Bing debuts

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing (formerly known as Kumo), has come online, though primarily still in Beta mode (ie, not fully developed). It has one or two nice features. For instance, when doing an image search you can specify a lot more exactly what you are looking for; eg, a cartoon or live image. But I don't like the fact you can't tell the web address or size of the image until you hover your mouse pointer over it. The web pages search has got quite a way to go to compete with Google's new features, and the whole engine still has a not-quite-finished feel about it. As for the name: maybe that says it all. (To be fair, perhaps we laughed at the name Google when it first launched.) Will it break Google's dominance? I suspect not, but in the topsy-turvy internet world, who can be certain about anything?

Search engine war hotting up

The new WolframAlpha search engine has now been launched. WolframAlpha's stock in trade will be answering questions in plain English, and making the most amazing computations I have seen from data of all kinds.
From the introductory video, this is shaping up to be a serious contender to knock Google off its perch - the potential capabilities are a quantum leap ahead of anything we have seen in a search engine up to now. But it's not there yet. For instance, it could not come up with an answer to my query, "what happened on 15 August 1945?" (Of course, you and I know that was when Japan surrendered.) And its NZ-related data is almost non-existent. But I suspect these shortfalls will be quickly remedied.
Meanwhile, according to PC World, Microsoft is within days of releasing a major overhaul of its search engine, codenamed Kumo.