June 2009. Microsoft launched its much anticipated “Google killer” of a search engine – Bing.com. Bing is the software giant’s answer to Google, the currently undisputed search kings that have dominated the search market for the best part of the last decade.

Before the launch of Bing.com, Live.com received 98% of its traffic through MSN rather than direct navigation so it’s no surprise that Microsoft are investing between $80m to $100m on branding and marketing their new search engine (sorry, decision engine).

One thing that jumps to mind is how strangely familiar Bing looks. The look and feel is most certainly Googlish, but why reinvent the wheel right? To add to this familiarity, results themselves seem to be very similar to the late Live.com results, rousing speculation that Bing is merely a re-skin of Live.

According to Microsoft, it’s best to think of Bing not as a search engine, but a decision engine. Bing will focus on four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.

While at the first glance it may not seem as though Bing is bringing anything dratiscally different to the search table, there are a couple of features which may snag the interests of the Google dependants in this world. The related searches on the left hand side of results pages may encourage further refined long tail searches.

Additionally, where video results are integrated, users can hover over the video thumbnail to see part of the video before clicking though. Bing search result listings also have an extend area which lists a brief snippet of the content within the destination site as well as top links within the site.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said in a statement about the launch: “Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find. When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

www.bing.com