun story – "What does the crow say?" – a question I often get asked while substitute teaching. When you're surrounded by kids, you need a quick way to find answers! We managed to eke out a small profit, but it took a lot of tweaking.

The tech itself wasn't the hard part. Microsoft had *all* the resources for Bing, spending billions to build a top-notch search engine and market it aggressively. Yet, despite all that, Bing's market share plateaued.

That's the real lesson here: marketing matters. Even with a feature-rich product, decades of branding have made the Google logo synonymous with search, just like Coca-Cola is with soda. You can try the same. If you're curious about our experience, ROI, and the numbers behind Crowsays, we offer paid consultations.

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