Microsoft recently re-launched its search engine. It was previously called Windows Live Search, but it is now Bing. It comes with new branding, new name, and new features, thanks to a rumored $80-100 million in marketing money. Marketing strategies include using Bing as a default search engine for Internet browsers on Dell and HP computers.

At first glance, Bing is definitely a good contender in the search engine arena due to its host of new features, though many of them have long been in other search engines. Microsoft’s past efforts to upgrade their search engine division have gone largely unnoticed, and clearly this time around they are attempting to make much more of a splash.

Probably one of the most significant changes is that Bing organizes search results into categories. Searching George Bush or Brad Pitt, for example, will net you a handful of categories such as Images, Biography, Interviews, and so on. Not all searches will have these categories; primarily only more popular topics will. But as time goes on more sub categories will be added to more searches.

Another feature Microsoft touts is the superior search engines for specific categories like image search, shopping search, local search, travel search, and health search. One feature in particular I did enjoy was in the Image search, in which the amount of images is infinite. Bing loads a certain amount of the images, then just loads more as you scroll down. It’s not terribly revolutionary by any means, but it’s a nifty little feature nonetheless.

But overall Bing is not going to de-throne Google from the search engine king throne. It may take some market share from Google due to its increased competiveness, massive marketing campaign, and posturing from the strong arm of Microsoft, but at least at this point it does not seem hold up any particularly amazing features that are going to give it a leg up over Google. It is this Arizona Web Designer’s opinion that Google will remain on top for some time. Bing may take a small bite, but Google will still sit at the head table.