That's Bing, the Microsoft rebranded and reformated search engine.
Bing has a nice background picture and allows me to search in English or Portuguese, but when there's a tie, the Portuguese result shows up first.
For what I could tell, it's definitely not Google.
Google is currently more than a search engine.
On Google I can ask simple questions like "4 times 5" or "1 euro in usd" and I get "4 times 5 = 20" and "1 Euro = 1.4225 U.S. dollars", this one depending on near real time
In Bing I only get regular search engine results.
Bing answer for 4 times 5.When trying to search information in news group "linux.debian.laptop", I can do it in Google and since Bing knows it, Bing shows the Google Groups for "linux.debian.laptop".
As Seth Godin puts it, looks like Microsoft is trying to be the next Google, but currently here's already a next Google: Google.
Why should people change for something that works well to something that seems not to have a real distinguishing factor? At least for now, it's still, as alomost in Google, a Beta version. Even if Microsoft adds a few cool features, how much time it Google take to clone it and improve it?
I don't really know why Microsoft is investing so much time, money and effort in such a battle when they could be doing something remarkable.
Update
I've just discovered that actually Bing does some math and it knows how to answer 4 times 5.
What I also discovered is that, like many Microsoft applications, it thinks it knows what is best for me and, as always, it thinks wrong!
I've specifically have told Bing that I wanted results in English, but it ignored me and gave me results in Portuguese and looks like in Portuguese it was unable to compute 4 times 5.
Looks like Bing thinks that since I'm located in Portugal, I cannot ask questions in English! Is this stupid or what?
If it thinks it's smart enough to know what's best for me, I've asked the same question in Portuguese, "4 vezes 5" and, as I expected, it failed to answer the question.
Not very smart, Bing...
Bing is not Google, and they can say that again!
Keep up like that and definitely it will continue to live obfuscated by Google, like the "eternal wanna be"...
./M6
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