Microsoft has unveiled a new search engine in yet another attempt to catch Google, while the search leader released an early version of a platform that combines email, instant messaging and other apps.
The new search engine, Bing, will be rolled out globally between June 1 and June 4.
Microsoft will spend up to $100 million in the US alone on advertising the new platform, according to Advertising Age.
The search engine’s new features include Best Match – an attempt to select the most relevant result and display it first – Deep Links, which gives an overview of what else a given site contains, and a hover-over quick preview function.
Just one in four searches using current search engines returned a satisfactory result, Microsoft said.
“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,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said.
Pre-release reviews of the engine have been generally positive, but reviewers have expressed reservations, as well as skepticism the product will dethrone Google.
Google yesterday previewed a new service - Wave – that attempts to build on all the communications mediums developed for the web so far to create a new medium.
On the official Google blog, software engineering manager Lars Rasmussen said the product would be “equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
Everybody on the wave can both instantly edit the screen, as well as view edits conducted by other participants.
Google Wave will consist of a product, a platform and a protocol, and the code will be open source, Rasmussen said.