New Bing: Redefining Search with a dose of Social

A newly redesigned Bing has been launched yesterday, as Microsoft aims at re-introducing a search engine that generates beautiful results and includes social networking in the picture. Over at their blog, Bing reiterated their proposition when they introduced Bing three years ago – “people should expect more from a search engine.” It seems that the search engine is still banking on this proposition as it launches an interesting facelift that could challenge Google’s competitive lead.

Essentially, the new Bing will feature a new design: the new architecture displays three columns that combine relevant web results, snapshots that focus on refined suggestions and finally a new sidebar that allows for social search – connect with Facebook friends, gain some worthwhile reviews and essentially have everything done in a single search activity. And users don’t need to fuss over privacy issues when they use Bing alongside Facebook. Bing ensures maximum protection of user data and privacy, and guarantees to display content as supervised by Facebook privacy controls.

In a statement released to Fast Company, Director Stefan Weitz of Bing reports on their decision to “reinvent search”. According to him Bing attempts to go beyond the simple indexing of texts but is instead “trying to associate data that exists on the web in all forms with the physical object that spawned it in the first place.”

The Relevance of Social Search

Bing understands the possibilities that search provides, and these are no longer limited to tracking mere pages. While search has always been centered on “finding information” this search engine uses a new approach that allows users to do something after coming across the information they need. And they may do so after getting a few suggestions from friends or other trusted sources. The inclusion of the social search sidebar makes this possible – in a snap.

Users in the U.S. will be the first to experience this new redesign from Bing. Bing is also set to introduce Bing mobile in the coming weeks.

Demo by Microsoft :

Demo / Hands-on by TheVerge :

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