by Kacey Stapleton

Created on: June 26, 2009   Last Updated: July 28, 2009

When the economy is rough people are willing to make a change from the trusted and familiar only if they're shown a better alternative which saves them time or money. Microsoft [NASTAG: MSFT] wants everyone to know Bing is out to be the faster, smarter rival of Google [NASTAG: GOOG] in the Internet search market. Their putting the new kid on the block up against a product that's become a verb in the English language. To 'Google' has become the the well known term for having performed an Internet search on a subject.

This gives other search engines a tough time gaining name recognition and Bing isn't even Microsoft's first try. Tested under the name kumo this engine was formerly known as Live Search, Windows Live Search and MSN Search. This incarnation looks more sedately "dressed for work" then Google or Yahoo [NASTAG:YHOO], but gives the user many of the same choices in searching including: web, images, videos, shopping, news, maps, and more.

Should you search for movie tickets, for example you're presented with the standard wide column of results sandwiched between sponsored links and related searches columns. It looks much like all the other search engines, but the difference isn't in appearances. It's the method Bing uses to gather information that makes it unique. Bing unlike its competitors doesn't simple return links to web sites, instead it crawls listings at review services such as CitySearch [NASTAG:IACI] or Yelp.com. This should eliminate superfluous source material returned from even search criteria lacking detail.

In this version of Bing the list of related searches may also be more on track since it's possible to see listings of search suggestions in real time even as queries are entered along with related searches visible in the Explorer pane. It's also possible to save searches and share them.

The bloggers and private sites aren't left out either and can be found on the xRank page. There under a side bar titled 'xTreme movers' Facebook, Myspace, Craigslist and similar sites can be checked for which searches are the most popular. There's also a top bloggers section. Bing also offers a Webmaster Center that's comparable to Google's. This service gives webmasters tools to troubleshoot site map creation and add their websites to the Bing index crawler. Other parts of Bing are, likewise comparable to Google with slight differences.

The question of course is will Bing's differences warrant an effort to kick the Google habit? It's been widely reported that Microsoft put about a quarter of their entire earnings from 2008 into the advertising budget for Bing. In their commercial campaign there's an attempt to make Bing sound radically different from its rivals Yahoo and Google. It is entirely possible this pitch might impact negatively if potential users find Bing too similar to all the other search engines despite its new appearance and press. However, if Microsoft's ad campaign for Bing does work than the mighty Google could finally be knocked from its almost singular status.

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