Microsoft bing to replace Google as favorite search engine

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I-Love-Bing

Well, at least on my computers.
I’ve been using Google as my search engine for an eternity now. Frankly, I don’t even remember what came before that. It was that long ago. Of course, being the Microsoft enthusiast that I am - I gave live.com a ping now and then, promising myself to try it for a few days and giving up rather shortly after. Yes, I admit, there was never a click between me and Microsoft’s search engine.

Then came “bing”

Given the supposition that bing is “live.com revamped” and that it is probably emerging from the very same codebase, I had little expectations from the new search engine. An improved live.com? possibly. A re-packaged, re-branded but otherwise unchanged live.com? probably. An exciting new search engine that will replace Google search in my world? well, that thought didn’t even occur to me. That is, until I actually used bing.

Bing is fast, smart, versatile, easy to use, and has tons of useful features. Among the most notable features I count:

Smart video preview: Hover your mouse cursor on the video thumbnail and you’ll get an instant preview of several scenes from that video, with sound, inside the thumbnail.

Image search to die for:

  1. Several zoom levels for image thumbnails, with and without textual details. Changing zoom level is done instantly, no waiting for reload.
  2. Filter by size, layout, color, style (photo or illustration), and “people” which lets you filter images showing just faces or head & shoulders.
  3. Seamless, continuous results scrolling - just scroll down with your mouse wheel and more images are revealed. All the results are in a single page but since they load “on-demand” when scrolling to them - there’s no delay in the search.
  4. Hover over thumbnail to expose more details and actions - like getting similar results.

Suggestions and auto-corrections - Yes, I know Google had that for a long time, now bing has that too.

There are other interesting features, like the maps, news and shopping search categories, but since I’m not actually living in the states, it’s of little use to me.

In addition to these features, I must point out that bing just looks great. It is certainly more colorful and interesting than the competition’s Spartan search page. And yet, it loads (almost) instantly.

So, in conclusion: There’s a new search engine in town, and it’s awesome. bing!