In evolutionary terms, Google are gaining a very solid advantage every day. If Bing were to start growing suddenly, their tools for beating black-SEO and spam would be more primitive due to the lack of natural "predatory pressure". Bing's lack of immunity against some attacks would then set them back.
The issue is not technical, it is a structural feature of Google's business model. Google has a vested interest in ranking websites filled with advertising high in the search results...eyeballs on ads is ultimately the basis for their primary sources of revenue.
If simple searches yield crappy results, then the user spends more time on the search page revising the search terms and therefore looking at keyword based ads, clicks through a sponsored link, or clicks through to a site filled with Google served ads.
Bing does not face similar structural pressure because it is not Microsoft's primary source of revenue.
> If simple searches yield crappy results, then the user spends more time on the search page revising the search terms and therefore looking at keyword based ads, clicks through a sponsored link, or clicks through to a site filled with Google served ads.
But if that user has to click on multiple ads to go where he wants, this is bad for the advertisers, and should reflect back on Google indirectly.
Google is filled with smart people and I suspect that they work very hard to find the optimum mix of advertising driven results and pure search results. Given that their market dominance, I suspect that most internet users have a high tolerance for advertising driven results.
In other words, Bing can afford to make a better search engine because it's not weighed down by a need to make a profit? I'm sure Microsoft wants in the end to make money from search, much in the same way as Google is. Although they may need to find a few niches first rather than doing a billion-dollar frontal assault.
Microsoft can generate a profit even if Bing itself doesn't make money and it can still benefit greatly from Bing without it generating revenue directly because Microsoft can monetize search technology without ad revenue by incorporating better search technology into their primary product lines.
The billions of dollars attributed to Bing is just internal accounting, Microsoft doesn't backcharge other departments such as MSDN for its use on their websites. Bing is the result of a research project which investigates search algorithms, large data sets, and collects data on web users - keep in mind that 3% of all web search probably provides enough data for most research projects.
Bing might be seen as similar to TerraServer: a test bed for developing tools which work on a much larger scale than most enterprises currently require.
