Coming in with a BING!

No doubt, by now all you techno buffs out there have heard of Bing, the new search engine by Microsoft, which went live on June 1, 2009.

While Bing’s core index is the same as Microsoft Live Search, Bing comes with some notable additions including:

§         the listing of search suggestions in real time as queries are entered

§         a list of related searches, called ‘Explorer pane’ which display on the left side of search results

§         instant previews of websites and videos

§         automatic categorization of search results

§         ‘Best Match’ results with deep links

§         Save & Share’ search histories via Windows Live SkyDrive, Facebook, and e-mail

There has been much debate in the media and online about how Bing compares with Google and other search engines and if Google now has competition for the top spot.  A quantifiable way to measure this is being worked on by Michael Kordahi of Microsoft.  He has developed and is refining a blind search engine that displays results in three columns with identical formatting representing actual results from Bing, Google, and Yahoo where users can vote for the best results. 

Even if Bing turns out to be the better search engine, the question still remains if Googles’ brand loyal followers can be lured away.  Not to mention that Google’s search tools are commonly pre-installed in new PC’s and that Google is the default search engine for Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.  Bing certainly has an uphill climb but perhaps it has anticipated the ever increasing wants and needs of today’s sophisticated Internet user.