Bing: Is the 3rd Time the Charm?
There’s a new search engine out today. Instead of adding it to your bookmarked list of search engines, you can simply replace one of them: Live is now Bing. Microsoft is still trying to gain more of the search market, and has opted to rebrand its search engine as Bing.
As of today (June 1) you can access Bing through its homepage, and Live.com is redirecting (by June 3 it will no longer be in “preview” mode and any traffic still going through Live will be redirected). Searches done on the MSN homepage (where it still says Live search next to the box), appear on Bing.com.
Bing is also launching internationally. The UK Bing is going into beta this week and is accessible to users outside of the US (the homepage picture is different). It will officially launch in the coming weeks. Bing has a list of supported countries and you can change your display language in search options. I typed in ‘bing.de’ and was redirected to the UK beta in German. Hopefully this is a sign that like the UK, there will be more customization of the features to each country.
Naturally, there’s a lot of speculation as to how successful Microsoft’s new search endeavour will be. Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand has written some good articles on Bing’s features and Bing’s position in search. Already, people are looking for tips and tricks to using the new search engine.
Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up in search. Only one of their problems was the confusion about what their search brand was. With a name like Bing, Microsoft is clearly hoping that it will turn into a verb and reflect a new way of searching. Only time and millions of more searches will tell if the third time is the charm for Microsoft.
