Today, Microsoft publicly unveiled its soon-to-launch search engine Bing. It will become available over the next few days, and be fully launched by June 3. On the surface, Bing has a distinct gloss. The home page features a rotation of stunning photography, for instance, which can be clicked on to produce related image search results. But the most significant changes are under the covers. “We have taken the algorithmic programming up an order of magnitude,” says Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi. Each search result page is customized according to what type of search you do (health, travel, shopping, news, sports). The algorithms determine not only the order of results on the page, but the layout of the page itself, concluding what sections appear. These sections can include anything from guided refinements and a list of related searches in the left-hand pane to images, videos, and local results.
I’ve been playing around with a preview version of Bing for about a week. It is designed to be “more of a decision engine,” says Mehdi. Bing helps people make decisions through guided search and a focus on task completion. In a time when a new Website is created every 4.5 seconds, information overload is becoming a real problem. ” People are getting hundreds of thousands of links but not getting what they want,” says Mehdi. Bing tries to alleviate problem by offering up different experiences depending on the search. It also acts more like a destination site for certain searches. Travel and product searches bring in comparison pricing, reviews, images, and more. Hulu videos can be played within the video search results. Bing pulls in data from other Web services when it can so that you often don’t have to leave to get the information you want.
The internal codename for Bing is Kumo (which is what you see in the screenshots), and the current release is called Kiev. Rather than a spare, blank screen, Bing’s homepage surrounds the search box with a single beautiful image, such as the one of the tribesmen above or a kinkajou. You can hover over parts of the image to get factoids about the image or click through to an image search result page to explore more. The left-hand pane offers the option to narrow your search on images, videos, shopping, news, maps, or travel. Each of these has a different look and feel. A travel search will turn up a page based on Microsoft’s Farecast technology asking you where you want to go, with flights, hotels, and destination information. A news search offers up headlines, photos, videos, and local news in a column on the right. A shopping search will bring up products and is tied into Microsoft’s Cashback program.
Every search also generates a guide on the left to help you refine your search. A search for “kinkajou,” for example, lets you refine by images, facts, sale, breeders, care, diseases, and videos. A search for “Samsung LCD TVs” brings up an entirely different set of guided results: shopping, review, manual, repair, buy, stand, images, and videos. If you search for images of “butterflies,” it lets you sift to show just Monarch, Swallowtail, Viceroy, Owl, and other types of butterflies. All of this categorization and concept-matching is Microsoft’s early attempt to bring in some basic semantic search technologies into a mainstream search engine. Each guided option is dynamically generated, just like the different sections of the search results page. “Google, tried to preempt this,” says Mehdi, referring to Google’s new search refinement options it launched last week, which is also in the left pane. Those Google options, which include the ability to search across different time periods or for related keywords, are “completely static,” criticizes Mehdi. “There is nothing new about it. It is a very minor rev, not as sophisticated as what we are doing. For us ever query is special.”
Bing also takes advantage of Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset to provide better previews and snippets of text when you hover over a result. Also, whenever a search brings up a “reference” tab in the guided exploration pane, clicking on that will bring up an enhanced Wikipedia article with semantic tags.
Onstage at the D7 conference, Steve Ballmer acknowledges: “There is no way to change the whole game in one step.” But search “deserves a good feature war.” And Bing will be rolling out new features as it goes forward. But is it enough to get people to switch? Bing is certainly not a game-changer, but it does cut out a lot of the back and forth that happens with so many searches today. If Bing can help people find what they are looking for faster, it will put pressure on Google to keep advancing the ball as well.
Looks very nice and slick!
It is great to see some good healthy competition in search again.
I never thought I would say this, but Go Microsoft!
Just read the full press release, and Bing is supposed to be a “Decision engine” but they offer just 4 areas of decision: make a purchase, plan a trip, research a health condition or find a local business.
Wao, I’m totally blown away by this kind of innovation!
Bing! left column is nice…
ya I like it it looks like the ask search engine
I love how they’re positioning this: as a decision (not search) engine. Hardcore folks will still search the old fashioned way I guess to do their own research, but this should simplify a lot of decisions, like movies and food.
Seems like the first major implementation of semantic search, will be interesting to see how Google responds.
How are you going to allow it to decide for you, if it is from the same company that brought blue to a screen near to you and made crashes notoriously popular?
Yeah,its go Microsoft,but the background I see is that of a Snow Leopard.
http://twitpic.com/6dyz9
So it wasn’t bing? Huh… looks nice, But It’s Not Google
Surely Google is not the last word in search. So much still to be done. Really exciting stuff.
you guys need to read the article. BING is the winner and the shots are for layout reference only. i would have rather heard that yahoo and micro flew to vegas and eloped overnight.
correct me if im wrong but if G makes 65% of rev from the addense-adspam network (aka) other peoples sites is’nt that what micro needs to compete with them?
They claim Bing is a “Decision engine”. give me a break. if they cant make good search decisions for themselves how are they gonna make good search decisions for the user.
simple natural language “LocationEngines” are the future.
WarLocator.com – know your enemy
@MyLocator -
You’ve got it backwards regarding AdSense. Google doesn’t publicly split the numbers out, but my understanding is that AdSense accounts for no more than 1/4 of Google’s ad revenue. Search ads are the big game, not the other way around.
Derry Quinn said…
But It’s Not Google
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, that drew the US into the World War2 , Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander of the Japanese Fleet, is reported to have said:
I fear we have awoken a sleeping giant
Both Brin & Page from Google, are now fearing that the sleeping giant MIcrosoft has just been awoken.
So, it’s not Google but a sleeping giant which is MIcrosoft.
It will always sleep, and the weight will make it sink!
Thank goodness it wasn’t Bing. I’m surprised, but it does look nice. And it looks like Microsoft is starting to stop chasing Google. They’re approaching the problem through new lenses of innovation.
http://www.traderbots.com/stocks/Stock.aspx?symbol=msft
It is Bing… these screenshots for some reason are still showing the test name.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/may09/05-28NewSearchPR.mspx
yes, it is Bing. When I tested it, the name was still Kumo
I hope their search results will get better.
That is the real issue here.
People already have their best of class products for all the things Bing aims to do: comparison shopping, search, maps, etc.
If Bing is mediocre in all the fields it tries to cover, people will continue to use individual services, instead of using an “operating system for search” approach like Bing seems to be.
However, Bing is something new, which is good. Not everything will stick, but innovation is evolution, and the net will be better for it.
Not sure how much of audience it will impact…
But It’s Not Google–>what is that supposed to mean
“But Its Not Google” – Acronym for Bing…. hah.
You stole that from John Dvorak:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347651,00.asp
“But It’s Nearly Google”
Microsoft’s unfortunate copycat strategies will not result in anything other than a weak copy of Google, with some visual tweaks to make the presentation look better. Redmond will never take a chance on something radical. My advice to the company is to try to understand what’s going on at Collarity, where it’s easy to see what a new idea for search is all about. I’m actually kind of surprised that one of the big three hasn’t already made Collarity’s developers an offer they could not refuse. Maybe none of these guys are paying attention
John dvorak is a big fat idiot.
Collarity? pff.. nonsense
topsy.com does right now what no other search engine can do, yet
ROTFL
At first blush, this actually sounds really good. Not sure if I’ve said that about a Microsoft product since, um… since… I’ll have to get back to you on that.
But as with Zune, Vista, and so many other massive failures by MS2K, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Sorry Zune is not a massive failure, Zune is the best Mp3 player out there.
Even Vista is not a massive failure, stop following Apple ads, and try the stuff by yourself
I bet you use Zune and Vista at home…
Zune Software for the desktop is hands down better than iTunes, and this comes from an iPhone owner. I have both installed on my PC, and iTunes continues to perform sluggishly.
vista is a monumental failure, why do you think the next bloated MS OS is called windows 7 and not Vista 2010??
Zune sucks, nobody is buying zunes, everyone has ipods. MSFT is a bloated sinking ship that stopped innnovating years ago.
Erick, you say “I’ve been playing around with a preview version of Bing for about a week.”
So what do you think about it personally? You didn’t ever seem to tell us. Would you use it over Google?
It looks fairly innovative actually.
I wanted to just get out the basic facts with this post. I will follow up with my personal impressions. It is not a game-changer, but there are a lot of nice little details. The guided search works surprisingly well.
Sounds like not enough – yet – to get people to switch.
Looks cool to me. I’ll definitely give it a fair try (a 1 month switch from Google). We’ll see if it keeps my attention and loyalty.
Loyal Microsoft follower… Keep it up. Microsoft needs you!
Microsoft seems to be taking innovative approach to their search engine kumo ,let’s see how fat it will succeed .I would like too see competition between Google and Microsoft search engines.Till now Google search engine is the king.Microsoft may not overcome Google but they can at least give some tough competition to Google ,let us hope so and it will be great.
UI changes are useless since the core search engine is basically the same live search which isn’t upto the mark,in case they have changed something : have there been any changes in the search engine : how it rates a website, how it rates the relevance of search term ??
There has to have been algorithmic changes if different results are appearing for different searches. I’m pretty sure you don’t rename a search engine, and the way it displays results, without changing the algorithm one bit. Not to mention there is also the addition of Powerset features, and Farecast technology, which were never really integrated into Live Search completely.
Don’t be misguided, MS has been playing this renaming game all the time… from win98->XP->vista, msn->live->bingo…
yeah, the algorithm has actually changed quite a bit since Live.
I must say, the changing wallpaper algorithm is great… Kids would love it!
Irrelevant … chasing tail … ball has moved.
I agree.
Watching the once overbearing Microsoft re-chase another lost wheel of cheese raises the question of how long Ballmer has left, particularly if he can’t re-close an also-ran like Yahoo.
Everyone I have mentioned the name to has instantly responded with Chandler Bing [Friends]
Chandler is referred to as ‘The dropper’ will this be able to compete with Google or just be dropped?!
I am happy to see the innovation in the rich interface. Introducing another sparse search interface, although practical, would seem to have little appeal. I also like how the interface is contextual to the decisions you are trying to make. It will definitely be interesting to try out for a while and see if it sticks.
beyond the fancy interface, I still see blue links everywhere. Where’s the beef? We’ll see… I’m skeptic
you’re blind then. atleast five of those screenshots had way more useful results than just blue links.
right, useful results: sponsored ads, images, maps, related searches, and a LOT of blue links… nothing new here.
As I said before: Where’s the beef?
get your head out of your ass.
of course thats all there is if you ignore product prices and reviews, cashback, restaurant reviews and info, flight prices trends, etc.
if you ignore everything that makes it better than google, it’s worse than google!
haha that’s your best shot? c’mon, recurring to insults is the response of an ignorant, clueless and insecure person.
what a poor argument… Microsoft lover, my comments are based only on a bunch of a beta-site screenshots, but apparently you’re part of the testing team of this failure.
Let’s wait for Comscore’s search traffic report for next quarter to find out how many % of market share this poor initiative drives to MSFT
Eddie please do us a favor and STFU! IDIOT!
They go through the effort of a guided search, but then add useless shit like random photos tagged with “factoids about the image” that you can expose by hovering your mouse over different parts of it, and even “click through to an image search result page to explore more”?
Way to undermine the focus-oriented spirit of guided search.
Probably the same people who offer 7 shutdown options in Vista, and all those absurd notification balloons on startup that are switched on by default.
“Less is more” Microsoft… when will you ever understand this?
“hovering your mouse over different parts”
- looks to me like yet ‘more’ information overload
Looks really good, wish they had kept the name Kumo, which i liked. If it’s results are at least 90% that of Google, I’ll make the switch. Tired of Google’s monopoly in this area.
You’ll switch away from Google for something that’s 90% as good? I’ll switch to something that’s 101+% as good….
Yes because I want competitors, as that’s the only thing that will foster better search engines overall.
If you truly walk the talk, “because I want competitors” than you are NOT using the following:
Microsoft OS (desktop, laptop, netbook, handheld)
Adobe Flash
My guess is that you use a Microsoft Desktop and your primary media player is a Flash specific player. Therefore you do not walk your talk.
To individuals who administer websites: Does your website video content open for a Linux user running the Totem player? If so then you are probably using an open data format, meaning 100% of web users can see your content. The best thing would be for all website owners to stream their content in open data formats, not something specific to any one vendor, including Microsoft and Adobe.
There are third party FREE media players (MPlayer, Coreplayer, FFPlay, MediaFrame, Realplayer, VLC, xine ) that work in all operating systems, even Microsoft. However Adobe Flash focuses primarily on Microsoft (with MacIntosh, Linux and Unix being afterthoughts and not kept current).
Some websites and systems administrators understand this and their content will stream in Totem (Linux, Unix specific that uses open data formats) and other 3rd party players that work in all operating systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_media_players#Video_players_2 – which players support which Operating Systems.
hmmm… http://kumo.com is showing only microsoft’s favicon. Will surely compare results of Google, Wolfram and Kumo
as soon as instructions pop up to allow it automatically integrate with firefox, safari, plurk, etc., then i’ll check it out.
wow that actually looks quite neat – will wait to play to see if it works. reminds me a little of wolfram alpha crossed with google. i hope it’s fast.
http://www.bing.com
Is it me or does this URL go nowhere?
June 3rd.
It looks so complicated and that’s what Microsoft doesn’t get. Even these screen shots you provided make my eyes tired.
Does anyone know of Bing will finally have some sort of chronological filtering? (Last 24hrs, Last Day, Last Week…)
I think this is the single biggest missing feature in MS search.
In a day when “Real-Time” is the coolness, ability to search accross the dimension of time is a must.
Hope they nailed this.
Those rich screenshots look great here – but are users going to put up with the download times? One of Google’s long time unique strengths has been the the simplicity of it’s home page.
Huh! When i first heard the news about the new Microsoft Search, I wasn’t phased by the news. Searching on Live wasn’t even a thought. Now I am thinking about trying it out @techvenkat…I think competition is a good thing too.
bing that!
Wow, microsoft is being innovative? They seem to actually be pushing forward into the whole web 3.0 “semantic” thing with relevant results that a human being actually wants to see
Looks quite nice actually.
Well, the home page image has been live on the current version of Microsoft search for nearly a year, so that’s not new to Bing:
http://searchengineland.com/live-search-adds-home-page-hotspots-14483
Social and real-time collaboration is the future of search and I see none of that here. Looks like yet another failed attempt.
No comment from me on a tool I haven’t used, but I can’t agree real-time collaboration in search is anything but an annoying spammable deadend.
Unlike algorithmic search which is not an annoying spammable deadend.