Microsoft officially launches Bing (Sort of)

After much talk about Microsoft’s latest search engine, and exhaustive planning by Microsoft, Microsoft has sort of launched its latest search site at Bing.com. I say sort of because when you browse to the official site for Bing, you would just see the Bing logo and observe a message below it saying “Coming Soon“.

Bing is set to go live within a week. Bing is not just a rename for Live Search, instead it can be considered as a significant upgrade that contains new features and a new interface and is considered as a decision engine. Bing which had the codename Kumo was unveiled today at All Things Digital D7 conference by none other than the Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Bing will be made available globally by 3rd June.

As Microsoft puts it, Bing has four dimensions to it on the initial basis:

• Shop around for products (Provides reviews of the products and price comparisons)
• Travel Planning
• Researching health conditions
• Local Business search

There might be many people who might be wondering what is the rationale behind choosing the Bing as the title for Microsoft’s decision engine. Yusuf Mehdi, who presented a demo of Bing on the stage, stated

We needed a brand that was as fresh and new [...] A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world [...] the name needed to clearly communicate that this is something new, to invite you to come back, to re-introduce you to our new and improved service and encourage you to give it a try.

It still remains to be seen whether Bing will signal a major breakthrough in the search engine competition and be considered as a competitor to Google or Google’s supremacy over the search engine will continue on. Only time will tell. Let’s hope that Bing does wonder for Microsoft.