The few people who actually used Microsoft’s Live Search may have stumbled across Micsrosoft’s newest search engine, Bing. When this new service launched on June 3, 2009 it had a lot of hype behind it. No matter what you read online you were guaranteed to come across an article about Bing. I have had the chance to use the search engine and it seems pretty solid. I would consider Bing more of a search engine that Google. I have gotten so use to using Google as my basis for search that I haven’t really looked at anything else. I am glad that I gave Bing a chance.
First thing to know is that Bing is has a different style of search. First of all, if you put in a location it will break the results into categories. For example, I entered “Atlanta” into Bing and into Google. Google presents me with a list of sites I can visit based on relevance and popularity, it also presents me with a map and some current news. Bing gave me almost identical results of sites, but they were grouped in categories like weather, hotels, and events. Bing also provided images and maps for the Atlanta area. Bing made it easier for me to weed out the sites that I didn’t need and jump directly to a particular category, from there I could see more results in a particular category or move on to additional results. Their video search isn’t as strict as some users would like but, that is a minor drawback that Microsoft has stated that they are working to make it better.
All the normal search features from Live Search are still available, including video, images, maps, and news. I recommend giving Bing a try. It is definitely different from Google, and it may be a good different.
It seems like Microsoft is headed in the right direction. With the official release of Windows 7 coming up, Windows Mobile 6.5, and their good work on Bing I think they may be header for better days. Who knows, soon you may be saying “Let me Bing that”.