5 Things I Want to Know About Bing

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is expected to take the stage Thursday at the D: All Things D conference and debut Redmond's new search brand, codenamed Kumo. No one knows for sure if Microsoft will stick with the Kumo brand for its latest search effort or go with another title. Earlier this week, the name Bing started looking more likely than Kumo after AdAge on Monday released a report claiming Microsoft plans an $80-100 million advertising campaign to drill the name Bing into the minds of users everywhere.

By Ian Paul
Wed, May 27, 2009

PC World — Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is expected to take the stage Thursday at the D: All Things D conference and debut Redmond's new search brand, codenamed Kumo. No one knows for sure if Microsoft will stick with the Kumo brand for its latest search effort or go with another title. Earlier this week, the name Bing started looking more likely than Kumo after AdAge on Monday released a report claiming Microsoft plans an $80-100 million advertising campaign to drill the name Bing into the minds of users everywhere.

Microsoft 'Bing' Would Bring New Life to Old Domain

Then, TechCrunch's MG Siegler added further credence to Bing as the final name after he was able to snag a screenshot of a favicon--the little icon you see next to the address bar in a Web browser--on bing.com. Was this Bing's new logo accidentally released into the wild? Nobody knows, but it was an interesting catch.Besides a short list of names, little else is known about Microsoft's search engine.

In March, screenshots under the codename Kumo leaked online showing a three-column Web page with advertising on one side and navigational links on the other. The stand out feature on Kumo was the releated categories tool that offered several broad-based topics directly related to your search topic. Searching for a particular singer would bring up links to that artist's biography, albums and so on.

Since Kumo's March leak, the search engine has been locked down at Microsoft's headquarters, and no one has any real idea what lies underneath its shiny new wrapper. So with little information available, and on the eve of what may be the debut of Microsoft's new search engine, I thought I'd offer my "5 Things I want to know about Bing":

1) Will Bing's related search categories work as advertised? Related search categories are a great idea and are likely the result of Microsoft's acquisition of the semantic search engine Powerset.

But in the two examples of search results we've seen--a search for Taylor Swift and another for Bose speakers--the queries were product oriented.

However, not all searches are for products like movie times, albums and A/V equipment.

What about non-product oriented searches for information on historical figures, health issues or current events? If related categories can't measure up equally across all search topics, how useful will it really be?

2) Will Bing integrate with other Microsoft services? One of the great things about Google is that you can find direct links to all of Google's most popular services right from the search page.

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