Bing search will be a huge part of the next Windows
There’s a good chance you’ve used Microsoft’s Bing search engine without even realizing it.
Ask your iPhone’s Siri to search the web, and Microsoft’s search engine fetches the results. Ditto Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Up until last year, Facebook searches were powered by Bing. Or maybe you prefer Yahoo! search — again, that’s Bing humming under the hood. It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of search engines: It can’t get no respect, but it has an unexpected vitality. In fact, Bing powers nearly one-third of all the world’s searches, according to statistics gathered by web analytics firm comScore — meaning Google search isn’t as dominant as you might think.
This summer, Bing is poised to claim an even larger share of the search market, when 1.5 billion Windows users will have an opportunity to upgrade to Windows 10. The upgrade, which will be free to anyone running Windows version 7 and up, will embed Bing-powered search bars on millions of desktops and home screens. Microsoft hopes that the convenience of these searches may finally break users of the habit of typing “Google.com” for all of their search needs.
“We fundamentally believe that as search evolves, it will move well beyond the point where I launch a browser and type a query into a search box,” says Bing’s general manager Ryan Gavin.
In Windows 10, the search bar will be ever-present at the bottom of the screen. It won’t just search the web, but also personal information saved to the device or floating in the cloud. All of the results will be bundled into a single menu. That means anytime Windows 10 users search for a file, they’ll see Bing search results as well, a constant reminder that web searches are only a click away — or less. Windows 10 users will also be able to search via voice query thanks to Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant that listens to spoken commands and personalizes search results according to what the user is doing in that moment.
“Say I’m using an Excel spreadsheet and I’m immersed in what I’m doing,” says Mike Calcagno, director of engineering for Cortana, “I can say, ‘Hey Cortana, what’s 69 times pi?’”
Cortana will spare the user from opening a separate window or launching a calculator app, and it will know that by “pi,” the user is not referring to a dessert. That may sound like a minor improvement, but Microsoft is wagering that a few less clicks can make all the difference in user adoption. When Cortana launched last year, spoken word searches increased ten-fold, according to Calcagno. “We do see behavior change, which is really exciting,” he says…
I’ve used Bing and I still prefer the search results from Google or even DuckDuckGo. I cannot speak to searches on smartphones or any other handheld device with search capabilities, because I don’t own any.
I think what bothers me most is……again, Microsoft insists on trying to make it as difficult as they can get away with, in preventing us from conveniently using anything they don’t want us to use. Very soon, as people find the need to buy new computers, with the only option being Win10, Microsoft will be touting the increased market share occupied by Bing……as if it was achieved by a great product that users “chose” over others.
Unless the options are limited I will continue to use the one that gives the best results.