google vs. bing : competition breeds innovation

Have you tried Bing yet? Microsoft's current serious foray into the web search field is definitely having a good showing. It is slowly yet significantly, taking a bite out of Google's search space pie, usurping up to 12% of the web search market share. That with the fact that essentially Yahoo! and Microsoft have joined forces on this front and we have a legitimate contender in this universally used but stale field.

Bing is very ... 'current' in look and feel. A very rich web experience compared to the tried-and-true M.O. of Google.

fun with bing and google...

If you're a bit stuck in your Google ways here are a couple of fun ways to jump in:
www.bing-vs-google.com (a side by side search results website)
blindsearch.fejus.com (and if you're afraid you're biases will still get in the way.. how about a blind search test)

emerging search technologies...

On a side note, there are a few cool things popping up in the search technology front. Surfing Google Labs I found a few cool things that may be fun ..and even productive to try out:
Google Fast Flip (visual results of news items (akin to browsing a news stand)
Google Similar Images (an algorithm that tries to locate similar images to the one you pick)
Google Squared (semantic search tool gathering pertinent info on your search)
Bing Visual Search (searching via images. a great sorting tool) (before you can use this you have to manually choose the country to United States in the upper right hand corner on bing.com) (you may have to install Silverlight (it will prompt you if you do). Microsoft's version of Adobe's ubiquitous Flash. If web apps like Bing's Visual Search take off it may be a launching pad for Silverlight to finally take a foot hold and become a legitimate contender to Flash in the interactive web space. Interesting...)