Last month Microsoft launched its highly anticipated “decision engine”, Bing.  Prefaced by the fact that I’m a devout Googler (and slightly offended that Microsoft has offered to make decisions for me) I’ve given Bing an objective test drive.  Some first impressions and observations…

Booking Travel.
Without a doubt, Bing is great for booking travel.  It has a full reservation system, and allows users to compare multiple fares and even has a great price predictor tool.  New for a search engine? Yes, but hardly a new idea.  The reservation system and search results look and function remarkably like all the existing travel sites (it’s creepy how much it looks like Kayak.com).  The only apparent innovation here is that a search engine is serving you the results, so really Bing’s just saving you a click.

Local search.
Bing touts local search as one of its strengths and something it hopes to hang its hat on.  Bing does a great job of collecting reviews and data on each listing and rendering it in a smart way making the user’s browsing/decision making infinitely easier.  However, the tools are easily missed (I knew this functionality existed and was purposefully looking for it and it took me several minutes/searches to find).  Additionally, although Bing has all these great tools and aggregators, their local search falls short in plain old search results.  A search on “Somerville MA laundry mats” gave me 2 results in Somerville.  The first few pages of the local results included several results in surrounding towns, which are not-so-surrounding: Lowell, Natick, Groton, Wakefield, Mattapan, Framingham, Providence RI and Brookfield Wisconsin.  I did the same search on Google and pages 1-4 of the local search results were all Somerville, Cambridge and Medford - much more accurate and useful.
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