Microsoft is launching their latest generation search engine – Bing (previous known as codename Kumo) by June 3. Together with the recently released Wolfram|Alpha, they introduce much speculations about the future of search engines, in my view, it’s about evolution of intelligence in search engines.

Bing – A Decision Engine

▲ Bing Search Result Page (See more in Bing’s Introductory Video)

The biggest change in Bing is the presentation of information on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). They are customized for the type of search keywords. Its aim is to help users have a better way to search, bing and decide easily, so the Bing team calls Bing a decision engine in introduction letter:

We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions.

- Bing Team, Microsoft

Microsoft is going launch this decision engine with pretty huge spending campaign of $80 – $100 million [via AdAge]. Definitely, it is looking for a bigger slice of market share in both search engine and keyword ad market. Let’s see if this decision engine can bring any challenge to search giant Google in June.

Wolfram Alpha – An Answer-Engine

▲ Wolfram|Alpha Search Result for “President of U.S.”

Another powerful intelligent search engine, Wolfram|Alpha, was just launched on Jun 16. Its significant difference with other search engines is that it answers your specific questions directly with appropriate format, but not listing links. So it seems like a Wikipedia to me rather than another Google, and kind of Google + Wikipedia as you can search the same questions in Google and probably it shows you Wikipedia links.

Search Engines need Intelligence

To conclude, both Bing and Wolfram|Alpha confirm the trend of search engine to provide better user experience, they have to be much intelligent. Their results should address users’ questions with easy-to-understand presentation, but not only links.

Extended Reading

• Bing! Microsoft Prepares For War With A Revamped Search Engine (Screenshots) by TechCrunch
• Wolfram ‘search engine’ goes live by BBC News
• Wolfram|Alpha by Wikipedia

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