Microsoft's Bing Versus Google

Microsoft will launch its newest search engine offering, Bing, soon. Rather than just another search engine that dishes out results based on popularity as was its previous two attempts with Live Search and MSN Search, Bing is being reformatted as a 'decision engine'.

It aims to clean up the smorgasbord of results thrown at users when searching for a solution on the Web to allow users to make decisions to their not-so-simple questions like 'Where to go for dinner?'

Since drawing excitement as 'Kumo' with some of its features revealed on the Microsoft blog in March, Microsoft has since renamed their new search engine Bing. "The name is short, it's easy to say, it works globally," quipped Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer.

Bing might find it an insurmountable battle with search engine giant Google though. According to research group comScore Inc, based on the US search queries in April, 65% of searches were ran on Google, with Yahoo coming up a distant second with 20.4% and Microsoft managing a disappointing 8.2%.

Acknowledging the tough competition, Microsoft hasn't set its sights on beating the giant. Instead, Mike Nichols, a general manager in the search department said: "We want to capture a unique position in consumers' minds. They need to know why is it that they should use this product."

While chances are Microsoft will not get a bite of the Google pie share, Bing might just succeed at attracting some of Yahoo's users. It aims to do so with a set of features that makes it stand out against its competitors.

Unlike Google, related search results are placed in a left column instead of at the bottom of the page, together with a bar of links running down the left side of the search results page that aim to help organise results. It also keeps track of recent searches and enables users to email links from that search history or share them on Facebook.

Instead of being directed to another site based on the search results, users looking to shop or check airfares online will find the information they need on the Bing result page itself. A search on airfare will bring up results from Farecast which features the Price Predictor that charts the best time to buy an air ticket so as to get you the biggest savings. Bing makes shopping a convenient experience by bringing together price comparisons, images and reviews, not unlike Amazon.com. What's more, it claims to get consumers cash backs from hundreds of online retailers.

Bing also reassures the user looking for medical information online by providing results from the top credible medical sources in the world which you can trust. It also refines the results on local searches and allows you to filter your results so you get what you want instead of having to sift through everything a search engine would usually throw at you.

Although the search engine market is already saturated with big players like Google and Yahoo and country-specific search engines favourable with the locals, it remains to be seen if Microsoft Bing's fresh offerings have the ability to pave its way up the charts to bring it face to face with Google.