Microsoft apparently just couldn’t wait to let the world experience its latest search-engine platform. The software giant launched Bing two days ahead of its June 3 release after offering a sneak peak at last week’s D: All Things Digital conference.
With Bing, Microsoft is renewing its focus on relevancy. Ipos Insights reports that 66 percent of people are using online search more frequently to make complex decisions. Bing aims to help slice and dice information for that majority.
Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: Deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to more confident decisions.
“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web.”
The Decision Engine
Bing is being positioned as a “decision engine.” Microsoft said Bing innovates on core search areas such as entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition, and document summarization technology, as well as a new user-experience model that adapts to query types to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.
A feature called Deep Links allows more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer. Another dubbed Quick Preview is a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the site’s relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, a feature designed to provide information within the body of the search-results page to minimize the need for additional clicks.
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