Discrete Vector

Microsoft latest foray into search has gone public. This time its called Bing. You got to hand it to the guys at Microsoft though, they just don’t give up. First they put search on MSN and called it MSN Search. Then they decided to take on the might of Google through Live search. It was live this and live that for quite some time. Now its Bing.

Incidentally, they are rebranding all the search spread across various Microsoft sites and are bringing it under the Bing umbrella. Its about time too. The problem with Microsoft’s search agenda was branding. Like I said they kept rebranding themselves every other year and users had difficulty keeping track of what or where Microsoft search was exactly.

I mean, think of Google search and there is only one place to go; google.com (not considering the country specific sites). Yahoo search? One place. Microsoft search? eh… umm…

Bing, to me, is in the right direction. Whether it can take on the might of Google is a completely different ball game altogether. You can throw a hundred gimmicks at the user but the end of the day everyone wants just one thing: relevant search results.

The Bing preview feature is quite nice. It allows you to see a bit of the site content without actually going to it. Search for products and reviews and comparisons are available to you right on the results page.

I liked Bing’s image search better than Google’s. It allows you to filter images on image characteristics such as size, layout and even people (faces, head and shoulders). Neat.

The homepage and the results page layout looks suspiciously Googlish. Oh well, whatever works.

Will Bing be your new search engine? Let us know what you think.

Happy Searching,
Alex