Bing Updated

Bing, Microsoft’s Web search site, is publicly beta testing features that organize search results as visual images rather than text links, allow users to search data streams from real-time micro-blogging service Twitter, and integrate data from online information service Wolfram|Alpha to provide answers to queries about nutrition and mathematics. Microsoft also announced a deal with Facebook to allow Bing to search Facebook updates. The new capabilities exemplify Microsoft’s plan to update Bing at least twice a year with unique features that will be relatively hard or expensive for Google to duplicate.

New Features

Bing, which launched in May 2009, is the latest edition of Microsoft’s Web search engine, which first became available in Jan. 2005. Although accompanied by a significant marketing campaign, Bing has not yet had much impact on market-leader Google: according to statistics from Comscore, Google’s market share of U.S. search queries dropped only slightly between May and Sept. 2009, from 65% to 64.9%, while Bing’s share rose from 8.0% to 9.4%. Number-two search provider Yahoo, which will abandon its own search technology to use Bing’s some time after 2009 (pending regulatory approval), saw its share drop from 20.1% to 18.8% during the same period. This suggests that Bing is so far gaining market share at the expense of its future partner.