REDMOND, Wash. — May 28, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. The new service, located at http://www.bing.com/, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.
The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences. Results from a custom comScore Inc. study across core search engines show that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.
“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 Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “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 forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”
A New Approach to Internet Search
Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today’s search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.
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Great search results. Relevant search results are still a top priority for people, yet Microsoft studies show that only one in four search queries deliver a satisfactory result. Bing helps identify relevant search results through features such as Best Match, where the best answer is surfaced and called out; Deep Links, allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer; and Quick Preview, a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site’s relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page, minimizing the need for additional clicks.
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Organized search experience. More and more customers are regularly spending time with search engines, engaging in complex, multi-query and multi-session searches. Respondents also said an organized search experience would be twice as useful in helping find information and accomplishing tasks faster. Bing includes a number of features that organize search results, including Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results. Collectively, these and other features in Bing help people navigate their search results, cut through the clutter of search overload and get right down to making important decisions.
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Simplify tasks and provide insight. Microsoft’s research identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas in which people wanted more assistance in making key decisions. The current state of Internet search isn’t optimized for these tasks, but the Bing Decision Engine is optimized for these key customer scenarios. For example, while a consumer is using Bing to shop online, the Sentiment Extraction feature scours the Internet for user opinions and expert reviews to help leverage the community of customers as well as product experts in trying to make a buying decision. In Bing Travel, the Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values, and the Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.
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The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:
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Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.
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Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel. More information coming soon.
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Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.
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Microsoft is committed to building better tools to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision. Bing is an important first step toward this long-term vision and a strong indicator of Microsoft’s commitment to move search technology forward for customers.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
* Ipsos 2009; 1,156 participants
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.
빙(Bing)이라는 브랜드명을 놓고는 ing로 끝나는 이름이 모두 긍정적인 의미를 포함한다며 좋다는 평가를 받기도 했지만 브랜드에 검색의 의미가 포함되어 있어야 하는데 빙(Bing)에는 그런 의미가 없다는 상반된 평가와 함께 어떤 사람들은 Bing이
의 두문자어(acronym)라는 재미있는 해석을 하기도 하는군요.
빙의 검색 결과에 대해서 전문가들의 평가는 좋기는 하지만 마이크로소프트가 그동안 외쳐왔던 구글타도는 쉽지 않을것 같아 보이네요. 빙의 알고리즘과 인터페이스는 라이브 서치보다는 확실히 많이 개선되었고 어떤 부분은 구글보다도 나은 점이 있지만 사람들이 구글을 떠나 빙으로 옮겨올만큼 획기적인 변화는 아니라고 합니다.
빙이 구글의 점유율을 일정부분은 가져 올수는 있겠지만 그리 많이 뺏어 올수는 없을것이며 다만 다른 검색 엔진을 사용하는 사람들을 빙으로 이동시킬수 있을 정도는 된다고 합니다. 그 이유는 빙이 근본적인 검색 방법의 변화가 없기 때문이라는 분석입니다. 마이크로소프트가 파워셋을 인수해 시맨틱 검색 기술을 빙에 접목시키려는 노력은 했지만 그리 뛰어난 결과를 낳지는 못한것으로 보이는군요.
있습니다. (현재 www.bing.com으로 접속이 가능하네요.^^;) 마이크로소프트가 빙(Bing)을 앞세워 구글이 주도하고 있는 검색시장의 판도를 바꿀수 있을지 여부는 이제
서서히 결정될 예정입니다. (포스팅 올리고 bing.com에 접속하니 프리뷰 버전으로 접속이 되는군요.)
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우리나라에 빙-신이라는 신조어가 있다는걸 몰랐구나...마소 빙..
2009/06/01 18:04그래도 나오면 한번 해보긴 해봐야겠네요..
한국에서는 어감이 좋지 않은 면이 좀 있지요... ^^
2009/06/01 18:14이런 빙~이라뇨 ㅎㅎ빙 잼있네요
2009/06/01 18:58ㅋㅋ 이거원...
2009/06/01 19:12지금 막 한번 써봤는데...
2009/06/01 22:34일단 첫 느낌은 페이지 스킴이 너무 구글과 비슷하다는거..
Oscar와 UPS를 검색해 보았는데 top match들은 구글과 거의 똑같고
(top match가 똑같고 스크롤을 내려야 다른 색다른 결과를 볼 수 있다면 별로 좋지 못한거 같군요. 귀차니즘의 네티즌들이 스크롤까지 내려가며 자료를 찾기를 원할까요? Fitt's law)
오스카 수상자라든가 UPS 전화번호는 안나오네요 (6월 3일부터 될라나요?).
왼쪽에 검색어에 따른 메뉴가 나오는건 꽤 마음에 드는군요.
저는 구글의 썰렁한 화면보다는 배경에 뭔가가 있는것이 더 보기는 좋은것 같던데요. 저도 검색해보니 전화번호는 안나오는군요. 시연때 보여주었던 것과는 다른가 봅니다. 베타라 그런가? -_-;;
2009/06/01 23:02추가 답변: 한국과 미국의 서비스 내용이 달라서 그런것 같습니다. 한국판 bing은 아직 전화번호는 찾아주지 못하고 있습니다. 미국판 bing은 UPS 고객센터 전화번호가 분명히 나옵니다.제가 본문에는 UPS를 취급하는 회사라고 했는데 그게 아니고 택배회사인 UPS를 말하는 것 같습니다. microsoft를 검색해도 고객센터 전화번호가 나오더군요.
2009/06/02 08:28www.bing.com 이 지난 주까지만 해도, 빙그레 홈페이지로 연결되어 있었습니다. 그러더니, 수요일부터인가... 비어있는 페이지로 나오더니, 결국 빙~ 페이지로 연결되는 군요.
2009/06/01 23:58서버 정보를 보면, 한국으로 나오네요.ㅎㅎㅎ
bing.co.kr 은 빙그레 홈페이지입니다.
bing.co.kr이 빙그레 홈페이지라는 사실은 알고 있었는데 bing.com도 빙그레 홈페이지였나요? 그리고, 서버정보는 정말 한국이군요. 정말 재미있네요. ^^
2009/06/02 00:03음.. 요즘 바뻐서 제대로 확인도 못해봤는데..
2009/06/02 00:38한번 빙에 접속해봐야겠습니다.. 음냐.. -.-;
밤늦게 잠 안자고 뭐 하시나요? 전 이제 자러 갑니다.
2009/06/02 00:44-_- zzz
"구글 신께 여쭤봐!"가 이제 "빙~~신에게 여쭤봐!"로 바뀔지도……., 쿨럭 -_-;;
2009/06/02 02:42음... bing이 우리나라에서는 확실히 이미지를 굳히고 있는것 같습니다. 제대로 검색 안되면 확실히 빙~~신 될지도...ㅋㅋ
2009/06/02 08:29아 지역에 따라 검색이 다르게 나오는군요.
2009/06/02 22:15한국 미국 뿐만 아니라 캐나다랑 미국도 다르게..
하긴 고객센터 전화번호가 다른데 똑같이 표기할 수는 없겠죠.
지역을 미국으로 바꿔서 해보니 전화번호 나오네요.
오스카 상 수상자는 왜 안나오는걸까요?
오스카상 수상자는 oscar라고 검색하면 왼쪽 메뉴에 related searchs 아래에 oscar winners를 클릭하면 나옵니다. 첫번째에 바로 나오지는 않네요.^^
2009/06/03 08:45그 동영상 미리보기 기능땜시 인기여요 빙~~~
2009/07/14 10:56동영상 미리보기 기능은 정말 좋더군요. ^^
2009/07/14 13:41