Surely you remember (or have heard about) the now classic “Pepsi Challenge” ad campaign from the 1970s and early 1980s. Pepsi went around to public venues like shopping malls and offered people blind taste tests of its own caramel colored soda vs Coke.
Overwhelmingly people preferred Pepsi to Coke. Microsoft is now trying something similar with search. (Blekko did something equivalent last year with its “3 Engine Monte” comparison.)
In a new campaign and with a new website (Bing It On), the company is giving people the ability to compare search results side by side. Microsoft claims that in blind side-by-side comparisons people prefer Bing by 2:1 over Google.