This relates to a real-world situation. I have used the My Business listing from Google before with the virtual 3D walkthrough of the business premises. I used Photosynth (by Microsoft) on my iPhone to map a 3D view before there were any other image tools available. Still online today.
Currently, I want to onsell software and collaborate on projects - Google insists on sending you a postcard, in this case being my home address, which I do not wish to list in any way. The model hasn't changed from 10 years back to accommodate online businesses and besides, even if I had an office, the industry of mine in lockdown is forced to work from home.
Unfortunately in South Africa, there is a 50/50 chance that postage will actually reach the destination. The reason why companies like Amazon do not ship here anymore.
Right, unfortunately, the indexing by Google is better, which explains why it is the default client everyone uses to look up something. (I administered web servers and the referer entries in the logs are consistent with their claim). I am hoping to get involved to improve the Bing services - please let me know-how. Even on Microsoft subjects like Visual Studio versions Bing rarely hits the spot. We (I definitely) are hoping for that to change soon.
This, business listings, is the one arena where, if acted on early could give Bing a competitive edge. Your one-stop shop for business lookups, credibility, score, history, walkthroughs for showrooms, all linked to your one Microsoft Profile (Partner, MS Profile or other), that is easily updateable. As a provider on the other side of the coin, my certifications, accreditations, everything including linkedIn is attached to my one Microsoft profile. Based on that, the search results can return probable best match scenarios for resources (hourly rate, portfolio) on top of a radius calculated physical location if I had an office. Opening the scope to businesses outside of the industrial age.
MS has moved into the Unix game - if I could throw IIS logs into a dashboard, which I did before analytics, it gives you what you want to know including reports on server/environment health, DNS issues etc, Security issues. Meaningful no brain solutions for a business. Something Google can not. Then on top of that suggestions on search terms and other recommendations like display and rendering issues - which the webmaster tools have to some degree.
You have a potential source of mountains of data. More streams of business towards O365 and Azure with or without DevOps.
