Microsoft isn’t giving up in its dreams of one day grabbing the “search engine giant” title away from Google.  And to prove this, it’s just unveiled a new logo, look, and an array of new features for its search engine.

The New Look

Microsoft seems to have an affinity with straight lines and sharp edges when it comes to new logos, and the Bing logo did not escape this love affair.  Instead of a rounded “b” it now has an edgier “b”, though Microsoft has kept the orange color scheme so it will still look familiar.

Microsoft describes Bing as always being helpful, human and beautiful, thus the changes revolve around those three aspects.  The new Bing is designed to deliver a beautiful new, modern design focused on simplicity, speed and visual appeal that would give people a better search experience regardless of the device they are using.

Everything from the fonts, spacing, color, visual scan patterns, the search box, and even underlying codes has been re-evaluated to be able to come up with the fresh new look. Aside from that, Microsoft has taken into consideration that many users are on different screen sizes, so the team built Bing to be able to adjust to any screen size automatically and be able to respond well on touchscreen devices.

“The improvements we’re releasing in this latest release of Bing.com are the beginning of a new, more modern era for Bing. We believe this reinvention will give people faster access to information, more efficient ways to get things done and a unique and human perspective on search, all delivered through a beautiful experience.

“It’s time to move forward. It’s time to build the next generation of search,” Lawrence Ripsher, Bing General Manager of User Experiences, wrote.

Snapshot

Last year, Microsoft introduced its Snapshot and Sidebar features, which both deliver information at a glance.  Snapshot details basic information that Bing has on a particular subject, while Sidebar delivers results based on what people are saying about that subject on social media sites – such as Facebook and Twitter.

This year, Microsoft has fused the two into the Sidebar to deliver everything a user needs to know regarding certain queries.  The Sidebar now ranks key information and actions regarding certain topics as well as bringing insight from your friends and some experts. Microsoft gives the example of a search for “Highway 1,” wherein the new Bing displays the factual data such as length, date, related places of the scenic route, and integrates a human perspective, be that through status updates, photos, tweets, check-in’s or expert opinions.

Page Zero

If you’re more of a Google Search user, then Page Zero probably won’t intrigue you that much.  Page Zero works just like Google Search, delivering search results even if you’re not done typing.  So if you do a search for Katy Perry on the new Bing, it lets you see basic information about the singer before you’re even done typing, and it now suggests possible search queries related to Katy Perry such as her most popular songs, music videos, TV appearances, etc.

Microsoft says that the new Bing is now more intelligent as it is able to discern if what you’re searching would yield multiple results.  For example, if you Jon Stewart, Bing will provide information about the person as well as the show.

The software giant promises that more improvements will come to Bing to deliver more useful results.  Right now, queries can yield results that would allow users to quickly navigate directly to the site they need, or bring fast access to basic information such as flight schedules when you search for a certain airline.

Delivering results

Microsoft stated that in order to deliver useful results, it uses “intelligent disambiguation,” or the ability to discern that some things have two meanings.  Microsoft uses machine learning to be able to deliver the right results and with the new Bing, it introduces “Pole Position” which ranks search results Bing has high confidence in right on top of the search page.

Aside from that, these high confidence results are displayed in a larger format and displayed at the top of the page, so they grab your attention immediately.  Microsoft leveraged Snapshot to deliver information at a glance and stated that this space will be “rapidly evolving to enable users to take an action or dig deeper into that topic.”