Did you checked Bing, the Microsoft’s new search engine? Bing (http://www.bing.com), the Microsoft’s answer to Google, went live on Monday. According to Microsoft, Bing is a decision engine that goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload. Really?

Microsoft claims that Bing will deliver a more functional experience than any other search engine and will help you make smarter and faster decisions. So, I checked it today. One can search the web, images, videos, news, maps and much more on Bing. The search results looks good with related searches displayed on a left sidebar. Also there is auto suggestion when you type in your search terms. But what about the relevancy of the results and quality of information? I found that the results are not satisfactory. The image search feature on Bing looks clean and fast. The video search results are pulled from different sources. You may see lots of videos from sites you have never heard before! Don’t worry, this is Bing!

Bing delivers search results tailored to the part of the world you are living. Note that, features like search history and cash back are not displayed in all regions. So, if you want to use all the features of Bing, you must use the English – US version, which you can set on this page. Also there is a preferences page where you can set your preferred language, web content filters, number of search results per page and enable or disable search suggestions. There is also an option to open links in a new browser window.

Well, it is too early to say about Bing’s performance and the quality of it’s competition with Google. But, I can definitely say that those background images are not gonna help Bing in improving it’s market share. Are they? Mind it, Google holds 64% of the US search engine market! Do you believe that Bing can beat Google in terms of search engine market share?