Microsoft released its new search engine Bing earlier this month, and so far the reviews seem to be a bit mixed. Perhaps this is because we all have higher expectations when it comes to new items being released by this multimillion dollar giant.
The initial search page at bing.com is quite honestly a very beautiful picture. Now I have only used this engine briefly, so I am not exactly sure whether it is there intent to change that image and if so how often. Much more elaborate and perhaps a bit too busy for those who are used to using the plainer page engines like ask.com and Google and even Blackle, but some nice imagery and design and perhaps more people will be drawn to this much more attractive opening page, really cant be sure how this will go over yet.
The basics are the same as other search engines. You pop in an item to search, and you get a list of websites that relate. This page is oddly different from the first one. The margin on the left is a great big empty space. This cuts the space size for searches. With ranking in mind this doesn't seem all that hot of an idea.
The right margin includes side bars that when you run the cursor over them that provide you with additional text from the website pops up to let you preview the information contained in the site without actually having to click through to it. This is a good feature, and I appreciate the fact that this information is only available when you click on it, because you don't have to access it if you choose not to.
Live Search doesn't hold a candle to its successor Bing. It looks really awesome, and feels so fresh and new. It doesn't seem though that it will take over the other big search engines. The ability of checking out the websites without actually going there is a time saver. Even more so for those without high speed connections. But the actuality is that though it looks improved it doesn't seem really all that different than the others.
