Only a few weeks after the new Wolfram Alpha search engine has been introduced, Microsoft has unveiled its own new search engine. It’s called Bing and it will replace the not so popular Live search engine. Live MSN Search has been a distant third behind market leaders Google and 2nd placed Yahoo, and after those two introduced some improvements recently, it was only a matter of time before Microsoft unleashed its secret weapon.

Bing has been designed to intuitively understand what people are seeking on the Internet and provide results more effectively. It is also similar to Wolfram Alpha in that is focuses on delivering answers, not links to Web pages. Bing is still in the early development stages, but Microsoft is excited about its prospects of challenging Google and Yahoo and maybe one day overtaking them.

For a number of years, search engines have been effective only in listing most relevant links to Web pages by looking at their popularity and number of incoming links, but finding the right information quickly has always been difficult for many users. According to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, Bing relies on algorithms and key words to provide results for online searches, but it also uses some semantic technology that deduces intended meanings of phrases.  

First reviews are positive but experts agree that it won’t replace Google any time soon. Bing does try to make it easier for users to find the right information by not having to click through a lot of sites, but Google is still the most superior search engine. Even though Bing might help users narrow searches down and present relevant results faster, it won’t outdo Google. Some Yahoo users might switch, but it’s hard to see people leave the beloved Google. Everyone is so used to it by now that it’s hard to let go. I use it myself and when I want to search for something, I automatically think of Google. Even if Bing is so great, it will take a while before people start saying “bing the word” instead of “google the word”. J