The home page over at Bing.com – Microsoft’s newest generation of search – is a huge step forward from past offerings. The page is simple, inviting, and seems to have a better pulse of the current trends on the Web.
It surprised me that Microsoft chose to include a seemingly random image as the background of the page. The image changes daily and includes several hover spots, each of which reveals a fact related to the picture and a link to a suggested relevant search query. Two of these links are duplicated in the footer bar of the page.
It seems to me that the background image of Bing is a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft. Although its designers chose to include popular searches on the home page and even may include posts from Twitter in search results, Bing’s random home page image stops its realtime cred in its tracks.
Instead, Bing should include a background image that is relevant to the news of the day (or at least a relevant holiday). With the amount of media available on the Web, this shouldn’t be a huge task; maybe they could scan the Wikipedia page for the current day to find a relevant event. (Today’s pic could be an archived shot of Endeavour or an early concert image of the Rolling Stones in commemoration of their first show together). I’d give them huge bonus points if they chose a Creative Commons image each day; I hear now they’re even easier to find.
Yes, I agree. But sometimes it does. I have observed that some of the days it provides the relevant homepage and one can discover more by clicking on hotspot. Like when Obama was elected and on some other days. This is applicable to US ver. of Bing only. I would suggest to make it more localized so that it will have more local following. And I think Bing is moving towards it.
Comment by vasudev — July 12, 2009 @ 9:48 pm
And also I would like to see a download button or set as wall paper button as everyone wants to have those stunning pics as their wallpaper or for collecting them.
Comment by vasudev — July 12, 2009 @ 9:49 pm
my default search engine is Yahoo but now i am using BING because it is much better than Yahoo. i heard that Bing search engine would power Yahoo search also.
Comment by Heather May — January 18, 2010 @ 3:56 am