Bing!

(updating 6/18 2:23pm with additional helpful info from this article.)

Bing is the newly updated and relaunched search engine (they’re calling it a decision engine) from Microsoft. I’m recommending it because it is definitely a viable contender to the big G. I’ve tried to use Microsoft’s search engines periodically in the past, and they just weren’t useful. But they’ve done a great job with the newest iteration.

And the reviews are excellent, so it’s not just the Kool Aid talking…

Cashback:

Want to get 15% back when shopping from Overstock.com? What about getting cash back when purchasing from other sites you typically purchase from such as Buy.com or TigerDirect.com? http://www.bing.com/cashback

You can get 35% cashback on a new AT&T phone (e.g. iPhone 3G S) if you use Bing. Details at http://bit.ly/6BHMg

Stock Info:

Type in "AAPL MSFT GOOG stock" and this is what you get at the top of the list of items returned:

Hover On Page Summary

A small but cool feature, you can hover on the orange circle next to each link, and it brings you the text of that page. No need to click on the link to find out whether the page contains information you want or not. This seemingly un-interesting feature has itself really saved me a huge chunk of extra clicks i.e. click > hate the page > back button.

Image Search

I searched for Eiffel Tower, but I only love pictures of Eiffel Tower, that were taken in the night. Here is the cool thing, hover over 1 night pic and then just click on "show similar images" and you'll see results after results, all on the same page (i.e. no pagination) for the same type of images.

Video & porn

In case you haven't heard, Bing is a porn lover's paradise. Not to take credit away from the excellent feature that Bing provides, but it makes browsing porn (and other videos) really easy. You can hover over a clip and watch it all live in action without having to leave the page. If you decide you like the clip, click on it. In many cases, you still don?t have to leave the site.

Here is a nice snippet from the interwebs:

Differentiating Bing as a “Decision Engine” and not a search engine is also a very good thing. In my experience, searching with Google does not lead to definitive answers, only more searching. It doesn’t usually solve anything; it just gives you places to continue your search. Bing tries to make assumptions to add context to your queries, operating under the theory that those assumptions will yield better results. And based on my experience so far, that theory is correct.

The first assumption Bing makes is that your search is for something local. It factors my IP address into every query. Take for example, the search for “weather”, illustrated below. Bing automatically figured I wanted to know the weather for where I was (which is Washington, PA at the moment), whereas Google makes me take the extra step of putting in my zip code before I get a forecast.

Rest of review is here. He goes into a lot of detail in this and several follow up articles.

This NY Times article talks about using Bing to search for travel deals. Microsoft purchased a company named Farecast last year and their product is now integrated into Bing. It tells you the likelihood of a particular flight route’s costs changing (up or down) in the future. Very handy.

Hey, give it a shot. You may find yourself binging instead of googling down the road.