Google recently added a customized homepage feature – very similar to Bing’s daily photo.

This has led many to question whether Google is following or leading in relation to Bing.  Google was always known for the clean, simple interface.  This followed its goal of being great at one thing – delivering the most relevant search results.

But over the past year or so Google’s navigation has become more and more convoluted.  Just look at how you get you the account page – you have to log in, then click on a very counter-intuitive account settings button.

Bing’s strategy is quite savvy – provide the best search results for specific high revenue categories.  Shopping, News, Entertainment, Travel – and then related images, video, etc.   And all you need to do is use their travel engine with predictive pricing to see that they have definitely outpaced the competition in that channel, in a user interface that is worthy of Apple.

It’s good to see Microsoft bring a little competition back to the search engine market.  Competition will only benefits the end user.