Microsoft Announces New Search Engine

Get ready for it. Microsoft has lifted the veil of secrecy behind it’s new new search engine. So what’s the name? Bing! We’re serious, it’s called Bing.

The folks in Redmond are getting ready to launch the new service within days here in North America. They are calling it a “Decision Engine”. Not exactly sure what they mean by that. In fact, some of the information being released by Microsoft is a bit vague,  but here’s what we know so far.

Bing focuses on four main areas of search. They include:

Shopping -  Scan the Web for user and expert reviews, organizes them by product attribute, and then ranks the sentiment in the reviews as either positive or negative. This enables you to filter quickly through lots of information to inform a purchase decision.

Travel – Helps you find information on flights and hotels. Bing Travel will also offer flight Price Predictors and hotel Rate Indicators.

Local – Search locally. Find restaurant reviews in your city, hours of operation for local businesses, one-click directions, maps and traffic reports.

Health – Find health information online. This service will help users get access to medical information from nine trusted resources to help you make more informed decisions about personal care.

Microsoft also hints at what they are calling a “New Home Page Experience”.  Each day a “beautiful”  new image will appear with hotspots embedded in that image, with clear links for starting your searches for video, news, shopping, travel, images or maps.

Intrigued? Bing will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3

Link to [Microsoft Release]