Last Thursday Microsoft announced Bing - a "new" approach to search.  The flashy demo and lack of specifics did not impress and the most quoted comment about Bing was that it stands for "But It’s Not Google."  However, Microsoft bounced back from that publicity to roll out Bing several days ahead of schedule.  Early reviews have been slightly more positive with comments like "it doesn't suck as much as I expected it would"

The challenge for Microsoft is to roll out features that inspire people to migrate from Google to Bing. Microsoft has also committed between $80 and $100 million USD to an advertising campaign to help encourage people.

So the key question is what does Bing do that's unique?  Actually, that might be the wrong question as it would pretty much end this article.  So let's consider what does Bing do that is new compared to live.com which was Microsoft's prior search engine. 

If you are going to test Bing out go to this page and set English - US as your default region. Many of the features are currently limited in certain parts of the world - though this seems to be changing by the hour.  There is already a web service to compare Bing and Google search results. 

Searching for videos in Bing is cool.  Just move your mouse over a video and the video starts playing - no need to click on the video or even click through to another site. But be careful about tweaking the safe search settings because any video clip.  So if you take the safe search off (a exhausting two click process) you might be in for a few surprises.  If you are looking for a way around porn filters, Microsoft is dishing this up (pun intended). This feature has already been nicknamed the Badda-Bing feature. 

Now on a more family-friendly note, Bing lets you watch previews, some fairly long previews, of Hulu videos.  Hulu typically blocks video display outside the US - so it will be interesting to see how long this preview lasts.

Bing's use of search categories is another interesting feature.  The best way to see this is put a TV show or movie title into the search and along the left side of the Bing screen you will see categories like Cast, Wallpaper, Theme Song, DVD, Episodes and more.  For the majority of searchers who are not experts at Google search syntax - this is pretty nice. 

Google, mostly because of its Google Maps division being based in Sydney, has served New Zealand well and the local business data on Bing does not even come close to what Google offers.  

But hey, the graphics on the Bing home page are nice.  And it looks like they change every day.  Not nice enough to cause a mass migration to Bing - but still nice.