On June 3rd, Microsoft launched a new kind of search engine. Called a “decision engine”, Bing is designed to inform consumers and urge them into making a decision. Bing focuses primarily on travel, shopping, health, and local categories. But is it better than Google?

I did an image search of “Washington DC” in both Bing and Google to see what the differences would be. While many of the results were the same on both pages, Bing had a much cleaner, easier format to follow. I also liked how I could choose to see similar images to any specific image I chose, without changing the search in Bing.

A shopping search of “summer sun dresses” turned up quite a few results in each engine. Google found results for both dress patterns and dresses, while Bing came up with dresses and shoes. Bing has the added bonus of searching for the highest cash back offer. Otherwise, they were basically the same, both offering the choice of sorting by price, brand, etc.

Next I compared the video category of Google and Bing. “Seinfeld episodes online” were my keywords. Bing easily outclassed Google in this category, as you can rollover the icon to see a preview of the video shown at that link. Google does not have this handy feature; however Google’s search results were more accurate in this case, giving me more relevant results to my keywords than did Bing.

The last comparison I made between Bing and Google was a straight up web search on “simple science experiments”. Google and Bing came up with the same results for the most part. I liked Google’s formatting better however, because if there are two hits on the same website, Google indents the second result’s summary so you know it is the same site. Bing simply lists them all.

For searches that require a decision or purchase, Bing is a much better search tool than Google. However, for simple searches such as recipes, craft ideas, who played in that movie, et cetera, Google just can’t be beat for its simplicity. The new search engine Bing will probably garner its own fan club and maybe even become a household name. But replace Google? I don’t think so.

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