[geoff01]

Microsoft has gone live with its Bing search engine in certain territories, ahead of a scheduled 3 June global launch.

In early tests conducted by vnunet.com, connecting to Bing was a hit-and-miss affair, and there were a couple of error messages suggesting that it had gone live only in the US, as some reports claim.
Advertisement

Microsoft has pitched the search engine at consumers, explaining that it is designed to help make informed decisions about travel and shopping.

"Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the web and find information, but they don't do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

"When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the web. Bing is an important first step in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly, and use the information to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions."

An easy-to-use preferences tab lets users add content tools to searches, such as the ability to filter out inappropriate images, while the location service offers the ability to receive search results from a precise local postcode area. However, a search for 'pizza' turned up a Canadian web site within a handful of results on the front page when searching from the UK.

A few sponsored results appear at the top of the page, and 'News' searches were accurate and easy to sift through.

The Shopping tab points to a preview page for Ciao, and the searches and prices were geographically accurate. Mapping services are provided by Multimap, and were also geographically accurate in our initial tests.

Bing may not be available in all geographies just yet, as Microsoft appears to be committed to sticking to its 3 June global launch date.

vnunet.com