Posts Tagged ‘Bing’
Microsoft launches Bing Android app for Verizon, but will anyone care?
After releasing an iPhone app for its Bing search engine last December, Microsoft today for Verizon users.
But since Android is much more deeply integrated into Google’s search and navigation offerings than the iPhone, the release of the Bing app honestly strikes me as curious. Who would actually use this thing? And is Microsoft doing anything with it to entice Android users to choose Bing over Google’s myriad services?
At first glance, the answer to the last question would be a simple “no”. The Android app is a dead ringer for its iPhone sibling: The main page features the Bing image of the day, and from there you have access to the app’s various sections, like “Images”, “Movies”, and “Maps”. Also like the iPhone app, the Bing image search is attractive and easy to use, and Microsoft has integrated voice search capabilities into pretty much every aspect of the app.
By bringing over the basic features of the Bing iPhone app to Android, Microsoft has managed to deliver a competent product. But, at least as it stands right now, there’s little reason for an Android user ever to launch the Bing app. All of Google’s search and navigation services are better, and it also has already integrated voice commands into the Android OS. The Bing Android app also appears to be missing , including social search, and “visual scanning”, Microsoft’s take on the Google Goggles camera search feature.
Like , Microsoft most likely brought Bing to Android just to have a presence on Google’s mobile platform. But aside from simply being on the Android Market, it doesn’t seem like there’s much it’s going to accomplish with the app.
Microsoft is planning to bring the Bing app to other Android carriers later this year, . It launched the app on Verizon first because of the carrier’s existing mobile search deal with Bing.
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Bing on the iPhone lets you search friends’ updates, adds “visual scanning”
Following the release of Apple’s iOS4 iPhone update yesterday, and in anticipation of the upcoming iPhone 4 launch on Thursday, Microsoft of its this morning that introduces two new features: Social networking integration, and a feature it’s calling Visual Scanning, which lets you search bar codes and media cover art with your camera.
The app can now connect to your Twitter and Facebook accounts to let you view updates from your friends. Microsoft takes that integration a step further by allowing you to search your friends’ social updates, as well. And, of course, you can now share items directly to Twitter and Facebook from within the app.
The Visual Scanning feature is basically Microsoft’s spin on , which is currently only available on Google Android devices. The feature is fairly straightforward: After choosing the “Camera” option on the main screen of the app, you can either perform a search on any bar code, or search on the cover of any book, CD, DVD, or video game. The bar code search worked fine for me, but the cover art search was a bit more finicky. It would recognize covers of obscure books, but had trouble with the cover of Microsoft’s own Halo 3 Xbox 360 game.
In typical Microsoft fashion, the company didn’t see fit to include support for . To read those bar codes, you need to download the separate . I’m not entirely certain how difficult it would have been to include Tag support in the Bing app, but it’s something Microsoft should consider. It could easily boost the amount of iPhone users running the Bing app by killing off the Tag Reader app altogether.
The app also includes improvements to its Movies section with the addition of more trailers and videos, as well a new Shopping section to let you find products easily.
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Apple adds Microsoft Bing as iPhone search option
On stage at the today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Microsoft’s Bing search engine would be an option in the next version of the iPhone operating system, iOS4.
The news comes after that Apple might dump Google as the iPhone’s default search engine. The latest report in that vein came from , which updated its post based on new sources who said it was “more complicated” than Bing replacing Google. As we’ve seen today, Bing isn’t replacing Google at all, and is instead an optional search engine alongside Yahoo.
In addition, Jobs briefly showed off and praised Bing’s HTML5-driven mobile site. The site, which has been around for some time already, offers a more stylish alternative to Google and Yahoo’s mobile search sites. In December, Microsoft released its , which was similarly more stylish than other iPhone search engine apps.
The from Hitwise showed that the search engine was slowly creeping up in market share while both Google and Yahoo dropped slightly. Bing’s inclusion in the iPhone will certainly help increase its popularity — but since it’s an optional feature, and you need to drill down into menus to activate it, I don’t suspect it will ever be a major threat to Google’s position as the iPhone’s default search option.
[Image via ]
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Apple adds Microsoft Bing as iPhone search option
On stage at the today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Microsoft’s Bing search engine would be an option in the next version of the iPhone operating system, iOS4.
The news comes after that Apple might dump Google as the iPhone’s default search engine. The latest report in that vein came from , which updated its post based on new sources who said it was “more complicated” than Bing replacing Google. As we’ve seen today, Bing isn’t replacing Google at all, and is instead an optional search engine alongside Yahoo.
In addition, Jobs briefly showed off and praised Bing’s HTML5-driven mobile site. The site, which has been around for some time already, offers a more stylish alternative to Google and Yahoo’s mobile search sites. In December, Microsoft released its , which was similarly more stylish than other iPhone search engine apps.
The from Hitwise showed that the search engine was slowly creeping up in market share while both Google and Yahoo dropped slightly. Bing’s inclusion in the iPhone will certainly help increase its popularity — but since it’s an optional feature, and you need to drill down into menus to activate it, I don’t suspect it will ever be a major threat to Google’s position as the iPhone’s default search option.
[Image via ]
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