Bing

Bing is the successor to Microsoft’s search engine Live Search and describes itself as a decision support tool.

Definition

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, is in direct competition with Google and Yahoo. It offers a complex user interface, which already displays newspaper articles and current news on the start page. Bing is used in particular on Microsoft’s own products – Windows 10, Windows Smartphones as well as Microsfoft Edge (or Internet Explorer) use “Bing Search” and “Bing Maps” among others.

Average Internet users probably won’t notice any real differences between Bing and other search engines like Google right away – except that the ads may be morenoticeable to them.

You can use Bing by default through the website, or you can also access it through Microsoft Edge, for example. There it is set as the default search engine of the browser. When you search for something in Edge using the search bar, you’re immediately taken to Bing’s search results.

History and background

In 2009, Microsoft launched Bing, a successor to its“Live Search” search engine, in a bid to catch up with or even take more market share from its superior competitor Google. So far, however, this endeavor remains unachieved.

Google is so dominant in the search engine space that most Internet users tend to pay less attention to Bing’s algorithm.

The search engine cooperates with Yahoo, but also with the sustainable, as well as ecological search engine Ecosia, whose search results it provides. Since July 2011, Bing has also been working together with Baidu from China and takes over the answering of all English-language search queries from the Chinese search engine. According to Baidu, around ten million English queries occur every day.

At the end of 2017, Bing announced that its search engine would provide “smarter” answers in the future, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), thus providing users with more comprehensive information.

Since 2020, the search engine has a new logo and is also officially called Microsoft Bing.

The name

During internal testing by Microsoft employees, Bing had the codename Kumo, which is derived from the Japanese word for spider or even cloud. The name alluded to the way search engines crawl the Internet and how they add Internet resources to their database, as well as cloud computing.

Microsoft Bing

Bing vs Google – the differences

First, the visual difference between Bing and Google is immediately noticeable: While Google’s homepage is usually simple and plain, Microsoft’s search engine is usually filled with colorful images and newspaper articles. That’s why Bing’s search bar is not in the middle of the home page, but a little further above it. But you can configure the search engine home page.

The general consensus is that there is not much or any significant difference in quality between the search results generated by Bing and Google. However, it is already noticeable that there are some differences that need to be taken into account when searching for date-related information. Bing doesn’t always give the publication date next to its search results, so it’s harder to quickly see the relevance of the results and which article provides the information you’re looking for.

Microsoft’s search engine doesn’t always put the most recent articles at the top of its search results and tends to show older articles instead of more appropriate and current posts or video. Google, on the other hand, in most cases makes sure that the latest headlines are at the top of the search results. Both search engines offer advanced search options and filters to narrow down search results – though Google’s advanced options and filters are easier to find than Bing’s.

On a Bing-generated search results page, you can only make advanced search settings or filters by selecting a different tab for results such as images or videos. On Google’s search results page, on the other hand, advanced search and other search tools are usually easy to find and visible on most selected results tabs.

The comparison of the user interfaces of Bing & Google

What can Bing “do” better than Google?

• Bing shows a new background image in HD on the search home page every day.
• The fading in of a wallpaper continues with an appropriate browser setting.
• The time information is updated, while the Google display remains at the time of the page call. Bing visualizes a second hand.
• Bing plays a preview on mouse-over on a video thumbnail. However, you’ll see the video embedded in a bing.com page when you click on it.
• You can reduce the search results to a smaller number and, for example, narrow down the time period of the search.
• While numerous webmasters optimize their sites for Google via SEO, the competition is much smaller on Bing.
• Every now and then, Bing gives out the more useful hits than Google.
• At the bottom of the home page you will find links to daily news.
• In the picture, video and news search, you can get to more search results without a click – by scrolling down.
• Bing displays image search results as a slideshow if desired.

The market shares of Bing & Co.

Source: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/225953/umfrage/die-weltweit-meistgenutzten-suchmaschinen/ (as of January 2021)

Conclusion

The Microsoft Bing search engine is a direct competitor of Google and Yahoo, but has not yet been able to match their success.

However, there are also some advantages over the top dog Google, so Bing is an alternative or even an extension. Microsoft’s search engine is gaining in importance and popularity not only for this reason