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Bing is Official! Mobile Client on the Way!

Last post 06-01-2009 5:43 PM by Dave Parker MVP. 3 replies.
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  • 05-28-2009 12:10 PM

    Bing is Official! Mobile Client on the Way!

    Microsoft's new "decision engine," Bing, is now official! This is a destination for desktop PCs, representing the evolution of the live.com search engine, and not really a mobile experience (at least not in the press release), so we'll have to wait and see what the implications are for mobile search... A note: the Bing.com site is not yet live - that's scheduled for June 3.

    UPDATE: I just noticed at the site Discover Bing that there WILL be a mobile client. Currently, however, the links point to Live Search downloads:

    Bing for Mobile download

    Bing for Mobile is designed specifically for quick, task-oriented searches of local information on mobile devices. Local search and mapping features will provide an easy way to find details and directions for local businesses.

    [EDIT] And there's yet another Bing information site: http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html

    Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

    The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. The new service, located at http://www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.

    The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences. Results from a custom comScore Inc. study across core search engines show that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

    “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 Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

    A New Approach to Internet Search

    Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* 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 faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today’s search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.

    Great search results. Relevant search results are still a top priority for people, yet Microsoft studies show that only one in four search queries deliver a satisfactory result. Bing helps identify relevant search results through features such as Best Match, where the best answer is surfaced and called out; Deep Links, allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer; and Quick Preview, a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site’s relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page, minimizing the need for additional clicks.

    Organized search experience. More and more customers are regularly spending time with search engines, engaging in complex, multi-query and multi-session searches. Respondents also said an organized search experience would be twice as useful in helping find information and accomplishing tasks faster. Bing includes a number of features that organize search results, including Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results. Collectively, these and other features in Bing help people navigate their search results, cut through the clutter of search overload and get right down to making important decisions.

    Simplify tasks and provide insight. Microsoft’s research identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas in which people wanted more assistance in making key decisions. The current state of Internet search isn’t optimized for these tasks, but the Bing Decision Engine is optimized for these key customer scenarios. For example, while a consumer is using Bing to shop online, the Sentiment Extraction feature scours the Internet for user opinions and expert reviews to help leverage the community of customers as well as product experts in trying to make a buying decision. In Bing Travel, the Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values, and the Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.

    The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:

    Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.

    Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel. More information coming soon.

    Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

     

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    • Post Points: 10
  • 06-01-2009 6:36 AM In reply to

    Re: Bing is Official! Mobile Client on the Way!

    I just "found" this, this morning.  I was a bit surprised when I clicked my home button and it pinged me to "Bing". 

    Funny name "Bing", what do you think?

    Dave Parker
    Microsoft M.V.P. Mobile Devices
    Reviewer & Moderator - www.4Winmobile.com
    • Post Points: 5
  • 06-01-2009 2:52 PM In reply to

    Re: Bing is Official! Mobile Client on the Way!

    m.bing.com is now live! This is the Bing mobile browser version, which provides a mobile-optimized search engine experience with a heavy emphasis on local results, instant answers, and specific tasks - with Bing's very cool categorization capabilities! You can also input your location to get tuned local results...

    Note: This is NOT the Bing mobile client, which is still expected later this year.

     

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    • Post Points: 10
  • 06-01-2009 5:43 PM In reply to

    Re: Bing is Official! Mobile Client on the Way!

     I've now used "Bing"  all day and have been impressed by the quality of the results. Although I've not performed any scientific tests it seems to have been more accurate than Live. That could just be my search criteria today but I don't think so.

    Dave Parker
    Microsoft M.V.P. Mobile Devices
    Reviewer & Moderator - www.4Winmobile.com
    • Post Points: 5
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