Bing Live

denali_en-us794296373Bing Live

Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing is now live. I’ve tried it a few times with mixed results, it is pretty and does have new features however.

The good news is that Microsoft and Bill Gates have been busy buying into regional news outlets and small town papers the past few years, which means when you are looking for the local immediate source for a hot news item they may have it sooner.

In the recent slaying in Arkansas, AP had one story out the first day, but initially it was very thin on information; searching Bing brought me immediately to the local station where they had much more story and some video, while google and yahoo did not have the link. This is important to us newshounds.

When searching for the Tiller shooting, there were many more links in the Google “wall of mud” search, but it was a chore going through them for the pertinent and not just repetition of what was already out. Bing provided a link to pitch.com, which had a picture of the car and arrest of suspect. So pluses for that.

Now the bad news: you do get fewer returns with Bing, but they are quality. You also have to hit “more” and drop down if you just want to sort for news, a step you don’t have with Google since “news’ sort is in their header.

The video below from John4Lakers covers most of the new features

I’ll be making more comparisons in the future as I continue to try out Bing vs Google.