Bing is now offering “Instant Search”. Picasso once said that “good artists imitate, but great artists steal”. Apparently in the corporate world: good companies imitate, but great companies steal.
Microsoft who has unsuccessfully tried to imitate everything from iPod (Zune) to iPhone (Kin, Kin2, Windows 7 Phone), has now decided to take a different tack. Microsoft’s johnny-come-lately search engine, Bing, now has a feature strikingly similar to Google’s “instant results”.
Microsoft is boosting its Bing system with a similar “instant results” feature to Google‘s, bringing a pseudo-real time feel to search that aims to speed up the process significantly.
Google introduced “instant” search feedback recently to increase the speed and efficiency of search–the system pops up a suggested list of search query matches as you’re actually typing, just in case the results meet your needs before you go through the tedious business of typing out a complete search string. Now Microsoft, which is busy expanding Bing’s search engine into a very serious rival for Google, is trying something very similar.
New Bing will include the instant search feature, smoother animations, better interaction with search history, pop-over windows to make in-site navigation easier, and moving photos and slideshows for certain types of search query results–these last give you more info about a search query finding directly inside Bing, meaning it’s simpler to determine if the match actually satisfies your needs without requiring you to surf there directly. (Source: Fastcompany )