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Bing

Bing Homepage in October 2010The Bing homepage features an image that changes daily.
Type of site	Search engine
Available in	Multilingual (40)
Owner	Microsoft
Created by	Microsoft
URL	www.bing.com
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional

Bing (formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is a web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine") from Microsoft. Bing was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009 at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego. It went fully online on June 3, 2009, with a preview version released on June 1, 2009.

Notable changes include the listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane") based on semantic technology from Powerset that Microsoft purchased in 2008.

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.

History

MSN Search

MSN Search was a search engine by Microsoft that comprised a search engine, index, and web crawler. MSN Search first launched in the third quarter of 1998 and used search results from Inktomi. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily. The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.

Windows Live Search

The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8, 2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta.

In the roll-over from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own internal image search algorithms.

Live Search

On March 21, 2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live Search was merged with Microsoft adCenter.

A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search branding. On May 23, 2008, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a service for users to create their own custom search engines or use macros created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA on February 18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.

Microsoft recognised that there would be a brand issue as long as the word "Live" remained in the name. As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services, Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.

Yahoo! search deal

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding.

Market share

Before the launch of Bing the marketshare of Microsoft web search pages (MSN and Live search) had been steadily declining. As of October 2010, Bing is the fourth largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 3.25%, after its competitor Google at 83.34%, Yahoo at 6.32% and Baidu at 4.96%, according to Net Applications. Bing's global share is 9.57% when considering that searches at both Yahoo and Bing are actually powered by the Bing search engine.

Features

Interface features

• Daily changing of background image. The images are mostly of noteworthy places in the world, though it sometimes displays animals, people, and sports. The background image also contains information about the element(s) shown in the image.
• Images page shows the main picture from that day and four searches that refers to that image with three preview pictures per search term.
• Left side navigation pane. Includes navigation and, on results pages, related searches and prior searches
• Right side extended preview which shows a bigger view of the page and gives URLs to links inside of the page.
• Sublinks. On certain search results, the search result page also shows section links within the article (this is also done on other search engines, including Google)
• Enhanced view where third party site information can be viewed inside Bing.
• On certain sites, search from within the website on the results page.
• On certain sites, Bing will display the Customer Service number on the results page.

Media features

• Video thumbnail Preview where, by hovering over a video thumbnail, the video automatically starts playing
• Image search with continuous scrolling images results page that has adjustable settings for size, layout, color, style and people.
• Video search with adjustable setting for length, screen size, resolution and source

Instant answers

• Sports. Bing can directly display scores from a specific day, recent scores from a league or scores and statistics on teams or players.
• Finance. When entering a company name or stock symbol and either stock or quote in the search box Bing will show direct stock information like a stockchart, price, volume, and p/e ratio in a webslice that users can subscribe to.
• Math calculations (e.g., 2 * pi * 24). Users can enter math expressions in the search box using a variety of math operators and (trig) functions and Bing will provide a direct calculation of the expression.
• Advanced Computation. Tapping into the WolframAlpha computational engine, Bing can also give results to advanced math problems (e.g. lim x/2x as x->2) and other WolframAlpha related queries (e.g. calories in pizza).
• Package tracking and tracing. When a user types the name of the shipping company and the tracking number, Bing will provide direct tracking information.
• Dictionary. When 'define', 'definition' or 'what is' followed by a word is entered in the searchbox Bing will show a direct answer from the Encarta dictionary
• Spell check. Will change frequently misspelled search terms to the more commonly spelled alternative.
• Best match (plus similar sites)
• Product shopping and Bing cashback
• Health information
• Flight tracking

Local info

• Current traffic information
• Business listing
• People listing
• Collections
• Localized searching for restaurants and services
• Restaurant reviews
• Movies played in an area. When a current movie title is entered in the search box Bing will provide listings of local theaters showing the movie. When a city is added to the search box, Bing provides the movie listings localized for that city.
• City hotel listings. When 'hotels' and a city name is entered in the search box Bing can provide hotel listings with a map. The listing leads to a detail search page with the hotels listed that holds extended information on the hotels and contains links to reviews, directions reservations and bird eye view of the hotel. On the page with the listings the list can be refined by settings on ratings, pricing, amenities, payment and parking

Integration with Hotmail

• With Hotmail’s "Quick Add" feature, users can insert derivatives of Bing search results such as restaurant reviews, movie times, images, videos, and maps directly into their e-mail messages.

International

Bing is available in many languages and has been localized for many countries.

Languages in which Bing can find results

Languages in which Bing can be displayed

Search products

In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Bing also provides the following search offerings:

Webmaster services

Bing allows webmasters to manage the web crawling status of their own websites through Bing Webmaster Center. Additionally, users may also submit contents to Bing via the following methods:

• Bing Local Listing Center allow businesses to add business listings onto Bing Maps and Bing Local
• Soapbox on MSN Video allow users to upload videos for searching via Bing Videos

Mobile services

Bing Mobile allow users to conduct search queries on their mobile devices, either via the mobile browser or a downloadable mobile application. In the United States, Microsoft also operates a toll-free number for directory assistance called Bing 411.

Other services

BingTweets is a service that combines Twitter trends with Bing search results, enabling users to see real-time information about the hottest topics on Twitter. The BingTweets service was initiated on July 14, 2009 in a partnership between Microsoft, Twitter and Federated Media.

Toolbars, gadgets and plug-ins

Toolbars

Both Windows Live Toolbar and MSN Toolbar will be powered by Bing and aim to offer users a way to access Bing search results. Together with the launch of Bing, MSN Toolbar 4.0 will be released with inclusion of new Bing-related features such as Bing cashback offer alerts.

Gadgets

The Bing Search gadget is a Windows Sidebar Gadget that uses Bing Search to fetch the user's search results and render them directly in the gadget. Another gadget, the Bing Maps gadget, displays real-time traffic conditions using Bing Maps. The gadget provides shortcuts to driving directions, local search and full-screen traffic view. However, traffic data is limited only for major US and Canadian cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montreal, New York City, Oklahoma City, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C.

Prior to October 30, 2007, the gadgets were known as Live Search gadget and Live Search Maps gadget; both gadgets were removed from Windows Live Gallery due to possible security concerns. The Live Search Maps gadget was made available for download again on January 24, 2008 with the security concern addressed. However around the introduction of Bing in June 2009 both gadgets have been removed again for download from Windows Live Gallery.

Accelerators

Accelerators allow users to access Bing features directly from selected text in a webpage. Accelerators provided by the Bing team include:

• Bing Translator
• Bing Maps
• Bing Shopping

Web Slices

Web Slices can be used to monitor information gathered by Bing. Web Slices provided by the Bing team include:

• Weather from Bing
• Finance from Bing
• Traffic from Bing

Plug-ins

The Bing team provides an official Bing Firefox add-on, which adds search suggestions to the Firefox search box from Bing.

Marketing and advertisements

Live Search

Since 2006, Microsoft had conducted a number of tie-ins and promotions for promoting Microsoft's search offerings. These include:

• Amazon's A9 search service and the experimental Ms. Dewey interactive search site syndicated all search results from Microsoft's then search engine, Live Search. This tie-in started on May 1, 2006.
• Search and Give - a promotional website launched on 17 January 2007 where all searches done from a special portal site would lead to a donation to the UNHCR's organization for refugee children, ninemillion.org. Reuters AlertNet reported in 2007 that the amount to be donated would be $0.01 per search, with a minimum of $100,000 and a maximum of $250,000 (equivalent to 25 million searches). According to the website the service was decommissioned on June 1, 2009, having donated over $500,000 to charity and schools.
• Club Bing - a promotional website where users can win prizes by playing word games that generate search queries on Microsoft's then search service Live Search. This website began in April 2007 as Live Search Club.
• Big Snap Search - a promotional website similar to Live Search Club. This website began in February 2008, but was discontinued shortly after.
• Live Search SearchPerks! - a promotional website which allowed users to redeem tickets for prizes while using Microsoft's search engine. This website began on October 1, 2008 and was decommissioned on April 15, 2009.

Debut

Bing's debut featured an $80 to $100 million online, TV, print, and radio advertising campaign in the US. The advertisements do not mention other search engine competitors, such as Google and Yahoo, directly by name; rather, they attempt to convince users to switch to Bing by focusing on Bing's search features and functionality. The ads claim that Bing does a better job countering "search overload".

The Colbert Report

During the episode of The Colbert Report that aired on June 8, 2010, Stephen Colbert stated that Microsoft would donate $2,500 to help clean up the Gulf oil spill each time he mentioned the word "Bing" on air. Colbert mostly mentioned Bing in out-of-context situations, such as Bing Crosby and Bing cherries. By the end of the show, Colbert had said the word 40 times, for a total donation of $100,000. Colbert poked fun at their rivalry with Google, stating "Bing is a great website for doing Internet searches. I know that, because I Googled it."

Search deals

As of Opera 10.6, Bing has been the default search engine on the Opera browser. Bing will also be incorporated into all future versions of Opera.

In addition, Microsoft also paid Verizon Wireless $550 million USD to use Bing as the default search provider on Verizon's Blackberry, and in turn, have Verizon "turn off" (via Blackberry service books) the other search providers available. Though users can still access other search engines via the mobile browser.

Microsoft also has an agreement with Hewlett-Packard to have Bing as the default search engine for all new PCs it sells for the next 3 years.

Name origin

Through focus groups, Microsoft decided that the name Bing was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that it would function well as a URL around the world. The word would remind people of the sound made during "the moment of discovery and decision making." Microsoft was assisted by branding consultancy Interbrand in their search for the best name for the new search engine. The name also has strong similarity to the word 'bingo', which is used to mean that something sought has been found or realized, as is interjected when winning the game Bingo. Microsoft advertising strategist David Webster originally proposed the name "Bang" for the same reasons the name Bing was ultimately chosen (easy to spell, one syllable, and easy to remember). He noted, "It's there, it's an exclamation point It's the opposite of a question mark." This name was ultimately not chosen because it could not be properly used as a verb in the context of an internet search. According to the Guardian " hasn't confirmed that it stands recursively for Because It's Not Google, but that's the sort of joke software engineers enjoy." Qi Lu, president of Microsoft Online Services, also announced that Bing's official Chinese name is bì yìng (simplified Chinese: 必应; traditional Chinese: 必應), which literally means "very certain to respond" or "very certain to answer" in Chinese.

While being tested internally by Microsoft employees, Bing's codename was Kumo (くも), which came from the Japanese word for spider (蜘蛛; くも, kumo) as well as cloud (雲; くも, kumo), referring to the manner in which search engines "spider" Internet resources to add them to their database, as well as cloud computing.

Legal challenges

On July 31, 2009, The Laptop Company, Inc. released a press release stating that it is challenging Bing's trademark application, alleging that Bing may cause confusion in the marketplace as Bing and their product BongoBing both do online product search. Software company TeraByte Unlimited, which has a product called BootIt Next Generation (abbreviated to BING), also contended the trademark application on similar grounds, as did a Missouri-based design company called Bing! Information Design.

Microsoft contends that claims by The Laptop Company and others challenging its trademark are without merit because these other companies filed for U.S. federal trademark applications only recently, after the filing of the Bing trademark by Microsoft and after the service's public release. Nonetheless, The Laptop Company and other challengers to the Bing trademark contend that they enjoy certain protections under common law and state laws.

Adult content

Video content

Bing's video search tool has a preview mode that could potentially be used to preview pornographic videos. By simply turning off safe search, users can search for and view pornographic videos by hovering the cursor over a thumbnail, since the video and audio, in some cases, are cached on Microsoft's Server.

Since the videos are playing within Bing instead of the site where they are hosted, the videos are not necessarily blocked by parental control filters. Monitoring programs designed to tell parents what sites their children have visited are likely to simply report "Bing.com" instead of the site that actually hosts the video. The same situation can be said about corporate filters, many of which have been fooled by this feature. Users do not need to leave Bing's site to view these videos.

Microsoft responded in a blog post on June 4, 2009, with a short term work-around. By adding “&adlt=strict” to the end of a query, no matter what the settings are for that session it will return results as if safe search were set to strict. The query would look like this: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=adulttermgoeshere&adlt=strict (case sensitive).

On June 12, 2009, Microsoft announced two changes regarding Bing's Smart Motion Preview and SafeSearch features. All potentially explicit content will be coming from a separate single domain, explicit.bing.net. Additionally, Bing will also return source URL information in the query string for image and video contents. Both changes allow both home users and corporate users to filter content by domain regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be.

Regional censorship

Bing censors results for adult search terms for some of the regions including India, People's Republic of China, Germany and Arab countries. This censoring is done based on the local laws of those countries. However, Bing allows users to simply change their country/region preference to somewhere without restrictions – such as the United States, United Kingdom or Ireland – to sidestep this censorship.

Criticism

Censorship in China

Microsoft has been criticized for censoring Bing search results to queries made in simplified Chinese characters, used in Mainland China. This is done to comply with the internet filtering requirements of the government in China. Microsoft has not indicated a willingness to stop censoring search results in simplified Chinese characters in the wake of Google's decision to do so. Searches in Bing are censored all over the world, not just China, when the search query is made in simplified Chinese characters.

Performance issues

Bing has been criticized for being slower to index websites than Google search or Yahoo! search. It has also been criticized for not indexing some websites at all.

See also

• Windows Live
• List of search engines

References

1. "Alexa Bing traffic results". Alexa. Retrieved 2010-12-14.
2. "Welcome to Discover Bing". Discoverbing.com. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
3. "Microsoft's New Search at Bing.com Helps People Make Better Decisions: Decision Engine goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload". Microsoft.com. Retrieved 2009-05-29.
4. "Microsoft Bing rides open source to semantic search". TheRegister.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
5. "Microsoft to Acquire Powerset". Bing.com. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
6. Microsoft and Yahoo seal web deal.
7. Chris Sherman, September 12, 2006, Microsoft Upgrades Live Search Offerings.
8. Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft severs Live Search from the rest of the Windows Live family.
9. Live QnA team blog announcement.
10. Keynote with Kevin Johnson at Microsoft.
11. Wired, 28 May 2009, Hands On With Microsoft’s New Search Engine: Bing, But No Boom.
12. "Microsoft and Yahoo seal web deal". BBC News. Wednesday, 29 July 2009 13:58 UK. Retrieved 2009-07-29. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. Tiffany Wu (Wed Jul 29, 2009 8:27am EDT). "REFILE-UPDATE 1-Microsoft, Yahoo in 10-year Web search deal". Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 2009-07-29. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
14. "Search Engine Market Share as reported by Compete, comScore, Hitwise, Net applications, Nielsen Online & StatCounter". antezeta.com. October 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-13.
15. Limit Image Results to Color or Black and White Images.
16. Display Stock Quotes.
17. Use Bing to Calculate, Perform Trigonometry, or Solve Your Algebra Homework.
18. Mathematical notations for use with Math Answers.
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24. Traffic by Live Search Maps Vista Gadget Returns.
25. LiveSide.net: Yes, the Live Search and Live Search Traffic gadgets are gone: security concerns cited.
26. LiveSide.net: The Traffic Gadget is Back!.
27. Bing Firefox addon.
28. Reuters AlertNet, 17 January 2007, Microsoft launches "Click for Cause" initiative to support UNHCR Net campaign.
29. searchandgive.com. Retrieved 1 June 2009.
30. "Microsoft challenges search users to game of snap".
31. Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search.
32. "Microsoft's Bing Ad Claims to Terminate 'Search Overload'". PC World. 2009-06-03. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
33. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/311926/june-07-2010/charity-begins-at-11-30
34. http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/210083.asp
35. "Microsoft hits search deal with Opera Software".
36. http://moconews.net/article/419-microsoft-beats-out-google-to-win-verizon-search-deal/
37. http://searchengineland.com/as-verizon-implements-bing-default-search-deal-company-sees-user-backlash-32650
38. http://www.zdnetasia.com/bing-to-be-default-search-on-hp-computers-62060376.htm
39. "The sound of found: Bing!". Neowin.net. May 28, 2009. Retrieved May 29, 2009.
40. "Interbrand Blog | Interbrand names Microsoft's new search engine Bing!". Interbrand.com. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
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43. Binging on search by design.
44. "First screenshot of Microsoft's Kumo emerges". Neowin.net. March 3, 2009. Retrieved May 29, 2009.
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46. Johnson, Bobbie (Monday 21 December 2009). "Microsoft sued over Bing trademark". The Guardian. London: Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 5 March 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
47. Johnson, Bobbie (December 21, 2009). "Microsoft sued over Bing trademark | Technology | guardian.co.uk". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
48. Magid, Larry (June 2, 2009). "Parents beware: Bing previews video porn". bing.com. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
49. Krazit, Tom (June 4, 2009). "Microsoft gives Bing stronger search filter option". Retrieved 2009-06-10.
50. Magid, Larry (June 5, 2009). "Microsoft offers unworkable solution to Bing porn". Retrieved 2009-06-08.
51. McDougall, Paul (June 8, 2009). "Bing Porn Draws Flak". Retrieved 2009-06-08.
52. Nichols, Mike (June 4, 2009). "Bing Community: smart motion preview and safesearch". bing.com. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
53. Nichols, Mike (June 12, 2009). "Bing Community: Safe Search Update". Bing.com. Retrieved 2009-06-14.
54. "No sex for Indians on Microsoft Bing".
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56. Kristof, Nicholas (November 20, 2009). "Boycott Microsoft Bing". The New York Times. Retrieved March 31, 2010.
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59. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/microsoft-outlines-plan-to-improve-bings-slow-indexing.ars
60. http://www.bing.com/community/forums/p/653570/9582219.aspx

External links

• Official website
• Bing for Mobile
• Discover Bing
• Decision Engine
• Bing Community
• Bing Toolbox - for developers and webmasters
• Bing Visual Search

• Bing
• Microsoft websites
• Internet search engines
• Websites which mirror Misplaced Pages
• Internet properties established in 2009
• 2009 establishments in the United States