It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as go Google yourself, but now you can go Bing yourself. (Then again, Google took a few years to become a verb.). Bing, Microsoft’s latest effort to compete in search , is now live on a “preview” site. The key thing to pay attention to is the guided search assistance on the left and the different experiences for the travel, images, video, maps, news, and shopping tabs.

A few things to try:

• An ambiguous Web search: “turkey” (do you want images, recipes, facts, or a map of the country? The topic guides in the left explore pane will help you narrow your search).
• A travel search: “SFO to JFK”
• Video search: “Simpsons” (hover over the thumbnail to play the video)
• Image search: “Rollercoasters” (notice the infinite scroll).
• A health search: “Sore throat”
• Shopping: “Digital SLR” (sort by price or brand, get average ratings and CashBack).
• Maps: “BBQ” (automatically knows what city you are in and offers up geo-appropriate results).
• News Search: “Bing” (what else?)

Check it out. Try a few searches and then tell us in comments if you will ever go back.

Popularity: 3% [?]

       

We’re 24 hours into the Bing era—i.e. the era of Microsoft’s new search engine. (It’s called Bing!) And even though the public doesn’t have access to the service yet, a lot of tech writers do, and their reviews are in—and excerpted below. Be ready for the product to launch—it’ll be available to everyone by June 3—and for Microsoft’s ad campaign, which will feature people who babble endlessly as a result of Google search result overload. (Bing, by contrast, filters the results to the stuff you need.)
Is Bing that awesome? Read excerpts of the reviews below (it’s not bad, they say), and check out this head-to-head search result comparison that SearchEngineLand compiled.

“On the positive side, we discovered Bing does much more than search for relevant links. It retrieves and processes data, and renders it smartly. That makes finding a great restaurant or an airline ticket, a snap.

But the service is far from perfect. Beautiful data mash-ups coexist side-by-side with perplexing interface choices that make it hard to find the best features. Meanwhile, actual search results were inaccurate in some cases, and disappointing overall in the local search category, one of the areas Microsoft hopes to make its biggest splash.”
-Wired.com

“In the content of search results, Bing is not consistently superior to Google….[I]n many cases Google delivered the goods just enough better than Bing to make me question the wisdom of adopting Bing as a replacement search engine.

While the service doesn’t reveal all its riches at once, it rewards exploration and yields pleasant surprises to users who poke around.

Google keeps improving in the area of in-search collation and display as well, but Bing makes Google look complacent, and that’s not good for Google. For the moment, Bing’s on top in this game. Try this search engine. I do not think you will regret it.”
CNET

“…I’ll bookmark Bing and give it another try the next time I’m launching an intensive search, like shopping, where I’d like a wide variety of information without having to click through page after page of results.

Video searches are especially cool on Bing. It returns thumbnail images, just like other search engines. But when you hover over the images, the video starts playing right there, without clicking through.

Travel shopping is another highlight….Other Bing standouts include listings of topics, such as local restaurants, which are displayed with maps and ratings. Buttons on the side can be clicked to tailor the search and set price ranges, again adding the sort of controls common on specialized Web sites.”
Seattle Times

“Microsoft has identified several of the problems with Web search as it stands today. Much of the time users are not really looking for a Web page but for an answer. By providing results that answer users’ questions immediately rather than requiring them to navigate to another page and back if the first one didn’t yield the info they were looking for, Bing brings value and efficiency to Web searches. I didn’t run into any cases where Google’s results were more relevant than Bing’s, whether I was looking for a specific site or for general information on a topic.

It’s unlikely that Bing will unseat Google anytime soon, but it’s a good thing for everyone to have more appealing choices, and some competition, when it comes to Web searching.”
PC Mag

Popularity: 3% [?]

       

I’m the easily contented sort. I was quite happy with snail mail until email came along. Then I was happy with Hotmail for a while. When the spams came in too quickly, I moved to Yahoo! Mail and was quite happy with that.

Then someone in a forum offered invitations to try out GMail and I took him up on the offer. When I discovered the convenience of threaded conversations, I went to heaven and have been there ever since. So now, Google is introducing the next new way for us to communicate and collaborate. I don’t know, it looks complicated. Is there another level to the heaven I’m on? A sky lounge? I can’t say until I try Google Wave for myself.

As for search engines, I was quite happy with Google.com. It’s served me with search results simply and speedily enough. But after a sneak preview of Microsoft’s new Bing, I’m itching to get off my butt and make a permanent move to www.bing.com.

Here’s what I understand about Microsoft Bing. Say I am searching for the customer service contact information for TMNET Streamyx. Other than turning in the link to Streamyx’s main homepage and thousands of other sites hurling abuse at TMNet, it will also provide a list of categorical links for pages within the main page. Meaning I can straightaway click on the link to the About page, the Corporate Information page, the Customer Service Information page… BING!!! Don’t have to wade through the entire site to look for the specific information that I want.

Popularity: 2% [?]