Legal Research

Introducing Two New Search Engines: Bing & Google Squared

There has been a lot of buzz the last several days about two new search engines - Bing, from Microsoft, and Google Squared.

Bing
Here's a good description of Bing from SearchEngineWatch

More than just a rebranding of Live Search, Microsoft is repositioning Bing as a "decision engine," with a goal "to provide customers with intelligent search tools to help them simplify tasks and make more informed decisions," according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

Bing's "decision engine" will begin by focusing on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

If you'd like to see how Bing stacks up against Google, check out this Google-Bing Search utility which allows you to compare search results from both engines side by side. (hat tip to MakeUseOf.com)

Like Google, Bing also offers a 411 phone service. From Lifehacker:

Bing 411 (1-800-246-4411) and its obvious Google counterpart, GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411), both offer voice searching of businesses around a certain city or town, and both can connect your call or send you a text message with more details...

What Bing offers to set it apart are two features for users without data-connected smartphones. One is turn-by-turn directions from wherever you are, and you can even save a "home" and "work" location with the service to save time, entirely over the phone... The weather service is fairly in-depth as well, providing to-the-minute temperatures and offering extended forecasts for where you are or where you're going.

Google Squared
The search engine is a bit different animal. According to Google, "Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed."

This one is easier to see than explain. Here are the results from a search supreme court justices. It's pretty nifty, but it's certainly not perfect. See this review at Jenkins Blog.

Source: WisBlawg

Full post as published by LexLibris on June 05, 2009 (boomark / email).