Bing
BingBing logo
Bing Homepage in April 2011
The Bing homepage features an
image or video that changes daily.
Slogan Bing and decide
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Web search engine
Registration Optional
Available language(s) 40 languages
Owner Microsoft
Created by Microsoft
Launched June 3, 2009; 2 years ago
Alexa rank increase 26 (February 2012)
Current status Active
Bing (formerly Live Search,
Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is a web search engine (advertised as a
"decision engine") from Microsoft. Bing was unveiled by Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009 at the All Things Digital conference in San
Diego. It went fully online on June 3, 2009, with a preview version released on
June 1, 2009.
Notable changes include the
listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related
searches (called "Explore pane") based on semantic technology from
Powerset that Microsoft purchased in 2008.
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in
which Bing would power Yahoo! Search. All Yahoo! Search global customers and
partners are expected to have made the transition by early 2012.
In October 2011, Bing announced
it is working on new back-end search infrastructure, with the goal of
delivering faster and slightly more relevant search results for users. Known as
“Tiger,” the new index-serving technology is being incorporated into Bing
globally starting in August 2011.
History
MSN
Search
MSN Search was a search engine by
Microsoft that consisted of a search engine, index, and web crawler. MSN Search
first launched in the third quarter of 1998 and used search results from
Inktomi. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings
from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in
1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft
upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the
index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily. The upgrade started as a
beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. Image
search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started
providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better
compete in the market.
Windows
Live Search
The first public beta of Windows
Live Search was unveiled on March 8,
2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search
engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local,
and Microsoft Encarta.
In the roll-over from MSN Search
to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search
provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own
internal image search algorithms.
Live
Search
On March 21, 2007, Microsoft
announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live
services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was
integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part
of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live
Search was merged with Microsoft adCenter.
A series of reorganisations and
consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search
branding. On May 23, 2008,
Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search
Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular
search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books
Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a
service for users to create their own custom search engines or use macros
created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a
service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search
Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA
was rebranded as MSN QnA on February
18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.
Microsoft recognised that there
would be a brand issue as long as the word "Live" remained in the
name. As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services,
Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.
Yahoo!
search deal
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they
had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by
Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on
its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell
adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user
interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing™" branding.
All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned
by early 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment