Microsoft Bing goes live in UK

Posted by Al Warmington on Mon 1 Jun 2009

Bing and the search is done

Microsoft has popped the lid on its new search engine a few days early. Bing, which wasn’t due to launch until Wednesday, is now ready and available for all your searching needs.

Microsoft has a lot riding on its new search engine – as evidenced by the fact that it’s essentially abandoning its previous search effort, Live Search, in order to develop its new baby. The reason is simple: Microsoft has played second fiddle to Google for too long in the search department. For a while it looked like Yahoo! might give it a way to fight the internet giant, but when talks collapsed, it pinned its hope on new tech.

The fact that Microsoft has failed so miserably when it comes to search traffic, is actually an advantage – or so the Redmond Giant believes. Microsoft's Paul Stoddart told TechRadar that Google is now so big that it can’t afford to make sweeping changes, even if they may be for the better. “Google has backed itself into a beautiful corner,” he explained. “Because we have a small market share we can afford to make these big changes.”

Okay, we’re still sceptical, but so far Bing is looking quite promising. At the same time as not reinventing the wheel, it makes some sensible adjustments to the internet search formula. The related search section is clear and simple. Image and video search are both well thought out: the former cutting out the need to cycle through pages, while the latter give you mini previews from within the search window when you hover the mouse over it.

Above all though, it’s fast and it’s easy on the eye. Whether that’s enough to keep it going in the long term is still up in the air and we think it’ll be a long time before anyone utters the words, ‘Let me Bing that for you’. Outside of Steve Ballmer’s office, anyway.

Link: Bing

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