Bing it Is!

By  |  Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 1:24 pm

Bing LogoI feel like I have around five percent of my brain cells back to devote to other, more productive purposes. After way too many months of way too much speculation, it’s official: Microsoft’s new search engine will be known as Bing. Steve Ballmer unveiled it this morning at the Wall Street Journal’s D conference, and on next Wednesday it replaces Live Search.

Don’t expect Microsoft to position Bing as a Google killer, even though others will presumably (most likely pejoratively, as usal) use that phrase as they size it up. Do expect the company to call it a decision engine–a phrase that Bing team member Stefan Weitz used when I spoke with him this morning. (There’s even a Bing video demo up at DecisionEngine.com.) Rather than provide Google-like results in a Google-like format, Microsoft has has focused on providing customized results for four common action-oriented search tasks: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business. It aims to provide information and tools to satisfy those goals right within Bing, eliminating the need to search elsewhere and providing a clear differentiation from Google and other search engines.

I’ll report back on Bing when I’ve had a chance to try it out. Meanwhile, here’s a review by Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling (he likes it quite a bit) and one by TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld (who I think may have forgotten that Live Search in its current form already has the fancy photographic backdrop).

 
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5 Comments For This Post

  1. Tom B Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt and see if it really IS a Wolfram Alpha-beater.

  2. venkat Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    this is innovative approach to their new search engine Bing ,let’s see how it goes I thought kumo is more easy to pronounce than bing.

  3. AlexTNL Says:
    May 29th, 2009 at 3:00 am

    I’m extremely excited about trying Bing next Wednesday. I think MS make it turnaround this time with Bing.

  4. JDoors Says:
    May 29th, 2009 at 11:30 am

    “Rather than provide Google-like results in a Google-like format, Microsoft has focused on providing customized results for four common action-oriented search tasks: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business.”

    Anyone have any idea what percentage of ALL Internet searches that includes?

  5. Mark Rosch Says:
    June 1st, 2009 at 2:58 am

    Maybe I’m unusual, but only a small percentage of my searches fall into one of bing’s 4 categories. I teach lawyers how to use the Internet for investigative research and the bulk of my searches are to locate information about people. For that purpose, bing is no better than LiveSearch – in fact the results for my test searches were the same at both of those search engines. When I’m searching the Web, I’m usually looking for “information” not “solutions.” If search engines can bring me back enough relevant information I’ll be the “Decision engine” that synthesizes it into a meaningful solution.

1 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Bing is Go | Technologizer Says:
    June 1st, 2009 at 12:53 am

    […] all:&nbspNews Microsoft’s new Bing search engine isn’t scheduled to officially replace Live Search until next Wednesday, but it’s now up and available in preview mode at Bing.com. If you try it out, let us know […]