Summary
3 June 2009
Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, is being launched in a major ad campaign today. The company hopes it will rival competitors like Yahoo and Google.
Reporter:
Imtiaz Tyab
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Microsoft has had a search engine for many years. It's gone through a number of incarnations but the problem was relatively few people ever used it. The world's largest software developer wants to change that with the launch of Bing. Described as a "decision engine", Bing promises to make shopping, booking a flight or searching for a restaurant online easier and faster than other sites.
But some experts are asking why people would stop using Google, one of the world's most used search engines, and start using Bing? Microsoft says it's because 40% of search queries on their competitor's site goes unanswered - something they can improve on. And while it remains to be seen how excited users will be about Bing, many advertisers already are.
Bing is stylish. Some of its features, like previewing videos without leaving the site, surpass what is offered by Google. Microsoft is taking a major financial risk with Bing. It's spent $100m on the advertising campaign alone.
Imtiaz Tyab, 大象传媒
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Vocabulary
- gone through a number of incarnations
- changed many times to look and feel different than before
- relatively
- here, compared to other internet search engines
- queries
- here, a query is a word or word combination you type into a search engine to find internet pages containing it
- their competitor
- a company (here, Google) whose aim is to be more successful than another company (here, Microsoft) that is in the same business
- goes unanswered
- here, cannot find relevant internet pages
- improve on
- be better at
- remains to be seen
- is not known yet (a cliche)
- advertisers
- people or companies whose job it is to promote and encourage the use of something
- surpass
- here, are better, faster and more user-friendly than
