Yesterday was Microsoft Bing's big launch day. With all the media hype, you'd expect this to be a big topic of discussion on Twitter. It is, but there seems to be another topic more people are discussing today: Google Wave. Neither of these projects is open to the public yet. They are different products that do different things, but it doesn't help your launch when your competition steals the media attention. What does Bing do?
Microsoft is labeling Bing as a "decision engine." The idea is that it integrates multiple services, like reviews, shopping, and videos. It even computes web-extracted results in some cases, much like Wolfram|Alpha.
The interface changes in response to the search query, and it gives lots of options. There are hot spots which reveal new facts, suggestions for refined search, and deep linking into sites for finding specific results. There's really a lot to like if it works as well as their press release says it does.
There are plenty of people that view this as direct competition to Google. I'm not sure it is. There are already many elements of Bing's semantic search suggestions incorporated into Google search, and Google isn't going to stop rolling out new features. If there's a particularly successful item in Bing, I'm sure it will make its way to Google.
Bing also seems more like a search portal, which really makes Yahoo! its competition. That isn't a bad place to start. Microsoft Live Search is currently a distant third behind Google and Yahoo! in search, and Microsoft failed in its earlier attempt at acquiring Yahoo!
Bing will be available at www.bing.com on June 3rd. It will replace Microsoft Live Search. Whether it replaces Google remains to be seen.