I don't think Google needs to worry about losing their dominance in the search engine market, at least not right now but Microsoft definitely can be happy with their latest offering in the search engine market. Personally, Live Search to me was just dead space. I say that because looking back I would avoid having to use Live Search even if it was more convenient. But now not so much with Bing.

Bing does sound a little cooler. I don't mind telling people I did a search on Bing although I don't know if I feel that comfortable telling people that I "Binged" it. I would still prefer to say I "Googled" it but then when I see the results I feel alright. For example, when you do happen to do a search with Bing which is more likely now at least for all the Yahoo fans, what you’ll find is a search engine with good search results plus a pleasing interface that might work better for those who prefer something a little more pleasant than a minimalist plain vanilla site.

No, Bing definitely doesn't kill Google but it does show Microsoft has come to play. Microsoft is now a real player in the search engine market. In fact Microsoft's Bing is not only prettier but when you take a hard look it appears better organized for most searches. In fact if Microsoft's goal was to get people to find the products and services they were searching for Bing definitely seems to be a better avenue than the Google search at times. Although, it does feel a little too commercial at times. When I just want pure search results even if its a little more crowded Google appears to be the better choice.

Here is the key places where Bing beats Google:

The Left-Side Category Bar

This section adds a lot of relevance to the searches. If by chance the initial results is not exactly what you are looking for the left-side category bar is a quick way to refine it. With Google you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and then randomly search through additional pages. With Bing it is all mostly at eye level.

Richer Visual UI

Google had trained us to accept minimal visual experience for the benefit of solid search results but now that Bing has reduced that gap the visual experience with Bing seems to stand out more and depending on your mood may actually be preferred.

So does this mean that you should give up Google and switch over to Bing. Well, at this point it would be strictly at matter of preference but I definitely wouldn't avoid using it. Oh yeah there is one more thing, if you are the site owner you listings may not show up in Bing yet. I searched for my sites and they showed in Google since they have already been crawled but either did not show in Bing or did not show as many links. That is definitely important from a business perspective, until Bing catches up.

The only other thing I would suggest to Microsoft is that even though Bing is nicely organized that it also include video results on the primary search results like Google. Using Bing in the search of "LA Galaxy", the results were a lot cleaner and nicely presented and if you click on the video link at the top you do get a nice array of videos of LA Galaxy moments but in the google search you get some videos in the primary search page which I clicked on right away saving me a step. Bing does show a selection of images at the top but I think in this YouTube generation a listing of videos would be more useful.

Now, this review is obviously just at a high level view. Bing should do fine in the US due to all the massive advertising in the US but globally it might be a different matter. Take a look at some stats at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/24/bing-doesnt-have-much-zing-yet-outside-the-us-comscore/. So one way or another it looks like Bing will be gaining market share. And if so then someone will be losing market share. It may not be Google right away. It may be other smaller search engines but someone's going to lose as Bing gains.

A future blog will go over more specific category searches since its too much to cover in this review. In the meantime its your turn to try out the new search engine and decide for yourself. If you want to do a side by side comparison you can go to http://www.bing-vs-google.com.

Efren Duarte is Managing Director, Products & Services and AVO Chief of Avocera Consulting and principal of the AVMI Group, a market research firm and think tank primarily focused on the business technology. You can read more blogs at http://www.avochief.com.