With the release of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, many are clinging to old traditions and aren’t giving up their allegiance Google, but those who have decided to test the waters of this new search engine have found quite a jewel. In this post I’d like to reflect a bit upon some of the features of our new search engine, and the differences between Google and Bing.

One of the most obvious differences between the two competing search engines is the styling of the homepage. While google.com displays a simple logo, a search box, and a line of links at the top, bing.com displays an exceptionally pleasing travel-oriented photograph daily. Further, hovering over the photograph provides users with snippets about it. Today’s image is of the Louvre, and it says “The world is full of great art museums, but few are as well-known and admired as the Louvre.”

Bing provides ten times more information on its search results page than Google does. Type the name of a car into Bing and feast your eyes on all of its specs. Type a company name into Bing and get the customer service number, something that would require navigation to the company’s website when using Google. Move your cursor to the right of a search result and Bing will give you a summary of the page and you can determine whether or not to navigate to that page. Hover over a video result and the video will begin to play. You don’t have to go to Youtube or Hulu to watch videos anymore, and you don’t even have to press Play. Just hover. I could go on and on about the little things like these that make the Bing experience just that: an experience.

Whereas Google is fast and familiar, Bing is attractive. However, when it comes down to it, Bing is not as comprehensive in its search results as Google is, according to Citigroup who tested 200 of the most popular queries in both Bing and Google to see which search engine would produce the most relevance. However, what may be considered relevant by Citigroup’s standards may not be for the rest of society.

But why not let you try it for yourself?