Bing went live this morning, two days ahead of it’s scheduled release. I’ve been putting it through its paces for a while now and here’s some of what I like and what I don’t. The interface is very nice, very clean. The engine is fast. When it finds what you’ve asked for it does so in a hurry. And the search results are formatted very nicely too. It’s also easy on the eyes. I think that I could live without the “big cat”, it seems somewhat distracting. Image searches seem to deliver better results than Google. They are a bit more “accurate”. Its got some problems finding things outside of the good old USofA even though it has billed itself worldwide. I suspect that will get fixed but you would think they would have made sure everything worked out of the gate if they hope to compete with Google. I also can’t help but wonder how long it will take Google to tune its engine to match and exceed anything that Bing does. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Here’s a few links to early reports from some of the tech sites. Apparently Bing is Something of a Hit
Microsoft Bing: First Impressions
Have you had a chance to try it yet? What are your first impressions?
Update: Oh my! There was talk over the weekend about a Bing search for Google only returning a few results while a Google search for Microsoft returned upteen million. I can’t imagine this was done on purpose, but do a Google image seach on “Bing” with safe filtering turned off. Definitely NSFW!
Update again: Fast Company likes it a lot. Microsoft’s Bing Search Arrives Early, and Impresses
Another Update: Last one, I promise. Tech Crunch has a story this morning about Irish SEO specialist, Paul Savage, and the web service he wrote that compares a search made through the two engines side by side. Interesting stuff. Search Smackdown: Bing vs. Google
