It might sound like the sound a microwave makes when it finishes heating up your ready-meal (or whatever), but
Bing is in fact a new search engine from Microsoft.
Well, I say 'new'. Really they've sort of applied a spit'n'polish reworking to their uninspiring and largely unsuccessful Live Search. Launched this week, the new search engine is intended to compete with Google the (so far) undisputed king of search, and according to Microsoft, Bing will focus on four key areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.
So why do we need a new search engine? Well, Microsoft reckon that Bing brings us new and shinier search results in the following ways:
- Bing was developed to help consumers make decisions, not just to catalogue content.
- Bing organizes results by searcher relevance, rather than by algorithm relevance.
- Bing filters out results that aren't relevant
So you put in 'where shall I go on holiday?' and Bing will tell you? Right? Helping make decisions sounds fine in principle, and organising results based on what types of results have proven relevant to former searchers may or may not work, depending on who the former searchers were and whether they were looking for the same stuff you are. But filtering out results that aren't relevant?? Surely that's the whole POINT of a search engine? It's not like Google goes "yes, I know you searched for 'website design' but here are some results on fishing".
Still, natural scepticism about Microsoft products aside, early feedback seems to be pretty good. There's an air of surprise about it, but there's also a lot of people who are cautiously impressed. But, good or not, Bing will have a hell of a long way to go before it can think about competing with Google's extremely dominant market share. You could argue that once the phrase 'Googling' became synonymous with searching, it was all over for everyone else.
Reading List
June 2nd, 2009
/ Tags: Bing, Google / Trackback
Anyone who saw this article
Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches in The Times recently might have been living in fear of the environmental impact of using Google, after the article claimed that performing two Google searches “uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle”, and generates the same amount of CO2.
The story was based on the work of a Harvard physicist, one Alex Wissner-Gross, who has spent much of his time since the article was published trying to set the story straight. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."
It is true that using the web, like everything else we do in life, has an environmental impact – but running hardware like computers themselves is more of a concern than performing searches. Searches only accrue a carbon footprint when you take into account the computers and servers that the searches run on, and even then we’re not quite at the stage where we need to stop searching in order to save polar bears.
The researcher himself attributes The Times focus on Google as “an easy way to sell newspapers”, but it’s unlikely that Google itself will be unduly upset by the claims – if anything the whole affair has given the search giant another opportunity to establish its green credentials.
January 14th, 2009
/ Tags: google, carbon footprint, green / Trackback
My life would be better all round if I lived in California, I'm sure – but this little nugget on the Google blog made me want to pack my bags and go: A Googlicious Time
Not only are the Googlers bragging about the excellent free meals they get over at Google towers (Rotisserie leg of lamb with smoked shallot marmalade??), now they’re making things worse by having a bake-off, held outside in the California sunshine - in October, I might add. And we’re not just talking a few limp flapjacks, either – recession-proof brownies, pumpkin pecan maple profiteroles, banana cupcakes, popcorn… feeling peckish yet? If not, just check out the pictures. If this is what they do on work’s time, I'm definitely in the wrong job.
October 29th, 2008
/ Tags: google, cakes / Trackback
