Microsoft has announced its new line of retail stores are on schedule to open before the end of 2009, as part of their ongoing marketing strategy. Interestingly, or perhaps oddly, Microsoft claimed this week that their shops will be springing up right next door to Apple Stores, highlighting the clear head-to-head idea behind the venture.

In direct contrast to the thinking behind their newly launched search engine Bing (an unofficial acronym for “Bing Is Not Google”), Microsoft is spelling out their aims for the retail store in unambiguous terms, making it clear that it sees it as a like-for-like competitor to Apple’s store.

Whether it’ll be a good move for Microsoft remains to be seen, but there are a number of reasons why the company’s established behemoth status might just not be enough to guarantee success on the street;

1) A Zune is not an iPod

Microsoft’s proprietary products aren’t exactly exciting. If they’re going to fill the shops up with copies of Windows7, Zunes and peripherals then the doors aren’t likely to be broken down with a customer stampede.

2) If it isn’t broke…

The high streets and retail parks are awash with PCs, with the vast majority tied in with Microsoft operating systems and software packages. Adding yet another option for the consumer with a purely Microsoft store risks cannibalising the retail model that helped make the company such a success in the first place. While it might just be intentionally targeting Apple Stores, Microsoft will also need to compete against the major established PC outlets whether it wants to or not.

3) It’s not very 2009

As primarily a software company, Microsoft is in the best possible position to make a stand for the reliability and robustness of downloadable products and services. The company’s own Xbox360 games console is a positive trailblazer in downloadable content and potential - so why not take the expensive and hard-won lessons from the Xbox Live community and create a purely online centre for retailing all things Microsoft? It’s obviously the future of the market, so why not bring it forward? Launching a brand new bricks and mortar venture in 2009 seems bizarrely, almost surreally late in the day.

4) It shows competitive concern

Coming so soon after the negative retort of the the “I’m A PC” advertising campaign, it’s yet another sign that Microsoft strategises in direct response to Apple’s activities. As the vastly smaller of the two companies, being recognised and referenced in such a clear way helps to validate Apple. Maybe Microsoft would be better served by emphasising its market dominance for the right reasons. It’s not through luck that Microsoft finds itself at the top of the pile - perhaps it should be pushing the positives and getting on with its own thing, without looking over its shoulder at whatever Apple are up to.

5) It’s unknown territory

While it’s undoubtedly the biggest fish in terms of market share, Microsoft is taking a leap in the dark on the retail store front, and it couldn’t have picked on a more polished opponent. Apple has already got it right with most aspects of their retail stores. They’ve got the clinical feel of a futuristic spa waiting room, and are stacked with products like iMacs, iPhones and cinema display monitors - all of which perform a tractor-beam pull on passers-by of a certain disposition. Even the exteriors of the stores are desirable - typically chromed steel and glass framed, like artworks planted into the street by a spaceship. Microsoft has its work cut out in providing a style that will match this, let alone surpass it in direct competition.

With the first of the new stores opening in the US in the Autumn, we won’t have long to wait to see if it’s a gamble too far for Microsoft.

Microsoft’s latest attempt to gain a greater share of the search engine market went unexpectedly into beta last week. Pitched as a “decision engine”, bing.com comes as the replacement for LiveSearch.

With a fresh look, stunning photographic background imagery and a reported immediate impact with users in the opening test week, is Bing the next big thing in search?

Nice touches, nothing groundbreaking

The homepage is undoubtedly good-looking, but how does Bing fare when it is actually put to work with a search? The results page looks more or less as you’d expect, with a couple of nice touches.

Related searches are bumped up to the top left, instead of appearing in the footer as you’d expect. This could be a slight time-saver if you’re not overly familiar with what you’re searching for, but it’s nothing you couldn’t get before elsewhere.

Each individual result, when hovered over, has a small pop-up containing a synopsis and various links from the same website. Presumably this is to offer as much information as possible before a user commits to a click. This doesn’t seem a million miles away from Ask.com’s thumbnail preview, which offers a sneak peek of a website on the results page. Neither are particularly useful, but at least Ask.com’s effort offers some neat visuals.

Both cases essentially miss the point of the results page and their own faith in the suggested websites - the fact that a site is appearing on the 1st page should be reason enough to click on it. Any in-depth pre-investigation required before accepting the search engine’s suggestion indicates it might not be what you’re looking for.

Advanced search offers a pleasingly flexible and straight-forward set of variables - including country and language - but these aren’t exactly daily requirements for your average web user.

Spammy returns rank strongly

The synopsis tool actually comes in quite handy as a few random searches show that while Bing is returning relevant websites, it often suggests very deep links or spammy findings. These absolutely need to be weeded out before any full launch, or there’ll be all manner of “optimised for Bing” results appearing - a sure-fire way to kill the user experience.

Loose PPC connections

Bing’s suggested pay-per-click websites seem decidedly fuzzy, which is odd given PPC’s highly manageable nature and in particular the sharp targeting available through Microsoft’s own Adcenter system.

A search for “email marketing newcastle” returns an accurate selection on organic - but a poorly irrelevant mix of hotel, job vacancy and football websites on sponsored search.

The same search on Google.co.uk returns a watertight set of paid-for Newcastle-based email marketing results.

Despite the apparently hapless targeting, Bing does repeat the top ranking PPC ads at the bottom of the page - meaning that those advertisers who are paying top dollar get a second bite of the cherry if their main ad is ignored. Good for advertisers, good for Microsoft’s pocket.

Endless images

When using the images tab, Bing doesn’t seem to limit the result thumbnails, returning as many as 1000 at a time. While this helpfully removes the need to click through multiple pages to find what you’re looking for, it also produces reams of loading thumbnails as you’re scrolling the page. Maybe that’s why every other search engine, ever, uses multiple pages.

“Verbing Up”

Google is so synonymous with the very act of searching online that it comfortably reached the brand nirvana of becoming an associated verb some years ago. While Google’s top brass have made noises in the past that this is something they’re not too happy about - it “dilutes” their other offerings apparently - it is surely the pinnacle of brand domination. This obviously isn’t lost on Microsoft, with Chief Exec Steve Ballmer openly stating that Bing was chosen as a name that can be easily “verbed up”.

First impressions…

So will we all be “binging” for our information in years to come? On the evidence of the beta, the answer has to be a pretty clear ‘no’. Bing needs to offer something that Google doesn’t, and at the moment it isn’t doing that. However, with a reported marketing budget of $100m to ease the full introduction, Bing is likely to be around for a while. We’ll see how it goes, but with such a glitchy opener and the absence of anything really new, or even useful, it doesn’t look very promising.

Of course the beta phase of any project is intended to iron out the creases, so perhaps the niggles mentioned above can be forgiven for the time being. Perhaps the full launch will be a little slicker…

All in all, it’s good to see that someone is taking a determined run at Google’s domination - it’ll certainly be interesting to see how the market leader responds in due course.