Bing is the Microsoft operated and owned web-based search engine. It offers an array of search services that includes videos, map searches, images etc. It provides information on traffic jam, movie shows in an area, restaurant reviews, advanced filters, mathematical computations, package tracking and tracing etc.
- Industry: Industry
- Founded: June 1, 2009
- Founder(s): Microsoft
- Website: bingo.com
History of Bing
Bing had been created by Microsoft and launched on the 1st of June 2009. Microsoft decided to name the website ‘Bing’ as it was short, memorable and easy for spelling out. Initially, Microsoft had launched the MSN Search in 1998 making use of the Inktomi search results. This comprised of the index, search engine, and the web crawler. Later, the MSN Search launched the version that displayed the listings from both Inktomi and Looksmart but later only from AltaVista. After that, Microsoft upgraded the MSN Search for providing a self-made search engine of its own. Its index was updated on a daily or weekly basis. This upgraded version began as a beta program. Picsearch powered the Image search.
On the 21st of March 2007, Microsoft announced the separation of its search offerings from the services of ‘Windows Live’ and  said that it would rebrand the services as ‘Live Search.’ Later Microsoft realized there would be a problem with branding as long as the word ‘Live’ was there and hence for creating a ‘separate identity’ for the Microsoft Search services, the Bing word replaced Live Search on the 3rd of June 2009.
Recent Activities of Bing
The name ‘Bing’ was used as it had similarity with the ‘bingo’ word, which means something has been realized.
Microsoft made a 10 year deal with Yahoo, in which Bing would replace the search engine of Yahoo while retaining the user interface of Yahoo. Through this deal, Yahoo would be able to keep about 88% of revenue generated from all the search advertisement sales of the site for a period of 5 years.
Some of the interface features of Bing are that it displays a background image of noteworthy animals, sports, people, places etc. It has a homepage video for the HTML5-enabled browsers for occasional events. It has a navigation pane on the left side that includes navigation, prior searches and related searches.
The media features of the website are thumbnail previews (video), advanced filters that helps the users in refining the search results on the basis of aspect ratio, image size, recognition of facial features etc. The website even offers video search with the adjustable setting for screen size, length, resolution etc.
Bing also has other features, such as displaying the scores of the sports from the specific day. It even can provide information related to the stock market, such as price, stock chart, volume etc. It helps in unit conversion and advanced computations as well as helps in package tracing and tracking. It provides information on health, flight tracking and helps in product shopping. It also helps in the translation of phrases and spell checks. It helps in the localized searches of services, restaurants, deals and coupons as well as provides information on current traffic. It provides listing of business, people and city hotels.
