Bing is a new search engine that was introduced by Microsoft earlier this week.  Today, I finally had a chance to try it out.  I’m not impressed.

I’ve heard a lot about Bing in the past few weeks – Microsoft is calling it an “internet decision engine” vs an “internet search engine”.  They cited a study where consumers are using the Internet to get things done instead of find information and that many consumers find search results disorganized. (You can read about some of the study on Bing’s About page.)  After reading press releases and the About page on Bing, I’m still not sure what they mean by that distinction of an “internet decision engine”. 

One of the examples I’ve heard over and over again is how Bing will help you find the cheapest airfare rates.  So, I decided to test Bing and Google using a search for “austin to buenos aires”.  All of Bing’s results pointed me to Buenos Aires restaurant in Austin.  Google’s first result was airline information.  That’s what I was looking for – flights to Buenos Aires from Austin.  Upon further research, I found that Bing’s Travel section is the place you must go to find the deals on flights.  That doesn’t seem right – why can’t I just go to bing.com? Google gave me what I wanted from ITS home page.

Maybe it’s just me (although, I don’t think so – there have been many reports of how Bing doesn’t deliver.)  Either way, Bing will have to do something very drastic to get me to switch from using Google.

Filed under: Internet