Microsoft Bing review

Last Friday, Microsoft officially launched the UK localised version of its Bing search engine, some six months after it was first unveiled as a beta here.

Microsoft said it would not take the search engine out of beta until it felt it could offer a level of performance for the UK that it was happy with. It would seem that time has now come.

Microsoft’s history in search up to now has been spotty. The myriad of name changes over the years, such as MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search and finally Bing, have reflected its confused strategy, while in the background, Google was relentlessly establishing itself ever further.

While Microsoft was just trying to come up with a name for its search offering, Google became a verb, part of the language and of the fabric of most people’s everyday lives. Competing with that is a tall order and perhaps a challenge that only one as stubborn, (read rich) as Microsoft could try and take on.

But let’s face facts, Microsoft isn’t stupid. It knows it’s not going to topple Google in search, but it has to be in that space to give itself a chance, as any percentage increase in search margin is worth a huge amount in advertising revenue. And if it helps to slow down Google in any way, then all the better.

At a briefing last week, Marie Thirlwall, one of Bing’s UK product managers, was quite sensible when she told IT PRO: “It would be great if we could get to number two.” At least Microsoft can feel better about itself that while it may never reach verb status, at least many are getting used to the word ‘Bing’.

Is it any good?

So now it’s out of beta, is Bing any good?

To start with we found it something of a mental effort to actually not use Google. Most people have it as their default engine in the search bar at the top right of their browser but if you want to add Bing to Firefox, you can just install this add-on. There’s even one that lets you search both side by side.

Bing has gained some love for its homepage design, choosing an image that it overlays with hotspots that lead to interesting links, images and videos about the subject of the picture. You can easily scroll through the archive of images via arrows at the bottom right and we’ve been informed that it’s popular with teachers who like to project the day’s image onto classroom screens to start discussions with pupils.

Microsoft likes to refer to Bing as a decision engine, rather than a search engine. That’s why down the side of all searches you get an explorer bar where you’ll find related searches or search refinements, which does make things more convenient. However, it also creates some redundancy too, as you might get a sidebar displaying Images and Video, which are repeated at the top as well.

Images and Video

Bing’s image search impressed us on its first release and it remains a highlight. You get larger default images than Google with further details that appear when you roll over an image. As ever, the filters, such as small and large, appear down the side. Actually, there are very similar options available in Google by clicking ‘Show options’ at the top, but it’s more clearly flagged in Bing. A bigger change is the infinite scroll features, which just means that instead of having to click 'next' through pages more choices appear as you scroll.