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Introducing Bing: Microsoft’s New Search Engine
Last week, Microsoft unveiled their latest search engine effort, Bing, which was rolled out to the public on June 1st, two days ahead of schedule. Bing has replaced Microsoft’s Live Search and appears to be Microsoft’s effort to compete in a market which is currently ruled by Google.
What will set Bing apart from its competitors is the way it categorizes and displays search results. Microsoft is marketing Bing as a “decision engine” instead of a search engine. Bing is focusing on four verticals for their users: shopping, travel, health-related research, and local businesses. Bing promises “Instant Answers” that quickly return direct answers in response to a specific search, helping users make informed choices fast. Bing also boasts a colorful yet simple user interface, allowing users to quickly get comfortable with the search engine while have a visual appeal. Other notable features of Bing include a saved search history, an Explorer Pane which shows related searches, Quick Tabs to help filter results, pop-up previews of webpages in the search results, and search suggestions which appear as a user types in their search. Another advantage to Bing is the use of Powerset technology, which, instead of trying to match keywords to web documents, tries to figure out user intent and provide the most useful search results. This all makes for a well-organized experience for consumers to easily accomplish key tasks in a fewer amount of searches.
But will faithful Google users be tempted to switch to Bing? While there are definite improvements to Bing’s user experience and interface, Bing’s organic results seem to be using the same exact algorithm as Live Search, which most savvy searchers deem inferior to Google’s.
While some preliminary Bing reviews have been favorable, especially when compared to Live Search, it’s unlikely that Bing will dethrone Google as reigning search engine. Still, with its favorable buzz, Microsoft’s massive marketing campaign, marketing collaborations with Dell and Verizon, and user-friendly features, Bing will most likely gain users who are less-than-devoted to Google, and may prove to be a worthy adversary to AOL, Ask, and perhaps even Yahoo. Even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admits that it would take many, many years for Bing to become a major threat to Google, but in the meantime, users who want a clean interface and an intuitive search engine may find that Bing is right for them.
Article by Dana Forman/ Razorfish
