Bing Explained: The Microsoft search engine

 Bing is Microsoft's search engine, it's attempt to rival Google, Yahoo and the others for a share of the search engine pie.

Microsoft advertise it as: "a search experience that helps you find what you’re looking for quickly and easily."

It aims to link in your MSN profile and Windows Live Mail, to give the user a more all-round experience and make it quicker and easier to find information.

Bing users have a profile, which "learns" the user's preferences to make searching more instinctive.

It has a Visual Search application, where you start with a picture of something to find your results faster.

The Bing Community allows users to communicate with each other and receive Facebook and Twitter updates instantly, and from the Bing homepage you have created, you can move direct to your MSN or Hotmail page.

 Bing is a relatively new search engine and works in a slightly different way to Google, for example. However, it is a good system and although it may not have everything you want to look for instantly available, it is constantly evolving and adding content.

Whilst the Visual Search app sounds good, the pictures on there so far are quite limited. Searching for Sports, for example, brings up images of cricket players, tennis players, ski resorts, football teams and premier league football players. Needless to say, this is not a comprehensive list of sports, let alone the professionals who play those sports.

The Shopping app takes you to Bing's favourite products. Whilst there is a search bar to find the things you're really looking for, this feels a little like you are being told to purchase the products Bing recommends, rather than the ones you actually want. And if you make the mistake of assuming the item you specifically want is somewhere in that list of recommended products, you might waste time searching through that instead of just entering the product into the search bar at the start.

 In all, Bing has potential. But there is still some way to go before it rivals the ease of use of Google.

However, for Microsoft fans, I'm sure it does very nicely.