Anyone else loving the new Bing?

[zicoz]

I've been using Bing as my main search engine for years, and even though I live in Norway the results have been on pair with what Google has been able to deliver. Perhaps this has been because I do a lot of searches related to movies, music etc and I've been using the US version of Bing.

But lately I've noticed that Bing actually gives me better answers then Google does. (Mark that I say answers and not results as the results are still basically the same for both search engines). And this is the "worldwide" version of Bing.

Take a search for "If I die Young". All Google gives me is the same old list of search results, but Bing gives me a nice info box with things like album artist, links to the song on ITunes, Xbox Music and Amazon MP3, it also gives me info on what other albums the song appears on.

Google has something similar, it gives the same sort of info box if I search for "Two guns", but while Bing gives me links to Xbox Video and Amazon, as well as a link to a trailer. Google does no such thing. Also, Bing seems to have a bigger database of movies "That thing you do" won't give me such a box on Google.

Same goes for games, "StarCraft 2" "Half-Life", and even an olden goldie such as "Betrayal at Krondor" all pops up in such an info box. And if I click on "Raymond E. Feist" under "designers for "Betrayal at Krondor" his search result also has such an info box . He has one on Google as well, but my overall impression is that Bing offers this info box for many more searches.

A few weeks ago I was watching "The Expendables 2", and the scene were they say that the character Dolph Lundgren plays is actually really smart, I knew that Dolph Lundgren is actually extremely smart as well, and I knew he had a very good education, but I didn't remember what that education was, so I did a quick search for "Dolph Lundgren education", and at the very top comes a grey info bar with the following information:

"Washington State University ? University of Sydney ? Royal Institute of Technology ? Clemson University ? ..."

As it turns out he has so much education that it doesn't fit in the info bar, so I had to click to link that said "Data from Wikipedia" to find the details.

For Brad Pitt on the other hand:

"Kickapoo High School (? - 1982) ? Missouri School of Journalism (1982 - )"

The same goes for a search for "Dolph Lundgred born"

"November 3, 1957 Stockholm" comes up in the info-bar.

No such thing from Google on neither education or birth place/time.

And Bing even knows to show the info-box on the right side when I search for Dolph Lundgren born". If I search for "Dolph Lundgren" on Google he has a box, but if I search for "Dolph Lundgren born" or "Dolph Lundgren education" no such box comes up.

Other example for the Info-bar is "3rd US president".

I do believe that Microsoft mentioned that they were building a knowledge database in one of their presentations this summer, and I'm pretty sure that is the source for all of this stuff, as well as the new Bing search in Windows 8.1 and it's what has given Bing the lead here. Now all they need is to continue that work and we'll be in for a fun future on Microsofts platforms.

 

[Pete]

I've been impressed too.

Only downside for me is that I no longer see the daily Bing screen (I really love when they're animated).

Except on my lock screen...

 

[dznk]

Yep, as you said, that's because you are using the US version. Anywhere else it is mainly just the search results you get. I'm from the UK and actually use Bing as my main search engine, but the lack of features compared to the US version is a bit annoying. Although I find the search is fine for me and I actually use Bing as my homepage. It's really not as bad as some people make out and it is improving all the time, just a shame they don't roll out all these changes worldwide.

Here's an example, using your search term above...

US Version:


UK Version:

 

[zicoz]

Like I said, I'm using the "worldwide" version, not the US version.

 

[dznk]

So Norway gets the links on the right hand side to Xbox Music and 'Play song' etc like the US? I thought it was just the US that got those things.

 

[ag1986]

I did a random check with the Lundgren anecdote, seems to be about the same...

 

[freshfelicio]

I live in Germany and use bing as primary search engine too, but all I got from the new bing was the new logo. MS needs to realize that the world outside the US is bigger than the US. People outside of the US are not some kind of minority that can be left behind. We are the majority. I don't get social search, I don't get preview results, etc. Besides that, why did they still not manage to scale the bing image of the day to fit the screen on 1080p?! It can scale down if you resize the window but it cant scale up. Grey borders are ugly. And also, why do I need to have the annoying bing desktop box on my desktop just to get bing image of the day as wallpaper?! That way its not compatible with Windows RT... Just build it into Windows!