What is Microsoft Bing? Can it replace Google?

If you have used Windows, then you might have seen Bing. Its the default search engine in Microsoft Window’s any of the browsers. Be it the old Internet Explorer or the new Microsoft Edge.

Bing ranks 34th in global internet engagement according to Alexa, and it also comes as the default search engine in all the browsers preinstalled on Windows. And generally to download Chrome or Firefox after installing Windows users always do their first search on Bing.

But you might not know what is Bing. So let’s see what is Bing and how it competes against Google.

What is Microsoft Bing?

Bing is the web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. It supports a variety of search types including web, video, image, and map search. It has its origin’s from Microsoft’s previous search engines like MSN search, Windows Live search, and Live search.

If you don’t know what is a web search engine, so in simple terms, it’s the website on which you search for something and you get results from all over the internet. For example, Google is a web search engine, the one which you might have you used to reach this page.

The one major difference between Google and Bing is Google is owned by Alphabet Inc. while Bing is owned by Microsoft. Now, which one is better between the two can be one’s personal choice. But if we look at numbers Google has 91.75 % market share while Bing has a 2.75 % market share. You can look at this data here, this data clearly shows Google is doing something very right.

That doesn’t make Bing any lesser great search engine. Its also a very nice search engine and offers very accurate search results. So now you might be thinking ok then what does Bing offers.

What features does Bing have?

Microsoft refers to Bing as a “decision engine“. According to Microsoft, Bing is designed to minimize the number of unwanted search results you get when you perform a search and to help simplify tasks so you can make the most informed decision. Bing focuses on four target areas, shopping, travel, local, and health.

Its stated Bing’s underlying goal is to simplify the search. Which it does by auto-suggesting you words, as you start typing a search query. Bing aims to organize searches in a way that it’s easy for users to navigate. It also has a feature known as Deep Links, which lets users preview the Website without actually clicking on it.

It also incorporates features like Bing Travel, Instant Answers. Travel shows low airfares and hotel reservations. While Instant Answer shows the most relevant information like the information that might be related to your geographical location.

But most of these features are also present on Google. So what makes Google different than Bing?

What is the difference between Google and Bing

• The first and main difference that you observe as you load Bing is page speed. Since Bing has a big scenic background image it takes some time to load which makes page load speed slow. I ran both the pages in a speed test on GTmetrix, Google.com was loaded in 1 sec while Bing took 4.7 seconds to get completely loaded.
• As you might have already heard page speed affects user experience. As users on slow internet connection have to wait for longer durations and they generally bounce off. This could count as a con for Bing.
• Bing’s video search is somewhat better than Google’s. It offers bigger thumbnails then Google which looks nice. Bing also has a live preview feature which works if you hover your mouse above the video thumbnail it starts playing without you needing to click on the video.
• Search layout-wise both look almost identical. But search accuracy wise and user experience wise I felt Google is better.
• Even image search also felt smoother on Google than Bing.
• But Bing’s certain features like flight cost prediction are more accurate than Google.
• Bing also has some features like linkfromdomain and linktodomain which shows results of the best link that are pointing from and to the domain. (For example, linkfromdomain:domainname.com will give you outgoing links of domainname.com)

These are some of the differences between Google and Bing. But after looking at the features and the differences you might think, Bing is also a nice search engine. This brings another question, if Bing is also a nice search engine would it ever be able to replace Google.

Can Bing Replace Google?

In the short term, Google is going to be the most popular search engine. But with the current slow and steady rise in popularity of Bing, there are chances that someday Bing might reach near to Google in terms of market share.

But the main advantage that Google has over Bing is a large user data through its various services. All this data helps Google in providing the search result to be linked personally to the user. This is not the case with Bing, that’s why Bing’s search results are less personal and less user-related. That’s also the reason why Bing might never replace Google.

But all these things still don’t mean Bing is not a nice search engine. Even though it might not have personal and user-related responses it still has some features that are making its popularity grow. So if you want to use you can set it as your default search engine, below is how you can do it.

How to use Bing as default search engine

To setup Bing as your default search engine, you need to open your browser.

Now, these steps will vary with the browser you are using, but in general its the same process. (I am using the Firefox browser.)

In browser click on the menu in the upper right corner, in the drop-down menu select settings or options whichever you see(In firefox its options). Click on Search on the left side, then in Default Search Engine change to Bing.

Whenever you again want to change your default Search Engine, just repeat the process and change it to whichever search engine you want to use.

Conclusion:

So What is Bing? Its a search engine just like Google, but its owned and operated by Microsoft. Its nice, accurate and also has various features. But can it replace Google? So if you are talking about replacing your default search engine Bing can replace Google as your search engine. But if we are talking about Bing replacing Google as a market leader, its quite unlikely. Even if Bing did, it will take a long time for Bing to do so.

I hope you like what you read. Do tell us in comments what did you like about Bing.com and why would you use Bing. What do you think can Linux be hacked? Read this article to know about it.