Bing

john.brookmyre — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:23:44 GMT

Microsoft have launched a new Search Engine called Bing incorporating the technology comes from Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset (not just a rebrand of Windows Live). It is being marketed as more than just a search engine, rather as a decision engine. It is in preview and you can try it out here, the video is worth a look too.

The decision engine is multi faceted with Bing, Multimap and Ciao (for shopping), here is a video here which gives an overview of the tool:

In a press release Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying - “Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find”. A good premise! So is this a reason for Google to wake up screaming in the night? Only time will tell but here is an amusing article on Search Engine Land by Lance Loveday who dispels this and explains that whilst Microsoft are onto something it probably won’t break the Google habit (Gord Hotchkiss concept). I like Gord’s article and this also brings to bear (in my mind at least) the thoughts I have been having on the command line interface to the Internet / World that is Google – I search for everything even if I know the web address or have a bookmark I normally just bash it into Google, or I can find out the currency conversion rates or weight conversions and loads more… but that is for another post... One plaudit for Bing is that it is getting good traction and depending on who you believe it is creeping up on Yahoo, here is a post by Greg Sterling on the stats that are out at the moment – looks very promising for Microsoft.

One thing for sure is that search is morphing and with Bing, Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared innovation is rife and should be applauded. I have noticed a lot of criticism for the tools but it is worth remembering that these tools are in beta / previews and under development so get into the vision and the execution will follow… hopefully.

Thanks for reading,

John

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Technorati Tags: Search,Bing,Google,Wolfram|Alpha,Future

John Brookmyre's Blog : Google Squared, Microsoft

Bing