Word: bing
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...Bing has received surprisingly good reviews from critics, considering that complaining about Microsoft products is an armchair sport for bloggers. Bing, described by Microsoft as a "Decision Engine," targets four major categories of search: shopping, local, travel and health. Bing's home page is sumptuously colorful, displaying a different, richly detailed photograph every day. It's a deliberate attempt to distinguish Bing from Google's minimalist look...
...Bing's search results are presented somewhat differently than Google's. A Bing results page has two components: a left-hand navigation panel that lets users click on related or recent searches, and a center panel that groups the search results into what Bing deems logical categories. Search for Obama, for example, and you'll see results grouped into categories such as Obama news, Obama issues, Obama facts and Obama biography. Google does have a type of categorization in its "related searches" feature, but it's not nearly as prominent as what Bing's. Bing also has a handy video...
...area where Bing especially hopes to distinguish itself from Google is in travel searches. As anyone who has done a Google search for "inexpensive new york hotel" or "cheap air fare to london" knows, the results are often close to useless, a jumble of promotional sites and lists that point to other lists. Bing hopes to trump Google in travel with its Farecast technology, designed to locate the cheapest flights and hotels on the basis of recent trends. Farecast charts the peaks and valleys of airfares and room rates for a particular itinerary over the course of several months...
...detail that's missing from Bing's home page is any mention of Microsoft. (There are small tabs that link to MSN and Windows Live, but they're easy to miss.) Omitting Microsoft's name is no accident - it's an effective way of positioning Bing as a cool new search engine rather than a site sponsored by a gigantic corporation that's often seen as the antithesis of cool. (See the best social-networking applications...
...Microsoft's renewed commitment to search is only the latest example of Google and Microsoft invading each other's territory. Shortly after Bing's debut, Google announced a new operating system called Chrome, meant to take a bite out of Microsoft's Windows franchise. The Chrome OS, scheduled to be rolled out in the fall, is designed to run on netbooks, the small, inexpensive laptops that have surged in popularity. By tying the Chrome OS to popular applications like Gmail, Google Chat and Picassa, Google hopes to give Microsoft a run for its money in the operating-system market, just...