Microsoft Bing: Much better than expected

From CNet

Microsoft on Thursday took the wraps off Bing, the rebranded and rebuilt search engine formerly code-named Kumo, designed to replace Live Search. It's a solid improvement over the previous search product, and it beats Google in important areas. It will help Microsoft gain share in the search business. It's surprisingly competitive with Google.

Bing isn't available to the public yet, but you won't have to wait long. Starting on June 1, some users will get Bing search results from Live Search. On June 3, we're told, Bing will be Microsoft's new default search. We got early access to the service. Here's how it looks.

I have been using Bing on my Windows machines. Obviously IE7 automatically started using Bing, and Firefox and Chrome were easy to change. Sadly Safari does not allow one to make changes to the default search engine without some additional software.

I have enjoyed using Bing and have even found it more useful than Google in some instances. That in itself was surprising, given Google's domination of Search and the dismal performance of Windows Live Search. I especially like the short preview of each site's contents and links on that site that are shown when one rolls the mouse over the right side of a link. I continue to use Bing as my default on my Windows machines and thus far have not missed Google.