Microsoft takes a swing at Google with its new Bing search engine. JOHN HARRIS finds it worth looking at.

Google in 2009 is doing an excellent imitation of Microsoft circa 1989.

Microsoft kicked off in 1975 as a one-trick pony when Harvard dropout Bill Gates and his buddy Paul Allen wrote a primitive program, Microsoft BASIC, for the nascent personal computer.

Microsoft turned this fingernail grip in the PC industry into a 10-finger throttle by developing software programs that control the personal computer, first MS DOS and later Windows. In the process, it became a multi-billion-dollar corporation that dominated the global computer industry.

Google kicked off in 1998 when Stanford Uni students Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with what a mate once described as “the thinking man’s search engine”.

In just a decade, Google transformed itself from start-up into US$21.8 billion organisation with 20,000 employees by figuring out how to turn the desire to find things - and be found - on the Web into money.

Today, Microsoft and Google are engaged in an increasingly fierce battle for control of the future.

Google has invested the vast amounts of cash generated by its search engine, and various online advertising spinoffs, into areas where it wants to establish a presence.

Last week I reviewed the HTC Dream, a phone built on Android software that Google developed to challenge Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.

Likewise, Microsoft has used some its billions from Windows to grab a piece of the search engine action.

Its latest effort is Bing www.bing.com, a search engine designed by a head hunted from Yahoo.

As well as a picturesque appearance, Bing brings a few neat new tricks to the search engine party.

Bing helps find things with the Explorer Pane, a left-hand column offering a series of subsidiary search related to your original query.

For example, if I type in “Chrysler Sebring” - dubbed the worst car in the world by Jeremy Clarkson - Bing provides the standard list of websites.

At the left, the Explorer Pane offers related searches including 2007 Chrysler Sebring; Convertible 2007 Chrysler Sebring; and 2007 Chrysler Sebring Reviews.

The basic idea is to provide faster access to more content with fewer searches.

A great feature is Quick Preview, a yellow spot that offers a summary of each listed web page.

Bing may not beat Google, but like the Wolfram-Alpha search engine reviewed recently, it makes searching the Web a lot more interesting.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can view his website at www.johnharris.net.au.

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