David Pogue seems to be making some waves with a frank and surprising review of Microsoft's new search engine Bing. Pogue, reviewing for the New York Times, finds that not only does Bing compete with Google, but in some ways it's actually much better. For example, scrolling over results reveals a pop-up balloon in which you can glance at the contents before clicking. Cool! In a panel to the left of the search results it suggests more specific searches, so if you're a girl Googling Binging Johnny Depp, Bing will offer News, Movies, Quotes, Biography and Images. Useful!
So for the first time since I first wrote about Bing's launch, I gave it a whirl. And you know what? It really might be better than Google.
The first thing to note about Bing and Google is that their search results are essentially twins. Not fraternal twins, where you can see a resemblance only when you squint and compare noses. They're more like identical twins. The best place to test and verify this identical twinship is on the new site Bing vs. Google, which allows you to search a phrase and see the results from Bing and Google in side-by-side windows. In search after search -- on life-expectancy in Russia, Michael Jackson's greatest song, buy Dell computer -- you get the same sites, in the same font, in a slightly different order.