Microsoft Bing

Does anyone here use it? What are your thoughts? For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s Microsoft’s search engine revamped; it looks very much like Google (did it always?).

I don’t think I’ll ever not use Google for searching, but there’s one search I found more awesome than Google’s; the image search (http://www.bing.com/images).

By default, no descriptions and URLs are displayed with the images so quite a lot fit on the screen compared to Google. Then there is no paging, either. You just scroll. And scroll. It keeps loading new images as you scroll. Very nice with the mousewheel or PAGE DOWN key. I think Google needs to steal this idea. There’s also more filters compared to Google. You can find illustrations only, black & white only, faces only, wide only, tall only, and so forth. The only downside is I can’t seem to find a way to do site specific searches like Google can.

I have yet to check out the rest; I’m assuming it’s all like a rebranded version of Google with Microsoft’s own touches. Hopefully, some of you have thoughts on this.

Edit: I’ve checked out the video search. Once again, I like it much better than Google’s. Holding your mouse over any of the videos will instantly start to play it. Very nice. Microsoft seems to be getting better lately.

Their map feature seems also to be more updated photo-wise. Also you can zoom in a lot further and the bird’s eye view has multiple angles. Better than google maps.

i don lak it

You can get that same image search effect with google by using a firefox addon called Cooliris, it’s not anything new.

The concept may not be new, and I doubt it was with Cooliris, but the Bing adaptation is very likely new. AJAX has only recently become popular and this is what Bing is using. Its backend is JavaScript, tried and true for over a decade, no silly “add-ons” or “extensions” needed that lead to all the problems encountered with one’s computer and browser, such as what I just experienced with my browser crashing :. That is why I am comparing it to Google. Google uses AJAX technology, too, so everything works right off the bat if JavaScript is enabled on your browser. Overall, Cooliris seems to only be a frontend. Bing and other search engines are the backend to something like Cooliris, which actually supports Bing under the old name, Live Search. Thanks for the app, but the frontend is not what I am trying to get across as far as Bing, but it was an added feature I enjoyed without having to install anything for viewing images and videos quickly.

Bing’s image search has better filters, speed, frontend, and even more images over Google. However, in my first post I mentioned it doesn’t support site specific searches, which is the only bummer compared to Google.

Khalbrae, I didn’t notice the maps, but now that I look at it, it actually has my house on it (built last year). Google doesn’t have my house, nor the street going to it, or even the street with the hospital, which is terrible, considering the importance of a hospital. I told them about this all 4 months ago and none of it’s still on there, just dirt roads:hahaha; – not entirely Google’s fault, just their crappy map provider. You’re right about the bird’s eye, too, much better zooming capabilities and I noticed it’s a lot clearer for my area of the map. I also like how you can choose the “fastest” route, not just the shortest one.

Edit: You can apparently draw any route on Bing maps, which is great for creating running paths…the same functionality as http://www.mapmyrun.com/ which uses Google. You can also add your own pins to Bing maps anywhere you want with descriptions which are saved to your account or in cookies. Pretty cool stuff they got.

Edit Edit: If we all know Microsoft by their previous actions, then this is likely a part of their master plan to pump out more and more features over their competitors until they end up like Netscape did. I love competition; it gets the rich ass business people back to work and off their mountains of money for a while.

Well, I couldn’t zoom in all the way so its like ‘walking’ along the street like you can sometimes with Google, but I could see MY house in my small NH town, which is not available at all on Google.

If they could find a way to throw leaflets, they’d be set.

The problem is, Jettatura, I remember Netscape. That was a genuinely bad product. If Microsoft tries to outperform Google, they’re going to be hard pressed to do so, especially since they don’t seem to understand what the public even WANTS (look at Vista).

Though I’ve heard that it surpasses Google in the area of looking up Porn so that’s got to count for something.

For some reason i thought that Microsoft owned google. Guess not?

Neither owned, nor pwnd.

Huh, whatev.